The AMA Steps Into the 20th Century

Doctors Light Up

By NORM KENT, COUNTERPUNCH

"Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

-- DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young Docket No. 86-22. 1988.

Better late than never, I suppose.

After decades of burying their head in the sand, the country's largest physician group, the American Medical Association (AMA), has reversed its long-held position that marijuana has no medical value. Now that the whole country has caught on, they have decided to jump into the ocean and see if they can’t swim and catch up to the ship that has left shore.

This is why the gay rights battle and pot advocates have so much in common. This decision is like the American Psychiatric Association saying there is nothing wrong with homosexuality years after gay rights professionals had formed coalitions in professions from law enforcement to medicine.

Nevertheless, to their belated credit, the AMA has called for a review of marijuana's status as a ‘Schedule 1’ drug with ‘no accepted medical use’ under the federal Controlled Substances Act. As a ‘Schedule 1’ controlled substance, in the same category as heroin, ecstasy and LSD, the federal laws for possession remain unduly harsh and the public access even for medical testing remains severely limited.

Reducing marijuana's federal classification even just to Schedule 2 -- the same class as cocaine, methadone, oxycodone and morphine -- would allow for more testing on the medical effects of marijuana. Since the government’s purported unwillingness to accept marijuana as an herb with medicinal value has been based on their allegation that all we have is limited anecdotal evidence, the scheduling conundrum becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The powers that be have been shouting we do not have enough evidence to reclassify while inhibiting the very research which could prove it. Politically savvy perhaps, but morally unconscionable.

Consequently, the rescheduling of marijuana is a critical battle that marijuana advocates must win. There is a terrible comfort zone the political left can succumb to if we find satisfaction that a particular administration is easing off on law enforcement. Political power is temporary. Those in office today can be voted out tomorrow. But those in office tomorrow will still have to follow the law in effect on that day. Thus, battles must be fought in courtrooms and legislatures. Laws must be changed now to insure change is permanent. Rescheduling initiatives must go forth.

Social activists have to understand that without pressure centrists will drift to the comfort zone of the right. The reason close to a million Americans are still getting arrested every year for marijuana possession is because so many people could care less about the laws and assume it is perfectly okay to light up where you want when they want. But some of you wind up like the South Florida judge, Lawrence M. Korda, who had spent 30 distinguished years on the bench. He decided to light up a single joint during a rock concert in a Hollywood, Florida park, and after a series of humiliating front page articles documenting his arrest, was forced to resign his position.

You can’t let up if you have the ball. For marijuana reformers, like gay rights proponents, the wave is on our side. We can’t get off the board. You have to ride it out and carry it to a new tomorrow. Yes, gay marriage may have lost a 31st state vote in Maine last month, but more significantly, scores of communities nationwide are extending homosexual couples the rights and privileges afforded heterosexuals, under the umbrella of domestic partnership ordinances. If your community is not, contact a city commissioner near you today.

It's been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that marijuana has therapeutic benefits. It’s been 30 years since Administrative Law Judge Francis Young ruled that rescheduling should occur. He was overruled by Presidents, politics, and the DEA. See Fred Gardner’s article about Judge Young here online in CounterPunch from early this Spring.

After three decades, it is time to honor Judge Young’s decision that cannabis has the capacity to provide medically based options in pain relief treatment. We know what they are, from taming nausea for cancer stricken patients to reducing neuropathic pain in those so suffering, whether from AIDS or multiple sclerosis or comparable ailments.

As stated by Aaron Houston of the successful Marijuana Policy Project, "Marijuana's Schedule I status is not just scientifically untenable, given the wealth of recent data showing it to be both safe and effective for chronic pain and other conditions, but it's been a major obstacle to needed research." The truth is more people died from spinach last year than pot. And a thousand people a year, I understand, overdose from aspirin. You don’t die from pot, just maybe ‘jones’ out a bit if you don’t have it.

The government has maintained a legally inconsistent position for decades regarding the scheduling of marijuana as an illegal drug with no justifiable medical uses. Even today, our government continues to operate the remnants of its once popular ‘Compassionate Use Protocol’ program, which allows the DEA to distribute marijuana cigarettes under a prescription to those deemed medically worthy to receive it. New applications have been denied for two decades. Only four patients are still alive who still receive medical marijuana thusly.

Ask yourself this: how can the government go into court and say there is no medical use for marijuana when its own DEA was and has been distributing it to dozens of patients for two decades? It is a case we must undertake again.

In changing its policy, the AMA said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug. But it is a lot more than that. Now it is time to pressure your congressman to pressure the Obama Administration to pressure the DEA to insure that the rescheduling occurs, and marijuana is removed from that list of drugs which can still lock your ass up in prison for years. Make no mistake about it. This change is not just about medically based research. This change is about insuring your freedom. It’s about preventing future lawmakers from using the ‘drug war’ as a tool to inhibit your liberty.

Freedom is a nice thing to have, and repressive pot laws are a stupid reason to take it away.

Norm Kent is a Fort Lauderdale based criminal defense lawyer who is a member of the board of directors of NORML. He publishes the www.browardlawblog.com and can be reached at norm@normkent.com

Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

By ALAN NASSER, COUNTERPUNCH

The liberal imagination has broadened the scope of what it wants to dismiss as unrealistic, utopian and unpragmatic, i.e. as for all practical purposes impossible. These claims have typically been accompanied by the assurance that “This is not something that Americans would go for – it’s not the American way.” There are countless variations on this theme. Obama’s case against a single payer health care system is a conspicuous case in point. What distinguishes Obama’s position on this issue is not merely the weakness of his “arguments”, but the straight-ahead factual falsehood of the some of the counterclaims he has put forward in order to turn the desirable into the impossible.

The Alleged Impossibility of Universal Health Care

In May and August, 2007 Obama stated his position on single payer:

"If you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system'-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside." (May, 2007)

" [W]hen we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices....Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered...I don't want to wait for that perfect system...” (August, 2007, at an Iowa roundtable)

Obama offers 5 reasons for not supporting single payer.

First: “..we’ve got all these legacy systems in place” simply means that our system is not single payer, and we’ve had it for a long time. Obama has turned himself into a bent sort of Burkean conservative: we have been marinating in a tradition which so permeates our way of being in the world that to do away with it would upset social life as we know it. This tradition includes…. insurance-industry-based health care! More mundanely: we haven’t got it, so we can’t have it.

Second: it would be hard to “manage the transition” from a deeply flawed system to a much better one. Harder than it was to effect the transition to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, desegregation, etc.? In each of these cases, what many people had “known for most of their lives” [was] “thrown by the wayside”. It belongs to the nature of any move from one way of doing things to a very different one that the transition will take some doing. That fact alone settles nothing. What matters is how urgent is the need for change. The US’s irrationally costly system which leaves millions uninsured, a fate suffered by the citizens of no other developed capitalist country, is surely intolerable. We have been given no reason to think that the cost of a transition to universal coverage is so great as to outweigh the massive benefits of this tried and tested arrangement. Obama’s excuses amount to a cleverly disguised a-priori argument against any consequential transformation of the status quo.

Third: the “difficulty” [i.e. costs] of “adjusting the culture to a different system”, given that there is “a lot of resistance to a single-payer system” , outweigh the benefits of single-payer. But what matters is not what a few selected Iowans are alleged to have felt about universal coverage. The demonstrated preferences of the democratic majority can’t be irrelevant.

On this issue Obama clearly means to imply that “Americans” don’t support single-payer. This is factually false. It’s improbable that Obama is unaware of the results of many surveys on this issue, the most recent, to my knowledge, having been conducted between December 14-20, 2007. The results of this Associated Press-Yahoo poll are worth reproducing as they were reported:

Subjects were asked which of the following 2 views comes closest to their own view:

!. The United States should continue the current health insurance system in which most people get their health insurance from private insurers, but some people have no insurance.

2. The United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.

A majority of 65% supported 2, 34% supported 1 and 2% did not respond.

Those polled were also asked “Do you consider yourself a supporter of a single-payer health care system, that is a national health plan financed by taxpayers in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan, or not?”

55% answered Yes, 44% No and 2% did not respond. Single-payer still has a majority here, but a smaller one, probably due to the pollsters’ use of (what is to some) the red-flag term ‘single payer’. [View the full poll results at http://news.yahoo.com/]

Taxpayer funded, government-run health care insurance for all is a public, not a private, good, and it is the only political project that most Americans are on record as willing to pay higher taxes to achieve. There is in fact not “a lot of resistance” to a rational health care system. Obama knows this. But the interests of those who have heavily invested (literally) in him carry more weight than do the most pressing interests of the rest.

The Ideology of Individual Choice and the Logic of Solidarity

Fourth: Obama claims that a health care plan based on “a series of choices” is superior to one that leaves no choice but instead saddles everyone with the burden of full and affordable coverage. Pity those poor Europeans, deprived of their right to liberty by forced access to first-rate health care. In the City on the Hill, few things are more important than the right to choose: which health care system gives us the most choice? This way of thinking is saturated with the ideology of individualism and its private goods, and functions to obliterate solidarity, as opposed to self-interest, as a political and moral value. This is especially pernicious since, as we shall see, it is only concerted action motivated by solidarity that can bring about a health care system from which no one is excluded because they can’t afford it.

When Obama contradistinguishes choice from universal coverage he unwittingly underscores the irrelevance of individual, self-interested choice to political goals motivated by a commitment to solidarity. Preoccupation with the choice between one doctor and another, one plan or another, conceals a crucial assumption, namely that the fundamental issue underlying the health care debate is one about choice and liberty. An individualist ontology implies that our collective fate is a function of whether or not each individual member of society is savvy enough to make the free choices most likely to promote his or her self-interest. But are people who worry about access to health care really concerned with choice? What weighs upon them is that they can’t afford health care. No individual can make on her own the choice to turn the US into a country that makes health care affordable, available to all. Such a choice is not a choice by an individual about her own well being. It is not even a choice about the aggregate sum of each and every individual’s well being. It is a choice we make together about the kind of society we want to live in. To worry about health care because one cannot afford it is, on reflection, to lament the non-existence of a public good, universally accessible health care, one that can’t be reduced to the sum of all individual goods. The survey discussed above indicates that most Americans implicitly know this. The majority endorse a universally applicable measure, taxation, as a means to institute a universally available, i.e. public, good, access to health care. A universal tax, as for education, roadways, health care, is not an individual cost; it is a social cost. Correspondingly, universally accessible health care is not an individual good, it is a public good. The majority would prefer to live in the kind of society that features that public good. It’s a different kind of society from the one we’re currently stuck with.

That kind of society, and the public goods it prioritizes, can be achieved only if it is pursued as a goal by people acting in concert. That’s where solidarity is on display: in collective action motivated by the desire to achieve a public good.

The kinds of goals/goods in question typically involve bringing about a certain kind of society. For example: the kind of society that provides all with affordable health care, the kind of society that makes access to the means of life -e.g. a living wage- available to all, the kind of society that makes the meeting of human needs the principal motivator of economic production, the kind of society that assigns sufficient resources to the reduction of pollution and the preservation of nature,… Prattling on about individual choice creates a conceptual space within which considerations of solidarity and public goods cannot arise. Talking about solidarity in the language of individualism is like trying to score a field goal in baseball.

Obama references affordability in spite of himself when he claims (falsely) that he wants to “make sure that every American is covered”. The fundamental virtue of single payer is that it detaches insurance from employment and thereby from one’s level of income, so that everyone can afford health care. The question of choice doesn’t even arise if you can’t afford to keep yourself healthy. And come to think of it, were health care universally available, the question of affordability would not arise. Talk of being able to “afford” access to health care would be as misplaced as talk of being able to afford access to elementary education.

Solidarity As a Familiar Phenomenon

The issue is worth dwelling on. In everyday life we are all familiar with the pursuit of irreducibly social goods. Think of a family with kids. A rare and highly desirable work opportunity, but far from home, arises for spouse #1. Spouse #2 has come upon a comparable golden opportunity, also far from home. The family wants to stay together. A decision based on the good of either individual spouse would break up the family. What to do? It’s not uncommon in such a situation for the adults to look to determine what would be good for the family. And what’s good for the family is not the sum of spouse #1’s good plus spouse #2’s good, plus the goods of each individual child. We cannot commensurate and then sum up these different and sometimes incompatible goods. The good of the family is irreducibly social, just like universally accessible health care. Families and households act in solidarity all the time.

Obama’s repeated insistence on the market as the primary agent in distributing resources precludes consideration of questions of solidarity from the outset. He is the instrument of domestic advisors benighted by preposterous economic theories hailing the efficiency and liberty-promoting virtues of the market. For these wags the pursuit of individual self-interest, plus competition, makes the world go round and secures for us all the freedom we (are allowed to) want. As we have seen above, the restriction of human-welfare-enhancing political choices to the realm of competition and self-interest deprives us of the freedom collectively to choose to live in the kind of society that provides copious public goods. That’s a big freedom lost.

The Political Psychology of Solidarity

A sense of solidarity is far more prevalent in much of Europe than it is in the Land of the Free. In a New York Times article titled “For the French, Solidarity Still Counts” (by Youseff M. Ibrahim, Dec. 20, 1995), the author describes public reaction in France to a three-week strike by public workers supported by “hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who filled the streets of every major city in France.” Workers were protesting then Prime Minister Juppe’s proposal to slash medical, social welfare and benefit payments. According to the Times:

“Polls showed an astonishing amount of sympathy on the part of those who did not participate in the strike and who suffered the paralysis of mass transit and essential services. Many people explained that they supported the strike because the Government’s austerity programs are stripping layer after layer of subsidies that permitted French families of even the most modest means to sample the cultural and culinary treasures that only the rich can afford.”

One recipient of the social wage was a woman receiving the standard subsidy extended to pregnant women. The subsidy will continue, for each child, until the child reaches 18. Said the woman: “This is the foundation of our Republican system… Equality and fraternity are not mere slogans here. For me the engagement by the state is an expression of solidarity that gives us values… I think most French people want France’s values to be decided by this spirit, not by cold, remote, economic summits that speak of deficits and competition. That was the message of the strikes.”

This past March one million demonstrated across France in protest of proposed cutbacks in the wake of the financial crisis. I am currently living in France for a stretch of time and have witnessed frequent strikes and other expressions of resistance to neoliberal austerity measures. A sad and stark contrast to the sitting-duck posture of so many US workers.

The Times article provides an implicit explanation of why it is that in France and other European countries there is no general resentment of social benefits available, for example, to single mothers, while in the US more than a few working people oppose this kind of support. The Times reports that the subsidy offered to the woman quoted above “is extended to every mother in France regardless of economic or marital status.” In France benefits to single mothers are not regarded as “special treatment” denied to the responsible and hard-working. There is neither social nor psychological soil in which to plant the seeds of resentment, since the single mother is the recipient of a public good available to all mothers.

Fifth and finally: “I just want to make sure every American is covered...I don't want to wait for that perfect system...” If the president truly wanted to guarantee universal coverage he would not have taken single-payer off the table before discussions began. Whatever is finally settled upon, government will neither negotiate drug prices nor regulate premiums, so we know now that millions will remain uninsured. Obama has known that all along.

Obama rigs the game by characterizing single-payer as “that perfect system”. One of the major weapons in the party-liners’ arsenal is to portray those who believe in greater possibilities as naïve utopians blind to the truism that a “perfect world” is impossible in what William F. Buckley liked to call “this veil of tears”. The logic is fine: since there are no finite limits to the greater possibilities of goodness, and perfection is conceived, as Anselm reminds us, as that greater than which none can be conceived, it follows that perfection is impossile down here. But whoever introduced mumbo-jumbo about perfection in the first place? Isn’t the elimination of a great deal of unnecessary suffering enough? Last I recall, single-payer advocates claim merely (sic) that it is way better than what we are offered. That’s pretty good.

Obama’s case against single-payer frames health-care priorities in the language of atomic individualism. Hence, the range of possible outcomes is determined for the worse before discussion begins. I am suggesting that a good part of our resistance and organizing should consist in reminders that an alternative way of thinking and acting is already on display in some of our common practices, and in already existing benefits won for other populations by aiming at public goods to be achieved by concerted action in solidarity.

Hope that helps.

Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He can be reached at nassera@evergreen.edu

The Public Opt-Out

By Peter Stanislaw, Get Off This!

Many progressives, liberals, and moderate conservatives (a dying breed) are celebrating the inclusion of a viable public option in the proposed Health Care Reform Bill, an accomplishment which should make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proud. Fighting the influence of Olympia Snow on the Senate Finance Committee - who has stated that a public option would give the public sector too much of an advantage in the health care market - Reid was able to place the option into the bill with a compromise engineered by Charles Schumer, Senator from New York, for states to be able to opt out.

While this sounds fair on the surface, it should be remembered that it is not a "people's" opt-out plan, but a state plan. The roughly 154 million people who live in states where conservatives control the governor's mansion and/or the state legislature will probably never have a chance to enroll in a government-sponsored plan, and will have to choose from the plans offered by the entrenched insurance industry. The influence of the states that do opt for the government plan may not be enough to effect any true competition in the area of premiums, deductibles, co-pays and costs for services.

This compromise is being played out in the corporate media as being the best of both worlds. No mention is made of the facts that the public option was a severe compromise from the majority desire for a single-payer plan in the first place, or that the insurance industry has undue influence among the people's representatives. The opt-out plan is too far from perfect and we are not finished in our goal of effecting a true transformation of health care in these Relatively United States.

We must keep the pressure on - we can make a difference.

White House v. Fox News: a War Obama Can Win

By Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch

The jousting between the White House and Fox News is drawing grave warnings from pundits to Obama’s team that this is a losing issue for their man. They quote the old tag, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”

Certainly the jabbing has been refreshingly vigorous. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, explains Obama’s refusal to appear on Fox News by saying, "Fox News often operates either as the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican party. We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent."

"I want to show you right where the enemy is located," Beck screams to his adoring three-million audience as he circles Rupert Murdoch's Fox News headquarters in green ink on a map of New York. "This is the enemy, America!"

Surely, it was a no-brainer for the White House. Fox’s troupe of right wingers will trash Obama, whatever Dunn says. Why not please your own political base by showing a little backbone and giving Murdoch a slap on the snout?

Besides, history suggests that if the White House keeps up the small arms fire and doesn’t lose its cool, in the end it will carry the day, and edge Fox as a network operation into the Glen Beck insane asylum, viewed with derision by even more millions of Americans.

In the case of the Obama administration there's the added bonus that after surrendering abjectly to every powerful interest group in America, they're at last showing an appetite for a scuffle.

Many presidents have seen political benefit in setting up the press as irresponsible mudslingers, overpaid, lazy and politically biased, which is most people reckon it is anyway. The champion here was Richard Nixon who unleashed Pat Buchanan and the late William Safire, and those famous lines for vice president Spiro Agnew, including the rather playful “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Actually it’s a measure of how sloppy the Nixon people were that across the entire Watergate Scandal they failed to excavate Carl Bernstein’s family ties to the Communist Party, nor the fact that every few weeks Bernstein would take time off from his investigative labors with Bob Woodward and drive up to Vermont to visit his cousin Shoshana who at that time was living under an alias in Brattleboro, one jump ahead of the FBI which had her on its Ten Most Wanted list as a radical bomber. People often overestimate the surveillance capacities of the state. One leak of that info to one of Nixon’s pet columnists and the Watergate scandal would have been over.

But in some of the famous exchanges from Nixon-time, it was the president who came out ahead in the eyes of public opinion. I can remember watching the clash between Nixon and Dan Rather in a press conference in 1974 as the Watergate scandal neared its climax. When Rather stood up, Nixon’s people in the room booed and Rather’s colleagues cheered. Nixon, on the stage, looked down at Rather and asked with heavy sarcasm, 'Are you running for something?' Dan snapped back, 'No, sir, are you?' Many people took Rather’s response as smartass, and out of place. But then, Rather was never the brightest bulb on the block.

Nixon’s chief weapon of coercion before the 1972 election was the Joint Operating Agreement, which suspended normal anti-trust rules so that competing newspapers in one town could, in the name of newspaper preservation, collude in fixing advertising rates. In the ’72 race Nixon collected a record number of newspaper endorsements.

Another weapon in the wars between White House and press was a tax audit or an indictment. In the 1930s,Moe Annenberg, with close mob ties and co-owner of the Race Wire, ATT’s fourth biggest customer, owned The Philadelphia Inquirer and used it to support Republican politicians in Pennsylvania and attack Roosevelt. FDR promptly turned for help to David Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post. Stern promoted an IRS investigation and Moe pulled three years in jail. (Moe was the father of a former US ambassador to the Court of St James, Walter Annenberg – who spent many diligent years winching his family’s reputation out of the mud.)

Some presidents, like Kennedy and Reagan, had no need to foment a public feud with the press, since the press in all essentials was in their pockets anyway. Carter furnishes the classic case of someone who simply lost the initiative and fatally allowed the press to make fun of him as a wimp, in his canoe beating off a giant rabbit with a paddle, or passing out during a jog, or whining about “malaise”.

The most intricate story is that of the jousting between the Clintons and the press, from the moment, almost fatal to his initial presidential campaign, that Murdoch’s National Star exposed Clinton’s long affair in Little Rock with Gennifer Flowers in January, 1993.

Hillary Clinton threw down the gauntlet on January 27, 1998, at the onset of the Lewinsky affair, when she told Matt Lauer of NBC that “the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

At the time plenty of people made fun of HRC for this, but it was undoubtedly smart politics, just as the attack on Fox News is now. It fired up Clinton’s base, and allowed an extensive cottage industry to thrive, unearthing the rightwing conspirators and their financial backers, such as Richard Mellon Scaife.

Seventy-five years ago, it mattered greatly to FDR what the Philadelphia Inquirer was saying about him. Obama’s White House probably cares about the New York Times and the Washington Post but not much else. The Wall Street Journal has loathed Obama from the getgo. The Fox Network is really the only enemy with mass appeal and as I suggested at the start it’s not political rocket science to go after it. Tone matters here. The barbs should not be whiny, but caustic and good humored, to the effect that this is not a news medium but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, as Dunn says. It’s essential not to blink. Glenn Beck is connected to sanity by a pretty thin mooring rope. A few months of this and he’ll probably pop, either going back on the bottle or slithering into a psychotic break, though some would say this is a nightly event anyway.

Obama's Education Plan Depends On Test Scoring By Ill-Trained Temps

Todd Farley, NY Times - Last week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged standardized tests are flawed measures of student progress. But the problem is not so much the tests themselves - it's the people scoring them.

Many people remember those tests as lots of multiple-choice questions answered by marking bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, but today's exams nearly always include the sort of "open ended" items where students fill up the blank pages of a test booklet with their own thoughts and words. On many tests today, a good number of points come from such open-ended items, and that's where the real trouble begins.

Multiple-choice items are scored by machines, but open-ended items are scored by subjective humans who are prone to errors. I know because I was one of them. In 1994, I was a graduate student looking for part-time work. After a five-minute interview I got the job of scoring fourth-grade, state-wide reading comprehension tests. The for-profit testing company that hired me paid almost $8 an hour, not bad money for me at the time.

One of the tests I scored had students read a passage about bicycle safety. They were then instructed to draw a poster that illustrated a rule that was indicated in the text. We would award one point for a poster that included a correct rule and zero for a drawing that did not.

The first poster I saw was a drawing of a young cyclist, a helmet tightly attached to his head, flying his bike over a canal filled with flaming oil, his two arms waving wildly in the air. I stared at the response for minutes. Was this a picture of a helmet-wearing child who understood the basic rules of bike safety? Or was it meant to portray a youngster killing himself on two wheels?

I was not the only one who was confused. Soon several of my fellow scorers - pretty much people off the street, like me - were debating my poster, some positing that it clearly showed an understanding of bike safety while others argued that it most certainly did not. I realized then - an epiphany confirmed over a decade and a half of experience in the testing industry - that the score any student would earn mostly depended on which temporary employee viewed his response.

A few years later, still a part-time worker, I had a similar experience. For one project our huge group spent weeks scoring ninth-grade movie reviews, each of us reading approximately 30 essays an hour (yes, one every two minutes), for eight hours a day, five days a week. At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie "Debbie Does Dallas." The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student's strong writing skills against the "inappropriate" subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.

All of the 100 or so scorers in the room soon became embroiled in the debate. Eventually we came to the "consensus" that the essay deserved a 6 ("genius"), or 4 (well-written but "naughty"), or a zero ("filth"). The essay was ultimately given a zero.

This kind of arbitrary decision is the rule, not the exception. The years I spent assessing open-ended questions convinced me that large-scale assessment was mostly a mad scramble to score tests, meet deadlines and rake in cash.

The cash, though, wasn't bad. It was largely for this reason that I eventually became a project director for a private testing company. The scoring standards were still bleak. A couple of years ago I supervised a statewide reading assessment test. My colleague and I were relaxing at a pool because we believed we'd already finished scoring all of the tens of thousands of student responses. Then a call from the home office informed us that a couple of dozen unscored tests had been discovered.

Because our company's deadline for returning the tests was that day, my colleague and I had to score them even though we were already well into happy hour. We spent the evening listening to a squeaky-voiced secretary read student answers to us over a scratchy speakerphone line, while we made decisions that could affect somebody's future.

These are the kinds of tests, after all, that can help determine government financing for schools. There is already much debate over whether the progress that Secretary Duncan hopes to measure can be determined by standardized testing at all. But in the meantime, we can give more thought to who scores these tests. We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education - rather than by people like me.

Iran War Dance

From MediaLens:

...A rare voice of sanity in the Guardian, Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, put the latest revelations in context, noting that: “when Obama announced that ‘Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow’, he is technically and legally wrong”. Ritter explained:

“The Qom plant, if current descriptions are accurate, cannot manufacture the basic feed-stock (uranium hexaflouride, or UF6) used in the centrifuge-based enrichment process. It is simply another plant in which the UF6 can be enriched.

"Why is this distinction important? Because the IAEA has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran's nuclear material stockpile. There has been no diversion of nuclear material to the Qom plant (since it is under construction). The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.

“Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama's announcement concerning the Qom facility.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/25/iran-secret-nuclear-plant-inspections)

Even if the claims of Iranian military intent are true, Ritter added, “this interpretation would still require the diversion of significant nuclear material away from the oversight of IAEA inspectors, something that would be almost immediately evident. Any meaningful diversion of nuclear material would be an immediate cause for alarm, and would trigger robust international reaction, most probably inclusive of military action against the totality of Iran's known nuclear infrastructure".

Instead, it is “more likely, an attempt on the part of Iran to provide for strategic depth and survivability of its nuclear programme in the face of repeated threats on the part of the US and Israel to bomb its nuclear infrastructure".

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Walter Brasch: The Origins of Labor Day

A very good piece on the militant origins of Labor Day. It doesn't involve a grill or a smoker, but don't let that stop you. I love me some ribs!--Pete

Walter Brasch: The Origins of Labor Day

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Kabul-Shit

Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

By RICHARD NEVILLE, Counterpunch

The brain disease sweeping the West is virulent and vicious, like the golden Staph which haunts so many hospitals. Most at risk are Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals and journalists. The ailment is not triggered by bacteria but by an ideology as old as history, which every so often resurfaces as a new strain, and this one hasn’t been named. It’s often fatal. Less so to the carriers than those caught in their sights. Let’s call it Kabul-shit – the propensity to ignore the years of violence inflicted on Afghanistan and to paint the invaders as heroes.

It sometimes seems that the greater the slaughter of civilians, the louder the praise for the mission. This may be due to guilt. Britain’s Gordon Brown: We are in Afghanistan to purge terrorism. Australia’s Kevin Rudd: Our soldiers are building schools. America’s Barack Obama: This is a war of necessity. The Sydney Morning Herald: The mission is to bolster Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and to support regional stability in Pakistan.

Tosh, the lot of it. The war started as an act of revenge on the perpetrators of the 9/11 tragedy and was not authorized by the United Nations. It took two years and a thousand bloody air strikes before UN Resolution 1510 finally granted the invaders an after-the-fact "legitimacy". Many legal scholars still regard the invasion as illegal under international law.

Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, how many Afghani civilians have been blown away? Take a guess. It’s not widely publicized. Wikipedia puts civilian casualties at “roughly” between 9,000 and 27,000. This does not include the thousands of maimed children.

All for what? Why are we there? The Taliban were not responsible for 9/11. “Yes they are” claims the Sydney Morning Herald, they “nurtured Al Qaeda”. Breast feeding Osama bin Laden, tucking in his little romper suit…? The Herald editorial ignores the role of the CIA in seeding the Taliban, and pouring in cash and weapons for the Mujahideen to kick out the Soviets.

In October 2001, shortly after the US started its own invasion, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial, so long as the bombing was halted and they were shown evidence of his involvement in 9/11. George Bush’s reply: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

A perfect example of Kabul-shit. If Bush possessed the evidence, why wasn’t it divulged? Three years later, in October 2004, a video was delivered to Al Jazeera in which bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

And so, eight years after the invasion, despite what Western Generals keep promising, US and NATO bombs continue to pulverise this unhappy land. It’s like a never ending blood sport. Why can’t we pull out? Every politician has a different answer. Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard pithily expressed the fear that lurks in the souls of warmongers: A premature withdrawal would be a blow to the prestige of the West. Remember Prince William a few years ago, calling in air strikes on “enemy positions”, the media thrilled. Hurrah for Western prestige. Never mind that our continued occupation involves aerial assassination on a massive scale, a kind of slow motion genocide – look at the record.

And in February this year, it was plucky little Australia that kicked off the shooting season, with a special forces attack on a compound in Uruzgan, killing 5 Afghan children. In April, American forces killed four civilians - a man, a woman, and two children - as well as an unborn baby. At first the US military said these were "armed militants", but – as is often the case - it was later conceded the dead were civilians. In May, we had the Farah massacre.

The US military claimed that only militants were hit, but the Afghan Defense Ministry announced a death toll of 140 villagers, producing an official list with the names and ages of those killed: 93 were children, 22 were adult males.

This was a bit too much, even for the Pentagon. The previous commander was dumped. President Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal, formerly head of Task Force 6-26, a death squad that ran a brutal interrogation unit at Camp Narnia, near Baghdad. "High-value" detainees were kept in the Black Room, formerly a Saddam dungeon. Its décor featured a darkened cell with butcher’s hooks hanging from the ceiling. Basically, McChrystal’s task force ran a secret prison and his unit was implicated in two prisoner deaths. A prosecution was initiated, but ran out of steam after a “computer glitch” had disappeared the unit’s records. An Esquire writer who visited Camp Narnia, John H. Richardson, reported it was so secret that its officers used false names and it was a place where “bad things happened”, a place where Stanley McChrystal had made a “personal promise that the Red Cross would never be allowed into the camp”, in violation of US treaty obligations.

Last week came the disastrous US fighter jet air strike in the northern province of Kunduz, which a prominent Afghan rights group claims to have killed up to 70 civilians, a figure based on interviews with local residents. A few days later, it was reported that Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid on a hospital in eastern Afghanistan, searching for insurgents. The soldiers bound guards and relatives before turning patients out of beds and ransacking a women’s ward, it is claimed. Nato is investigating.

“This war has nothing to do with defending the American people”, commented a New York Times feedback contributor, “Obama’s war is the war of the overgrown military industrial complex that needs a continuous flow of dollars in order to survive”.
Another writes: “The so-called “new strategy” announced by general McChrystal is nothing but a propaganda ploy to appease the American public. The Afghan war is continued exactly as it was pursued by the defunct Bush policy. Carpet bomb everything and perhaps the enemy will disappear”.

According to Russian analyst Andrei Konurov, Washington and Brussels have far broader geo-strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and “ultimately the world”, to abandon current operations and occupations. He points out that "the US has deployed 19 military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asian countries” since 2001.
US Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman today told the NY Times an Afghan pullout could deny the United States bases from which it carries out Predator bombing missions. From their dual perspectives, both experts seem to believe that the US gameplan is far more complex, entrenched and far reaching than dreamed of by media analysts.

Finally, a comment from Dr Abdullah, the leading opposition candidate: "We have insecurity in this country. We have bad government. We have corruption. We have narcotics. We have a war. We have an insurgency. On top of that, if a leadership is imposed on the people based on fraudulent elections, what will happen? What will happen to Afghanistan?"

There are no easy answers. Curbing air strikes is a start, as well as holding clean elections. Many westerners seek a bright future for Afghanistan and the voices of the well informed, and of the local people, must prevail over trigger happy soldiers, secret geo-political maneuverings and the endless flood of Kabul-shit.

Richard Neville lives in Australia, the land that formed him. In the Sixties he raised hell in London and published Oz. He can be reached through his websites, http://www.homepagedaily.com/ and http://www.richardneville.com.au/

HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAUGHT SUBURBANITES TO BE RACISTS

By the way, this isn't a story about a conspiracy. It is a story about inherent, systemic racism and business as usual. Be advised, however, that just because we've been taught to bark at the conspiracy theorists when the bell rings, conspiracies are alive and well in America.--Pete

[FDR's Home Owners Loan Corporation, the HOLC,] figured out how real-estate markets worked and systemized an appraisal methodology that would help banks, lenders, and home owners guarantee the investment value of their properties. People were not about to take out mortgages to buy homes in neighborhoods that might go down in value. Banks were not inclined to lend the money, either. The long-term financial commitment of a thirty-year mortgage meant ensuring that the main characteristics of a neighborhood remained stable over time.

Instead of measuring this stability in terms of civic participation, church membership, community reinvestment, or local volunteerism, the HOLC evaluated neighborhoods through more familiar statistics: age, jobs, income, housing materials, and, most of all, race. The new, mathematically justified system for classifying neighborhoods became known as "red lining." The scheme used colors, letters, and numbers to code the desirability and investment value of different neighborhoods. Green was the best - a homogeneous, perpetually high-demand area, occupied by white businessmen and professionals, with no Jewish infiltration. Blue was next, for desirable areas that had already reached their peak. Yellow was for neighborhoods in decline, and red was for those already fallen. "Full decline" meant that black people already lived there. . .

Appraisers learned to see any mixing of races as a sign of instability and impending price drops. This logic trickled down to home owners who were tied to big mortgages and had more of a stake in the value of their property than the quality of their lives or, least of all, the eradication of their prejudices. Besides, recognizing the precursors to a neighborhood's infiltration by blacks or Jews meant getting out in time to win a good price for one's home and pay back the mortgage. Getting out too late could mean owing more on a house than it was currently worth. Thanks to the way the federal government promoted home ownership, suburbanites learned to become more racist as a means of financial survival.

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Inc-World-Became-Corporation/dp/1400066891

The Amazingly Talented Jenna Bush Merits A Spot On NBC News!!

Glenn Greenwald, Salon: Via Sam Smith, The Progressive Review

NBC's "Today" show has hired someone with White House experience as a new correspondent - former first daughter Jenna Hager, the daughter of former President George W. Bush. . . . She "just sort of popped to us as a natural presence, comfortable" on the air, [Executive Producer Jim] Bell said. Hager will work out of NBC's Washington bureau.

They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment.

They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from.

There's a virtually endless list of politically well-placed guests equally qualified to talk on such matters.

Health Plans and Death Plans

By Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch

The first illusion to chase off the stage is that the great debate here has much to do with health. So far, as public health is concerned, many of the biggest battles were fought and won a hundred years ago, at the end of the nineteenth century, with better nutrition, birth control, the change from wool to cotton clothing, the introduction of modern sanitation in the urban environment and – most important – clean water.

Between 1900 and 1973, American life expectancy went from 47 to 71, but most of this rise had taken place by 1949, when the average life span reached 68. Much of the upward curve could be attributed to improved survival rates for infants and young people. Prohibition helped, since people drank less alcohol, ate more, and hence TB rates dropped sharply, well before the introduction of sulfa drugs.

Health in America is class-based, naturally. The poor die sooner, starting with black men who tend to drop dead in their middle 60s, usually from stress and diseases consequent on diet. The better-off folk drink less than they did in the 1950s, take a bit more exercise, and sometimes live longer. The poor get fatter and fatter. A real health plan would start with public executions of the top thousand CEOs and owners of the major food companies and fast food franchises. It would continue with serious penalties for health workers not washing their hands or merely holding them under the tap without using soap.

The plagues of America today are beyond the reach of the modern medical system, and that system is itself a peculiarly outrageous example of antisocial imperatives: high technology health care which serves fewer and fewer people. Part and parcel of this system are the drug companies, working in concert with the hospitals and insurance industry. Doctors have long since been shoved to the side as major players.

Read More...

New Jersey mayors, rabbis in corruption arrests

(AFP)
NEW YORK — New Jersey mayors and rabbis were among dozens of people arrested Thursday in a huge anti-corruption sweep across the state, local reports said.

MSNBC television showed footage of FBI agents bringing a stream of handcuffed suspects into custody in the city of Newark. Other suspects -- reported by local media to number at least 30 -- were shown being put onto a bus.

Those arrested included the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, television and local press reports said. They also included the deputy mayor of Jersey City, other officials and several rabbis, WABC television reported.

The sweep was believed to be one of the biggest such actions in a state long associated with corruption and famous as the setting of the hit mafia television drama the "Sopranos."

Others snatched in the raids were the state's commissioner for community affairs and a Republican member of the state assembly, The New York Times reported.

The FBI and federal prosecutor's office refused to comment on the arrests or the charges. Prosecutors scheduled a press conference for noon (1600 GMT).

The dramatic FBI sweep comes as Chris Christie, a crusading former US attorney, steps up his campaign against the state's Democratic governor, Jon Corzine, in an election this November.
Christie, a Republican, previously won fame for his relentless and successful prosecution of political corruption in New Jersey.

Corzine is battling widespread dissatisfaction with his performance as the state reels from the national recession, spending cuts, and furloughs for state employees.

Dispatch from Post-Constitutional Amerikkka

More "above the law" cop hijinks. Wonder if Boston has civilian oversight of their own police department, 'cause San Jo surely don't!

Renowned African-American Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested after being accused of breaking into his own home. Apparently, Mr. Gates accused the po-po of being "racist", which doesn't sit well with most bigot cops. They then did whatever the hell they fucking pleased, which is par for the course.--Pete

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Studies, was arrested on Thursday at his Cambridge home for disorderly conduct, according to a Cambridge Police Department report.
The report, obtained from the Cambridge District Court, said that the 58-year-old professor was arrested by Cambridge police shortly past noon for "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior," during which he allegedly accused police officers at the scene of being racist. The report said that a woman had called police to the scene after seeing a man "wedging his shoulder in the front door [of Gates' house] as to pry the door open."

When a police officer arrived on the scene to investigate the tip, Gates was reportedly already having an altercation with another sergeant inside the home. The professor allegedly shouted "[t]his is what happens to black men in America" when asked for identification and repeatedly told the police officer that "[y]ou don't know who your [sic] messing with," according to the report.

The two then moved to the front porch, the report said, where Gates continued to shout that the sergeant was racist, catching the attention of roughly seven "surprised and alarmed" onlookers.

Joanne Kendall, Gates' assistant, said that the professor was away from Cambridge for the summer filming a documentary and would only be making periodic returns. Gates could not be reached for comment.

But according to an e-mailed statement from law school Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a friend of Gates' who is now representing him, Gates was returning on Thursday from a week-long trip to China and tried to enter through his front door, which was damaged. Ogletree said that Gates had forced open the front door with the help of his car driver, who also helped carry Gates' luggage into the home, after first entering through a backdoor and turning off his alarm.

"I think that the charges should be dropped because Professor Gates was a suspect for being a burglar in his own home," Ogletree said in an interview with The Crimson. "This was precipitated on a false assumption that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time." He added that Gates has been "traumatized" by the entire affair and is now resting comfortably in his summer home in Martha's Vineyard.

According to Ogletree, Gates noticed a police officer on his porch while he was on the phone requesting a door repair from Harvard Real Estate Services, which owns the home. The professor reportedly stayed inside when the officer asked him to come outside, but provided the officer with both his Harvard identification card and his driver's license as proof that he lived at the home and taught at the University. Ogletree said Gates then asked the police officer for his badge number and name several times but received no response.

But the police sergeant who first arrived on the scene said he had told Gates his name multiple times when requested, and that Gates simply shouted over him. The sergeant said he was forced to step out of the home because of Gates' uncomfortably loud yelling, according to the report obtained from the Boston Globe. He said he told Gates that they could discuss the matter further outside, to which Gates allegedly replied, "ya, I'll speak with your mama outside."

The officer said he warned Gates multiple times that his behavior was becoming disorderly before the actual arrest, but Ogletree says the officer did not provide his name or give any indication that charges would be filed. Ogletree says the officer simply exited the kitchen to leave the home, and that Gates followed the officer to the front door only to see multiple other police officers standing outside. When Gates stepped onto the front porch to ask for the police officer's name, the officer said "thank you for accommodating my earlier request" and placed Gates under arrest, Ogletree said.

The police report says that Gates complained that the handcuffs were too tight and that he was "disabled," prompting officers to handcuff him with arms in front for comfort and to search for a cane in the home. Gates was held at Cambridge Police Station for roughly four hours before being released from custody Thursday evening, Ogletree said.

Ogletree declined to comment on whether he believes Gates was racially profiled, as some media reports have suggested, instead saying that his statement of events "speaks for itself." But other prominent black Harvard professors, including medical school professor S. Allen Counter and social sciences professor Lawrence D. Bobo, have suggested that race influenced the police actions. According to the Associated Press, the Reverend Al Sharpton has vowed to attend Gates' arraignment.

"This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen," Sharpton said. "I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs."

Ogletree said that he and Gates believe the professor did not violate any laws and are hoping the matter will be resolved promptly. According to the police report, disorderly conduct carries a maximum penalty of a $150 fine.

The Cambridge Police Department declined to release further information, citing the ongoing investigation in the District Attorney's office. Corey Welford, a spokesman for the Middlesex District Attorney's office, declined to comment further on the arrest "unless and until an arraignment occurs." He said an arraignment has been scheduled for August 26.

The woman who reported the incident to police did not return a call to her cell phone on Monday.

Gates, who served as chair of the department of African and African American studies from 1991 to 2006, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Cambridge after completing his undergraduate studies in history summa cum laude at Yale. Gates was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 1981 and was named one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997.

He is one of roughly 20 Harvard faculty members who hold prestigious University professorships, which are given to honor academic achievements that cross disciplinary boundaries.

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.

Our Economy Needs at Least $2 Trillion in Stimulus Spending Right Now -- Tens of Millions of Jobs Are at Stake

Posted on July 16, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/141344/

By Dean Baker, Guardian

When her husband was in the oval office Laura Bush launched an initiative to promote literacy across the country. Unfortunately, there was no comparable effort to promote numeracy in our nation's capital. This has been evident in the discussion of the stimulus among politicians and commentators in the week since the June job numbers were released.

Republicans were anxious to pronounce the stimulus a failure, while Democrats insisted that the package just needed more time, pointing out that most of the money had not yet been spent. Neither assertion can withstand the test of third grade arithmetic.

The basic story is that the stimulus was too small, pure and simple. It would have been too small even if the Obama's administration's projections for the severity of the recession had proven accurate. However, since the downturn is considerably steeper than they had projected, the inadequacy of the stimulus is even greater.

Here are the numbers. The unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent and virtually certain to cross 10.0 percent by the end of the summer. It is likely to hit 11.0 percent early next year, but we'll just work off the 10.0 percent figure.

The target for unemployment should be no higher than 5.0 percent. (The year-round average for unemployment in 2000 was 4.0 percent.) This leaves a gap between actual unemployment and our employment target of 5 percentage points. As a rule of thumb, it takes a 2 percentage points increase in GDP to reduce the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point. This means that in order to reach our target of 5 percent unemployment, we would have to increase GDP by 10 percent, or $1.5 trillion.

Different types of stimulus have different multiplier effects. One dollar of addition spending is generally estimated to have a multiplier effect in the neighborhood of 1.5, meaning that for every dollar we spend on a government project, we increase GDP by $1.50 as the people we hire go out and spend their paychecks, creating new demand.

The multiplier effect on tax cuts is generally estimated as being in the neighborhood of 0.9, or less. This means that $1 of tax cuts will end up increasing GDP by about 90 cents. Unlike spending on things like road construction or health care, a tax cut does not directly generate demand. It only generates demand when people go out and spend their tax cuts. Since much of any tax cut will be saved, the stimulus effect of tax cuts is almost always less than the effect of direct spending.

Okay, if we have an annual GDP shortfall of $1.5 trillion and we decided to fill it by spending, then we would need approximately $1 trillion per year of additional spending. Alternatively, if we tried to fill the gap with tax cuts, we would need $1.65 trillion per year in tax cuts. After pulling out spending for later years, and the alternative minimum tax fix, the Obama package provides about $300 billion a year in stimulus. This is obviously inadequate.

When the Republicans jump on the June jobs numbers and say that stimulus doesn't work, it is like the obese person complaining that dieting and exercise don't work because he is still overweight after passing up dessert and taking a walk around the block. There is a question of magnitude here that they seem to have missed.

The "give it time" crew don't fare too much better. While only about 15 percent of the stimulus has gone out the door thus far, it is the rate of spending that matters.

To put this point simply, suppose that we would spend the $600 billion 2-year stimulus at the rate of $25 billion a month. Assume that we have ramped up to this spending rate, so that by May we have reached the $25 billion rate of monthly spending. While it may be true that at the end of June that we have only spent 15 percent of the stimulus, the rate of spending will not be increasing substantially from current levels. This means that whatever boost to monthly consumption and output we expect from the stimulus, we are now currently seeing. This boost will continue through 2010, but we will not get an additional boost from the stimulus further down the road.

The actual story of stimulus spending is somewhat more complicated, but this simple story captures the basic picture. The additional boost from new projects that are yet to be started will not make a big dent in the economic picture.

In short, we badly need another very big dose of stimulus. Unfortunately, the politicians and pundits in Washington are either too ignorant, dishonest, or scared to talk about the $2 plus trillion stimulus that this economy needs. As a result, tens of millions of people will lose their jobs and/or their homes because of continued economic mismanagement. In economic policy circles, mismanagement is a job qualification, not a fault.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

Who let this happen?

There has been no action taken on allowing financial constructions like mortgage-backed securities since the collapse of the global economy last September. Morgan Stanley believes that the process needs to be started again, apparently.--Pete

By Pierre Paulden, Caroline Salas and Sarah Mulholland

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aeTzfvEedKpQ#

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.

Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York.

Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.

A lot of banks and insurers “cannot buy anything but AAA,” said Sylvain Raynes, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York and co-author of “Elements of Structured Finance,” which is due to be published in November by Oxford University Press. “You’re manufacturing AAA out of not AAA, therefore allowing those people who have AAA written on their forehead to buy.”

Copying Re-REMICs

New York-based Morgan Stanley is copying a financing structure known as Re-REMICs that bundle mortgage securities into new bonds that often offer investors an additional layer of protection, or collateral, from downgrades. Credit-rating cuts may sometimes force investors to sell the debt and cause financial institutions that own the bonds to increase capital.

Jennifer Sala, a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley, and Gregory Mount, a Greywolf partner, declined to comment.

Moody’s reduced the $365 million top-ranked portion of Greywolf in June by six levels to A3 from Aaa as the default rate on the loans in the CDO rose to 7 percent. The rating company cut 83 loan CDOs with the top rankings from May 28 through June 26, according to Wachovia Corp.

Raising Capital

Structured finance securities fueled the writedowns and losses at the world’s biggest financial institutions since the start of 2007, helping to plunge the U.S. economy into the worst recession since the 1930s. Finance companies have been forced to raise $1.27 trillion in capital, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

CDOs parcel fixed-income assets such as bonds or loans and slice them into new securities of varying risk intended to provide higher returns than other investments of the same rating. Greywolf is a type of CDO called a collateralized loan obligation, or CLO, which focuses on doing the same with company loans.

Banks are using re-REMICs to protect against losses on residential-mortgage securities during the worst housing slump since the Great Depression.

About $27 billion of home-loan bond Re-REMICs have been issued this year, up from $17 billion for all 2008, according to a June 12 report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Re-REMIC stands for “resecuritizations of real estate mortgage investment conduits,” the formal name of mortgage bonds.

‘Make Magic’

The strategy is increasingly being used for commercial mortgage debt. Standard & Poor’s said on June 26 that it may lower the rankings on $235.2 billion of bonds backed by loans on properties such as office buildings and shopping malls.

Banks have issued about $2 billion of the debt in the last three weeks, according to Barclays Capital. That compares with $5.8 billion of similar offerings in all of 2008, Credit Suisse Group data show.

“Somebody does something and it seems to make magic, and the other guy says ‘Hey, let’s do that, too,’” Raynes said.

New York-based Goldman Sachs plans to sell $216.9 million of repackaged commercial mortgage debt, according to people familiar with the sale who declined to be identified because terms aren’t public. The re-REMIC is being carved out of four bonds sold in 2006, said the people. Michael DuVally, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, said he couldn’t comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Pierre Paulden in New York atppaulden@bloomberg.net; Caroline Salas in New York at csalas1@bloomberg.net;Sarah Mulholland in New York at smulholland3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 8, 2009 09:54 EDT

NO STORY HERE

Sam Smith

Like any good lawyer, Sonia Sotomayor can take either side of a case - even when it's about something she said. Thus she excused her remark that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a white male as a play on words that fell flat. She added: "It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge."

To a writer who is not a lawyer this is pure crap. On the other hand, it means she will get along quite well in Washington because as a wise lawyer with the richness of her experiences she knows how to speak in tongues.

After all, any potential justice who can get headlines around the country because she claims to believe in "fidelity to the law" doesn't have much to worry about. There was a happier time when that was taken for granted.

The truth is that Sotomayer - except for her ethnicity - is an absolutely mundane, even boring, centrist judge from whom no surprises should be expected. Like her appointer, she has been elevated to sanctified status simply because the elite - many decades late - decided it was okay to have someone of her background in such a high position. And she seemed safe.

She has thus benefited from a form of atomized affirmative action that fools a lot of people into thinking there's been a real change.

But as the cops say, that's it, folks. You can leave now. Clear the area. There's no story here.

Entreaty to condemn racism at Philadelphia pool from ColorOfChange.org

Dear friends,

Two weeks ago outside Philadelphia, sixty-five children from a summer camp tried to go swimming at a club their camp had a contract to use. Evidently, the club didn't know the kids were largely Black.

When the campers entered the pool, White parents took their kids out of the water, and the swimming club's staff asked the campers to leave. The next day, the club told the summer camp that their membership would be canceled and that they would refund their money. When asked why, the club's leader said the "kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club."

A "Whites only" pool in 2009 should not be tolerated. The club's actions appear to be a violation of section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act. Whether or not any laws were violated, a "Whites only" pool should be something every American condemns.

I've just joined ColorOfChange.org in doing exactly that -- will you join me, and email your friends and family asking them to do the same? We're also calling on the Department of Justice to evaluate suing the facility under federal law. It takes just a moment to do both, here:

http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/?id=2509-157502

Obama is President but that doesn't mean that suddenly all is fine when it comes to race in America. This is a vivid reminder of what we know still lies beneath the surface.

We all know stories like this one -- similar incidents play out quietly every day in different communities across the country. The difference in this case is that folks got caught and there was a contract in place that makes for a potentially illegal act.

Standing up now isn't just about making things right for these kids in Philadelphia or bringing consequences to this swim club (called the Valley Swim Club). It's about creating a climate of accountability everywhere. If we can publicly shame the Valley Swim Club and hold them accountable for this incident, it will make others think twice before engaging in this kind of discrimination.

Please join me in condemning the Valley Swim Club's blatant discrimination and calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether they violated civil rights laws. And please ask your friends and family to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/?id=2509-157502

Thanks.

Here are some links to more info:

"Pool Boots Kids Who Might 'Change the Complexion,'" NBC Philadelphia, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/90Zyr

"60 Black Kids Booted from Philly Pool For Being Black -- Speak Out," Jill Tubman at Jack and Jill Politics, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/GkJTs

"Valley Swim Club: Day Two," Adam B at Daily Kos, 07-08-09
http://bit.ly/qbpSA

"Section 1981 Summary," Employment Law Information Network
http://www.elinfonet.com/1981sum.php

Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

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

NaturalNews

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. Summary of claims and allegations filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009 In her charges, Burgermeister presents evidence of acts of bioterrorism that is in violation of U.S. law by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers who control the Federal Reserve, as well as WHO, UN and NATO. This bioterrorism is for the purpose of carrying out a mass genocide against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. This group has annexed high government offices in the U.S. Specifically, evidence is presented that the defendants, Barack Obama, President of the U.S, David Nabarro, UN System Coordinator for Influenza, Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, David de Rotschild, banker, David Rockefeller, banker, George Soros, banker, Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria, and Alois Stoger, Austrian Health Minister, among others, are part of this international corporate criminal syndicate which has developed, produced, stockpiled and employed biological weapons to eliminate the population of the U.S. and other countries for financial and political gain. The charges contend that these defendants conspired with each other and others to devise, fund and participate in the final phase of the implementation of a covert international bioweapons program involving the pharmaceutical companies Baxter and Novartis. They did this by bioengineering and then releasing lethal biological agents, specifically the "bird flu" virus and the "swine flu virus" in order to have a pretext to implement a forced mass vaccination program which would be the means of administering a toxic biological agent to cause death and injury to the people of the U.S. This action is in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act. Burgermeister's charges include evidence that Baxter AG, Austrian subsidiary of Baxter International, deliberately sent out 72 kilos of live bird flu virus, supplied by the WHO in the winter of 2009 to 16 laboratories in four counties. She claims this evidence offers clear proof that the pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies themselves are actively engaged in producing, developing, manufacturing and distributing biological agents classified as the most deadly bioweapons on earth in order to trigger a pandemic and cause mass death. In her April charges, she noted that Baxter's lab in Austria, one of the supposedly most secure biosecurity labs in the world, did not adhere to the most basic and essential steps to keep 72 kilos of a pathogen classified as a bioweapon secure and separate from all other substances under stringent biosecurity level regulations, but it allowed it to be mixed with the ordinary human flu virus and sent from its facilities in Orth in the Donau. In February, when a staff member at BioTest in the Czech Republic tested the material meant for candidate vaccines on ferrets, the ferrets died. This incident was not followed up by any investigation from the WHO, EU, or Austrian health authorities. There was no investigation of the content of the virus material, and there is no data on the genetic sequence of the virus released. In answer to parliamentary questions on May 20th, the Austrian Health Minister, Alois Stoger, revealed that the incident had been handled not as a biosecurity lapse, as it should have been, but as an offence against the veterinary code. A veterinary doctor was sent to the lab for a brief inspection. Burgermeister's dossier reveals that the release of the virus was to be an essential step for triggering a pandemic that would allow the WHO to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. She lists the laws and decrees that would allow the UN and WHO to take over the United States in the event of pandemic. In addition, legislation requiring compliance with mandatory vaccinations would be put into force in the U.S. under conditions of pandemic declaration. She charges that the entire "swine flu" pandemic business is premised on a massive lie that there is no natural virus out there that poses a threat to the population. She presents evidence leading to the belief that the bird flu and swine flu viruses have, in fact, been bioengineered in laboratories using funding supplied by the WHO and other government agencies, among others. This "swine flu" is a hybrid of part swine flu, part human flu and part bird flu, something that can only come from laboratories according to many experts. WHO's claim that this "swine flu" is spreading and a pandemic must be declared ignores the fundamental causes. The viruses that were released were created and released with the help of WHO, and WHO is overwhelmingly responsible for the pandemic in the first place. In addition, the symptoms of the supposed "swine flu" are indistinguishable from regular flu or from the common cold. The "swine flu" does not cause death anymore often than the regular flu causes death. Burgermeister notes that the figures for deaths reported for the "swine flu" are inconsistent and there is no clarity as to how the number of "deaths" has been documented. There is no pandemic potential unless mass vaccinations are carried out to weaponize the flu under the guise of protecting the population. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the mandatory vaccines will be purposely contaminated with diseases that are specifically designed to cause death. Reference is made to a licensed Novartis bird flu vaccine that killed 21 homeless people in Poland in the summer of 2008 and had as its "primary outcome measure" an "adverse events rate", thereby meeting the U.S. government's own definition of a bioweapon (a biological agent designed to cause an adverse events rate, i.e death or injury) with a delivery system (injection). She alleges that the same complex of international pharmaceutical companies and international government agencies that have developed and released pandemic material have positioned themselves to profit from triggering the pandemic with contracts to supply vaccines. Media controlled by the group that is engineering the "swine flu" agenda is spreading misinformation to lull the people of the U.S. into taking the dangerous vaccine. The people of the U.S. will suffer substantial and irreparable harm and injury if they are forced to take this unproven vaccine without their consent in accordance with the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, National Emergency Act, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, and the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza. In the U.S. since 2008, Burgermeister charges that those named in her allegations have implemented new and/or accelerated the implementation of laws and regulations designed to strip the citizens of the U.S. of their lawful constitutional rights to refuse an injection. These people have created or allowed provisions to remain in place that make it a criminal act to refuse to take an injection against pandemic viruses. They have imposed other excessive and cruel penalties such as imprisonment and/or quarantine in FEMA camps while barring the citizens of the U.S. from claiming compensation from injury or death from the forced injections. This is in violation of the laws governing federal corruption and the abuse of office as well as of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Through these actions, the named defendants have laid the groundwork for mass genocide. Using the "swine flu" as a pretext, the defendants have preplanned the mass murder of the U.S. population by means of forced vaccination. They have installed an extensive network of FEMA concentration camps and identified mass grave sites, and they have been involved in devising and implementing a scheme to hand power over the U.S. to an international crime syndicate that uses the UN and WHO as a front for illegal racketeering influenced organized crime activities, in violation of the laws that govern treason. She further charges that the complex of pharmaceutical companies consisting of Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis are part of a foreign-based dual purpose bioweapons program, financed by this international criminal syndicate and designed to implement mass murder to reduce the world's population by more than 5 billion people in the next ten years. Their plan is to spread terror to justify forcing people to give up their rights, and to force mass quarantine in FEMA camps. The houses, companies and farms and lands of those who are killed will be up for grabs by this syndicate. By eliminating the population of North America, the international elite gain access to the region's natural resources such as water and undeveloped oil lands. And by eliminating the U.S. and its democratic constitution by subsuming it under a North American Union, the international crime group will have total control over North America. Highlights from the complete dossier The complete dossier of the June 10th action is a 69 page document presenting evidence to substantiate all charges. This includes: Factual background that delineates time lines and facts that establish probable cause, UN and WHO definitions and roles, and history and incidents from the April, 2009 "swine flu" outbreak. Evidence the "swine flu" vaccines are defined as bioweapons as delineates in government agencies and regulations classifying and restricting vaccines, and the fear of foreign countries that "swine flu" vaccines will be used for biological warfare. Scientific evidence the "swine flu" virus is an artificial (genetic) virus. Scientific evidence the "swine flu" was bioengineered to resemble the Spanish flu virus of 1918 including quotes from Swine Flu 2009 is Weaponized 1918 Spanish Flu by A. True Ott, Ph.D., N.D., and a Science Magazine report from Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger et.al. The genome sequence of the "swine flu" Evidence of the deliberate release of the "swine flu" in Mexico Evidence as to the involvement of President Obama that delineates his trip to Mexico which coincided with the recent "swine flu" outbreak and the death of several officials involved in his trip. Contention is made that the President was never tested for "swine flu" because he had been previously vaccinated. Evidence as to the role of Baxter and WHO in producing and releasing pandemic virus material in Austria includes a statement from a Baxter official stating the accidentally distributed H5N1 in the Czech Republic was received from a WHO reference center. This includes delineation of evidence and allegations from Burgermeister's charges filed in April in Austria that are currently under investigation. Evidence Baxter is an element in a covert bioweapons network Evidence Baxter has deliberately contaminated vaccine material. Evidence Novartis is using vaccines as bioweapons Evidence as to WHO's role in the bioweapons program Evidence as to WHO's manipulation of disease data in order to justify declaring a Pandemic Level 6 in order to seize control of the USA. Evidence as to the FDA's role in covering up the bioweapons program Evidence as to Canada's National Microbiology Lab's role in the bioweapons program. Evidence of the involvement of scientists working for the UK's NIBSC, and the CDC in engineering the "swine flu". Evidence vaccinations caused the Spanish killer flu of 1918 including belief of Dr. Jerry Tennant that the widespread use of aspirin during the winter that followed the end of World War I could have been a key factor contributing to the earlier pandemic by suppressing the immune system and lowering body temperatures, allowing the flu virus to multiply. Tamiflu and Relenza also lower body temperatures, and therefore can also be expected to contribute to the spread of a pandemic. Evidence as to manipulation of the legal framework to allow mass murder with impunity. Constitutional issues: the legality vs. illegality of jeopardizing the life, health and public good by mass vaccinations. The issue of immunity and compensation as evidence of intent to commit a crime. Evidence as to the existence of an international corporate crime syndicate. Evidence of the existence of the "Illuminati". Evidence as to the depopulation agenda of the Illuminati/Bilderbergs and their involvement in the engineering and release of the artificial "swine flu" virus. Evidence that weaponized flu was discussed at the annual Bilderberg meeting in Athens from May 14-17, 2009, as part of their agenda of genocide, including a list of attendees who, according to a statement once made by Pierre Trudeau, view themselves as genetically superior to the rest of humanity. Media is keeping Americans clueless about the threat they are under Jane Burgermeister is a dual Irish/Austrian who has written for Nature, the British Medical Journal, andAmerican Prospect. She is the European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World website. She has written extensively about climate change, biotechnology, and the ecology. In addition to the charges currently under investigation that she filed against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology in April, she has filed charges against WHO and Baxter among others concerning a case of exploding "swine flu" vials meant for a research lab on a busy IC train in Switzerland. In her view, control of the media by the ruling elite has allowed the world crime syndicate to further its agenda unabated while the rest of the people remain in the dark about what is really going on. Her charges are an attempt to get around this media control and bring the truth to light. Her greatest concern is that "in spite of the fact Baxter has been caught red handed nearly triggering pandemic, they are also moving ahead, together with allied pharma companies, with supplying the vaccine for pandemics." Baxter is hurrying to get this vaccine to market some time in July.

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