UNDERNEWS

CRASH TALK

2009-07-04T05:00:00.001-04:00

Neiman Watchdog - Many states and cities have moved quickly to spend their part of the $787 billion federal stimulus package. . . One promising project is the Kansas City Green Impact Zone, a targeted green revitalization effort that supporters hope will bring as much as $200 million to a 150-block, mostly poor, economically depressed section of the city. Backed by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Mayor Mark Funkhouser, a unanimous city council, and dozens of community groups, the project could be one of the stimulus package's signature economic development projects.

Specific projects:

- Weatherizing 2,500 homes inside the Zone. . .

- Creating and expanding "green job" training programs for community residents. . .

- Improving public transit. . .

- Planting vegetation for a "green sewer" project. Kansas City already had success planting vegetation elsewhere in the city to soak up storm-water and keep it out of the city's sewer system. . .

- Creating a smart grid electrical grid that would help track and respond to real-time energy use, keeping costs and waste down. . .

The area has some of the highest unemployment rates in the city – up to 55 percent in some places. The median household income is just $22,397.

CNBC - Manhattan apartment sales plunged more than 50 percent and the average price dropped 21 to 24 percent from a year ago. . . Most of the year-over-year decline occurred in the fall, when the credit crisis brought the market to an abrupt halt, said Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and the author of the report. "What this is telling us is that the market continues to slide but not at the rate as it was last fall and that we're probably not done yet," Miller said.

Governing - "When it comes to jump-starting the economy, a playground isn't going to cut it." . . . That's what U.S. Housing and Urban Development officials told the Norfolk City Council. The city wanted to spend $50,000 in stimulus funds on a playground, but the feds said that really wouldn't do much for job creation. So the council voted instead to put the $50,000 toward drainage improvements in the South Suffolk neighborhood. Then it moved the same amount of money out of the drainage project and into swings and slides. "In other words, you take money out of your left pocket and put it in your right pocket," Vice Mayor Curtis Milteer Sr. said.

According to Barclays Capital economist Michelle Meyer, housing prices have fallen 33% from their peak three years ago. She sees the trend continuing albeit at a slower pace.

Matt Taibbi's blockbuster piece on Goldman Sachs

Obama hires more Wall Street banksters

SAN FRANCISCO REQUIRES THAT EVERYONE COMPOST

2009-07-03T16:51:00.000-04:00

Sacramento Bee - San Francisco, renowned for its civic will to save the planet, is now ordering residents and businesses to compost food scraps and biodegradables, or risk fines for not properly sorting their garbage.

That's welcome news for Jepson Prairie Organics, a Dixon-based composting firm that already accepts delivery of 400 tons a day in plate scrapings, greasy cardboard and other sweet-stinking waste from San Francisco eateries and homes.. . .

For some 200 Northern California vineyards that use it, there is something about San Francisco compost and its unique, urban blend of crab shells from Fisherman's Wharf, pasta from North Beach, pupusas from the Mission District and dim sum from Chinatown that nourishes the soil like little else.

Yet the question for San Francisco is whether the new city composting law signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom last month will nourish the city's ecological soul or merely irritate the populace.

The new law gives the city authority to fine residents and small businesses $100 and impose penalties up to $1,000 on big firms and apartment owners if they refuse to segregate leftover fish bones, watermelon rinds and watercress salad into compost bins.

Even in liberal San Francisco, which boasts of recycling 72 percent of its 2.1 million tons of waste a year, a few residents wonder if the law is a case of big compost meets Big Brother. . .

The city, which has had a composting program since the mid-1990s, has achieved voluntary participation from 50 percent of restaurants, 40 percent of single-family homes and 20 percent of apartments.

But the new law, designed to boost those rates by using the threat of citations, is drawing national media attention. . .

"All of a sudden, the headlines were 'Garbage Police: They're coming,' " Newsom mused in a signing ceremony for the law passed on a 9-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors. . .

CAP & TRADE SETS UP NEW COMMODITIES MARKET AND GOLDMAN SACHS IS ALREADY IN IT BIG TIME

2009-07-03T16:40:00.001-04:00

James Corbett, Global Research - The sweeping new bill which just passed the House last Friday, the Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, is ostensibly about climate change, but it is in fact a bill of staggering economic ramifications that is going to accelerate the takeover of the economy by the well-placed financiers who have already plundered the Treasury and the Fed of $12+ trillion and counting.

The first thing that needs to be understood about the brand new trillion dollar carbon-trading commodities market that will be brought into existence if this bill passes the Senate is that it is a ripoff designed by and for the very corporate interests the environmentalists claim to be fighting. For an historical precedent of what is being proposed under this cap-and-trade scam one can look to Enron, which immediately found ways to plunder billions of dollars from new energy market legislation passed by the Clinton Administration in 2000. They gave schemes for manipulating billions of dollars out of Californians funny little names like Death Star and even went so far as to rig up a completely fake trading floor in their offices in order to bamboozle investors who were interested in the company's remarkable success. They got away with it because they were The Smartest Guys in the Room, much brighter than the government bureaucrats who were supposed to stop them from committing such blatant fraud (assuming the regulators weren't simply paid to look the other way). And now supporters of this new bill are putting their blind faith in these same bureaucrats to regulate a scheme to create a vastly more complex market with hundreds of times as much money at stake. Is it any wonder Enron was a booster for cap-and-trade?

That the new carbon trading market can and will be manipulated by the very same financial oligarchs and government bureaucrats who have brought the world to the brink of economic Armageddon is laid bare in a must-read article by Matt Taibi in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. In "The Great Bubble Machine" Taibi meticulously documents how the amazingly well-connected Goldman Sachs has managed to manipulate and profit from every financial bubble since the Roaring Twenties and how they're getting set to do it all over again with the creation of a carbon trading bubble:

"The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utah-based firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There's also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in green-tech ... the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot."

In effect, this bill creates an entirely new commodity that is guaranteed to generate ever-increasing profit for those who have already spent millions preparing to get in on the ground floor. Here's a hint: that does not include your average mom and pop investor or your dual-income family struggling to make ends meet in a crashing economy. Here's another hint: it does include financial juggernauts like Goldman Sachs who have been investing in solar, wind, and biofuels for years and now just happen to find themselves in the perfect position to start reaping vast profits from their headstart in the new carbon credit economy (and you thought Paulson was into going green for any other reason than making green?). It also includes Obama, who was instrumental in helping set up the Chicago Climate Exchange for his political cronies like Al Gore, who already has a company which he uses to buy carbon credits from himself and who had made multi-million dollar investments in companies developing carbon tracking software that will be essential to the new carbon-swindle economy.

THE FULLY PROGRAMMED IPHONE USER

2009-07-03T16:23:00.000-04:00

Life Hacker - Remember previously mentioned RunPee.com, the ingenious website that tells you when to head for a bathroom break during a movie so you don't miss any good parts? The site has released its first mobile version for iPhone users.

Built on the same premise as the website, RunPee's iPhone app tells you the most opportune times to head out for a bathroom break (e.g., at 35 mins.). Like the site, RunPee Mobile also lets you know how long each "PeeTime" lasts, and what happened while you were away.

The application also has a built-in timer (which you can start at the beginning of the movie) that will keep track of all RunPee times so you can decide whether to go then or, well, hold it until the next designated break time. It will also tell you which movies have extra scenes after the credits.

The creators are also working on more features that will be rolling out "every few weeks," including a friendly vibrate reminder to alert you a few minutes before a RunPee time.

THE WASHINGTON POST SALON THAT WASN'T

2009-07-03T16:19:00.001-04:00

NY Times - The Politico article prompted an immediate newsroom reaction. The Post's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, wrote on his blog that "this comes pretty close to a public relations disaster."

Valerie Strauss, a reporter who, unlike some, was willing to speak on the record, said, "I don't believe the newsroom would ever go along with that."

It was not entirely clear how the salon idea had developed, how much people inside the company knew about it or who planned to attend. Soon after the news broke, Marcus W. Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, sent a memo to his staff saying that "the language in the flier and the description of the event preclude our participation."

In an interview, Mr. Brauchli said he had intended to go to the dinner and knew the company was seeking paying sponsors. But he said he did not see the promotional flier, or know that the event might have a single sponsor. Invitations to the event stated it was "underwritten by Kaiser Permanente."

Sybil Wartenberg, a Kaiser spokeswoman, said that despite what was written on the invitation, "we were in discussions about the event, but there was no final agreement for us to participate.". . .

In the Post's newsroom, editors and reporters reacted with dismay. Marc Fisher, the enterprise editor for local news, said people in the newsroom knew the company was considering conferences, "but I don't think that anybody envisioned that we would attempt to sell access in a very limited way, with the implication that there would be inside information only to those who ponied up big money."

LA Times - A Post reporter said the newsroom was "furious" about the plan. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the reporter said the ethics code at the paper is so strict that if reporters get so much as a coffee mug from someone they cover, they must donate the gift to charity.

"The whole thing stinks, but the money was the worst part. I was always taught that's the line you never cross," the reporter said.

THE PACIFICA RADIO MASSACRE CONTINUES

2009-07-03T14:11:00.001-04:00

Richard Prince - WPFW's Ron Pinchback was said to be 'still in shock.' For the second time since April, the national board of the progressive, feisty and sometimes unruly Pacifica radio chain has fired the general manager of one of its stations. But unlike the outcry that followed the ouster of the management at New York's WBAI-FM, the departure of Ron Pinchback at Washington's WPFW-FM has been accompanied by a deafening near-silence. "Thanks for your interest but I can not offer any comments at this time," Pinchback told Journal-isms via e-mail on Tuesday.

Messages to Grace Aaron, the interim executive director of the parent Pacifica Foundation, were unreturned, as were those to Washington-based members of the national board and Pacifica's director of human resources. One director promised to have a conversation about the events, but failed to follow up at the appointed time.

By contrast, those ousted at New York's WBAI have been happy to put forth their point of view, keeping up a steady drumbeat of criticism and imputing racial and ideological motives to the national board.

"I spoke to Ron Pinchback former General Manager of WPFW who is still in [shock] over the treatment he received. Grace's roving hitman, Ahmad Anderson, the Director of Human Resources, gave Mr. Pinchback a letter telling him he was terminated and that he had to leave the building immediately. He then marched him out of the building. Ron Said that he felt like he was being treated like he was a common criminal.". . .

Listeners to the "Community Comment" call-in show that Pinchback hosted Friday mornings told his replacement they were sorry to see Pinchback go.

He had been general manager since 2006 and was in the job on an interim basis for 18 months before that. "During his tenure, the station posted record fund-drives and its highest audience, breaking into the Top 30 public radio stations in the country," an announcement said at the time.

POLISCUM: JOHN EDWARDS

2009-07-03T13:29:00.000-04:00

National Enquirer - While John Edwards' former loyalist Andrew Young met secretly with the Federal Grand Jury investigating the hush money conspiracy. . .

According to The New York Times, Young writes in his book proposal that Edwards said he "would be taken care of for life" in return for falsely claiming he was the father of Rielle Hunter's baby.

Young quotes Edwards as saying: "You know how much I love you. You know I'd walk off a cliff for you, and I know you'd walk off a cliff for me. I will never forget this. And I will always be there for you."

Before appearing in front of the grand jury, Young says he was questioned by The FBI. . .

Sam Smith - I supported John Edwards in 2008 but, as a result of his reported behavior, I now consider him to be worse poliscum than Governor Sanders and John Ensign because he not only betrayed his ill wife and was an astounding hypocrite, but betrayed the honorable cause of progressive populism he purported to support. Not as bad a poliscum as Bill Clinton, based on the sheer number of women that the latter hurt in order to satisfy himself, but still pretty bad. As I wrote last August, "The Edwards affair helps to explain my reputation as a doubter; and it provides added support for one of my basic journalistic principles: the quickest way to get into trouble into say something nice about a politician. . . . In fact, the overwhelming proportion of my journalistic misjudgments have been the product of excessive optimism. So obvious is this statistical bias that I never compliment a politician anymore without considering the risk involved, the letters I will receive and the ridicule I may endure."

My other rule of thumb is not to hide the screw-up, which is why the Review ran Enquirer's news of the Edwards affair in December 2007, when hardly any other publications did.

THE EDUCATION DEFORMERS

2009-07-03T13:10:00.001-04:00

Mark Simon, Real Education Reform DC - it turns out that [DC school] Chancellor Rhee is actively exploring with education iconoclast Steve Barr offering Green Dot an opportunity to run schools in DC. The question to ask is what expertise, if any, does Green Dot bring to the equation? Steve Barr instigated a masterful political movement of parents and then teachers in LA through Green Dot to wrest control of 17 schools from LAUSD and UTLA. He and his people never claimed to know anything about running schools.

I met the newly elected president of the Green Dot teachers union at the most recent Teacher Union Reform Network meeting in June and she seemed smart, genuine, well meaning, and honest in acknowledging that she is totally inexperienced. . .
Green Dot is just now trying to figure out how teachers in their schools should be evaluated. They have little or no experience in this arena. Green Dot is trying to gin up a professional development program for their teachers from scratch. To their credit, they acknowledge that they have little experience in either of these arenas, or in running schools. . . .

Are the ones who get hired just the ones who's stories get the best press in national magazines? . . . The blind leading the blind?

OBAMA'S HEALTH CZAR WAS DIRECTOR OF COMPANIES THAT FACED SCORES OF FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS.

2009-07-03T13:04:00.001-04:00

Fred Schulte, Investigative Reporting Workshop - Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama’s health policy czar, served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions, according to government records.

Several of the companies were investigated for alleged kickbacks or engaging in other illegal billing schemes, while others were accused of serious violations of federal quality standards, including one company that failed to warn patients of deadly problems with an implanted heart defibrillator. Several of the cases ended with substantial fines paid to the federal government, even though the companies admitted no wrongdoing.

Since leaving her government job running Medicare for the Clinton administration, DeParle built a lucrative private-sector career. Records show she earned more than $6.6 million since early 2001.

After leaving government, DeParle accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director.

Now she’s back in government as a leading voice in deciding the shape of health care reform. Named by Obama in March as director of the White House Office of Health Reform, making $158,000 a year, DeParle is the point person in pushing for the administration's plans for changing health care and the ways Americans pay for it - changes in which her former companies have a great deal at stake.

Among DeParle’s corporate connections:

- DaVita Inc., which owns and operates kidney dialysis centers, has been the subject of several government probes into its billing and drug-prescribing practices, most recently in December by Justice Department investigators in Georgia.

- Boston Scientific Corp. reported to the SEC that it received five state or federal subpoenas during 2008, including ones from the Justice Department and Health and Human Services, which oversees the Medicare agency. In addition, Defense Department criminal investigators are looking into the company’s “marketing interactions” with doctors at a U.S. Army hospital in Tacoma, Wash.

- Guidant, which already was in legal trouble for failing to disclose 12 patient deaths when DeParle joined the board in 2001, has since then faced new problems. After a college student died in 2005 when his implanted defibrillator failed on a biking trip, his doctor told Congress that Guidant officials had known of similar problems for three years, but failed to tell the public.

RECOVERED HISTORY: WHEN AMERICA TOOK ON THE BANKERS

2009-07-03T11:48:00.003-04:00

Progressive Historians - In December of 1932 and January of 1933, the Unemployed Councils [In New York City] began a new wave of strikes . . . In February of 1933, a panicked Real Estate News writer warned that "there are more than 200 buildings in the Borough of the Bronx in which rent strikes are in progress, and a considerably greater number in which such disturbances are brewing or in contemplation.". . .

Unlike today, the unemployed haven't always suffered in silence. On November 5, 1857, 15,000 unemployed men convened at Tompkins Square Park in New York City. They did not ask for charity, but for work. However, some of the hungry stormed baker's wagons and the police responded with force. Tompkins Square Park was again the site of another mass protest of the unemployed and hungry on January 13, 1874. Once again the demonstrators demanded public works projects, not charity. Once again the police responded in kind.

"Mounted police charged the crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality. I was caught in the crowd on the street and barely saved my head from being cracked by jumping down a cellarway." - Samuel Gompers, 1874

Most of these demonstrations achieved nothing. But decade after decade of efforts convinced local governments to set up soup kitchens and, in some places, public works projects.

It's difficult to find accurate information about the unemployment situation of the early Great Depression and the civil unrest it caused because the newspapers and politicians simply refused to acknowledge it until 1932. The AFL, the sole remaining national labor union after all other national labor unions had been brutally crushed, was completely unable to deal with the changing environment. . .

The unemployment demonstration staged by the Communist Party in Union Square broke up in the worst riot New York has seen in recent years when 35,000 people attending the demonstration were transformed in a few moments from an orderly, and at times a bored, crowd into a fighting mob. . .

New York wasn't the only place for rent strikes. In Chicago, particularly in the black neighborhoods, evictions and protests were an epidemic. In early August, 1931, an eviction riot led to three people being shot dead, and three injured cops. The fear of further unrest prompted the mayor to declare a moratorium on evictions. Some of the rioters got work relief. In Detroit it took 100 police to evict a single resisting family.

The outcome of the rent strike movement was to force the government to enact serious housing reforms, the twin pillars of which were rent control and public housing. . .

Some people may be under the impression that FDR's election and the New Deal was simply a logical reaction to extreme hardships. That democracy naturally corrected itself. That wasn't the case. It took a grassroots movement, working against all odds, to push the government into action. It's a lesson we should remember.

MUCH MORE

PARENTS: KEEP YOUR KIDS AWAY FROM FDA APPROVED DRUGS

2009-07-03T09:41:00.001-04:00

GALLERY

2009-07-03T09:40:00.000-04:00

FROM THE MUSEUM OF FORGOTTEN ART SUPPLIES

BREVITAS

2009-07-02T18:15:00.000-04:00

GROWING THINGS IN SMALL SPACES

SHIP SEIZED BY ISRAEL UPDATE

Atlanta Journal Constitution - Israeli naval forces blockading Gaza have intercepted a ship whose passengers include former

Georgia

congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. . . The ship was rerouted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and its cargo delivered to Gaza by road after a security inspection. The passengers and crew are in

Israel

and will be flown to their home countries in about a day, the consulate general's office said.

MID EAST

Angry Arab - You would not know this from US media but the month of June was the most violent month in

Iraq

in 11 months.

OBAMALAND

Chip Reid and Helen Thomas double team White House press secretary on Obama's prepakaged town hall meeting.

INDICATORS

BBC - The number of jobs lost in the

last month came in at 467,000, which was much more than had been expected. The jobless rate rose to 9.5% in June, from 9.4% in May, as the

economy continued to struggle. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of jobless people has risen by 7.2 million, the Department of Labor said. The unemployment rate was slightly lower than had been expected, but was still the highest since August 1983.

BANKS HIKING FEES & INTEREST RATES TO BEAT NEW LEGISLATION

2009-07-02T17:48:00.001-04:00

Washington Post - Credit card companies are raising interest rates and fees seven months before new rules go into effect that will limit their ability to do so, much to the irritation of Congress and consumer advocates.

Chase, for instance, will raise the minimum payment required of some of its customers from 2 percent to 5 percent of the statement balance starting in August. Chase and Discover have increased the maximum fee charged for transferring a balance to the card to 5 percent of the amount, up from 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Bank of America last month raised the transaction fee for balance transfers and cash advances from 3 to 4 percent. Card issuers including Bank of America and Citi also continue to cut limits and hike up rates, which they have been doing with more frequency since January. . .

Yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) once again requested that the Federal Reserve invoke its emergency powers to place a limit on interest rate hikes.

"This is what many of us feared about a law that didn't take effect right away," Schumer said. "It was never going to take this long for the credit card companies to get ready for the new reforms. Instead, issuers are using the delay in the effective date to wring more dollars out of their customers. It is against the spirit of the law, and it is just plain wrong."

SEC INVESTIGATOR'S CONCERNS ABOUT MADOFF WERE BRUSHED OFF

2009-07-02T17:32:00.001-04:00

Washington Post - An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation. Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show.

Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud. But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case.

HEALTH INDICATORS

2009-07-02T17:29:00.001-04:00

National Health Statistics Reports Number 17, July 1, 2009

Center for Disease Control - An estimated 43.8 million Americans had no health insurance in 2008, approximately 2.8 million more than in 1997, according to new data. The report, “Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 2008,” presents the latest insurance estimates for the United States.

The report also contains new estimates of health insurance coverage for the 20 largest states, and shows Massachusetts had the lowest percentage of uninsured individuals under age 65 (3.4 percent) in 2008. In contrast, approximately 1 in 4 persons under age 65 lacked coverage in Florida and Texas, and 1 in 5 lacked coverage in Arizona, California and Georgia. Nationally, 16.7 percent of those under age 65 were uninsured in 2008.

The report also includes data on children under the age of 18 and shows that the percentage of children with no health insurance was 8.9 percent in 2008, the same as in 2007, but down significantly from 13.9 percent in 1997. A total of 34.2 percent of children had public health coverage. Among the states examined in this report, public coverage for children ranged from 22 percent in New Jersey to 41 percent in Georgia and North Carolina.

In a second report also released today, “Health Insurance Coverage Trends, 1959-2007: Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey,” NCHS researchers examined insurance coverage trends during both the pre-and-post-Medicare/Medicaid periods.

Findings in the 1959-2007 report include:

The percentage of people under age 65 with private hospital insurance increased from 69.1 percent at the time of their interview in 1959 to 79.3 percent in 1968.

The percentage of people under age 65 with private insurance coverage remained stable at about 79 percent from 1968 to 1980, and has declined since 1980.

Medicaid coverage for individuals under age 65 remained stable at about 7 percent from 1978 to 1990, and has increased since 1990. Medicaid coverage for those under 65 was 13.9 percent in 2007.

The percentage of people under 65 who lacked health insurance increased between 1978 and 1990 and has remained stable since 1990 at between 16 percent and 18 percent. The report shows that 16.6 percent of those under age 65 had no health insurance in 2007, almost five percentage points higher than in 1978, the first year that comparable estimates of the uninsured are available.

The number of people under 65 without health insurance has increased by more than 20 million people since its lowest point in 1978.

HOW TO KILL ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY

2009-07-02T17:01:00.001-04:00

Sam Smith - Washington, DC, which has spent billions on economic development but still has fewer residents employed than in the mid 1980s is demonstrating once again how not to do it. Since the early 19th century, when hack drivers did the best of any free black group in the city, Washington has enjoyed an unusual door to upward mobility: driving a cab. What made it special was that the city put no cap on number of drivers and used zones instead of meters, which meant that large corporations couldn't take over the business since they wouldn't be able to tell how much income a driver made.

As a result, the city had more cabs per capita than any place else in

America

and new immigrants - whether blacks from the south in the 1950s or Ethiopians and Indians today - had an unusual opportunity to make it in a tough system.

But those in power, including the white liberal elite, have hated the system and in recent years started to change it, first by moving to a meter system. As the Review predicted, however, this was only the first step in moving towards a corporate controlled system, as the story below indicates.

Michael Neibauer, DC Examiner - The District's open, all-are-invited taxicab industry is so saturated with drivers that the entire enterprise is threatened, according to a D.C. Council member who has filed a bill to cap the number of cabs allowed on city streets.

Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham introduced legislation to limit the number of taxicabs in D.C. through either a medallion system, like ones used in New York City and Chicago, or a certification system.

The soaring number of taxicab operators in D.C. - roughly 8,000, most of whom own their own cars - is a "pressing and urgent problem," Graham said. [Note: this is untrue. There were 8,000 drivers a decade earlier- TPR] There are more licensed drivers in D.C. per capita than any place in the world, he said, and new applicants continue to take the required class, giving them access to the driver's exam administered by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. A glut of drivers could jeopardize the chances of any cabbies making an adequate living, Graham has said.

"Whatever system we use, we need to limit the number of operators or this boat is going to sink by its own weight in terms of the number of taxicab operators that we have," Graham said. "We're going to determine which of these two approaches we should take, but we're going to have one or the other.". . .

New York City's medallion system, established in 1937 during the Great Depression in response to a ballooning number of unregulated taxis, artificially capped the number of cabs on the road, to what is now about 13,000.

The medallion program, however, made it very difficult for the average New Yorker to join the industry as an owner: The May 2009 price for an individual medallion, those held by owner-operators, was $568,000. The cost of a corporate medallion was $744,000.

D.C. Taxicab Commissioner A. Cornelius Baker said during a recent meeting that the city must move "toward a regulated taxi force" and create a system "that sustains our drivers and also creates wealth for them in the long term."

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - It's an awful burden on council members to have to determine the optimum number of people who should be allowed to practice any profession. Wouldn't it be a relief for politicians if someone could invent an economic system under which the optimum number of workers could be determined automatically, say by the market? Under this magical system, people would enter and leave different job markets on their own accord, depending on their own judgments of how good a living they could make, and politicians wouldn't have to make decisions for everyone else about which occupations they would be allowed to pursue. Has anyone heard of an economic system like that?

Seriously, isn't this the second step in the city government's program to force independent taxicab drivers out of business, and to ensure that a few large cab companies control the market? The first step was to get rid of the zone system and force the installation of meters. Instituting a medallion system that will limit the number of cabs and vastly increase the cost of becoming an independent cabbie should ensure that large companies will dominate and independents disappear over time, as they have in New York.

THE BACK STORY

AMERICAN NUNS AFRAID VATICAN IS GOING TO CLAMP DOWN ON THEM

2009-07-02T16:42:00.000-04:00

NY Times - The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition. . .

Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining - to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

ENTROPY UPDATE: WASHINGTON POST EDITION

2009-07-02T16:30:00.002-04:00

Mike Allen, Politico - For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" - Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer - which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters - is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders …

"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. …

"Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters' CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. . . A Washington Post Salon .. . . July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m.". . .

Sources at the paper say the marketing offer may be getting ahead of what the newsroom is prepared to deliver. The newspaper recently hired someone to organize conferences, and his primary mission is to stage on-the-record events about topical subjects in Washington. Conferences are a trend throughout the news industry.

"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. . . By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons."

The first "Salon" is titled, "Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate."

From: Marcus Brauchli
Sent: 07/02/2009 10:33 AM EDT
To: NEWS
Subject: Newsroom Independence

Colleagues,

A flyer was distributed this week offering an "underwriting opportunity" for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate.

The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation.

We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.

There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values.

Marcus

Howard Kurtz, Washington Post - Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth today canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered lobbyists access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress and Post journalists in exchange for payments as high as $250,000.

"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom.". . .

Two Post executives familiar with the planning, who declined to be identified discussing internal planning, said the fliers appear to be the product of overzealous marketing executives. The fliers were overseen by Charles Pelton, a Post executive hired this year as a conference organizer. He was not immediately available for comment.

White House communications director Anita Dunn said today that The Post Co. had approached officials at the Health and Human Services Department to participate in a Weymouth dinner later this month. But, she said, "no senior Obama administration officials had accepted any invitation for the 'salon.'"

Weymouth knew of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation. But, one of the executives said, she believed that there would be multiple sponsors, to minimize any appearance of charging for access, and that the newsroom would be in charge of the scope and content of any dinners in which Post reporters and editors participated.

Brauchli said he had been involved in discussions, stretching back to last year, about newsroom participation in conferences of the sort commonly staged by major news organizations.

But he said he made clear to the company's marketing officials that Post journalists would participate only if they could substantially control the nature of any such conference. Brauchli said he was blindsided by the wording of these fliers and that they are an embarrassment to the newspaper.

"We expressed our concerns and are disappointed by this outcome," he said of the previous meetings with Post executives. "I would ascribe it to a lack of effective communication internally." . . .

The aggressively worded pitch gives the impression that The Post is selling access to special interests, not just to administration officials and lawmakers -- which raises a separate set of questions about cozy relationships -- but to the people who produce the newspaper. The Post often raises questions about whether corporations, unions and trade associations receive access or favors in return for campaign contributions to political candidates.

Now the fliers have raised the question of whether the newspaper itself is pursuing such a strategy in exchange for hefty fees from special-interest groups. Access to Weymouth herself, a granddaughter of longtime publisher Katharine Graham who took over as chief executive of Washington Post Media last year, would be deemed valuable by those trying to influence The Post's editorial policies and news coverage.

The Post Co. lost $19.5 million in the first quarter and just completed its fourth round of early-retirement buyouts in several years, prompting Weymouth to look for new sources of revenue.

WORD

2009-07-02T10:40:00.000-04:00

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired - Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer

SHOP TALK

2009-07-02T09:58:00.002-04:00

We love Firefox but so far not the new upgrade. Problems include unexpected elimination of a number of our favorite add ons - such as one that copied both text and url at the same time - and an apparent refusal, when you load a group of tabs, to let you view any tab until they're all loaded. This makes you hostage to the slowest loading tab.

RENTERS' PLIGHT IGNORED BY CONGRESS

2009-07-01T17:13:00.001-04:00

Washington Independent - While the plight of homeowners affected by the real estate meltdown has been well-documented, renters too often fall under the radar. Although tenants' advocacy groups credit recently passed national legislation for including some protections, they charge that the new law only scratches the surface.

The number of renters being forced from their homes is on the rise as foreclosures increase. "We've seen a mass increase. I would say it's up by 50 percent," said Arlene Bradley, housing advocacy director of Housing Rights Inc. in Berkeley, Calif., a group that provides legal advice and counseling to renters in the greater San Francisco Bay area.

Prior to the new legislation that went into effect last month, tenants were at the mercy of the lender, and the results could be very disruptive. Renters could be forced from their homes with a mere five days' notice in the state of Arizona, said William Deegan, executive director of the Phoenix-based American Tenants Association.

Under the new rule, which was passed May 20 and took effect immediately, an addendum to a broader housing bill addressing the foreclosure crisis, a lender who takes possession of a property or a new owner who buys the building at auction has to let a tenant stay for 90 days or until their lease is up. . .

While those who work with renters across the country say the legislation is a vast improvement over the earlier status quo, they also call the law incomplete. Too often, renters are at the mercy of courts and a financial system ill-equipped to deal with their particular challenges. For one thing, a tenant is still more likely than not to lose his or her security deposit if the owner goes into foreclosure

SOUTHERN POLS OPPOSE SINGLE PAYER, BUT ALMOST HALF OF THOSE USING MILITARY SINGLE PAYER ARE FROM THE SOUTH

2009-07-01T17:09:00.000-04:00

Facing South - In this year's health reform debate, Congressional Democrats quickly took proposals for a single-payer system off the table, claiming it was "unrealistic." But more than 9 million people in the U.S. have already signed on to a single-payer system that's proved both workable and popular: TRICARE, the Department of Defense's program for active-duty military and retirees.

Even more interesting: According to a Facing South analysis, nearly half of TRICARE beneficiaries live in the South -- states where Congressional leadership has been most vocal in opposing public involvement in health care. . .

The high Southern enrollment in government-run TRICARE, where the military pays private doctors in a single-payer system, seems at odds with the vocal opposition of Southern lawmakers to anything smacking of public involvement in health care.

Take South Carolina: The Palmetto State has the 8th-highest TRICARE enrollment in the nation, nearly a quarter-million people. . . Contrast TRICARE's popularity in South Carolina with these words from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) last week, who has led the Republican party's attempts to torpedo health proposals that involve the government:

"[Democrats] think we're stupid," said DeMint. "They think that you don't know that government does not work well, that the same people who cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina are the ones who can really run our health care system with that personal touch that we all want ... They're talking about a government plan that can do things that no government plan has ever done."

The 233,725 people who chose to use TRICARE in DeMint's home state likely disagree

HOW JOB LOSS AFFECTS YOUR LIFE EXPECTANCY

2009-07-01T17:05:00.001-04:00

Alternet - When you lose your job, with no prospect of finding another one quickly, you give up a lot more than income. You are deprived of a sense of security, a source of self-esteem, a certain status in the community. And, according to recent research, you also lose something even more precious: a year or more of your life.

That's the conclusion of two prominent economists, Daniel Sullivan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University. Matching death records with employment and earnings data of Pennsylvania workers from the 1970s and '80s, they found mortality rates for high-seniority male workers spike sharply in the year following an involuntary job loss, and they remain surprisingly high two decades later.

If this higher death rate persists into old age, it implies "a loss in life expectancy of 1 to 1.5 years for a worker displaced at age 40," the researchers report. . .

WHAT THE US TROOPS ARE REALLY DOING IN IRAQ

2009-07-01T17:00:00.002-04:00

Rep Dennis Kucinich - The withdrawal of some U.S. combat troops from Iraqâ€™s cities is welcome and long overdue news. However, it is important to remember that this is not the same as a withdrawal of U.S. troops and contractors from Iraq.

U.S. troop combat missions throughout Iraq are not scheduled to end until more than a year from now in August of 2010. In addition, U.S. troops are not scheduled for a complete withdrawal for another two and a half years on December 31, 2011. Rather, U.S. troops are leaving Iraqi cities for military bases in Iraq. They are still in Iraq, and they can be summoned back at any time.

This is not a great victory for peace. On May 19, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Iraqi and U.S. military officials virtually redrew the city limits of Baghdad in order to consider the Army's Forward Operating Base Falcon as outside the city, despite every map of Baghdad clearly showing it within city limits. In fact, according to the SOFA, U.S. troops can remain at any agreed upon facility. The reported reason for this decision is to ensure U.S. troops are able to â€˜help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war.'

In reality, this is a small step toward Iraqi sovereignty as Iraqi security forces begin assuming greater control over security operations, but it is a long way from independence and a withdrawal of the U.S. military presence.