UNDERNEWS

AMAZON WATER BEING STOLEN

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:44:00 +0000

UC BERKELEY PHOTO

Tree Hugger - A recently published report is exposing some shocking exploitation of the Amazon's natural resources. . . According to the report, "tankers are quietly removing water" to be bottled and sold in Europe and the Middle East. This is coming at a time when regions of the northern Amazon region have been experiencing a devastating drought that threatens the livelihoods of its people. This burgeoning crime is known as hydro-piracy, and it could foreshadow a future of resource wars as clean water supplies become scarce.

This isn't the first time the crime of hydro-piracy has come to the attention of Amazon watchdog groups. Tankers were known to be exporting oil to South America and refilling their tanks with fresh water from the Amazon to import back to Europe and the Middle East.

It is estimated that each tanker returns with approximately 5 million gallons of Amazon River water. For bottling companies, it is considerably less expensive to treat freshwater than to procure it through desalinization.

NY TIMES OUTLINES DEMOCRATS' AGENDA: CUT MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:38:00 +0000

Shamus Cooke, Counterpunch - It's official: the Democrats are coming after Social Security and Medicare. All the backroom scheming and political conspiring is finally out in the open.

In an unusually long, 1,800 word editorial, entitled The Truth about the Deficit, published February 7, The New York Times -- cheerleader for neo-liberalism -- gives its solution to the country's debt problems. The main idea is summed up thus:

"To truly tame deficits will require serious health care reform [Obama's plan slashes Medicare], the sooner the better. Other aspects of the long-term fiscal problem - raising taxes and retooling [reducing] Social Security - must take place in earnest as the economy recovers."

Later the article is clearer: "And then there is Social Security. What is needed is a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases that preserve the program's essential nature." Of course those surviving on Social Security already live in poverty and cannot afford "benefit cuts." Also, to make a dent in the deficit, benefit cuts to social security will have to be quite substantial, to the point where the program's "essential nature" will be destroyed.

The New York Times acknowledges that such a course of action will be completely undemocratic and unpopular, but that politicians "must gather the political will to do what must be done…"

How can politicians destroy these cherished social programs in the face of such popular resistance? By trickery, of course. And this is exactly what Obama has proposed with his "bi-partisan deficit-reduction commission." This idea puts Democrats and Republicans together to create a plan to destroy social programs. This way both parties share the blame, so that no one is to blame. The New York Times reveals Obama's hidden motives:

"The deficit commission that Mr. Obama intends to establish could be helpful in breaking this logjam [resistance to cutting social security], by calling for necessary changes that politicians would be loath to broach without political cover."

Labor unions and community groups also understand Obama's treacherous motives. Dozens of them - including the AFL-CIO and Change to Win - signed a statement condemning the goals behind Obama's "deficit commission." . . .

OBAMA: OPRAH WITH A PRESIDENTIAL SEAL

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:32:00 +0000

Lee Siegal, Daily Beast - The coming health-care summit is just the latest example of how the president prefers public discussion of problems to rolling up his sleeves and fixing them. . .

If ever there was any doubt that Barack Obama loves civics but hates politics, it was dispelled during the "fascinating" and "groundbreaking" exchange Obama had with the Republicans last Tuesday. This is a president who blames the media for trivializing politics at the same time he is abandoning politics for media-savvy talk-a-thons which accomplish nothing.

Obama is Oprah with a presidential seal. Does he really think that posturing in front of the cameras is the antidote to haggling in the proverbial smoke-filled room?. . .

On February 25, under the pretext of transcending messy politics, Obama will plunge into the stink with intensified vigor. Rather than truly delivering on his (impractical) promise to finally make the legislative process of health-care reform transparent, Obama will be daring the Republicans to start playing politics on his turf. What will be at stake is not health care-you cannot reconcile John Boehner's weaseling demand for "step-by-step improvements" with genuine overhaul-but the fate of Democrats in the midterm elections. They will be angling to portray the Republicans as stonewalling villains; the Republicans will be angling to portray the Democrats as tyrannical monomaniacs. At the televised summit, the portraying will eclipse the talking.

WHAT PALIN WROTE ON HER PALM

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:23:00 +0000

Including correction:

Energy
~~Budget~~ cuts
Tax
Lift Americans
Spirits

A FEW THINGS THE OBJECTIVE MEDIA FORGETS TO TELL YOU

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:10:00 +0000

There are peace experts as well as military experts; they just aren't allowed to be quoted or to appear on national TV.

Legislation, such as healthcare, is the constitutional responsibility of the Congress and not the President.

The three most mentioned political figures of the day - Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Scott Brown - had no significant political achievements before they became the most mentioned political figures of the day.

Social Security has enough money to last another 30 years or so.

Both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama have trouble speaking without prompters. Obama uses a teleprompter; Palin uses a palm prompter.

Neither Obama nor Congress are doing much right now. Scott Brown seems to have scared them into catatonia.

The Afghan, Pakistan and Iraq wars were never declared by Congress, as required by the Constitution.

Barack Obama's key economic advisors include former executives of Goldman Sachs which played a huge role in creating the financial crisis. This is just a few steps away from naming Bernie Madoff as Treasury Secretary.

The Senate could end the use of the filibuster or alter its nature simply by changing its rules. Both Republicans and Democrats (including Harry Reid) have supported the existing rules.

INTERNET SIGHTINGS

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:43:00 +0000

Response to an online complaint about the lack of snow removal in Washington

OBAMAMETER

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:40:00 +0000

We are bringing up to date our Obamameter and will be listing various categries here. Positive positions are in bold. We would be glad to hear of any additional suggestions

8% Freedom & Justice

Permitting torture and renditions to continue

Continues searchs of computers at borders

Supports anti-gay marriage law

Opposes legalization of marijuana

Won't prosecute in states that allow medical marijuana

Supports unconstitutional preventive detention

Claims right to kill Americans abroad it suspects fo aiding terrorism

Refuses to prosecute CIA torture criminals

Institutues virtual strip searches of air passengers, without record to either Constitution or to proper scientific testing for dangers.

Support overturn of long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer is present

Claims prisoners have no right to DNA evidence that might prove their innocence.

Eric Holder says he favors continuation of secret searches of library and bookstore data files.

Supports illegal wiretapping of citizens

BREVITAS

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:38:00 +0000

News, Australia - Employers are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic and spend too much time talking to friends in work hours. "Employers come to us about Gen Y, saying they're looking for a staff member but they don't want anyone in that 20s age bracket because they find they don't understand common courtesy in the workplace," Kristy-Lee Johnston, director of Footprint Recruitment told The Courier-Mail. And the complaints don't only come from managers and bosses. Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: "They also come from other people in the team who are of another generation."

It's always fun when the Washington Post tries to get down home, as with this headling: "For some folks, profusion of snow offers great sledding opportunities". . .As in, "Come on kids, let's take advantage of the sledding opportunity offered us by the profusion of snow."

Rules of Thumb: A waitress friend told me this one: If a kid asks for root beer and you don't have any, mix some Coke with some Ginger Ale. If a kid asks for Ginger Ale and you don't have any, mix some Coke with some Sprite. If a kid asks for Sprite and you don't have any, mix some sugar with some Seltzer Water. If a kid asks for Seltzer Water, he's just messin' with you. Joseph Bauer, Master Carpenter, Indian Hills, Ohio

MORE DIRT REVEALED ON GOLDMAN SACHS' ROLE IN FISCAL COLLAPSE

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:30:00 +0000

Put simply, for Obama to employ anyone who held a position of significance at Goldman Sachs is an impeachable offense, but since there's no one to impeach him, the sickness continues.

NY Times - Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.

A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world's biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.

A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman - like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment - had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.

After more than an hour of debate, the two sides on the call signed off with nothing settled, according to internal A.I.G. documents and an audio recording reviewed by The New York Times.

Behind-the-scenes disputes over huge sums are common in banking, but the standoff between A.I.G. and Goldman would become one of the most momentous in Wall Street history. Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman's demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in.

With taxpayer assistance to A.I.G. currently totaling $180 billion, regulatory and Congressional scrutiny of Goldman's role in the insurer's downfall is increasing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the payment demands that a number of firms - most prominently Goldman - made during 2007 and 2008 as the mortgage market imploded.

The S.E.C. wants to know whether any of the demands improperly distressed the mortgage market, according to people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because the inquiry was intended to be confidential.

In just the year before the A.I.G. bailout, Goldman collected more than $7 billion from A.I.G. And Goldman received billions more after the rescue. Though other banks also benefited, Goldman received more taxpayer money, $12.9 billion, than any other firm. . .

Goldman stood to gain from the housing market's implosion because in late 2006, the firm had begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market soured. The further mortgage securities' prices fell, the greater were Goldman's profits.

In its dispute with A.I.G., Goldman invariably argued that the securities in dispute were worth less than A.I.G. estimated - and in many cases, less than the prices at which other dealers valued the securities.

The pricing dispute, and Goldman's bets that the housing market would decline, has left some questioning whether Goldman had other reasons for lowballing the value of the securities that A.I.G. had insured, said Bill Brown, a law professor at Duke University who is a former employee of both Goldman and A.I.G.

The dispute between the two companies, he said, "was the tip of the iceberg of this whole crisis."

"It's not just who was right and who was wrong," Mr. Brown said. "I also want to know their motivations. There could have been an incentive for Goldman to say, 'A.I.G., you owe me more money.' "

Goldman is proud of its reputation for aggressively protecting itself and its shareholders from losses as it did in the dispute with A.I.G.

WHY? . . . THE THING OUR LEADERS NEVER TELL US ABOUT TERRORISM

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:21:00 +0000

Bill Blum - "The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction," writes Fareed Zakaria, a leading American foreign-policy pundit, editor of Newsweek magazine's international edition, and Washington Post columnist, referring to the "underwear bomber", Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his failed attempt to blow up a US airliner on Christmas day. "Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well."

Is that not odd? That an individual would try to take the lives of hundreds of people, including his own, primarily to "provoke an overreaction", or to "sow fear"? Was there not any kind of deep-seated grievance or resentment with anything or anyone American being expressed? No perceived wrong he wished to make right? Nothing he sought to obtain revenge for? Why is the United States the most common target of terrorists? Such questions were not even hinted at in Zakaria's article.

At a White House press briefing concerning the same failed terrorist attack, conducted by Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan, veteran reporter Helen Thomas raised a question:

Thomas: "What is really lacking always for us is you don't give the motivation of why they want to do us harm. ... What is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why."

Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. ... [They] attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that [they're] able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death."

Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?"

Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way."

Thomas: "Why?"

Brennan: "I think ... this is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

Thomas: "But you haven't explained why."

EVIDENCE OF CRIME STAT FRAUD

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Rob Kall, Op Ed News - A new survey of over 100 retired NYPD captains and senior officers found that they believed that statistics were manipulated to portray lower crime rates for the compstat program that calculates crime rates..

The survey suggests that police have distorted crime reporting, dropping value of stolen goods so the theft is categorized as misdemeanor instead of felony. They drop categorization of crimes from felony to misdemeanor if suspects can't be found.

One element of the compsat program is the theory that aggressive arrests for the smallest crimes, with a minimum of 24 hours spent in jail, lead to discouraging of repeat offenses.

Compsat, originally adopted by Rudy Giuliani's first police chief, William J. Bratton, is now in use by hundreds of police departments all over the US and the world, including LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston, Baltimore and Vancouver. Many former NYPD officers now operate as consultants to those cities, helping them run the compsat program.

The survey raises the question as to whether the use of this system literally encourages police and district attorneys to manipulate crime reporting.

The NY Times, in an article title, Retired Officers Raise Questions on Crime Data, reported, "In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies -- felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat -- to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

"Others also said that precinct commanders or aides they dispatched sometimes went to crime scenes to persuade victims not to file complaints or to urge them to change their accounts in ways that could result in the downgrading of offenses to lesser crimes, the researchers said.

"Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics," said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a retired New York City police captain." . . .

JUST EXERCISING A LITTLE CORPORATE PERSONHOOD

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:02:00 +0000

NY Times - If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama's from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago's Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase's political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry's campaign to thwart Mr. Obama's proposals for tighter financial regulations.

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions - $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics - some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry's chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street's "buyer's remorse" with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street "fat cats," they may fight back by withholding their cash.

"If the president doesn't become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support," said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

SOCIAL SECURITY SCARE SQUAD MISSTATES FUTURE

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Dean Baker - Allan Sloan told listeners to Marketplace radio this morning that future retirees should be worried about their Social Security benefits because the program is now paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. In fact, the program has accumulated more than $2.5 trillion on government bonds in its trust fund. The Congressional Budget Office projects that this fund will be sufficient to pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2044.

Even after that date, if nothing is ever done to change the program, the projections still show that it will be able to pay close to 80 percent of scheduled benefits. This will still provide future retirees with a benefit that is considerably larger than what current retirees receive.

All of these benefits will be paid under current law. Congress would have to vote to overhaul the program to prevent the payment of benefits.

COMPENDIUM OF VIOLENCE IN SUPERBOWL ADS

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:52:00 +0000

OBAMA CANCELS NUKE PROMISE; BACKS HUGE SUBSIDIES FOR DANGEROUS ENERGY

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Arjun Makhijani, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research - In his State of the Union address, President Obama formally abandoned his campaign promise on new nuclear plants. In 2008 he endorsed only continued operation of existing nuclear power plants. New ones would have to wait until safety, waste, and proliferation concerns are resolved. The latter two concerns are arguably more acute than before he took office. The Obama administration has rightly abandoned Yucca Mountain as a repository for nuclear waste . . . But his commission on nuclear waste has not even begun work; it will be 2012 by the time it issues its final report.

Further, while expressing concerns about deficits, the Obama administration is opening the spigot for more loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants because Wall Street won't finance them. They are just too risky. A single project is often more costly than the entire net worth of many electricity generating companies. They don't want to bet their companies on nuclear. But they are OK with betting taxpayer dollars. Given that the underlying relationship between energy demand and economic growth is changing (quite apart from the recession), many nuclear projects are likely to be abandoned. Some already have been. Every nuclear power plant ordered after the first energy crisis in 1973 was abandoned, leaving ratepayers and bondholders on the hook. This time it will be the taxpayers.

Worst of all, nuclear will not materially help with global warming. It takes too long and too much money to build a single plant. Pursuing nuclear takes so much money that it will sideline renewable energy and efficiency to marginal roles.

LICENSE PLATE SCANNERS: ANOTHER UNCONSITUTIONAL TOOL FOR COPS

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:39:00 +0000

Shenna Bellows, Maine Civil Liberties Union - Automatic license plate-readers scan and store the license plates of any car that an equipped police cruiser encounters-on the highway, in a parking lot, in a neighborhood. The scanner then checks the plate against databases, watch-lists and the identity and location of the scan is stored in a police database.

Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1928, "The makers of the Constitution: conferred as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." Mainers cherish our right to be left alone by the government - to think, say, and do what we want as long as we are not hurting our neighbors or breaking the law. ALPRs, like all surveillance, threaten those fundamental privacy rights.

There are three primary civil liberties problems with this technology itself - the cameras, the hot lists, and most seriously, the database.

First, surveillance cameras, in themselves, have a chilling effect on freedom of movement. People behave differently when they believe themselves to be under surveillance. This has been a theory behind prison architecture for decades, and indeed, we have come to expect cameras in situations where heightened security is at issue - at the bank or the airport. Cameras on police cars can be very effective, and indeed, the ACLU has supported them in situations that protect both police and citizens, by videotaping arrests and questioning of suspects. But there is a difference between the camera used to monitor interactions between law enforcement and the public and surveillance cameras that monitor the ordinary activity of us, the people as we go about our daily lives. In a free society, we have an expectation that we are not being monitored by law enforcement unless we are suspected of wrongdoing or involved in a situation that requires police action. All people in America are presumed innocent and law-abiding unless the evidence indicates otherwise. The very nature of these surveillance cameras turns that presumption of innocence on its head - into a presumption that we are all guilty.

Second, the cameras rely on "hot lists," lists fed into the camera by law enforcement to generate automated matches. Even if we can't agree that surveillance cameras in themselves have a chilling effect on a free society, then perhaps we can agree on the dangers of unlimited "hot lists." The technology that many of you have seen and you will hear described in more detail functions using "hot lists" that allow law enforcement to match a photographed license plate to a license plate number on a hot list. This technology allows law enforcement to use any hot list that they like or even to construct a hot list themselves. Imagine the potential abuse of such hot lists. Law enforcement could sweep the parking lot of a No on 1 or Yes on 1 rally. . .or a synagogue. . .or a mosque. . .or a church to record the license plate numbers, which would then enable law enforcement to use that list of license plate numbers to monitor the actions of those participants.

Think that wouldn't happen in America? Ask the Eastern Maine Peace and Justice Center or Senator John Kerry or others who have been subjected to FBI surveillance because of their political activities. We have further concerns about use of some federally compiled lists, like the so-called terrorist watch list, which numbers over one million names and includes names like those of the civil rights leader and current Congressman John Lewis as well as eight-year old Mikey Hicks. Hot list technology that creates an automated match makes this surveillance camera system even more powerful and potentially threatening to civil liberties than an ordinary camera.

Third, the most dangerous aspect of this system is the database that the camera creates and feeds. I have seen this database in my visit to South Portland to meet with law enforcement. The database contains the record of every car law enforcement has encountered with a photograph, date, time and location. This database contains a virtual map of the movements of ordinary citizens about the community. Lieutenant Frank Clark has described this in the newspaper saying, "Information is gold." He is absolutely correct. Already, other jurisdictions are sharing these databases with repo companies looking to repossess vehicles whose owners are behind on payments. The commercial and political interest in these types of databases is enormous. A journalist friend of mine said when I shared with him the details of this information, "I do want to know if the mayor is at the liquor store. That's news." The newspaper. . .or one's political opponents. . .might very well be interested in who visits the liquor store or the adult video shop or a psychiatrist or a family planning center. Commercial entities have a strong interest in who shops at their stores or their competitor's stores. You will hear from supporters of this technology that their interest is very limited, but we know from experience that inevitably mission creep expands uses of these powerful technologies from law enforcement to intelligence gathering to total information awareness, all at the expense of the privacy of ordinary citizens. . .

When the government invades our privacy by collecting information about our private, personal lives, the government then has a responsibility to ensure that we are kept safe from those who would seek merely to embarrass one of us or our neighbors to those who would do us harm. We are concerned that the hasty adoption of this technology has serious and dramatic implications for both our liberty and our security. . .

The three civil liberties problems with the technology itself include the cameras, the hot lists used to create matches, and the database. Each of those technological elements creates liberty and security vulnerabilities. The urge to use the newest, fastest technology is not surprising, but ALPR's simply place too much data mining power in the hands of the police and those who breach their systems.

WHEERE THE DEFICIT COMES FROM

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:24:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS CHARTER SCHOOLS: CAPITALIZING ON DISASTER

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Jessica Schiller, Change - Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, including its schools. Children and their families suffered through, and are now back at school -- but they face a new school system, one dominated by the private sector. Without adequate funding from the federal and state governments, the city had little choice but to turn over its system to non-profits and for-profit companies. Now, New Orleans has the largest number of charter schools of any city in the country.

In spite of the enthusiasm for the charters, they are riddled with problems. Many exclude special education students and are physically inaccessible to the majority of students in the city, leaving them to the regular public schools or poorly-functioning charters. Moreover, low-income families spend much of their time getting their homes and neighborhoods back together, and do not have the time to navigate the school choices, leaving the school system with a few strong schools and still many poorly performing schools.

Arne Duncan wants us to see New Orleans as a model. A city largely dedicated to privately-run charter schools. Race to the Top funds require states to support charter growth, even though there is no research confirming that charter schools are better than public schools. Katrina has enabled private operators to take advantage of what Ken Saltman has called "capitalizing on disaster." Katrina wiped out the school system of New Orleans, and created an opportunity for private operators to come in and remake the schools without rebuilding or consulting the communities that the schools would serve. Indeed, these schools were remade as an essentially privately-run system. . .

Some families are benefiting from the new schools, most are not. The charter operators, on the other hand, can open up shop easily and get public funds to run their schools. This does not seem like a model of urban school systems. We need high quality schools for all children, not a bunch of private operators who create good schools for some.

SHOP TALK

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:14:00 +0000

Some strange things have been happening around here. Last night some of our readers trying to check in our main page, got our Down East edition, Coastal Packet, instead. The other day, they were sent to our ecology news archives. We've fixed both problems but want you not to be surprised at this sort of thing happening again over the next month and half. Just let us know when you find it.

What's happened is that Google, as part of its campaign to take over the world, has decided that it no longer likes the venerated file transfer protocol, or FTP. We don't know why it feels this way, but who are we to argue with a corporation that even scares the Chinese?

Although many readers may not know it, a few of the pages that seem to just ordinary subsidiaries of prorev.com are, in fact, produced by the Google subsidiary, Blogger.Com. By March 26, these pages must be free of FTP association or they will end up as uneditable files on our site, which has been served to the world for years by the ever-wonderful Turnpike.Net.

We have already converted two pages to the Bloggercentric paradigm. These are:

Flotsam & Jetsam is now at http://prorevflotsam.blogspot.com

Sam Smith's Essays archives is now at http://samsmithessays.blogspot.com

What is pending, however, is that our main Undernews page and our Coastal Packet page will both have to change as well. We are awaiting further instructions but, it might help if you printed this post out for future reference. Should you be unable to reach either of these sites, try the new links which will be:

http://prorevnews.com for Undernews
http://coastalpacket.com for Coastal Packet

Don't try them now; they won't work. And in the best of all worlds - remember those days? - you'll have a clear announcement that the change is occurring.

Finally, there is the unresolved problem of the RSS feeds for the above. If the current ones stop working, try loading the sites above into your reader. They should work after the change is made.

FROM OUR OVERSTOCKED ARCHIVES: FOOTBALL AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:24:00 +0000

Sam Smith

This article appeared in the DC Gazette in the 1970s. Nothing much has changed.

It's almost over. Our autumnal orgy of orchestrated injury, our paean to triumph at any cost, the pageant of American Darwinism. Football season.

I treat football season like February. I avoid it whenever possible. But, like February, one must leave town or face it at some point. It looms nightly as a desert to cross in order to learn both the evening news and the weather. It turns up on television sets incongruously propped in strange locations so we can follow the game as well as do whatever else we had planned for that afternoon. It speaks to us with Orwellian omnipotence from screens in bars, behind store counters and perched on stools in parking lot shacks. My bank, in a singular departure from its normal practice of applying service charges to every transaction, offers me a free guide to it each year. It is the male thing of which to speak during the darkening months and if one wishes more than a cursory conversation with other males then more than a cursory glance at the sports pages is required. For while it is all right to be indifferent to baseball, soccer, or hockey - if one is discreet about it - indifference to football verges on androgyny or worse. Skip the totems if you like - the bumper stickers and the logo festooned wool cap - but avoid the issue completely? Never.

Well, the truth is that not only am I indifferent to football, I don't like it I can find only two things good about professional football. The first is that it is so popular in Washington that no otherwise pleasant friend has invited me to attend a Redskins game. The second is that it may serve the nation to some extent by sublimating violence that could be expressed in more dangerous forms. Football is part of the pornography of violence and, if we accept the liberal sociologists' view of such matters, it is perhaps wisest to let the Battle of America be won on the playing fields of RFK Stadium.

I say perhaps. The evidence is cloudy. We managed to engage in the most stupid war of our history while at the peak of arousal over professional football. And we are regressing into the state-contrived violence of capital punishment, SWAT squads, and massive subsidization of foreign and domestic police state activities apparently unappeased by the bruises of the NFL. But then, who knows what even more grizzly avocations we might find for ourselves and our nation were it not for the ritualistic release of our lust for battle on Sunday afternoons (and Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons and. . . )

Football was long kept in its place in part by the American love of baseball, that remarkably friendly game that more than any other sport seemed to reflect national political and social ideals. Slow as a bill working its way through Congress, enamored of individual eccentricity, full of conflict between citizen (ball player) and authority (umpire), organized in American technological fashion with a specialist for every position all working towards the same goal but keeping a genteel distance from each other, dependent upon skills other than physical size, and featuring the pitcher as democratic hero, recallable upon loss of a vote of confidence, baseball was closely attuned to the way we were.

But we didn't stay the way we were. As America's imperial longings became more apparent, as merchandising considerations increasingly insinuated themselves into every corner of our values, as our businesses merged and our minds conglomerated at the drop of anything bigger, more exaggerated or more "super," and as television demanded larger and larger audiences as the price of admission to its cameras, the countless, casual, dreamy and so unextraordinary afternoons of baseball no longer were what we were about. Baseball had been a way of life for America, but America's life had lost its way. As we lost confidence in the future, we needed something that would fulfill the moment - the moment that was increasingly to serve the functions of past, present and future. We no longer wished to wait a half a year to find out who had won or lost or to choose our heroes only after observing their performance in scores of games. Professional football brought us the Big Event - history in an afternoon, destiny a baker's dozen of hours on a 100-yard patch of artificial turf.

Baseball is different. As Eugene McCarthy said, theoretically, a game could go on forever. A ball hit out of the park could " travel to infinity. And baseball has a past that echoes with every crack of the bat.

I was in the cavernous-waiting room of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station recently when Mohammed Ali walked in. The entire Philadelphia patronage of Amtrak for that hour stared as much as it dared. I remembered the first time I saw him. It was 1961 or so. I was in the lobby of the Louisville Courier Journal and this black tornado roared out of the elevator bragging, yakking, dancing. Who's that, I asked. Cassius Clay. Who's Cassius Clay? Now I knew. And the reason I knew was that beyond the braggadocio, the hype that no Madison A venue copywriter would be brazen enough to emulate, was quantifiable achievement, achievement attained over enough years, with enough pain, to prove its worth. Boxing is a brutal game too, too brutal for my inclinations, but at least it knows how to find a hero.

Football has its heroes. But as in contemporary politics and contemporary music, the real ones are obscured by the institutional necessity to make every action heroic, dramatic or controversial. The truth simply does not out itself at velocity adequate to pro football's economic demands. Football has premised itself on the existence of supermen. When it can not produce them or activities worthy of them, it and the press that fawns over it simply lies to us.

Football also not only involves an unreasonable number of individual injuries but a progressive deterioration of the physical health of nearly all players. The spectator is not viewing an occasional accident, but the pandemic maiming of most of those on the field. This problem is most severe in pro ball, but is a characteristic of the game all the way down to the little leagues. Football is actually an anti-athletic endeavor since its main physiological effect is to hurt bodies rather than to make them stronger.

The sport is organized along extraordinarily authoritarian lines, with plays committed to paper in advance and individual innovation encouraged only when the play goes astray. The coach assumes an importance unparalleled in sports. The concept of a team representing a blend of individual initiative is replaced in football by, a system dependent upon each player doing precisely what he is told, providing yet another parallel to recent American political and economic history.

The watching of football and other sports has become a substitute for physical activity on the part of the spectator. I believe that part of the attraction of television sports is a subconscious belief that the karma of the athlete is transmitted to the viewer through the tube. Unfortunately, there is no metaphysical or medical evidence to support this. On the contrary, for a nation so obsessed with sports, we are remarkably unfit. When more than a thousand American males 18 to 20 were given a twelve minute running test, only six percent rated in the excellent category. A similar sample of young Austrian males found 30% rated excellent.

Simple observation suggests that this situation does not improve with age especially in that category of American males most glued to the Sunday tube. We send our top six percent to the Olympics and the stadium. A much higher percentage we send to the intensive care unit.

The obsession with football interrupts many other facets of life, not the least being sports itself. One example; A few weeks ago 1,500 persons started in the Marine Marathon here. More than a thousand finished. Based on participation it was probably the largest sporting event ever held in the area. As far as the local media was concerned, though, it was a sidelight. It rated a couple of photos and cut lines. Not stats, no detail, no real coverage. The press was following the money, not the athletes and so once again devoted its space to football.

For me, that's enough reasons to long for a new year, for a temporary end of Super Bowls, wild cards and draft choices. For me there's enough greed and brutality in the real world. A good sport takes us away from the avarices and perversions of the mind and lets us discover skill, speed, strength, grace and surprise that lie beneath the shoulders. A good sport is fun. It's play. Football is neither. It is hard, mean, power-grubbing, hurtful work because instead of releasing us from the less admirable aspects of our world, it emulates and encourages them.

BIG SNOWBALL FIGHT IN DC

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:15:00 +0000

(Just three blocks south of the Review's former headquarters.

Note homeless man selling newspapers helping to organize it)

CONSERVATIVE GROUP DENIES HUMAN ROLE IN TRAFFIC JAMS

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:27:00 +0000

Progressive Review - Fresh from raising serious questions about the human role in climate change, a conservative group - People for Driving - has challenged the widely-held belief that people cause traffic jams. They argue that tie-ups are the result of the natural and random ebb and flow of cars.

The argument has already raised serious problems on Capitol Hill for those pushing for more mass transit or the repair of existing roads and bridges.

PFD points out that even though approximately the same number of people live in a city during a 24 hour period, traffic congestion changes considerably. Further, traffic tie-ups greatly diminish on weekends, again with no significant change in population.

"This is a classic case of correlation being mistaken for causation," says Florie M. Megafone, director the group.

The group claims liberals are blaming humans for what is a natural and unpredictable event and, as a result, are damaging the economy and individual freedom.

Charles Olglebot of the American Automobile Association said that nothing in their research indicates that cars are present on the highway without their drivers wishing them to be there, but he admitted not to have done a study specifically aimed at this question.

Conservative critics point out a number of instances where local TV news programs grossly overestimated the seriousness of a traffic jam in order to build their audience. William Appledirth of Fox Channel 13, for example, has admitted using adjectives like "terrible," "tremendous" and "blocks-long" to describe traffic congestion even though Channel 13 lacked any scientific proof of these claims.

"We can't let this major traffic jam scandal continue," says Megafone.

Another conservative group is also looking into reports that sex isn't always necessary to have a baby. Said a spokesperson, "Liberals want to blame people for everything."- Josiah Swampoodle

BANK OF AMERICA CEO TRIAL COULD BRING PAULSON AND BERNANKE INTO COURT

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:47:00 +0000

Charlie Gasparino, Daily Beast - In defending former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis against charges that he misled investors, his lawyers will call as witnesses former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, according to people close to the matter. The defense team, led by former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, hopes to get Paulson and Bernanke to reveal that Lewis did not mislead the government about BofA's deteriorating financial condition in the aftermath of its Merrill Lynch deal. Those losses prompted a massive government bailout.

White's first order of business is to get the civil case dismissed, according to several sources. But if she's unsuccessful, she plans a vigorous defense, including calling high-level government officials to testify. "If this thing goes to trial you can expect both Paulson and Bernanke to be on the witness list," said one person close to the defense team, "and right now Lewis doesn't want to settle."

"It is unclear if either Bernanke or Paulson have already given testimony to the state attorney general in preparation for bringing today's case, which includes civil fraud charges against former Bank of America CFO Joe Price. (A spokesman for Cuomo's office did not return a call for comment; a spokesman for Bernanke had no comment and a spokeswoman for Paulson didn't return an email request for comment. And a spokesman for Lewis declined to comment on the matter.) So far, both men have given testimony before Congressional committees on the controversial merger. Paulson addresses the matter in On the Brink, his new book about his role in the financial meltdown of late 2008.

In a statement, White said that Lewis is being "publicly vilified by the political search for accountability for the financial meltdown."

SNOW DAZE: WASHINGTON AND MAINE

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:36:00 +0000

Sam Smith

In part because the media has misleadingly written endlessly about global warming rather than climate change, there are going to more than a few people in mid-Atlantic cities who think the recent snows prove it's all not a problem.

In fact, as a reader recently pointed out, change is just that. It is hard to predict. We know past data definitely indicates a shift but we can't define the precise nature of that shift because we haven't experienced it yet.

Just before the current blizzard, the National Wildlife Federation issued a report that suggested that we shouldn't be surprised by such things:

"Global warming is having a seemingly peculiar effect on winter weather in the northern United States. Winter is becoming milder and shorter on average; spring arrives 10 to 14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago. But most snow belt areas are still experiencing extremely heavy snowstorms. . . Even as global warming slowly changes the character of winter, we will still experience significant year-to-year variability in snowfall and temperature because many different factors are at play."

Washington, DC, well illustrates the uncertain quality of change. The storm last weekend dropped the fourth largest amount of snow on the city in recorded history. But you need only to go back two years to February 6, 2008, and you'll find the city setting a warmth record for that date of 74 degrees. The coldest February 6 was back in 1895, when the thermometer fell to one degree.

It may help to keep in mind two principles:

- Change is change and doesn't fully define itself until it's happened.

- An average is only an average.

Having recently moved from DC to Maine, I gaze out my window at the remains of 22 inches of snow that hardly slowed things down at all in these parts and recall the number of my friends who said something like, "How are you going to survive those Maine winters?" and I think how grateful I am I wasn't back in DC this weekend.

In fact, Maine has two mre typical advantages over the capital in winter. We have a lot of sun and the cold is dry. Twenty-five degrees on a sunny Down East day is infinitely preferable to a 35 degree cloudy day in DC with the humid cold cutting through any protection you might be wearing.

Here's how I described it back the 1970s:

"The city lived for spring and fall, periods separated by muggy summer and by an unpredictable yet dull winter. In the fall, the gauze of noxious gas that stretched over DC all summer was peeled away, permitting the sun a rare chance to lounge unimpeded against the sides of buildings or ricochet off spires. The air conditioner's monotone was finally silenced and the hint of chill repulsed by a friendly jacket. But the spring was even better; you quickly forgot the snow that didn't come, or that did come but all in one blizzard, and you luxuriated in a few months of unadulterated color and life. Summer was awful and in winter it was best to heed the words of Mark Twain:

"'When you arrived it was snowing. When you reached the hotel it was sleeting. When you went to bed it was raining. During the night it froze hard, and the wind blew some chimneys down. When you got up in the morning it was foggy. When you finished your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant, the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and all pervading. You will like the climate-when you get used to it. . . . Take an umbrella, an overcoat, and a fan, and so forth.'"

As for Maine, I don't have to check any data to confirm that the climate has changed. All I have to do is remember the Farm Bureau supper I attended as a kid where I overheard the straw hatted Harold Mann telling a companion, "Ayah. I remembah that wintah of ought eight. We had our first snow the middle of Octobah and come May 1st we were still on runnahs."

Sam Smith, Washington Post, 1987 - Al Thompson is superintendent of roads in Freeport, Maine, with a population about one percent of that of the District. But what Maine lacks in people, it makes up in roads, so Al Thompson has about 12 percent of Washington's asphalt mileage to look after.

Now Al doesn't have anything like the equivalent of Connecticut and Wisconsin avenues in his charge, and the local politicians tend to realize that nature often is impervious to memos, directives and policy guidelines. On the other hand, he works without the benefit of Snow Command Centers, Computerized Cancellation Centers and Codes Yellow. What he does have is five trucks with 12-foot dustpans and 11-foot wings.

How long does it take his trucks to cover 130 miles? Says Al: "An hour and a half, an hour and three-quarters." Then it takes another three hours for a second "cleanup" trip.

To put it in D.C. terms, that would mean, with the number of vehicles we've got (if properly equipped), you theoretically could sweep through the city in a couple of hours. Since it is clear our trucks are outmoded and not properly equipped, let's look at it another way: 25 good snow plows could, using the Maine standard, run through every street in the city in nine hours. . .

Now, before someone at the District Building picks up the phone to tell The Post about "complex urban problems," let me tell you about George Flaherty. He's director of parks and public works for Portland, Maine. Portland is about one-tenth the size of D.C. but has nearly 30 percent of its street mileage. He uses about a quarter of D.C.'s equipment and expects to have the job done in 8 to 10 hours.

I asked if he could explain the logic of a not-uncommon Washington scene: two snow plows working directly behind each other, sometimes with a Department of Public Works pickup truck in the lead. He just laughed and said, "No." Al Thompson agrees: "Doesn't do any good to plow over ice. Got to use salt."

And you don't wait until four inches have piled up before you start plowing. You start when you've got an inch and a half, and you stay ahead of the storm. And you don't leave it to the Almighty once ice-covered streets become mushy. You run the plows through and get the stuff off. Here, even downtown, we let the streets freeze again so the morning traffic reporters will have something to talk about.

"As soon as the storm starts, we salt all our major arterials," Flaherty says. In cases of major storms, "we will salt our critical areas just before it begins to snow.". . .

It will be argued that northern cities are willing to pay a high premium for clearing their streets because they get so much snow. But this year Portland budgeted, like most cities, for the best of all possible worlds: 25 inches, a winter roughly comparable to ours so far. With one-third the street mileage of D.C., Portland still planned to spend one-third more.

Why? Maybe because they know what bringing a city to a halt really costs. Here are some figures that will give you a rough idea of the costs of closing down D.C. for a day: the D.C. government spends $3 million a day on its payroll; the federal government spends close to $20 million a day for its D.C. payroll; private businesses spend another $30 million. What did D.C. budget for snow removal? Just under $1 million. Calculate the odds yourself.

9-YEAR OLD ALMOST SUSPENDED FOR BRINGING 2 INCH TOY GUN TO SCHOOL

noreply@blogger.com (TPR) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:43:00 +0000