The birthers eat their own
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
October 21, 2011
Say what you will about the birthers, but don’t call them partisan.
The people who brought you the Barack Obama birth-certificate hullabaloo now have a new target: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a man often speculated to be the next Republican vice presidential nominee. While they’re at it, they also have Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana and perhaps a future presidential candidate, in their sights.
Each man, the birthers say, is ineligible to be president because he runs afoul of the constitutional requirement that a president must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Rubio’s parents were Cuban nationals at the time of his birth, and Jindal’s parents were citizens of India.
The good news for the birthers is that this suggests they were going after Obama, whose father was a Kenyan national, not because of the president’s political party. The bad news is that this supports the suspicion that they were going after Obama because of his race.
When I heard of the birthers’ latest targets, from a participant in my online chat, I figured it was a joke. But, sure enough, Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times reported that various bright lights of the birther community – Mario Apuzzo, Charles Kerchner and Orly Taitz – were casting doubt on Rubio’s eligibility.
“Senator Marco Rubio is not a natural born citizen of the United States to constitutional standards,” Kerchner writes on his blog. “He was born a dual citizen of both Cuba and the USA. He is thus not eligible to serve as the president or vice president.” A few months ago, Kerchner used the same logic to proclaim, “Jindal is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States. His parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born.”
This relies on a rather expansive interpretation of “natural born.” At this rate, it is surely only a matter of time before birthers begin to pronounce candidates ineligible if they were born by C-section, or if their mothers were given pain medications during childbirth. Will Donald Trump demand to see their medical records?
The absurd accusations of the birthers by themselves won’t stop Jindal or Rubio from becoming president. There are far more serious impediments in their way — most recently a devastating report by The Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia proving false the central narrative of Rubio’s political rise: that he is the son of exiles who fled Cuba under Castro. In fact, his parents left the island, apparently for economic reasons, 21 / 2 years before Castro came to power.
But the wild new turn the birthers have taken should serve as a timely reminder to Republican leaders that they need to push back more forcefully against the angry and the unstable in their ranks. Too often, they have done the opposite. Jindal, for example, encouraged the birthers this year when he announced his support for legislation that would require candidates for federal office to show proof of their U.S. birth before being allowed on the ballot in Louisiana. It was, as many pointed out, a sad gesture for a man born Piyush Jindal...
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Name changers: 285 Indian girls no longer 'unwanted'
Name changers: 285 Indian girls no longer 'unwanted'
District hopes renaming ceremony will give girls new dignity, fight discrimination
By CHAYA BABU
10/22/2011
MUMBAI, India — Hundreds of Indian girls whose names mean "unwanted" in Hifndi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.
The girls — wearing their best outfits with barrettes, braids and bows in their hair — lined up to receive certificates with their new names along with small flower bouquets from Satara district officials in Maharashtra state.
In shedding names like "Nakusa" or "Nakushi," which mean "unwanted" in Hindi, some girls chose to name themselves after Bollywood stars like "Aishwarya" or Hindu goddesses like "Savitri." Some just wanted traditional names with happier meanings, such as "Vaishali" or "prosperous, beautiful and good."
Only on msnbc.com
Clinton: No one should doubt commitment to Iraq
'I am happy': Libyans line up to see Gadhafi's body
4-month-old receives heart transplant
'Occupy' protesters find allies among the wealthy
Dating after diagnosis: Love in the time of chemotherapy
It's A Snap! Vote for your favorite travel photo
Flooded Thailand races to rescue pets, loose crocs
"Now in school, my classmates and friends will be calling me this new name, and that makes me very happy," said a 15-year-old girl who had been named Nakusa by a grandfather disappointed by her birth. She chose the new name "Ashmita," which means "very tough" or "rock hard" in Hindi.
The plight of girls in India came to a focus as this year's census showed the nation's sex ratio had dropped over the past decade from 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6 to 914.
Maharashtra state's ratio is well below that, with just 883 girls for every 1,000 boys — down from 913 a decade ago. In the district of Satara, it is even lower at 881.
Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.
Part of the reason Indians favor sons is the enormous expense of marrying off girls. Families often go into debt arranging marriages and paying for elaborate dowries. A boy, on the other hand, will one day bring home a bride and dowry. Hindu custom also dictates that only sons can light their parents' funeral pyres.
Fighting on behalf of girls
Over the years, and again now, there are efforts to fight the discrimination.
Advertise | AdChoices
"Nakusa is a very negative name as far as female discrimination is concerned," said Satara district health officer Dr. Bhagwan Pawar, who came up with the idea for the renaming ceremony...
District hopes renaming ceremony will give girls new dignity, fight discrimination
By CHAYA BABU
10/22/2011
MUMBAI, India — Hundreds of Indian girls whose names mean "unwanted" in Hifndi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.
The girls — wearing their best outfits with barrettes, braids and bows in their hair — lined up to receive certificates with their new names along with small flower bouquets from Satara district officials in Maharashtra state.
In shedding names like "Nakusa" or "Nakushi," which mean "unwanted" in Hindi, some girls chose to name themselves after Bollywood stars like "Aishwarya" or Hindu goddesses like "Savitri." Some just wanted traditional names with happier meanings, such as "Vaishali" or "prosperous, beautiful and good."
Only on msnbc.com
Clinton: No one should doubt commitment to Iraq
'I am happy': Libyans line up to see Gadhafi's body
4-month-old receives heart transplant
'Occupy' protesters find allies among the wealthy
Dating after diagnosis: Love in the time of chemotherapy
It's A Snap! Vote for your favorite travel photo
Flooded Thailand races to rescue pets, loose crocs
"Now in school, my classmates and friends will be calling me this new name, and that makes me very happy," said a 15-year-old girl who had been named Nakusa by a grandfather disappointed by her birth. She chose the new name "Ashmita," which means "very tough" or "rock hard" in Hindi.
The plight of girls in India came to a focus as this year's census showed the nation's sex ratio had dropped over the past decade from 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6 to 914.
Maharashtra state's ratio is well below that, with just 883 girls for every 1,000 boys — down from 913 a decade ago. In the district of Satara, it is even lower at 881.
Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.
Part of the reason Indians favor sons is the enormous expense of marrying off girls. Families often go into debt arranging marriages and paying for elaborate dowries. A boy, on the other hand, will one day bring home a bride and dowry. Hindu custom also dictates that only sons can light their parents' funeral pyres.
Fighting on behalf of girls
Over the years, and again now, there are efforts to fight the discrimination.
Advertise | AdChoices
"Nakusa is a very negative name as far as female discrimination is concerned," said Satara district health officer Dr. Bhagwan Pawar, who came up with the idea for the renaming ceremony...
Saturday, October 22, 2011
In 1952, corporate taxes were 6.1% of GDP; in 2009, corporate taxes were 1% of GDP
50 Amazing Numbers About the Economy
By Morgan Housel
The Motley Fool
October 21, 2011
...In 1952, corporate taxes were 6.1% of GDP, and employment taxes were 1.8% of GDP.
In 2009, corporate taxes were 1% of GDP, and employment taxes were 6.3% of GDP...
By Morgan Housel
The Motley Fool
October 21, 2011
...In 1952, corporate taxes were 6.1% of GDP, and employment taxes were 1.8% of GDP.
In 2009, corporate taxes were 1% of GDP, and employment taxes were 6.3% of GDP...
Tea Party Nation tells small Business not to Hire
Tea Party Nation tells small Business not to Hire
Oct 21, 2011
By Schuyler Thorpe
AllVoices.com
The political organizations wants small businesses to go on "strike"
President Obama's jobs bill has been rebuffed by Republicans and now the Tea Party Nation has sent out a statement to its members requesting that they don't hire anyone in order to further hurt the president.
On the Tea Party Nation's website, Melissa Brookstone criticizes the president's administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate as being allied in forcing the United States into socialism and away from capitalism.
Jobs bill supporters estimate that the president's bill could create nearly 2 million jobs.
On the other hand, Brookstone not only alleges the president has assumed "dictatorial powers," but that the administration, Senate Democrats, "Progressive socailsts from all around the coutnry, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning media" have colluded to create an "anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda."
Brookstone charges that Democrats "have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialst agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of inidividual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism."
Brookstone continues to rail against President Obama, Democrats, liberals and, generally, anyone in support of their policies, but then in concluding her remarks, she adopts a stance that defies logic.
"I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped."
"I hereby declare that my job creation potential is now ceased," she writes. "I'm on strike!"
Regardless of one's political beliefs, it seems that finding a solution to the current high unemployment would benefit everyone.
Oct 21, 2011
By Schuyler Thorpe
AllVoices.com
The political organizations wants small businesses to go on "strike"
President Obama's jobs bill has been rebuffed by Republicans and now the Tea Party Nation has sent out a statement to its members requesting that they don't hire anyone in order to further hurt the president.
On the Tea Party Nation's website, Melissa Brookstone criticizes the president's administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate as being allied in forcing the United States into socialism and away from capitalism.
Jobs bill supporters estimate that the president's bill could create nearly 2 million jobs.
On the other hand, Brookstone not only alleges the president has assumed "dictatorial powers," but that the administration, Senate Democrats, "Progressive socailsts from all around the coutnry, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning media" have colluded to create an "anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda."
Brookstone charges that Democrats "have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialst agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of inidividual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism."
Brookstone continues to rail against President Obama, Democrats, liberals and, generally, anyone in support of their policies, but then in concluding her remarks, she adopts a stance that defies logic.
"I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped."
"I hereby declare that my job creation potential is now ceased," she writes. "I'm on strike!"
Regardless of one's political beliefs, it seems that finding a solution to the current high unemployment would benefit everyone.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Escondido immigrant turned over to ICE; four minor childen left at home
Escondido woman turned over to immigration after domestic violence incident
By EDWARD SIFUENTES
October 19, 2011
A woman who called the Escondido Police Department to report that she was beaten by her boyfriend was herself arrested and later turned over to immigration authorities after she was booked at the Vista jail, a case that critics say illustrates the problems inherent in local police getting involved in immigration enforcement.
Elena Cabrera, 36, said she came home tired from work on the morning of Aug. 20 and wanted to sleep a little. But her then live-in boyfriend, Jorge Melgar, 50, wanted her to do house chores and began beating her when she refused. When police arrived, he told the officers that she had also hit him, Cabrera said.
Cabrera said she did not hit him, but was arrested anyway. She had a bloody lip and bruises on her face, she said.
Escondido police Lt. Craig Carter said both people were arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and there were injuries on both of them. Carter said the department did not turn Cabrera over to immigration authorities.
After the couple was arrested, the couple's four minor children were left home alone, Cabrera said. Police are investigating the family's complaint that the kids were left without supervision, Carter said.
Bill Flores, a retired assistant sheriff and a member of the human rights group El Grupo, said Escondido's close working relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hurts its ability to protect the community. He said police officers knew that Cabrera would be screened for immigration violations at the Vista jail and chose to take her into custody.
Incidents like Cabrera's hurt the department's relationship with the community, Flores said, making immigrants less likely to report crimes in the future.
"Everybody in that neighborhood found out what happened," Flores said. "She was a victim of domestic violence, she was taken to jail and she ended up getting turned over to ICE. All because she sought help from the Escondido Police Department."
After being arrested, Cabrera was taken to the Escondido Police Department and later to the Vista jail, where ICE placed an immigration hold on her, apparently as part of its Secure Communities program. Secure Communities links local jails to federal databases to identify illegal immigrants who are booked into the facilities.
"I never thought that this would happen to me," Cabrera said during an interview last week. "To me, it was a complete surprise."
A spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego declined to comment on the case.
Cabrera spent several days at the Vista jail before she was turned over to immigration authorities. Cabrera had an immigration petition pending as a victim of domestic violence related to a prior relationship. Under a law called the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, battered women who are married to U.S. citizens can apply for an immigrant visa.
Melgar, a legal resident, was not turned over to immigration authorities. He spent four days in jail before he was released.
Lilia Velasquez, a San Diego immigration attorney representing Cabrera, said having the visa petition does not necessarily mean that a victim is safe from deportation. However, under a new policy by the Obama administration, immigration authorities have discretion on when to pursue deportation procedures.
The Obama administration has said it wants to focus its resources on deporting violent illegal immigrant criminals, immigrants who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge and people who repeatedly have been caught in the country illegally.
"Given the new policy of prosecutorial discretion, ICE should have removed the hold (on Cabrera) once they ascertained she was a (Violence Against Women Act) beneficiary," Velasquez said.
The San Diego County District Attorney's office declined to file charges against either Cabrera or her boyfriend. She was released from immigration custody on Aug. 28 due to her Violence Against Women Act visa petition.
Critics say that the Obama administration's immigration policies, including Secure Communities, have created a dragnet that catches not only violent criminals but also people whose only violation is being in the country illegally. Those policies break families apart, tearing parents away from their U.S.-born children, critics say.
While she was detained, Cabrera's four children, ages 3 to 17 years old, were left in her Escondido home without supervision, she said. Her oldest daughter, Tayana Zarate, 17, said she had to care for her siblings while trying to figure out where her mother was being held and how to have her released.
Tayana said a neighbor helped her buy food and drove her around to find her mother.
"They never asked who I was, my name, how old I was, is there a grown-up in the house?" Tayana said last week. "They don't care."
The family filed a complaint with the police department for leaving the children without supervision. Tayana and her mother spoke with police detectives last Thursday night about the complaint.
Carter said the officers noted in their report that they left the children in the care of an "18-year-old female."
The department also came under fire last year when it announced that it had forged a new alliance with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement allowing several immigration officers to work out of its headquarters. Operation Joint Effort, as the program is called, is the only one of its kind in the county. It has been credited by the department with the arrest of over 400 criminal illegal immigrants since it started in May 2010...
By EDWARD SIFUENTES
October 19, 2011
A woman who called the Escondido Police Department to report that she was beaten by her boyfriend was herself arrested and later turned over to immigration authorities after she was booked at the Vista jail, a case that critics say illustrates the problems inherent in local police getting involved in immigration enforcement.
Elena Cabrera, 36, said she came home tired from work on the morning of Aug. 20 and wanted to sleep a little. But her then live-in boyfriend, Jorge Melgar, 50, wanted her to do house chores and began beating her when she refused. When police arrived, he told the officers that she had also hit him, Cabrera said.
Cabrera said she did not hit him, but was arrested anyway. She had a bloody lip and bruises on her face, she said.
Escondido police Lt. Craig Carter said both people were arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and there were injuries on both of them. Carter said the department did not turn Cabrera over to immigration authorities.
After the couple was arrested, the couple's four minor children were left home alone, Cabrera said. Police are investigating the family's complaint that the kids were left without supervision, Carter said.
Bill Flores, a retired assistant sheriff and a member of the human rights group El Grupo, said Escondido's close working relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hurts its ability to protect the community. He said police officers knew that Cabrera would be screened for immigration violations at the Vista jail and chose to take her into custody.
Incidents like Cabrera's hurt the department's relationship with the community, Flores said, making immigrants less likely to report crimes in the future.
"Everybody in that neighborhood found out what happened," Flores said. "She was a victim of domestic violence, she was taken to jail and she ended up getting turned over to ICE. All because she sought help from the Escondido Police Department."
After being arrested, Cabrera was taken to the Escondido Police Department and later to the Vista jail, where ICE placed an immigration hold on her, apparently as part of its Secure Communities program. Secure Communities links local jails to federal databases to identify illegal immigrants who are booked into the facilities.
"I never thought that this would happen to me," Cabrera said during an interview last week. "To me, it was a complete surprise."
A spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego declined to comment on the case.
Cabrera spent several days at the Vista jail before she was turned over to immigration authorities. Cabrera had an immigration petition pending as a victim of domestic violence related to a prior relationship. Under a law called the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, battered women who are married to U.S. citizens can apply for an immigrant visa.
Melgar, a legal resident, was not turned over to immigration authorities. He spent four days in jail before he was released.
Lilia Velasquez, a San Diego immigration attorney representing Cabrera, said having the visa petition does not necessarily mean that a victim is safe from deportation. However, under a new policy by the Obama administration, immigration authorities have discretion on when to pursue deportation procedures.
The Obama administration has said it wants to focus its resources on deporting violent illegal immigrant criminals, immigrants who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge and people who repeatedly have been caught in the country illegally.
"Given the new policy of prosecutorial discretion, ICE should have removed the hold (on Cabrera) once they ascertained she was a (Violence Against Women Act) beneficiary," Velasquez said.
The San Diego County District Attorney's office declined to file charges against either Cabrera or her boyfriend. She was released from immigration custody on Aug. 28 due to her Violence Against Women Act visa petition.
Critics say that the Obama administration's immigration policies, including Secure Communities, have created a dragnet that catches not only violent criminals but also people whose only violation is being in the country illegally. Those policies break families apart, tearing parents away from their U.S.-born children, critics say.
While she was detained, Cabrera's four children, ages 3 to 17 years old, were left in her Escondido home without supervision, she said. Her oldest daughter, Tayana Zarate, 17, said she had to care for her siblings while trying to figure out where her mother was being held and how to have her released.
Tayana said a neighbor helped her buy food and drove her around to find her mother.
"They never asked who I was, my name, how old I was, is there a grown-up in the house?" Tayana said last week. "They don't care."
The family filed a complaint with the police department for leaving the children without supervision. Tayana and her mother spoke with police detectives last Thursday night about the complaint.
Carter said the officers noted in their report that they left the children in the care of an "18-year-old female."
The department also came under fire last year when it announced that it had forged a new alliance with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement allowing several immigration officers to work out of its headquarters. Operation Joint Effort, as the program is called, is the only one of its kind in the county. It has been credited by the department with the arrest of over 400 criminal illegal immigrants since it started in May 2010...
Friday, October 07, 2011
The story of our holy Constitution
(Credit: Ian Huebert)
Oct 7, 2011
Introducing: A Tea People’s History
Exclusive read from the history book they won't teach in schools! The story of our holy Constitution
By Alex Pareene
Salon.com
We're exceptionally proud to bring you this excerpt from Salon's new e-book, "A Tea People's History," by Alex Pareene. You can buy the full e-book for $2.99 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Continental Congress organized the new nation with a document called the American Rules of Acquisition, an early precursor to our Constitution. While the Rules — also known as the Articles of Confederation — wisely established a weak central government and powerful states’ rights, there was a certain spark missing — the spark of Natural Law, which was the Founders’ preferred phrase for the Ten Commandments.
Some argue that the Articles of Confederation created a federal government that was too small and weak, but in fact the primary problem with the Articles was that they were far too left-wing. Government bureaucracy killed nearly 2,000 soldiers at Valley Forge. It was apparent that a change was needed!
While planting some hemp one day, George Washington discovered an early draft of the Constitution, written in ancient Egyptian on a series of golden plates buried deep within the ground at Mount Vernon. James Madison translated and elaborated on the text, with the help of Thomas Jefferson and an angel. The excited Founders immediately called for a Constitutional Convention to officially ratify the document and formally make America the best country ever.
The Constitution was written with 74 essential guiding principles in mind, based on the principles of Natural Law as laid out by Polybius, Cicero, Thomas Hooker, Coke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, John Locke, Adam Smith, Moses and Jesus. Some of them include:
Principle 6: All Men are created (by God) equal (before God).
Principle 7: The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not special rights for cross-dressing Wiccans with ADHD and “the differently abled” and every other interest group under the sun.
Principle 10: Property rights are the most important inalienable right of all.
Principle 17: If anything ever goes wrong, it is not because of any flaws in the Constitution or with the Founders.
Principle 20: In fact, if something goes wrong, it is because America has strayed from the original glorious divinely inspired mission of the Founders.
Principle 21: But it’s OK, because they predicted that would happen.
In their wiseness, the Founders explicitly rejected the direct election of senators, progressive taxation, welfare and collective bargaining for public employees. In fact, Ben Franklin argued that public employees shouldn’t even be paid, at all. As he said, at the time:
“To bring the matter nearer home, have we not seen the greatest and most important of our offices, that of general of our armies, executed for eight years together, without the smallest salary, by a patriot whom I will not now offend by any other praise; and this, through fatigues and distresses, in common with the other brave men, his military friends and companions, and the constant anxieties peculiar to his station? If he can do it, should a mere instructor of youths not stop complaining about his recompense? They don’t even work all year! Can the public treasury handle giving a mere public carriage-driver half his salary upon his retirement at the age of thirty? I think not! Especially when your average carriage-hand is living to be nearly forty, these dayes.”
The Founders also explicitly designed America to be a Christian nation. After all, the Natural Laws that make every man equal are the laws of God. All of the Founders believed in God. All of them. They all believed in God and thought everyone should believe in God and worship Him. It’s just a fact. Get over it. Also Jefferson’s “wall” between church and state just meant that the federal government couldn’t interfere with churches, but in fact the Founders wanted all religions to be encouraged, because worshiping God makes us virtuous, and only a virtuous people can handle self-rule. This is why the Founders came up with the “In God We Trust” motto, which they put on all the money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. It was Ben Franklin’s idea, along with the eagle, God’s favorite bird. Madison is the one who decided everyone should be sworn in on a Bible.
After agreeing unanimously on all the Golden Plate-derived portions of the document, the Founders set about writing the BiIl of Rights. There is a friendly debate among historians about whether the First Amendment — which establishes the right of Real Americans to Speak Common Sense Truths without fear of getting attacked by America-hating trolls and the lamestream media — or the Second Amendment — which establishes the right of Corporations to bear automatic weapons — is more important, but the Founders truly believed that both were essential for Freedom.
Fun Fact: When Washington took office as our first president, not all the states had ratified the Constitution, and the Articles of Confederation said that no changes could be made without every state’s approval. This is proof that the Founders officially approved of seceding from the Union, and endorsed Rick Perry.
Buy the full “A Tea People’s History” for $2.99 on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Ridiculed crystal work wins Nobel for Israeli
Ridiculed crystal work wins Nobel for Israeli
An Israeli scientist whose work was once ridiculed for being out of line with received thinking won the 2011 Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for discovering different ways in which atoms could be packed together in solid materials.
By Patrick Lannin and Veronica Ek
Oct 6, 2011
(Reuters) - An Israeli scientist who suffered years of ridicule and even lost a research post for claiming to have found an entirely new class of solid material was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals.
Three decades after Dan Shechtman looked with an electron microscope at a metal alloy and saw a pattern familiar in Islamic art but then unknown at a molecular level, those non-stick, rust-free, heat-resistant quasicrystals are finding their way into tools from LEDs to engines and frying pans.
Shechtman, 70, from Israel's Technion institute in Haifa, was working in the United States in 1982 when he observed atoms in a crystal he had made form a five-sided pattern that did not repeat itself, defying received wisdom that they must create repetitious patterns, like triangles, squares or hexagons.
"People just laughed at me," Shechtman recalled in an interview this year with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noting how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening "crusade" against him, saying: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."
After telling Shechtman to go back and read the textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for "bringing disgrace" on the team. "I felt rejected," Shechtman remembered.
"His discovery was extremely controversial," said the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which granted him the 10-million crown ($1.5-million) award.
"Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science ... His battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.
"In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves."
A PRIZE FOR THOUSANDS
On Wednesday, Shechtman said he was "excited" but at pains to praise fellow scientists, many of whom once doubted him.
Nancy Jackson, the president of the American Chemical Society (ACS), called it "a great work of discovery."
Scientists had previously thought solid matter had only two states -- crystalline, like diamonds, where atoms are arranged in rigid rows, and amorphous, like metals, with no particular order. Quasicrystalline matter offers a third possibility and opens the door to new kinds of materials for use in industry.
Sometimes referred to as Shechtmanite in the discoverer's honor, hundreds of quasicrystals have been synthesized in laboratories. Two years ago, scientists reported the first naturally occurring find of quasicrystals in eastern Russia.
David Phillips, president of Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, called them "quite beautiful." Interlocking arrays of stars, circles and floral shapes are typical.
"You can normally explain in simple terms where in a crystal each atom sits - they are very symmetrical," Phillips said. "With quasicrystals, that symmetry is broken: there are regular patterns in the structure, but never repeating."
An intriguing feature of such patterns, also found in Arab mosaics, is that the mathematical constant known as the Greek letter tau, or the "golden ratio," occurs over and over again. Underlying it is a sequence worked out by Fibonacci in the 13th century, where each number is the sum of the preceding two.
Living things, including flowers, fruit and shellfish, also demonstrate similar arrangements, which scientists associate with the efficient packing of materials into growing organisms.
Quasicrystals are very hard and are poor conductors of heat and electricity, offering uses as thermoelectric materials, which convert heat into electricity. They also have non-stick surfaces, handy for frying pans, and appear in energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and heat insulation in engines.
Astrid Graslund, secretary for the Nobel Committee for chemistry, said: "The practical applications are as of now, not so many. But the material has unexpected properties. It is very strong, it has hardly any friction on the surface. It doesn't want to react with anything -- they cannot ... become rusty.
"But it is more a conceptual insight - that these materials exist and we need to re-write all textbooks about crystals - it's a shift of the paradigm, which I think is most important."
BATTLE OF BELIEF
Since Galileo was mocked by established scientists and persecuted by the church in the 16th century for observing that the Earth moved round the Sun rather than the reverse, overturning accepted wisdom has never been easy, as several of this year's Nobel prizewinners in science have shown.
Research that was largely ignored for years secured the medicine prize for the late Ralph Steinman and the astounding finding that the universe's expansion was speeding up not slowing down meant the physics prize for its joint discoverers.
But in a year when science is in a froth over whether particles may have been fired from Geneva to Italy faster than the speed of light -- apparently defying Einstein -- few in the modern age have had to battle disbelief as hard as Shechtman.
"He dealt with the skepticism in a very scientific and gentlemanly manner and answered his critics as every scientist should -- through science," Ron Lifshitz, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University, told Reuters. "There were also personal slurs but those did not warrant a response ... He believed in his own work and carried on with determination."
Interviewed about his Nobel by television in Israel, where the award was big national news for a small country with a long roster of laureates, Shechtman spoke of a photograph in his office that showed a small cat sipping water, surrounded by angry dogs; a biblical inscription read: "Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil."
"That's the way I felt for many years," Shechtman chuckled. "It accurately describes the situation, during that period."
He "trusted in his science," however, and came to see the criticism by the late Pauling, which Shechtman has described as "almost theological," as a positive source of strength:
"When you're a young scientist, and you're faced with perhaps the top international scientist, Professor Linus Pauling ... and he argues with you as an equal, and you know that he is wrong - that's not really such a bad feeling."
(Additional reporting by Simon Johnson in Stockholm, Ben Hirschler in London, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Dan Williams, Ori Lewis and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
(The Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences corrects laureate's first name to Dan from Daniel)
An Israeli scientist whose work was once ridiculed for being out of line with received thinking won the 2011 Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for discovering different ways in which atoms could be packed together in solid materials.
By Patrick Lannin and Veronica Ek
Oct 6, 2011
(Reuters) - An Israeli scientist who suffered years of ridicule and even lost a research post for claiming to have found an entirely new class of solid material was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals.
Three decades after Dan Shechtman looked with an electron microscope at a metal alloy and saw a pattern familiar in Islamic art but then unknown at a molecular level, those non-stick, rust-free, heat-resistant quasicrystals are finding their way into tools from LEDs to engines and frying pans.
Shechtman, 70, from Israel's Technion institute in Haifa, was working in the United States in 1982 when he observed atoms in a crystal he had made form a five-sided pattern that did not repeat itself, defying received wisdom that they must create repetitious patterns, like triangles, squares or hexagons.
"People just laughed at me," Shechtman recalled in an interview this year with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noting how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening "crusade" against him, saying: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."
After telling Shechtman to go back and read the textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for "bringing disgrace" on the team. "I felt rejected," Shechtman remembered.
"His discovery was extremely controversial," said the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which granted him the 10-million crown ($1.5-million) award.
"Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science ... His battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.
"In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves."
A PRIZE FOR THOUSANDS
On Wednesday, Shechtman said he was "excited" but at pains to praise fellow scientists, many of whom once doubted him.
Nancy Jackson, the president of the American Chemical Society (ACS), called it "a great work of discovery."
Scientists had previously thought solid matter had only two states -- crystalline, like diamonds, where atoms are arranged in rigid rows, and amorphous, like metals, with no particular order. Quasicrystalline matter offers a third possibility and opens the door to new kinds of materials for use in industry.
Sometimes referred to as Shechtmanite in the discoverer's honor, hundreds of quasicrystals have been synthesized in laboratories. Two years ago, scientists reported the first naturally occurring find of quasicrystals in eastern Russia.
David Phillips, president of Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry, called them "quite beautiful." Interlocking arrays of stars, circles and floral shapes are typical.
"You can normally explain in simple terms where in a crystal each atom sits - they are very symmetrical," Phillips said. "With quasicrystals, that symmetry is broken: there are regular patterns in the structure, but never repeating."
An intriguing feature of such patterns, also found in Arab mosaics, is that the mathematical constant known as the Greek letter tau, or the "golden ratio," occurs over and over again. Underlying it is a sequence worked out by Fibonacci in the 13th century, where each number is the sum of the preceding two.
Living things, including flowers, fruit and shellfish, also demonstrate similar arrangements, which scientists associate with the efficient packing of materials into growing organisms.
Quasicrystals are very hard and are poor conductors of heat and electricity, offering uses as thermoelectric materials, which convert heat into electricity. They also have non-stick surfaces, handy for frying pans, and appear in energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and heat insulation in engines.
Astrid Graslund, secretary for the Nobel Committee for chemistry, said: "The practical applications are as of now, not so many. But the material has unexpected properties. It is very strong, it has hardly any friction on the surface. It doesn't want to react with anything -- they cannot ... become rusty.
"But it is more a conceptual insight - that these materials exist and we need to re-write all textbooks about crystals - it's a shift of the paradigm, which I think is most important."
BATTLE OF BELIEF
Since Galileo was mocked by established scientists and persecuted by the church in the 16th century for observing that the Earth moved round the Sun rather than the reverse, overturning accepted wisdom has never been easy, as several of this year's Nobel prizewinners in science have shown.
Research that was largely ignored for years secured the medicine prize for the late Ralph Steinman and the astounding finding that the universe's expansion was speeding up not slowing down meant the physics prize for its joint discoverers.
But in a year when science is in a froth over whether particles may have been fired from Geneva to Italy faster than the speed of light -- apparently defying Einstein -- few in the modern age have had to battle disbelief as hard as Shechtman.
"He dealt with the skepticism in a very scientific and gentlemanly manner and answered his critics as every scientist should -- through science," Ron Lifshitz, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University, told Reuters. "There were also personal slurs but those did not warrant a response ... He believed in his own work and carried on with determination."
Interviewed about his Nobel by television in Israel, where the award was big national news for a small country with a long roster of laureates, Shechtman spoke of a photograph in his office that showed a small cat sipping water, surrounded by angry dogs; a biblical inscription read: "Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil."
"That's the way I felt for many years," Shechtman chuckled. "It accurately describes the situation, during that period."
He "trusted in his science," however, and came to see the criticism by the late Pauling, which Shechtman has described as "almost theological," as a positive source of strength:
"When you're a young scientist, and you're faced with perhaps the top international scientist, Professor Linus Pauling ... and he argues with you as an equal, and you know that he is wrong - that's not really such a bad feeling."
(Additional reporting by Simon Johnson in Stockholm, Ben Hirschler in London, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Dan Williams, Ori Lewis and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
(The Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences corrects laureate's first name to Dan from Daniel)
Saturday, October 01, 2011
This American Life: A man who has searched 18 years for the right couch
Cat and Mouse
This American Life
Originally aired 02.24.2006
In most games of cat and mouse, you've got the chaser and you got the chased, right? And both of them are pretty much in constant motion. But here's a story where the mouse is not moving at all. In fact, the mouse is an inanimate object. And yet, somehow it cannot be caught. David Segal reports.
David Segal
I've known Eric for just about 20 years. And for nearly the entire length of our friendship, he's been hunting quarry that everyone else cornered a long time ago, something nobody really thinks of as the sort of thing you hunt.
Eric
I've been looking for the right sofa for about 18 years.
David Segal
Yes, he said 18 years. And yes, he said sofa. All of this started after Eric left graduate school. And briefly, it looked like it would be a fairly conventional shopping experience. He spotted a sofa he liked at Pottery Barn, an off-white number with a slip cover. And he had a matching pair delivered. But once they arrived, he knew he'd made a big mistake. The lines were all wrong. The fabric wasn't right. He returned the goods within a week. And after that, the shopping experience was never conventional again. His quest moved into what I call its "Ahab/Moby Dick" phase. He began to stalk his couch.
For years he'd subscribe to these high-end furniture magazines. And slowly, he started to build a clip file of advertisements and photographs. He learned the ins and outs of couch construction, the proper materials for the frame--
Eric
What they call kiln-dried hardwood.
David Segal
Invisible stitching. Cushion filling.
Eric
There's a firmness but a softness, which is actually not all that easy to achieve.
David Segal
The fabric for the covering--
Eric
The kind of the boucle that they do, which is the fabric that I was keen on.
David Segal
And of course, all important, the springs.
Eric
What's called eight-way hand-tied, I think, which is, they do eight-way hand tying of the coils.
David Segal
I should say, Eric's not this way when he's buying clothes. He's not this way when he's ordering dinner. He's not this way with a lot of things. But when it's something he cares about, he's methodical and he's relentless. But with the sofa, he went further than he ever had before. By the time his search entered its 10th year-- that's more than twice as long as it took scientists at the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb-- Eric was honing in.
He'd started shopping in these swanky boutiques, places that don't even have storefronts, places where someone has to tell you the address and then buzz you in. He had his eyes on the work of a sofa superstar named Jean-Michel Frank. And there was one piece in particular that he decided was the couch of his dreams. It was a $12,000 three-seater of Italian nutwood in a beeswax finish. Eric found the one place in the country where it was for sale.
Eric
A place called Ralph Pucci.
David Segal
So you walked around this place, and did you fall in love with any of the sofas? Did you hear the church music you were looking for?
Eric
Yeah, well, it's interesting. The short answer is, I didn't, which was kind of dismaying. When I saw it in person, I was actually a little underwhelmed.
David Segal
So you ultimately passed on all of the sofas that you came across during your 15- to 18-year search for the perfect sofa.
Eric
Right.
David Segal
Could you describe your current sofa?
Eric
That's just plain mean.
David Segal
Where did you get your current sofa?
Eric
So I got my current sofa for free. It was a donation from a friend that I was helping move out of his apartment. The polyester fill cushions have gotten flattened to the point where if you plop down, if you just kind of collapse into my sofa, you will actually hurt yourself.
David Segal
More than a few times in these past 18 years, Eric and I have tried to figure out what this sofa thing is really about. Perhaps it won't shock you to learn that Eric is single. He's had a fair number of girlfriends. With some he's even shared the story of his never-ending couch adventure. And guess what, they don't seem very amused.
Eric
Yeah. I mean, it kind of drives them crazy.
David Segal
To review. Just after college, he found something he liked, lived with it briefly, and then decided it wasn't good enough and sent it packing. He started pursuing exotic specimens that conformed to a narrower and more unattainable ideal. He subscribed to glossy, photo-rich magazines, which only reinforced his yearning for this unattainable ideal. And then, after years of searching, he finally came face-to-face with that ideal. He found it lacking. Do you see where I'm going here? Often, when I talk to him about his quest, I want to say, wait, are we still talking about a couch?
Eric
Do I hold out for one that really knocks me out or do I just settle for something that is-- that I can live with, but really doesn't knock me out?
David Segal
But does it not worry you that you might live a sofa-less, single life?
Eric
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. This is probably the thing that causes me more concern and dismay and questions as anything in my life. I really, really like being together. And I'm not all that crazy about being alone.
David Segal
One thing that's interesting about the tale of Eric's nonstop sofa safari-- which I've heard him tell more than a few times-- is that it ticks off nearly as many people as it amuses. Some are actually angry when he's done with the story. And I think I know why. Two radically different world views are clashing here, one in which life is all about seeking perfection, and the other in which you make normal compromises and settle for good instead of great. The settlers consider the perfection people to be babies and whiners. The perfection people see the settlers as strangely hostile milquetoasts who've given up, who aren't striving for greatness, who've been cowed into lowering their standards.
Personally, I know that part of me wants to tell Eric, don't yield. Do not surrender. Hold fast. Wait for that transformative moment, even if it means you're alone and drooling on a frat house futon for the rest of your life. And another part of me wants to tell him exactly what a former girlfriend once told him, and I quote, "Just buy a [BLEEP] couch."
Ira Glass
David Segal is a reporter for the Washington Post.
This American Life
Originally aired 02.24.2006
In most games of cat and mouse, you've got the chaser and you got the chased, right? And both of them are pretty much in constant motion. But here's a story where the mouse is not moving at all. In fact, the mouse is an inanimate object. And yet, somehow it cannot be caught. David Segal reports.
David Segal
I've known Eric for just about 20 years. And for nearly the entire length of our friendship, he's been hunting quarry that everyone else cornered a long time ago, something nobody really thinks of as the sort of thing you hunt.
Eric
I've been looking for the right sofa for about 18 years.
David Segal
Yes, he said 18 years. And yes, he said sofa. All of this started after Eric left graduate school. And briefly, it looked like it would be a fairly conventional shopping experience. He spotted a sofa he liked at Pottery Barn, an off-white number with a slip cover. And he had a matching pair delivered. But once they arrived, he knew he'd made a big mistake. The lines were all wrong. The fabric wasn't right. He returned the goods within a week. And after that, the shopping experience was never conventional again. His quest moved into what I call its "Ahab/Moby Dick" phase. He began to stalk his couch.
For years he'd subscribe to these high-end furniture magazines. And slowly, he started to build a clip file of advertisements and photographs. He learned the ins and outs of couch construction, the proper materials for the frame--
Eric
What they call kiln-dried hardwood.
David Segal
Invisible stitching. Cushion filling.
Eric
There's a firmness but a softness, which is actually not all that easy to achieve.
David Segal
The fabric for the covering--
Eric
The kind of the boucle that they do, which is the fabric that I was keen on.
David Segal
And of course, all important, the springs.
Eric
What's called eight-way hand-tied, I think, which is, they do eight-way hand tying of the coils.
David Segal
I should say, Eric's not this way when he's buying clothes. He's not this way when he's ordering dinner. He's not this way with a lot of things. But when it's something he cares about, he's methodical and he's relentless. But with the sofa, he went further than he ever had before. By the time his search entered its 10th year-- that's more than twice as long as it took scientists at the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb-- Eric was honing in.
He'd started shopping in these swanky boutiques, places that don't even have storefronts, places where someone has to tell you the address and then buzz you in. He had his eyes on the work of a sofa superstar named Jean-Michel Frank. And there was one piece in particular that he decided was the couch of his dreams. It was a $12,000 three-seater of Italian nutwood in a beeswax finish. Eric found the one place in the country where it was for sale.
Eric
A place called Ralph Pucci.
David Segal
So you walked around this place, and did you fall in love with any of the sofas? Did you hear the church music you were looking for?
Eric
Yeah, well, it's interesting. The short answer is, I didn't, which was kind of dismaying. When I saw it in person, I was actually a little underwhelmed.
David Segal
So you ultimately passed on all of the sofas that you came across during your 15- to 18-year search for the perfect sofa.
Eric
Right.
David Segal
Could you describe your current sofa?
Eric
That's just plain mean.
David Segal
Where did you get your current sofa?
Eric
So I got my current sofa for free. It was a donation from a friend that I was helping move out of his apartment. The polyester fill cushions have gotten flattened to the point where if you plop down, if you just kind of collapse into my sofa, you will actually hurt yourself.
David Segal
More than a few times in these past 18 years, Eric and I have tried to figure out what this sofa thing is really about. Perhaps it won't shock you to learn that Eric is single. He's had a fair number of girlfriends. With some he's even shared the story of his never-ending couch adventure. And guess what, they don't seem very amused.
Eric
Yeah. I mean, it kind of drives them crazy.
David Segal
To review. Just after college, he found something he liked, lived with it briefly, and then decided it wasn't good enough and sent it packing. He started pursuing exotic specimens that conformed to a narrower and more unattainable ideal. He subscribed to glossy, photo-rich magazines, which only reinforced his yearning for this unattainable ideal. And then, after years of searching, he finally came face-to-face with that ideal. He found it lacking. Do you see where I'm going here? Often, when I talk to him about his quest, I want to say, wait, are we still talking about a couch?
Eric
Do I hold out for one that really knocks me out or do I just settle for something that is-- that I can live with, but really doesn't knock me out?
David Segal
But does it not worry you that you might live a sofa-less, single life?
Eric
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. This is probably the thing that causes me more concern and dismay and questions as anything in my life. I really, really like being together. And I'm not all that crazy about being alone.
David Segal
One thing that's interesting about the tale of Eric's nonstop sofa safari-- which I've heard him tell more than a few times-- is that it ticks off nearly as many people as it amuses. Some are actually angry when he's done with the story. And I think I know why. Two radically different world views are clashing here, one in which life is all about seeking perfection, and the other in which you make normal compromises and settle for good instead of great. The settlers consider the perfection people to be babies and whiners. The perfection people see the settlers as strangely hostile milquetoasts who've given up, who aren't striving for greatness, who've been cowed into lowering their standards.
Personally, I know that part of me wants to tell Eric, don't yield. Do not surrender. Hold fast. Wait for that transformative moment, even if it means you're alone and drooling on a frat house futon for the rest of your life. And another part of me wants to tell him exactly what a former girlfriend once told him, and I quote, "Just buy a [BLEEP] couch."
Ira Glass
David Segal is a reporter for the Washington Post.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Jamey Rodemeyer, 14-Year-Old Boy, Commits Suicide After Gay Bullying, Parents Carry On Message
Jamey Rodemeyer, 14-Year-Old Boy, Commits Suicide After Gay Bullying, Parents Carry On Message
The Huffington Post
Dean Praetorius
9/22/11
Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old boy from Williamsville, NY, took his life Sunday after what his parents claim was years of bullying because of struggles with his sexuality.
His parents, Tracy and Tim Rodemeyer, say that Jamey faced bullies for years, though things intensified in middle school, according to NBC 2. Jamey recently became a freshman at Williamsville North High School.
In the wake of their loss, the Rodemeyers hope to carry on a message of anti-bullying and acceptance. "To the kids who are bullying they have to realize that words are very powerful and what you think is just fun and games isn't to some people, and you are destroying a lot of lives," Jamey's father told WIVB.
Tracy Rodemeyer misses her son, but hopes the loss can still be used to teach a message of tolerance. "It took him away from our family way too early and we're just convinced that he had a purpose on this planet and it was to touch as many people as he could," she told NBC 2.
According to NBC, the Rodemeyers had gone to the school about the problem in the past. Jamey even sought counseling to learn to deal with the problem, but it seems it wasn't enough.
While they say their son seemed happy in the days leading up to the tragedy, his "It Gets Better" YouTube posting from May includes details about how intense the bullying was.
Through it all, Jamey remained outwardly optimistic. “That's all you have to do. Just love yourself and you're set. And I promise you, it'll get better,” he said in the video, which you can see in full below.
Gay bullying has been gaining increasing attention in the media, as a number of tragedies has brought the issue into the spotlight. Earlier this month the California State Senate passed "Seth's Law" a measure designed to curb anti-gay bullying in schools.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or visit stopbullying.gov.
The Huffington Post
Dean Praetorius
9/22/11
Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old boy from Williamsville, NY, took his life Sunday after what his parents claim was years of bullying because of struggles with his sexuality.
His parents, Tracy and Tim Rodemeyer, say that Jamey faced bullies for years, though things intensified in middle school, according to NBC 2. Jamey recently became a freshman at Williamsville North High School.
In the wake of their loss, the Rodemeyers hope to carry on a message of anti-bullying and acceptance. "To the kids who are bullying they have to realize that words are very powerful and what you think is just fun and games isn't to some people, and you are destroying a lot of lives," Jamey's father told WIVB.
Tracy Rodemeyer misses her son, but hopes the loss can still be used to teach a message of tolerance. "It took him away from our family way too early and we're just convinced that he had a purpose on this planet and it was to touch as many people as he could," she told NBC 2.
According to NBC, the Rodemeyers had gone to the school about the problem in the past. Jamey even sought counseling to learn to deal with the problem, but it seems it wasn't enough.
While they say their son seemed happy in the days leading up to the tragedy, his "It Gets Better" YouTube posting from May includes details about how intense the bullying was.
Through it all, Jamey remained outwardly optimistic. “That's all you have to do. Just love yourself and you're set. And I promise you, it'll get better,” he said in the video, which you can see in full below.
Gay bullying has been gaining increasing attention in the media, as a number of tragedies has brought the issue into the spotlight. Earlier this month the California State Senate passed "Seth's Law" a measure designed to curb anti-gay bullying in schools.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or visit stopbullying.gov.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Reporter recounts massacre as new information is revealed by WikiLeaks
Sep 3, 2011
Reporter recounts massacre revealed by WikiLeaks
By Justin Elliott
Salon.com
This week, a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks brought renewed attention to a disputed killing of several civilians in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006.
The cable contains a copy of a letter of inquiry by a U.N. investigator outlining allegations that U.S. forces had handcuffed and then "executed" 10 people in the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee. The soldiers then called in an airstrike that destroyed the house, it alleges.
The U.S. military has maintained that nothing improper happened, but to this day has refused to comment in detail about the case.
Beyond the primary question about what happened that day and whether it was an unjustified massacre or a case of collateral damage, the incident has political ramifications. As the AP reported Friday, Iraqi politicians said this week the incident could have an impact on any agreement to allow U.S. forces to stay in the country beyond Dec. 31.
As the AP noted, "Whether U.S. forces in Iraq will continue to have legal immunity from prosecution if they stay is one of the major stumbling blocks in the ongoing negotiations, as Washington will not allow the military to remain without it."
A Pentagon spokesman said this week, "We've already investigated these allegations, and there is no new information."
To learn more, I spoke to journalist Matthew Schofield, who has been covering the incident since he first wrote about while on assignment in Iraq in 2006. He is currently an editorial writer at the Kansas City Star, a McClatchy paper, but he wrote a news article on the WikiLeaks cable this week.
I know there are competing accounts, so can you explain what do we know -- or think -- happened in this incident in 2006?
What we know happened -- what everyone agrees on -- is that U.S. troops went to a house in Ishaqi, Iraq, in March of 2006. In one official U.S. version, the troops were looking for an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist, or, in another official account, someone who had shot at U.S troops. When they approached the house in the early morning hours, there was a gunfight. Neighbors talked about this. In the U.S. version, in the course of the gunfight, the people in the house were killed, the house was destroyed at the same time, and they were able to detain the person they were looking for. In the account the neighbors told, as well as the report of a U.N. investigation on this, the house was standing when the soldiers went inside and was destroyed sometime later.
The bodies of the dead were found against one wall in one room, all handcuffed in white plastic handcuffs according to neighbors. The coroner we talked to after the incident said that the people who died were killed by gunshots to the upper chest and head. It didn't necessarily look execution-style -- the shots were not all to the same place in the head, or anything like that -- but it looked like they were from fairly close range. His guess was that the bullets were from an M-16. The Iraqi police investigators, who had been trained by U.S. forces, said in their report that these had been execution-style killings by American forces.
Who was killed exactly?
There were five children under the age of five, the youngest being five months old. Then there was a mother, her sister, the grandmother and a visitor -- four women in all. The father, in his 20s, was killed as well.
What about the question of an alleged airstrike on the house?
The house was certainly rubble after the raid -- that's clear. When it collapsed is the question. The neighbors said that after the U.S. troops left, an airstrike was called in. At the time, they said it was helicopters. U.S. forces maintained that it collapsed during the firefight. I couldn't get to the site when I was in Iraq because at that time we couldn't get far out of Baghdad very safely. We relied on a stringer who we had worked with quite a bit in the past. He took a satellite phone and we did phone interviews with the coroner and the police and others.
What has the military said about the incident over the years?
The initial reaction was always that "this can't be true." In June 2006, the U.S. military finally said that nothing untoward had happened in Ishaqi. But there were questions about the military investigation. They weren't on the ground for a particularly long time. Again, we were not there when the investigation took place, but neighbors told us afterwards that investigators were on the scene for a total of 30 to 45 minutes. The military maintained that it had been thorough. Some Iraqi government officials have long maintained anger over the incident.
How did you end up covering the incident?
It was an almost insanely violent period. So we were trying to do some in-depth coverage of what was going on, a sort of day-in-the-life piece, instead of just letting the violence roll. On the day we had settled on this idea, news of the Ishaqi incident was released. We got a press release from the U.S. military that talked about five people who had been killed in collateral damage. So we started looking into it. After our stringer talked to the neighbors, he told us, 'Look, the version I'm getting doesn't jibe with the version you're getting from the military.' He said it's not five people, it's at least 10. After I went to the military with this, they then came back and acknowledged the higher body count was accurate.
What did we learn from the cable just released by WikiLeaks?
One, it shows different sources of information than what I was dealing with. It shows that officialdom was concerned about this. They were not admitting they were concerned when we were on the story back then. They gave much more credence to the story than they had suggested to the press at the time. Behind the scenes, there was a great deal of concern over what exactly had happened there.
The cable outlines pretty much exactly what the worst-case scenario was when we were reporting on it. I didn't really pursue the worse-cast scenario because I didn't believe it was possible. We looked into it and we reported on the allegations at the time, but we were always looking for other explanations, for other ways this could have happened. This cable seems focused on that worst-case scenario, which I found fascinating.
So what happened with the U.N. investigation? It was essentially stymied?
Yes, it died. They sent questions out to the United States, and there was no response. They have said there was frequently no response from the United States on these matters. They sent questions to the Iraqi government, and they said these things also just tended to vanish because Iraq was a mess at the time. The investigator, Philip Alston, who is the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told us this week that they just had nowhere left to go after these nonresponses.
So this incident has really never been addressed by the U.S. military in a comprehensive way?
It has not. The military has always been dismissive of this case. It may well be that it should be dismissed. But there's enough smoke there that it deserves a very thorough investigation. These are very disturbing allegations. The Iraqi cops who investigated this had U.S. training; they were not anti-American. They had respect for the training they had gotten. There has been and continues to be a desire for concrete answers.
Reporter recounts massacre revealed by WikiLeaks
By Justin Elliott
Salon.com
This week, a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks brought renewed attention to a disputed killing of several civilians in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006.
The cable contains a copy of a letter of inquiry by a U.N. investigator outlining allegations that U.S. forces had handcuffed and then "executed" 10 people in the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee. The soldiers then called in an airstrike that destroyed the house, it alleges.
The U.S. military has maintained that nothing improper happened, but to this day has refused to comment in detail about the case.
Beyond the primary question about what happened that day and whether it was an unjustified massacre or a case of collateral damage, the incident has political ramifications. As the AP reported Friday, Iraqi politicians said this week the incident could have an impact on any agreement to allow U.S. forces to stay in the country beyond Dec. 31.
As the AP noted, "Whether U.S. forces in Iraq will continue to have legal immunity from prosecution if they stay is one of the major stumbling blocks in the ongoing negotiations, as Washington will not allow the military to remain without it."
A Pentagon spokesman said this week, "We've already investigated these allegations, and there is no new information."
To learn more, I spoke to journalist Matthew Schofield, who has been covering the incident since he first wrote about while on assignment in Iraq in 2006. He is currently an editorial writer at the Kansas City Star, a McClatchy paper, but he wrote a news article on the WikiLeaks cable this week.
I know there are competing accounts, so can you explain what do we know -- or think -- happened in this incident in 2006?
What we know happened -- what everyone agrees on -- is that U.S. troops went to a house in Ishaqi, Iraq, in March of 2006. In one official U.S. version, the troops were looking for an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist, or, in another official account, someone who had shot at U.S troops. When they approached the house in the early morning hours, there was a gunfight. Neighbors talked about this. In the U.S. version, in the course of the gunfight, the people in the house were killed, the house was destroyed at the same time, and they were able to detain the person they were looking for. In the account the neighbors told, as well as the report of a U.N. investigation on this, the house was standing when the soldiers went inside and was destroyed sometime later.
The bodies of the dead were found against one wall in one room, all handcuffed in white plastic handcuffs according to neighbors. The coroner we talked to after the incident said that the people who died were killed by gunshots to the upper chest and head. It didn't necessarily look execution-style -- the shots were not all to the same place in the head, or anything like that -- but it looked like they were from fairly close range. His guess was that the bullets were from an M-16. The Iraqi police investigators, who had been trained by U.S. forces, said in their report that these had been execution-style killings by American forces.
Who was killed exactly?
There were five children under the age of five, the youngest being five months old. Then there was a mother, her sister, the grandmother and a visitor -- four women in all. The father, in his 20s, was killed as well.
What about the question of an alleged airstrike on the house?
The house was certainly rubble after the raid -- that's clear. When it collapsed is the question. The neighbors said that after the U.S. troops left, an airstrike was called in. At the time, they said it was helicopters. U.S. forces maintained that it collapsed during the firefight. I couldn't get to the site when I was in Iraq because at that time we couldn't get far out of Baghdad very safely. We relied on a stringer who we had worked with quite a bit in the past. He took a satellite phone and we did phone interviews with the coroner and the police and others.
What has the military said about the incident over the years?
The initial reaction was always that "this can't be true." In June 2006, the U.S. military finally said that nothing untoward had happened in Ishaqi. But there were questions about the military investigation. They weren't on the ground for a particularly long time. Again, we were not there when the investigation took place, but neighbors told us afterwards that investigators were on the scene for a total of 30 to 45 minutes. The military maintained that it had been thorough. Some Iraqi government officials have long maintained anger over the incident.
How did you end up covering the incident?
It was an almost insanely violent period. So we were trying to do some in-depth coverage of what was going on, a sort of day-in-the-life piece, instead of just letting the violence roll. On the day we had settled on this idea, news of the Ishaqi incident was released. We got a press release from the U.S. military that talked about five people who had been killed in collateral damage. So we started looking into it. After our stringer talked to the neighbors, he told us, 'Look, the version I'm getting doesn't jibe with the version you're getting from the military.' He said it's not five people, it's at least 10. After I went to the military with this, they then came back and acknowledged the higher body count was accurate.
What did we learn from the cable just released by WikiLeaks?
One, it shows different sources of information than what I was dealing with. It shows that officialdom was concerned about this. They were not admitting they were concerned when we were on the story back then. They gave much more credence to the story than they had suggested to the press at the time. Behind the scenes, there was a great deal of concern over what exactly had happened there.
The cable outlines pretty much exactly what the worst-case scenario was when we were reporting on it. I didn't really pursue the worse-cast scenario because I didn't believe it was possible. We looked into it and we reported on the allegations at the time, but we were always looking for other explanations, for other ways this could have happened. This cable seems focused on that worst-case scenario, which I found fascinating.
So what happened with the U.N. investigation? It was essentially stymied?
Yes, it died. They sent questions out to the United States, and there was no response. They have said there was frequently no response from the United States on these matters. They sent questions to the Iraqi government, and they said these things also just tended to vanish because Iraq was a mess at the time. The investigator, Philip Alston, who is the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told us this week that they just had nowhere left to go after these nonresponses.
So this incident has really never been addressed by the U.S. military in a comprehensive way?
It has not. The military has always been dismissive of this case. It may well be that it should be dismissed. But there's enough smoke there that it deserves a very thorough investigation. These are very disturbing allegations. The Iraqi cops who investigated this had U.S. training; they were not anti-American. They had respect for the training they had gotten. There has been and continues to be a desire for concrete answers.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Ridiculed, an N.F.L. Owner Goes to Court
Dan Snyder sues paper that criticized him
Citizen Media Law Project
On November 19, 2010, the Washington City Paper published "The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder." The article levied a wide array of complaints about Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins NFL franchise since 1999. The complaints largely concerned his management of the team, as well as his control of several other business ventures.
On November 24, 2010, Washington Redskins General Counsel David Donovan wrote a letter on behalf of Dan Snyder to Atalaya Capital Management, an investment company that, according to the letter, purchased the City Paper out of bankruptcy in 2009. The letter alleges that the City Paper article, and its inclusion of a photograph of Snyder with drawn-in devil horns, goatee, and uni-brow, were anti-Semitic and that the allegations made regarding Snyder and his wife in the article were false and defamatory. The letter also suggests that the statements regarding Snyder may have been published at the direction of Atalaya Capital, which competes with RedZone Capital (an entity which Snyder co-founded).
On December 7, 2010, attorneys for Atalaya Capital responded to Snyder's letter, rejecting the assertion that Atalaya had control over the content of Washington City Paper, disputing the factual allegations made in the letter, and asserting City Paper's First Amendment right to criticize Snyder under Hustler Magazine v. Falwell.
On February 2, 2011, Snyder filed suit in the New York Supreme Court for New York County against Atalaya Capital, its portfolio company Creative Loafing, Inc., and 10 "John Doe" defendants. Snyder alleged that four statements made in the article were defamatory, and sought relief in excess of $2 million
On April 26, 2011, Snyder discontinued his action in New York and filed a second the complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, this time against Creative Loafing, Inc., Washington City Paper, and Dave McKenna, the author of the article.
Using DC's recently enacted anti-SLAPP law, the defendants brought a special motion to dismiss on June 17, 2011. The defendants argue that D.C. Code § 16-5502 protects the statements as they are "an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest" and that Snyder will not be "likely to succeed on the merits" of his claims.
According to the Blog of LegalTimes, Snyder filed a memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss on August 1, 2011, in which he argues that the anti-SLAPP law in question is in violation of the Home Rule Act, the federal law which delegates some congressional control of the District of Columbia to the DC local government. On August 30, 2011, the District of Columbia intervened in the case for the limited purpose of defending the validity of the anti-SLAPP law.
Oral argument for the motion to dismiss is currently scheduled for October 14, 2011.
Related Links:
John Sharkey, Dan Snyder Gets a Taste of D.C.'s New Anti-SLAPP Law, CMLP Blog, June 17, 2011.
Dan Snyder, Why I am suing Washington City Paper, Washington Post, April 25, 2011.
Michael Schaffer, Bully Pulpit: Why Dan Snyder's Lawsuit Matters, Washington City Paper, Feb. 11, 2011.
Rep. Steve Cohen, Protect Free Speech by Combating SLAPPs, Roll Call, May 23, 2011.
Erik Wemple, Daniel Snyder lawsuit: No settlement in sight, TBD, April 26, 2011.
David Carr, Ridiculed, an N.F.L. Owner Goes to Court, New York Times, Feb. 6, 2011.
Citizen Media Law Project
On November 19, 2010, the Washington City Paper published "The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder." The article levied a wide array of complaints about Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins NFL franchise since 1999. The complaints largely concerned his management of the team, as well as his control of several other business ventures.
On November 24, 2010, Washington Redskins General Counsel David Donovan wrote a letter on behalf of Dan Snyder to Atalaya Capital Management, an investment company that, according to the letter, purchased the City Paper out of bankruptcy in 2009. The letter alleges that the City Paper article, and its inclusion of a photograph of Snyder with drawn-in devil horns, goatee, and uni-brow, were anti-Semitic and that the allegations made regarding Snyder and his wife in the article were false and defamatory. The letter also suggests that the statements regarding Snyder may have been published at the direction of Atalaya Capital, which competes with RedZone Capital (an entity which Snyder co-founded).
On December 7, 2010, attorneys for Atalaya Capital responded to Snyder's letter, rejecting the assertion that Atalaya had control over the content of Washington City Paper, disputing the factual allegations made in the letter, and asserting City Paper's First Amendment right to criticize Snyder under Hustler Magazine v. Falwell.
On February 2, 2011, Snyder filed suit in the New York Supreme Court for New York County against Atalaya Capital, its portfolio company Creative Loafing, Inc., and 10 "John Doe" defendants. Snyder alleged that four statements made in the article were defamatory, and sought relief in excess of $2 million
On April 26, 2011, Snyder discontinued his action in New York and filed a second the complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, this time against Creative Loafing, Inc., Washington City Paper, and Dave McKenna, the author of the article.
Using DC's recently enacted anti-SLAPP law, the defendants brought a special motion to dismiss on June 17, 2011. The defendants argue that D.C. Code § 16-5502 protects the statements as they are "an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest" and that Snyder will not be "likely to succeed on the merits" of his claims.
According to the Blog of LegalTimes, Snyder filed a memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss on August 1, 2011, in which he argues that the anti-SLAPP law in question is in violation of the Home Rule Act, the federal law which delegates some congressional control of the District of Columbia to the DC local government. On August 30, 2011, the District of Columbia intervened in the case for the limited purpose of defending the validity of the anti-SLAPP law.
Oral argument for the motion to dismiss is currently scheduled for October 14, 2011.
Related Links:
John Sharkey, Dan Snyder Gets a Taste of D.C.'s New Anti-SLAPP Law, CMLP Blog, June 17, 2011.
Dan Snyder, Why I am suing Washington City Paper, Washington Post, April 25, 2011.
Michael Schaffer, Bully Pulpit: Why Dan Snyder's Lawsuit Matters, Washington City Paper, Feb. 11, 2011.
Rep. Steve Cohen, Protect Free Speech by Combating SLAPPs, Roll Call, May 23, 2011.
Erik Wemple, Daniel Snyder lawsuit: No settlement in sight, TBD, April 26, 2011.
David Carr, Ridiculed, an N.F.L. Owner Goes to Court, New York Times, Feb. 6, 2011.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Stetson Kennedy, Exposer Of Ku Klux Klan Secrets, Dies At 94
Stetson Kennedy, Exposer Of Ku Klux Klan Secrets, Dies At 94
By TERRY SPENCER
08/27/11
MIAMI -- Author and folklorist Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan six decades ago and exposed its secrets to authorities and the public but was also criticized for possibly exaggerating his exploits, died Saturday. He was 94.
Kennedy died at Baptist Medical Center South near St. Augustine, where he had been receiving hospice care.
In the 1940s, Kennedy used the "Superman" radio show to expose and ridicule the Klan's rituals. In the 1950s he wrote "I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan," which was later renamed "The Klan Unmasked," and "The Jim Crow Guide."
"Exposing their folklore – all their secret handshakes, passwords and how silly they were, dressing up in white sheets" was one of the strongest blows delivered to the Klan, said Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press. She was a friend of Kennedy for about 30 years and did her doctoral thesis on his work as a folklorist.
"If they weren't so violent, they would be silly."
Kennedy began his crusades against what he called "homegrown racial terrorists" during World War II after he was deemed unworthy for military service because of a back injury. He served as director of fact-finding for the southeastern office of the Anti-Defamation League and served as director of the Anti-Nazi League of New York.
"All my friends were in service and they were being shot at in a big way. They were fighting racism whether they knew it or not," Kennedy said. "At least I could see if I could do something about the racist terrorists in our backyard."
Using evidence salvaged from the Grand Dragon's waste basket, he enabled the Internal Revenue Service to press for collection of an outstanding $685,000 tax lien from the Klan in 1944 and he helped draft the brief used by the state of Georgia to revoke the Klan's national corporate charter in 1947.
Kennedy infiltrated the Klan by using the name of a deceased uncle who had been a member as a way to gain trust and membership.
But the Klan did not know that Kennedy was giving its secrets to the outside world, including the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Anti-Defamation League and Drew Pearson, a columnist for The Washington Post.
When he learned of plans for the Klan to take action, he would make sure it was broadcast, thwarting them.
"They were afraid to do anything. They knew that somebody was on the inside. They had first-class detectives looking, and I was trying hard not to be caught," Kennedy said.
Kennedy said he always feared exposure and remained scared throughout his life. "Nonstop, to date," mentioning threats, the shooting of his dog and frequent attempts to burn his home...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
New York Times
August 14, 2011
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
New York Times
August 14, 2011
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Rick Perry under fire over veiled Bernanke threat
"'To accuse Bernanke of being a traitor to his country -- treason is a crime punishable by death -- to say you are going to treat him pretty ugly if he was down in Texas, this was unpresidential and unnecessary,' said Rove."
When Karl Rove says a fellow Republican has gone too far, it's time to worry. But here's my question. How does someone like Rick Perry, who talks about having Texas secede from the US, manage to also claim to be a patriotic American?
Perry under fire over veiled Bernanke threat
(AFP)
August 16, 2011
WASHINGTON — Republican White House hopeful and Texas Governor Rick Perry faced disbelieving and angry reactions Tuesday to remarks seen as threats of implied violence against Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke.
At a campaign stop in the heartland state of Iowa on Monday, Perry said he would consider any attempt to boost the US economy before the November 2012 elections as "almost treasonous" and invoked the specter of mob justice.
"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa -- but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry told supporters.
"I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous, in my opinion," Perry told supporters at a backyard get-together, with US President Barack Obama not far away on a campaign-style swing through Iowa.
The eyebrow-raising comments, visible in a video that was widely available on the Internet Tuesday, drew fire even from Republicans, though most of his rivals for the party's presidential nomination initially kept quiet.
Tony Fratto -- a former spokesman for Republican President George W. Bush, who named Bernanke to the Fed chief post -- took to Twitter to call them "inappropriate and unpresidential."
Bush political guru Karl Rove warned on Fox News Business television that Perry's Bernanke comments sounded like he was going to "take him out behind the barn and whup him" and warned the candidate "did not help his cause."
"To accuse Bernanke of being a traitor to his country -- treason is a crime punishable by death -- to say you are going to treat him pretty ugly if he was down in Texas, this was unpresidential and unnecessary," said Rove.
Perry may have stoked worries among some voters who could be wondering "is he going to be too much of a cowboy?"
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Melanie Rousell dismissed Perry's unusual broadside at Bernanke as "inflammatory schoolboy taunts" that left other Republican candidates "looking positively thoughtful."
She also invoked Perry's past controversial remarks suggesting Texas might secede, saying he "would have needed a passport to visit Iowa if he had his way."...
When Karl Rove says a fellow Republican has gone too far, it's time to worry. But here's my question. How does someone like Rick Perry, who talks about having Texas secede from the US, manage to also claim to be a patriotic American?
Perry under fire over veiled Bernanke threat
(AFP)
August 16, 2011
WASHINGTON — Republican White House hopeful and Texas Governor Rick Perry faced disbelieving and angry reactions Tuesday to remarks seen as threats of implied violence against Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke.
At a campaign stop in the heartland state of Iowa on Monday, Perry said he would consider any attempt to boost the US economy before the November 2012 elections as "almost treasonous" and invoked the specter of mob justice.
"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa -- but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry told supporters.
"I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous, in my opinion," Perry told supporters at a backyard get-together, with US President Barack Obama not far away on a campaign-style swing through Iowa.
The eyebrow-raising comments, visible in a video that was widely available on the Internet Tuesday, drew fire even from Republicans, though most of his rivals for the party's presidential nomination initially kept quiet.
Tony Fratto -- a former spokesman for Republican President George W. Bush, who named Bernanke to the Fed chief post -- took to Twitter to call them "inappropriate and unpresidential."
Bush political guru Karl Rove warned on Fox News Business television that Perry's Bernanke comments sounded like he was going to "take him out behind the barn and whup him" and warned the candidate "did not help his cause."
"To accuse Bernanke of being a traitor to his country -- treason is a crime punishable by death -- to say you are going to treat him pretty ugly if he was down in Texas, this was unpresidential and unnecessary," said Rove.
Perry may have stoked worries among some voters who could be wondering "is he going to be too much of a cowboy?"
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Melanie Rousell dismissed Perry's unusual broadside at Bernanke as "inflammatory schoolboy taunts" that left other Republican candidates "looking positively thoughtful."
She also invoked Perry's past controversial remarks suggesting Texas might secede, saying he "would have needed a passport to visit Iowa if he had his way."...
Monday, August 15, 2011
Maddow discusses Rick Perry's connections with a Christian conspiracy group
Aug 11, 2011 07:12 ET
Maddow discusses Rick Perry's connections with a Christian conspiracy group
A number of the Texas governor's prayer rally pastors are plotting world domination
On Wednesday night Rachel Maddow discussed Texas Gov. Rick Perry's prayer event, The Response, which took place last weekend. The event "raised eyebrows," she noted, for involving pastors known for their extreme conservative views. A number of the pastors have something more in common explained Maddow:
"Many of them are part of a little-known, very specific religious and political movement... The New Apostolic Reformation."
According to a cover story in the Texas Observer this month, pastors in the movement believe themselves to be modern day prophets or apostles, directly linked to God. Their aim, explained the article author Forrest Wilder, is "to infiltrate government, and Rick Perry might be their man."
The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they're intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an 'army of God' to commandeer civilian government.
Just days before Perry is expected to announce his presidential run, Maddow expressed concern that the Texas governor was able to hold a very public prayer event, largely organized by members of this group, without the Beltway media exposing who they really are...
Maddow discusses Rick Perry's connections with a Christian conspiracy group
A number of the Texas governor's prayer rally pastors are plotting world domination
On Wednesday night Rachel Maddow discussed Texas Gov. Rick Perry's prayer event, The Response, which took place last weekend. The event "raised eyebrows," she noted, for involving pastors known for their extreme conservative views. A number of the pastors have something more in common explained Maddow:
"Many of them are part of a little-known, very specific religious and political movement... The New Apostolic Reformation."
According to a cover story in the Texas Observer this month, pastors in the movement believe themselves to be modern day prophets or apostles, directly linked to God. Their aim, explained the article author Forrest Wilder, is "to infiltrate government, and Rick Perry might be their man."
The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they're intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an 'army of God' to commandeer civilian government.
Just days before Perry is expected to announce his presidential run, Maddow expressed concern that the Texas governor was able to hold a very public prayer event, largely organized by members of this group, without the Beltway media exposing who they really are...
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Why Mitt Romney believed it was wrong to force anti-abortion beliefs on others
Mitt Romney and his young relative Ann Keenan in her high school yearbook picture.
Aug 8, 2011
The abortion that Mitt doesn't talk about anymore
His young relative died tragically in an illegal abortion in 1963: Her untold story -- and what it means for Romney
By Justin Elliott
Salon.com
In a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney revealed a startling chapter from his past: A close relative had died many years earlier in a botched illegal abortion, shaping Romney's stance in favor of safe and legal access to abortion for all women. But in the many years since that revelation, even as Romney flipped his position and became an ardent opponent of legal abortion, the details of his young relative's story, including even her name, have never been reported.
The relative he was referring to back in '94, Salon has learned, was a Detroit woman named Ann Keenan. She was the sister of Romney's brother-in-law and died at the age of 21 in 1963, a full decade before Roe v. Wade. While much of what happened remains murky, an investigation by Salon has uncovered never-reported details about her life and death, including: how she died (an infection); that her grief-stricken parents asked for memorial donations to be made to Planned Parenthood; and that the family apparently wanted to keep the death quiet because Romney's politically ambitious father, George, was then governor of Michigan.
With access to abortion increasingly restricted in many states and the possibility that a Republican victory in 2012 -- potentially by Romney -- will tilt the balance of the Supreme Court against Roe v. Wade, Romney's account of how a back-alley abortion touched his own family is more relevant than ever. The episode is a window into an era when obtaining an abortion meant the real risk of serious injury or death. It also represents a key part of Romney's political journey on the issue of abortion, which has more than any other tarred him as a flip-flopper.
The outlines of the story first became public when Romney -- unprompted -- brought it up in that 1994 debate with Kennedy, whom he was trying to unseat. At the time, Romney, who was making his first bid for office, was struggling to prove his pro-choice bona fides to liberal Massachusetts voters. In the debate, he insisted that he separated his personal beliefs -- opposition to abortion -- from his policy position that abortion "should be safe and legal in this country." Accused by Kennedy of being "multiple-choice," Romney angrily fired back:
"On the idea of 'multiple-choice,' I have to respond. I have my own beliefs, and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people. Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter...
Thursday, July 28, 2011
This is new: tundra fires in the Arctic
28 July 2011
Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate cue
By Richard Black
BBC News
An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say.
The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra visited by fire since 1950.
With the Arctic warming fast, the team suggests in the journal Nature that fires could become more common.
If that happens, it could create a new climate feedback, they say.
Fires in the tundra are uncommon because the ground is covered in snow and ice for large periods of the year.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Melting can lead to other huge changes... releasing carbon that's been frozen since the Pleistocene”
Michelle Mack University of Florida
Temperatures are low even in summer, and the ground can also remain wet after the ice has melted.
But 2007 saw unusually warm and dry conditions across much of the Arctic - resulting, among other things, in spectacularly fast melting of Arctic sea ice.
This created conditions more conducive to fire, and when lightning struck the tundra in July, the Anaktuvuk River fire ignited.
"Most tundra fires have been very small - this was an order of magnitude larger than the historical size," said Michelle Mack from the University of Florida in Gainesville, who led the research team on the Nature paper and is currently conducting further field studies in Alaska.
"In 2007, we had a hot, dry summer, there was no rain for a long period of time.
"So the tundra must have been highly flammable, with just the right conditions for fire to spread until the snow in October finally stopped it."...
Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate cue
By Richard Black
BBC News
An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say.
The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra visited by fire since 1950.
With the Arctic warming fast, the team suggests in the journal Nature that fires could become more common.
If that happens, it could create a new climate feedback, they say.
Fires in the tundra are uncommon because the ground is covered in snow and ice for large periods of the year.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Melting can lead to other huge changes... releasing carbon that's been frozen since the Pleistocene”
Michelle Mack University of Florida
Temperatures are low even in summer, and the ground can also remain wet after the ice has melted.
But 2007 saw unusually warm and dry conditions across much of the Arctic - resulting, among other things, in spectacularly fast melting of Arctic sea ice.
This created conditions more conducive to fire, and when lightning struck the tundra in July, the Anaktuvuk River fire ignited.
"Most tundra fires have been very small - this was an order of magnitude larger than the historical size," said Michelle Mack from the University of Florida in Gainesville, who led the research team on the Nature paper and is currently conducting further field studies in Alaska.
"In 2007, we had a hot, dry summer, there was no rain for a long period of time.
"So the tundra must have been highly flammable, with just the right conditions for fire to spread until the snow in October finally stopped it."...
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Horn of Africa aid caravan too late, again
Horn of Africa aid caravan too late, again
By Barry Malone
EL ADOW, Kenya
Jul 26, 2011
(Reuters) - A besuited U.N. official wearing well-buffed shoes crouches in the orange dust near a cluster of huts in northern Kenyan, and, as his tie wafts in the breeze, raises an iPad and carefully films the rotting carcass of a cow.
Since drought gripped the Horn of Africa, and especially since famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the international aid industry has swept in and out of refugee camps and remote hamlets in branded planes and snaking lines of white 4X4s.
This humanitarian, diplomatic and media circus is necessary every time people go hungry in Africa, analysts say, because governments -- both African and foreign -- rarely respond early enough to looming catastrophes.
Combine that with an often simplistic explanation of the causes of famine, and a growing band of aid critics say parts of Africa are doomed to a never-ending cycle of ignored early warnings, media appeals and emergency U.N. feeding -- rather than a transition to lasting self-sufficiency.
"Although humanitarian agencies are gearing themselves up to mount a response, it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms," Simon Levine, an analyst at the Overseas Development Institute think-tank, wrote on its website.
"Measures that could have kept animals alive -- and providing milk, and income to buy food -- would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment," Levine said.
The drought gripping the region straddling Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is the worst for 60 years, some aid groups say, and is affecting more than 12 million people. In the worst-hit area in Somalia, 3.7 million people are at risk of starvation.
"It seems once again that slow onset disasters don't get attention until they become critical," said a senior humanitarian adviser at a U.N agency in the region
"One can understand this with rapid onset disasters as they come out of the blue, but drought ... we've seen it before and we will again," said the official, who declined to be named.
The man filming the dead cow with an iPad was just one in a series of incongruous episodes when the director of the U.N. food agency, Josette Sheeran, flew for a day-trip to a small village and the world's biggest refugee camp in Dadaab to see how her organization is delivering emergency food.
Sheeran posed awkwardly next to the dead carcasses, an uneasy almost-smile on her lips as her staff snapped away with cameras and phones, watched by bemused locals.
Officials then had stilted conversations with refugees used to answering questions from Western aid workers who come with sometimes sympathetic nods, always promising that they can make things better.
"While international NGOs can be very active around humanitarian response many of them don't have a long-term development strategy for these areas," Andrew Catley, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, told Reuters.
THORNY POLITICS
Reporters accompanied Sheeran, knowing they might need the iconic, loathed-by-Africans footage of the most emaciated babies they could find to get air time, or chance upon the "haunted" mother with the most dead children.
For many analysts, however, the story being told in the Horn of Africa by the humanitarian and media caravan is simplistic and misleading.
There is clearly a drought, they say, but the reason tens of thousands of people are leaving their homes in search of food is also because a festering insurgency in Somalia -- along with the forced recruitment of youths -- is making things worse.
Much of southern and central Somalia is controlled by al Shabaab Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda who imposed a ban on food aid in 2010. They have since lifted the ban but maintained the embargo on the WFP, calling it a "spy agency."
"This is not political," Sheeran briefed frontline aid workers in northern Kenya, saying that responding to the crisis was all that mattered now. "It's about saving lives."
Al Shabaab accused the United Nations last week of exaggerating the severity of the drought and said it would not allow agencies with "hidden agendas" to return.
Part of the problem, analysts say, is that much of the funding for WFP, and some other aid agencies, comes from the United States, opening them to charges of skewed objectives.
"What they are really interested in is security in Somalia. Since 9/11 a development for security agenda has come in with big donors like USAID and (Britain's) DFID," said a former senior aid worker in the Horn of Africa.
"Humanitarian issues and real development have basically played second fiddle to their security agendas," he said.
The State Department website says that although USAID is independent, it "receives general direction and overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary."
According to WFP's website, the United States has contributed 45 percent of its government funding since the start of 2007 -- or $7.3 billion out of $16.3 billion.
Analysts say that, without tackling the political complications that influence the distribution of food aid, and even the use of the word "famine," droughts will remain difficult both to prevent and to manage.
"Whilst it is tempting to say that the causes of the crisis are natural causes, it's much more difficult to look at the man-made causes of the crisis such as governance, conflict and economic trends," Catley said.
Several senior aid officials spoken to by Reuters did not want to be named when criticizing the aid system for fear of losing their jobs or being banned entry by African governments, but said the industry desperately needed an overhaul.
"Some of these organizations have been in these regions for 20/25 years and they're doing the same things today that they were doing 25 years ago," one said.
"If you were in any other sector -- and you had such a terrible impact -- you'd be out of business."
(Editing by David Clarke)
By Barry Malone
EL ADOW, Kenya
Jul 26, 2011
(Reuters) - A besuited U.N. official wearing well-buffed shoes crouches in the orange dust near a cluster of huts in northern Kenyan, and, as his tie wafts in the breeze, raises an iPad and carefully films the rotting carcass of a cow.
Since drought gripped the Horn of Africa, and especially since famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the international aid industry has swept in and out of refugee camps and remote hamlets in branded planes and snaking lines of white 4X4s.
This humanitarian, diplomatic and media circus is necessary every time people go hungry in Africa, analysts say, because governments -- both African and foreign -- rarely respond early enough to looming catastrophes.
Combine that with an often simplistic explanation of the causes of famine, and a growing band of aid critics say parts of Africa are doomed to a never-ending cycle of ignored early warnings, media appeals and emergency U.N. feeding -- rather than a transition to lasting self-sufficiency.
"Although humanitarian agencies are gearing themselves up to mount a response, it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms," Simon Levine, an analyst at the Overseas Development Institute think-tank, wrote on its website.
"Measures that could have kept animals alive -- and providing milk, and income to buy food -- would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment," Levine said.
The drought gripping the region straddling Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is the worst for 60 years, some aid groups say, and is affecting more than 12 million people. In the worst-hit area in Somalia, 3.7 million people are at risk of starvation.
"It seems once again that slow onset disasters don't get attention until they become critical," said a senior humanitarian adviser at a U.N agency in the region
"One can understand this with rapid onset disasters as they come out of the blue, but drought ... we've seen it before and we will again," said the official, who declined to be named.
The man filming the dead cow with an iPad was just one in a series of incongruous episodes when the director of the U.N. food agency, Josette Sheeran, flew for a day-trip to a small village and the world's biggest refugee camp in Dadaab to see how her organization is delivering emergency food.
Sheeran posed awkwardly next to the dead carcasses, an uneasy almost-smile on her lips as her staff snapped away with cameras and phones, watched by bemused locals.
Officials then had stilted conversations with refugees used to answering questions from Western aid workers who come with sometimes sympathetic nods, always promising that they can make things better.
"While international NGOs can be very active around humanitarian response many of them don't have a long-term development strategy for these areas," Andrew Catley, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, told Reuters.
THORNY POLITICS
Reporters accompanied Sheeran, knowing they might need the iconic, loathed-by-Africans footage of the most emaciated babies they could find to get air time, or chance upon the "haunted" mother with the most dead children.
For many analysts, however, the story being told in the Horn of Africa by the humanitarian and media caravan is simplistic and misleading.
There is clearly a drought, they say, but the reason tens of thousands of people are leaving their homes in search of food is also because a festering insurgency in Somalia -- along with the forced recruitment of youths -- is making things worse.
Much of southern and central Somalia is controlled by al Shabaab Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda who imposed a ban on food aid in 2010. They have since lifted the ban but maintained the embargo on the WFP, calling it a "spy agency."
"This is not political," Sheeran briefed frontline aid workers in northern Kenya, saying that responding to the crisis was all that mattered now. "It's about saving lives."
Al Shabaab accused the United Nations last week of exaggerating the severity of the drought and said it would not allow agencies with "hidden agendas" to return.
Part of the problem, analysts say, is that much of the funding for WFP, and some other aid agencies, comes from the United States, opening them to charges of skewed objectives.
"What they are really interested in is security in Somalia. Since 9/11 a development for security agenda has come in with big donors like USAID and (Britain's) DFID," said a former senior aid worker in the Horn of Africa.
"Humanitarian issues and real development have basically played second fiddle to their security agendas," he said.
The State Department website says that although USAID is independent, it "receives general direction and overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary."
According to WFP's website, the United States has contributed 45 percent of its government funding since the start of 2007 -- or $7.3 billion out of $16.3 billion.
Analysts say that, without tackling the political complications that influence the distribution of food aid, and even the use of the word "famine," droughts will remain difficult both to prevent and to manage.
"Whilst it is tempting to say that the causes of the crisis are natural causes, it's much more difficult to look at the man-made causes of the crisis such as governance, conflict and economic trends," Catley said.
Several senior aid officials spoken to by Reuters did not want to be named when criticizing the aid system for fear of losing their jobs or being banned entry by African governments, but said the industry desperately needed an overhaul.
"Some of these organizations have been in these regions for 20/25 years and they're doing the same things today that they were doing 25 years ago," one said.
"If you were in any other sector -- and you had such a terrible impact -- you'd be out of business."
(Editing by David Clarke)
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Eric Cantor: A debt ceiling shonda
Michael Takiff says threatening to pull the trigger unless you get your way is immoralJul 22, 2011
Eric Cantor: A debt ceiling shonda
By Michael Takiff
Salon.com
These days Eric Cantor is steering the United States Treasury to default -- and the world economy to catastrophe -- as he defends to the death the sacred right of corporate jet owners to amortize their aircraft over five years instead of seven. Not long ago he was giving George W. Bush all the credit for killing bin Laden. Before that he was threatening to shut down the government over the budget bill. Earlier he claimed that the House of Representatives could make law without the approval of the Senate or the president.
Jul 22, 2011 07:45 ET
Eric Cantor: A debt ceiling shonda
By Michael Takiff
Eric Cantor: A debt ceiling shonda
AP
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, center, flanked by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, left, and House Speaker John Boehner, right
These days Eric Cantor is steering the United States Treasury to default -- and the world economy to catastrophe -- as he defends to the death the sacred right of corporate jet owners to amortize their aircraft over five years instead of seven. Not long ago he was giving George W. Bush all the credit for killing bin Laden. Before that he was threatening to shut down the government over the budget bill. Earlier he claimed that the House of Representatives could make law without the approval of the Senate or the president.
Am I the only Jew in America who finds the House majority leader deeply embarrassing to our people? Am I the only tribe member who considers this smarmy yutz today’s numero-uno shonda fur die goyim?
Shonda what?
* * *
My father used to tell us a morality tale. Not long after the events of November 22 and 24, 1963, our rabbi attended an interfaith meeting of clergymen from our midsize New Jersey town. He later reported to his congregation a conversation he’d had at the gathering. “The Protestant minister,” Dad would say, “said to the rabbi, ‘I see one of your people got Lee Harvey Oswald.’ Jack Ruby was Jewish, you know. [Right, Dad, I know from the other 18 times you’ve told me the story.] And the rabbi said, ‘Yes, and I see one of yours got the president.’”
It was an article of faith among American Jews of my parents’ generation -- people who came of age in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, when the best country clubs and colleges and suburbs and law firms still remained unpolluted by the Hebrew menace -- that the bad example of any Jew (e.g., Jack Ruby, né Rubenstein) casts disgrace on every Jew, even though no one generalizes about Christians on the basis of a single bad apple (e.g., Lee Harvey Oswald). (Or even a string of bad apples: “Man, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson ... all the way to Clinton and Bush and Obama. Those dirty Christian bastards control the government!”) Our shtetl-minded insecurity survives today -- if not among all of us, if not as centrally in our lives -- when anti-Semitism, in the West, anyway, is but a bad memory. (Right, Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone, Julian Assange, Helen Thomas, John Galliano, and Charlie Sheen?)
When a Jew is publicly bad -- especially publicly really bad -- large numbers of the rest of us Jews cringe. That Jew becomes a shonda fur die goyim -- a disgrace for the non-Jews, an example for the gentiles to latch onto as evidence that every one of us is out to control their banks, run their newspapers, and make matzoh from the blood of their children. Think of the long list of Jewish financial miscreants of the past 25 years -- Ivan Boesky, Mike Milken, Bernie Madoff, the gonifs at Goldman Sachs. Let’s see, rich Jewish financiers screwing millions of ordinary people -- gee, that doesn’t play into any pernicious stereotypes about Jews, does it?
It’s gotten to the point that when I read about a swindler who is not one of us I’m ecstatic. A while ago the New York Times reported on the trial of an allegedly crooked defense contractor named Brooks: “A goy!” I said after reading the first paragraph. “Thank goodness. Keep reading.” I did, drooling with schadenfreude. Oh, this was a juicy one: According to the charges, he and another employee pulled down $190 million via stock fraud. To top it off, his company, which makes body armor for our troops in Afghanistan, allegedly paid out more than $6 million to cover his personal expenses, including plastic surgery for his wife and pornographic videos for his son.
But then came one last example of his obscene conspicuous consumption. The guy spent millions -- hiring 50 Cent and Aerosmith as entertainment -- on his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Bat mitzvah? So Brooks isn’t Brooks at all -- he’s Brodsky or Bernstein or Bergman or Buxbaum, whose grandfather changed his name years ago so he could be one of the goys. Such a shonda!
And the neocons. Oy, the neocons. Do so many of these momzers, so keen on sending other parents’ children off to war, have to be tribe members? Ken Adelman, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Elliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, and the Podhoretzes...
In other words, Ivan Boesky, you should know better. In other words, William Kristol, reread the list of sins -- the al chaits -- we reel off on Yom Kippur. In other words, Eric Cantor, didn’t you learn anything from your upbringing? Were you out on your shul’s front steps enjoying a smoke when your rabbi sermonized about the Jewish obligation to lead an honorable life?
Evidently you didn’t learn, because if you had, you’d share my belief that just as Jews should not stage multibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes, so they should not threaten to bring about world economic calamity for no better reason than to curry favor among a bunch of mouth-breathing fanatics who don’t know a principle of economics from a pulled-pork sandwich. You’d understand that a man who counts himself among the People of the Book, a people that has won Nobel Prizes in a ratio as much as a hundred times its share of the world’s population, should not dismiss the learned opinions of credentialed economists who warn of dire consequences should Congress not do its duty and protect the full faith and credit of the American dollar. You’d know, without being told, that pointing a gun at working people everywhere and threatening to pull the trigger unless you get your way is immoral...
Friday, July 22, 2011
Fox News Bias Exposed By Leaked Memos
Fox News Bias Exposed By Leaked Memos
TheYoungTurks
Uploaded Dec 10, 2010
Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) discusses leaked memos from Fox News that expose a clear right wing conservative agenda.
You and I know that Fox News is not fair and balanced, they do conservative programming.
Propaganda. That's exactly what Fox News Channel does. And this is yet another case of overwhelming evidence of that.
TheYoungTurks
Uploaded Dec 10, 2010
Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) discusses leaked memos from Fox News that expose a clear right wing conservative agenda.
You and I know that Fox News is not fair and balanced, they do conservative programming.
Propaganda. That's exactly what Fox News Channel does. And this is yet another case of overwhelming evidence of that.
The Perils of Polar Bears’ Longer Swims
July 20, 2011
The Perils of Polar Bears’ Longer Swims
By FELICITY BARRINGER
New York Times
In arguments over the impact of climate change, some of the images commonly associated with those clashes have attracted skeptical critiques, perhaps none more so than those of polar bears forced to swim longer distances because their sea ice habitat is melting. Some skeptics point out that polar bears are born swimmers and that the worries of environmentalists are therefore overdone.
Now comes a new study from researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the World Wildlife Fund indicating, after tracking a small sample of bears wearing radio collars, that the swims have indeed grown longer over the last six years. Five of the 11 mothers swimming with cubs lost the cubs along the way, and one bear even swam 427 miles to reach sea ice...
The Perils of Polar Bears’ Longer Swims
By FELICITY BARRINGER
New York Times
In arguments over the impact of climate change, some of the images commonly associated with those clashes have attracted skeptical critiques, perhaps none more so than those of polar bears forced to swim longer distances because their sea ice habitat is melting. Some skeptics point out that polar bears are born swimmers and that the worries of environmentalists are therefore overdone.
Now comes a new study from researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the World Wildlife Fund indicating, after tracking a small sample of bears wearing radio collars, that the swims have indeed grown longer over the last six years. Five of the 11 mothers swimming with cubs lost the cubs along the way, and one bear even swam 427 miles to reach sea ice...
Bonuses for Billionaires
Bonuses for Billionaires
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
July 20, 2011
The first few times I heard House Republicans talk about our budget mehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifss, I worried that they had plunged off the deep end. But as I kept on listening, a buzzer went off in my mind, and I came to understand how much sense the Tea Party caucus makes.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Why would we impose “job-crushing taxes” on wealthy Americans just to pay for luxuries like federal prisons? Why end the “carried interest” tax loophole for financiers, just to pay for unemployment benefits — especially when those same selfless tycoons are buying yachts and thus creating jobs for all the rest of us?
Hmmm. The truth is that House Republicans don’t actually go far enough. They should follow the logic of their more visionary members with steps like these:
BONUSES FOR BILLIONAIRES Republicans won’t extend unemployment benefits, even in the worst downturn in 70 years, because that makes people lazy about finding jobs. They’re right: We should be creating incentives for Americans to rise up the food chain by sending hefty checks to every new billionaire. This could be paid for with a tax surcharge on regular working folks. It’s the least we can do.
Likewise, the government should take sterner measures against the persistent jobless. Don’t just let their unemployment benefits expire. Take their homes!
Oh, never mind! Silly me! The banks are already doing that.
LET JOBS TRICKLE DOWN Leftist pundits say that House Republicans don’t have a jobs plan. That’s unfair! Granted, the Republican-sponsored Cut, Cap and Balance Act would eliminate 700,000 jobs in just its first year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but those analysts are no doubt liberals. America’s richest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, and the affluent would feel renewed confidence if the Republican plan passed. We’d see a hiring bonanza. Each of those wealthy people might hire an extra pool attendant. That’s 400 jobs right there!
Cut, Cap and Balance would go even further than the Ryan budget plan in starving the beast of government. Sure, that’ll mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs, but so what? Who needs food safety? How do we know we really need air traffic control unless we try a day without it?
ROOT OUT SOCIALISM Republicans have been working to end Medicare as we know it but need to examine other reckless entitlements, such as our socialized education system, in which public schools fritter resources on classes like economics and foreign languages. As a former Texas governor, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, is said to have declared when she opposed the teaching of foreign languages: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.”
For that matter, who needs socialized police and fire services? We could slash job-crushing taxes at the local level and simply let the free market take over:
“9-1-1, may I help you?” “Yes, help! My house is burning down!” “Very good, sir. I can offer you one fire engine for $5,995, or two for just $10,000.” “Help! My family’s inside. Send three fire engines! Just hurry!” “Yes, sir. Let me just run your credit card first. And if you require the fire trucks immediately, there’s a 50 percent ‘rush’ surcharge.”
CHILL OUT ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING House Republicans like Michele Bachmann are right: If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, some solution will turn up. As Representative Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia, observes: “In the end, the sun is going to come up tomorrow.”
We got through the Great Depression, didn’t we? It looked pretty hopeless in 1929, but in just a dozen years World War II bailed us out with an economic stimulus. Something like that’ll come along for us, too. Ya gotta have faith.
CONSIDER ASSET SALES While Democrats are harrumphing about “default,” Republicans have sagely noted that there are alternatives in front of our noses. For example, why raise taxes on hard-pressed managers of hedge funds when the government can sell assets?
Fort Knox alone has 4,600 tons of gold, which I figure is worth around $235 billion. That’s enough to pay our military budget for four months! And selling Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon would buy us time as well.
RENT OUT CONGRESS If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, we could also auction members of Congress for day jobs: Are you a financier who wants someone to flip burgers (steaks?) at your child’s birthday party? Why, here’s Eric Cantor! Many members of Congress already work on behalf of tycoons, and this way the revenue would flow to the Treasury.
Finally, if we risk default, let’s rent out the Capitol for weddings to raise money for the public good. Wouldn’t it be nice to see something positive emerge from the House?
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
July 20, 2011
The first few times I heard House Republicans talk about our budget mehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifss, I worried that they had plunged off the deep end. But as I kept on listening, a buzzer went off in my mind, and I came to understand how much sense the Tea Party caucus makes.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Why would we impose “job-crushing taxes” on wealthy Americans just to pay for luxuries like federal prisons? Why end the “carried interest” tax loophole for financiers, just to pay for unemployment benefits — especially when those same selfless tycoons are buying yachts and thus creating jobs for all the rest of us?
Hmmm. The truth is that House Republicans don’t actually go far enough. They should follow the logic of their more visionary members with steps like these:
BONUSES FOR BILLIONAIRES Republicans won’t extend unemployment benefits, even in the worst downturn in 70 years, because that makes people lazy about finding jobs. They’re right: We should be creating incentives for Americans to rise up the food chain by sending hefty checks to every new billionaire. This could be paid for with a tax surcharge on regular working folks. It’s the least we can do.
Likewise, the government should take sterner measures against the persistent jobless. Don’t just let their unemployment benefits expire. Take their homes!
Oh, never mind! Silly me! The banks are already doing that.
LET JOBS TRICKLE DOWN Leftist pundits say that House Republicans don’t have a jobs plan. That’s unfair! Granted, the Republican-sponsored Cut, Cap and Balance Act would eliminate 700,000 jobs in just its first year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but those analysts are no doubt liberals. America’s richest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, and the affluent would feel renewed confidence if the Republican plan passed. We’d see a hiring bonanza. Each of those wealthy people might hire an extra pool attendant. That’s 400 jobs right there!
Cut, Cap and Balance would go even further than the Ryan budget plan in starving the beast of government. Sure, that’ll mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs, but so what? Who needs food safety? How do we know we really need air traffic control unless we try a day without it?
ROOT OUT SOCIALISM Republicans have been working to end Medicare as we know it but need to examine other reckless entitlements, such as our socialized education system, in which public schools fritter resources on classes like economics and foreign languages. As a former Texas governor, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, is said to have declared when she opposed the teaching of foreign languages: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.”
For that matter, who needs socialized police and fire services? We could slash job-crushing taxes at the local level and simply let the free market take over:
“9-1-1, may I help you?” “Yes, help! My house is burning down!” “Very good, sir. I can offer you one fire engine for $5,995, or two for just $10,000.” “Help! My family’s inside. Send three fire engines! Just hurry!” “Yes, sir. Let me just run your credit card first. And if you require the fire trucks immediately, there’s a 50 percent ‘rush’ surcharge.”
CHILL OUT ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING House Republicans like Michele Bachmann are right: If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, some solution will turn up. As Representative Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia, observes: “In the end, the sun is going to come up tomorrow.”
We got through the Great Depression, didn’t we? It looked pretty hopeless in 1929, but in just a dozen years World War II bailed us out with an economic stimulus. Something like that’ll come along for us, too. Ya gotta have faith.
CONSIDER ASSET SALES While Democrats are harrumphing about “default,” Republicans have sagely noted that there are alternatives in front of our noses. For example, why raise taxes on hard-pressed managers of hedge funds when the government can sell assets?
Fort Knox alone has 4,600 tons of gold, which I figure is worth around $235 billion. That’s enough to pay our military budget for four months! And selling Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon would buy us time as well.
RENT OUT CONGRESS If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, we could also auction members of Congress for day jobs: Are you a financier who wants someone to flip burgers (steaks?) at your child’s birthday party? Why, here’s Eric Cantor! Many members of Congress already work on behalf of tycoons, and this way the revenue would flow to the Treasury.
Finally, if we risk default, let’s rent out the Capitol for weddings to raise money for the public good. Wouldn’t it be nice to see something positive emerge from the House?
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Throw Clarence Thomas Off the Bench:The Supreme Court justice broke the law by not disclosing his wife's $700K
Throw Clarence Thomas Off the Bench
The Supreme Court justice broke the law by not disclosing his wife's $700K think-tank payday. Paul Campos on Clarence Thomas' "preposterous" defense and why he likely won't be punished.
March 3, 2011
The criminal-law scholar George Fletcher once quipped that the maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is one of the few fundamental principles of law that most people actually know. As harsh as this principle may sometimes be when applied to ordinary citizens, applying it to justices of the Supreme Court seems only reasonable.
Thus it's difficult to feel sympathy for Clarence Thomas, as he finds himself embroiled in a controversy over his failure to reveal the sources of his wife's non-investment income (or indeed that she even had any such income). The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires all federal judges to fill out annual financial-disclosure forms. The relevant question on the disclosure form isn't complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn't a lawyer, he shouldn't have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase "Spouse's Non-Investment Income" should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income.
In fact Ginni Thomas was paid nearly $700,000 by the Heritage Foundation, a "conservative think tank," between 2003 and 2007, as well as an undisclosed amount by another lobbying group in 2009. Justice Thomas' false statements regarding his wife's income certainly constitute a misdemeanor, and quite probably a felony, under federal law. (They would be felonies if he were prosecuted under 18. U.S.C. 1001, which criminalizes knowingly making false statements of material fact to a federal agency. This is the law Martha Stewart was convicted of breaking by lying to investigators.)
Thomas' defense is that he didn't knowingly violate the law, because he " misunderstood" the filing requirements. This is preposterous on its face. Bill Clinton was impeached—and subsequently disbarred—for defending his false statements about his affair with Monica Lewinsky with an excuse that wasn't as incredible as the one Thomas is now employing...
The Supreme Court justice broke the law by not disclosing his wife's $700K think-tank payday. Paul Campos on Clarence Thomas' "preposterous" defense and why he likely won't be punished.
March 3, 2011
The criminal-law scholar George Fletcher once quipped that the maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is one of the few fundamental principles of law that most people actually know. As harsh as this principle may sometimes be when applied to ordinary citizens, applying it to justices of the Supreme Court seems only reasonable.
Thus it's difficult to feel sympathy for Clarence Thomas, as he finds himself embroiled in a controversy over his failure to reveal the sources of his wife's non-investment income (or indeed that she even had any such income). The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires all federal judges to fill out annual financial-disclosure forms. The relevant question on the disclosure form isn't complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn't a lawyer, he shouldn't have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase "Spouse's Non-Investment Income" should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income.
In fact Ginni Thomas was paid nearly $700,000 by the Heritage Foundation, a "conservative think tank," between 2003 and 2007, as well as an undisclosed amount by another lobbying group in 2009. Justice Thomas' false statements regarding his wife's income certainly constitute a misdemeanor, and quite probably a felony, under federal law. (They would be felonies if he were prosecuted under 18. U.S.C. 1001, which criminalizes knowingly making false statements of material fact to a federal agency. This is the law Martha Stewart was convicted of breaking by lying to investigators.)
Thomas' defense is that he didn't knowingly violate the law, because he " misunderstood" the filing requirements. This is preposterous on its face. Bill Clinton was impeached—and subsequently disbarred—for defending his false statements about his affair with Monica Lewinsky with an excuse that wasn't as incredible as the one Thomas is now employing...
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Michele Bachmann: counseling clinic received nearly $30,000, family farm received some $260,000 in subsidies.
Michele Bachmann denies benefiting from government aid
By Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2011
With a new Iowa poll putting her in a dead heat with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Rep. Michele Bachmann deflected allegations that she and her family had benefited from government assistance programs and said that hundreds of thousands of dollars to her family farm and a counseling clinic went instead to her employees and her in-laws.
"My husband and I did not get the money," she said, appearing on Sunday news talk shows as she prepared to officially open her campaign in her original hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and "tea party" favorite, portrayed herself as a fiscal conservative while also benefiting from government funds and federal farm subsidies. An examination of her record and finances showed that a counseling clinic run by her husband received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, with part of the money coming from the federal government. And a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner, received some $260,000 in federal subsidies.
Bachmann and her staff declined to talk to about the government assistance for the L.A. Times article. But asked about the issue on "Fox News Sunday," she insisted that she and her husband had not benefited at the expense of federal and state taxpayers.
"First of all," she said, "the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money. And my husband and I did not get the money either. That's mental health training money that went to employees."
As for the farm, she said it belonged to her father-in-law. "It's not my husband and my farm," Bachmann said. "And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm."
As the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday, however, in financial disclosure forms, Bachmann reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.
Bachmann also repeated her stance that she was opposed to federal earmarks that sponsored pet projects for politicians back home and said she believed "the states have to build roads and bridges," not the federal government. But asked whether that was an inconsistency given that her family appeared to be benefiting from government aid, she said the clinic money was spent to train employees when they otherwise would have been there working...
By Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2011
With a new Iowa poll putting her in a dead heat with the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Rep. Michele Bachmann deflected allegations that she and her family had benefited from government assistance programs and said that hundreds of thousands of dollars to her family farm and a counseling clinic went instead to her employees and her in-laws.
"My husband and I did not get the money," she said, appearing on Sunday news talk shows as she prepared to officially open her campaign in her original hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and "tea party" favorite, portrayed herself as a fiscal conservative while also benefiting from government funds and federal farm subsidies. An examination of her record and finances showed that a counseling clinic run by her husband received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, with part of the money coming from the federal government. And a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner, received some $260,000 in federal subsidies.
Bachmann and her staff declined to talk to about the government assistance for the L.A. Times article. But asked about the issue on "Fox News Sunday," she insisted that she and her husband had not benefited at the expense of federal and state taxpayers.
"First of all," she said, "the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money. And my husband and I did not get the money either. That's mental health training money that went to employees."
As for the farm, she said it belonged to her father-in-law. "It's not my husband and my farm," Bachmann said. "And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm."
As the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday, however, in financial disclosure forms, Bachmann reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.
Bachmann also repeated her stance that she was opposed to federal earmarks that sponsored pet projects for politicians back home and said she believed "the states have to build roads and bridges," not the federal government. But asked whether that was an inconsistency given that her family appeared to be benefiting from government aid, she said the clinic money was spent to train employees when they otherwise would have been there working...
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Corporations line up to block rules that would force companies to disclose comparison data.
Business group: Public companies shouldn’t have to compare CEO and worker pay
By Peter Whoriskey
June 24, 2011
Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker.
Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.
The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee.
The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”
But some Democrats and investors say the information should be issued to highlight the growing income disparity in the United States. They add that opponents of disclosure merely want to hide the outrageous scale of executive pay packages.
On Wednesday, a House committee approved a bill that would repeal the disclosure requirement.
Disclosing such comparisons “can mislead or confuse investors,” said Rep. Nan A.S. Hayworth (R-N.Y.), who filed the bill to repeal the disclosure. “It creates heat but sheds no light.”
She also said the calculation of the ratio would be a burden for companies, especially those with global operations.
The committee vote was largely along partisan lines: Twenty-nine Republicans and four Democrats supported repeal; 21 Democrats opposed it.
“The real reason House Republicans want to keep the typical worker’s pay secret is that it may embarrass some companies to reveal that they pay their CEO in the range of 400 times what they pay their typical worker,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)...
By Peter Whoriskey
June 24, 2011
Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker.
Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.
The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee.
The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”
But some Democrats and investors say the information should be issued to highlight the growing income disparity in the United States. They add that opponents of disclosure merely want to hide the outrageous scale of executive pay packages.
On Wednesday, a House committee approved a bill that would repeal the disclosure requirement.
Disclosing such comparisons “can mislead or confuse investors,” said Rep. Nan A.S. Hayworth (R-N.Y.), who filed the bill to repeal the disclosure. “It creates heat but sheds no light.”
She also said the calculation of the ratio would be a burden for companies, especially those with global operations.
The committee vote was largely along partisan lines: Twenty-nine Republicans and four Democrats supported repeal; 21 Democrats opposed it.
“The real reason House Republicans want to keep the typical worker’s pay secret is that it may embarrass some companies to reveal that they pay their CEO in the range of 400 times what they pay their typical worker,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)...
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Republicans roll eyes at Obama's (accurate) assertion that taxes were higher under Reagan
Republicans roll eyes at Obama's (accurate) assertion that taxes were higher under Reagan
by Jed Lewison
Daily Kos
Jun 02, 2011
First, the facts (.xls):
During Ronald Reagan's presidency, total federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP averaged 18.2%, reaching a low point of 17.3% in 1984.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
During Barack Obama's presidency, total federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has averaged 14.9% and is projected to drop to 14.4% in 2011.
Second, the punchline:
GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. The White House and Republicans are trying to reach a deal on spending cuts that could allow the $14.3 debt ceiling to be raised.
“(The President) made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (former President Ronald) Reagan,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, “We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history … lower than Reagan!”
The fact is, one of our biggest fiscal challenges is that taxes are too low, yet not only do these guys refuse to even consider raising them, they never get tired of denying the plain reality that we have historically low taxes. Perhaps if they acknowledged that simple fact, then they'd have to admit that taxes aren't the problem: underinvestment is.
by Jed Lewison
Daily Kos
Jun 02, 2011
First, the facts (.xls):
During Ronald Reagan's presidency, total federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP averaged 18.2%, reaching a low point of 17.3% in 1984.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
During Barack Obama's presidency, total federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has averaged 14.9% and is projected to drop to 14.4% in 2011.
Second, the punchline:
GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. The White House and Republicans are trying to reach a deal on spending cuts that could allow the $14.3 debt ceiling to be raised.
“(The President) made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (former President Ronald) Reagan,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, “We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history … lower than Reagan!”
The fact is, one of our biggest fiscal challenges is that taxes are too low, yet not only do these guys refuse to even consider raising them, they never get tired of denying the plain reality that we have historically low taxes. Perhaps if they acknowledged that simple fact, then they'd have to admit that taxes aren't the problem: underinvestment is.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Activists cry foul over FBI probe
Activists cry foul over FBI probe
By Peter Wallsten
Washington Post
June 13, 2011
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
CHICAGO — FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband.
The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened infant bodysuits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like “Help Wanted: Revolutionaries.”
Anti-war activist Tom Burke meets Barack Obama in 2004 at Burke's Chicago-area union hall as Obama was running for U.S. Senate. Burke is one of 23 prominent anti-war activists to be subpoenaed as part of an ongoing FBI terrorism probe.
The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers.
The probe — involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes last fall — has triggered a high-powered protest against the Department of Justice and, in the process, could create some political discomfort for President Obama with his union supporters as he gears up for his reelection campaign.
The apparent targets are concentrated in the Midwest, including Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise...
By Peter Wallsten
Washington Post
June 13, 2011
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
CHICAGO — FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband.
The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened infant bodysuits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like “Help Wanted: Revolutionaries.”
Anti-war activist Tom Burke meets Barack Obama in 2004 at Burke's Chicago-area union hall as Obama was running for U.S. Senate. Burke is one of 23 prominent anti-war activists to be subpoenaed as part of an ongoing FBI terrorism probe.
The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers.
The probe — involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes last fall — has triggered a high-powered protest against the Department of Justice and, in the process, could create some political discomfort for President Obama with his union supporters as he gears up for his reelection campaign.
The apparent targets are concentrated in the Midwest, including Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)