Undernews For May 29, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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GALLERY: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF BEN HEINE
ABOUT BEN HEINE
SOTOMAYER ON THIS AND THAT
David L. Hudson Jr, First Amendment Ctr - One of the more high-profile First Amendment decisions authored by Judge Sotomayor was her decision in U.S. v. Quattrone in which she invalidated a gag order issued by a trial judge that prevented the press from divulging the name of any prospective or selected juror in the second trial of Frank Quattrone, a former executive of Credit Suisse First Boston. . . She noted that the names of the jurors were read in open court, which limited the efficacy of a prior restraint in the first place. She concluded that "the district court's order barring publication of jurors' names not only subjected appellants to a prior restraint on speech, but also infringed their freedom to publish information in open court.". . .

Sotomayor authored an opinion for the 2nd Circuit rejecting various constitutional challenges to the so-called "global gag rule," which prohibits overseas organizations that receive U.S. funds from providing abortion services or engaging in speech intended to ease restrictions on abortion. . .

CNS - Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment's commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments. The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual's right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois. "It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right," said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, "it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state."
STREETSCAPE

Good - The Toronto-based street artist Posterchild has been turning unused flier boxes in his city into planters.
THE CRASH OF CALIFORNIA
LA Times - To balance the books, Schwarzenegger is eyeing the dismantling of the state's CalWorks program, which serves more than 500,000 poor families with children, as well as the elimination of Healthy Families, which provides medical coverage to 928,000 children and teens. Mothballing the two programs would save the state about $1.4 billion in the coming fiscal year, officials said. If the proposals to slash the safety net come to pass, they would completely reshape the state's social service network, transforming California from one of the country's most generous states to one of the most tightfisted in aiding the poor.

Also potentially on the chopping block is CalGrants, a financial assistance program that offers cash grants to lower- and middle-income college students each year. The governor's proposal would eliminate the 77,000 new grants awarded each year at a cost of $180 mill

LA Times - The Los Angeles Unified School District announced it is canceling the bulk of its summer school programs, the latest in a statewide wave of cutbacks expected to leave hundreds of thousands of students struggling for classes. The reductions, which will force many parents to scramble for child care, are the most tangible effect of the multibillion-dollar state financial cuts to education. Community colleges also have announced summer program cancellations.

LA Times - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger readied a proposal to cut state worker salaries by an additional 5% as local government officials lambasted his bid to take $2 billion from cities and counties to help curb the state's growing budget deficit. The governor's proposed salary reduction would affect 235,000 state workers who already are taking mandatory unpaid furloughs to help the state grapple with a projected budget gap of $24.3 billion.

Dozens of local government representatives told a 10-member legislative budget panel that Schwarzenegger's plan to tap them for $2 billion would force cities and counties to slash police and fire protection, shut libraries and cause a cascade of other troubles as they struggle to make ends meet. The governor's proposal, which involves borrowing local property tax money and repaying it within three years with interest, simply transfers the state's fiscal woes to a rung of government that can least afford it. Schwarzenegger wants to take nearly $700 million from cities and $330 million more from special districts that provide fire protection, flood control, mosquito abatement and other services.

LA Times - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program would make California the first state in the recession-battered nation to eliminate student financial aid while raising college tuition, experts said. "Other states are cutting back, but not a complete phase-out," said Haley Chitty, communications director for the National Assn. of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The governor's proposal would end all new Cal Grants, eventually eliminating the state's main financial aid program for college students, and prevent existing awards from increasing. Grants awarded to 118,000 freshmen starting college in the fall would be canceled, as well as hikes in 82,255 continuing awards promised when the University of California and California State University raised fees this month by 10% and 9.3%, respectively.

LA Times - The overseer of healthcare in state prisons has agreed to dramatically scale back an $8-billion plan to build inmate medical facilities in a deal with Schwarzenegger administration officials who had called for his removal only months ago.
NADER SAYS MCAULIFFE TRIED TO BUY HIM OFF IN 2004 WITH CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Washington Post - Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader went public with an allegation that Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe offered his campaign money to stay off the ballot in key states during the 2004 elections -- a disclosure timed to raise questions about McAuliffe's fitness for public office.

"Terry McAuliffe is slipperier than an eel in olive oil," Nader said in an interview.

He said McAuliffe, who was the Democratic National Committee chairman at the time, had offered Nader's campaign an unspecified amount of money, believed to be party funds, to spend in 31 states in exchange for an agreement to withdraw from 19 battleground states where he could potentially hurt Democrat John Kerry. . .

The accusation against McAuliffe was first disclosed in a new book, "Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny," by Theresa Amato, who was Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004.

Nader and Amato were on the phone with McAuliffe, according to the book, when he said: "Ralph, I would love for you to be running for president in 31 states; the issue is these 19 states where a vote for you is a vote for Bush."

"But what started as a seeming financial proposition being put on the table charged into a directive with each repetition of 'stay out of 19 states,' " Amato wrote. "McAuliffe alternated between dictating to Ralph the terms and cajoling him, saying to Ralph, 'You'd be a . . . hero,' " she wrote.

Nader and Amato said McAuliffe never mentioned how much money he would provide or where exactly it would come from, but they assumed that he was offering Democratic Party money. Nader said he refused the offer immediately.
WHAT SOCIALISTS THINK ABOUT OBAMA'S 'SOCIALIST' POLICIES
Moira Herbst, Business Week - Real socialists . . . say if the Obama Administration were establishing a true socialist state, we'd have at least a $15-an-hour minimum wage (instead of the current $6.55 federal minimum) and 30-hour workweeks. Every American would be guaranteed employment and health-care coverage. Oh, and homeless people would be occupying vacant office buildings in cities and vacant McMansions in the suburbs.

In fact, many Americans appear to be confused about what socialism actually is. In a poll of 1,000 adults conducted Apr. 6-7, Rasmussen Reports found that 53% of Americans said they prefer capitalism to socialism, while 20% said they prefer socialism. More than one-quarter, 27%, said they're not sure which system is better. Another poll conducted this month by ConservativeHQ.com found that 70% of self-identified conservatives consider Obama's political philosophy "Socialist" or "Marxist," with 11% calling it "Communist."

Socialists say the policies Obama has pursued are hallmarks of "democratic capitalist" states, not socialist ones. "None of the societies of Western Europe are socialist, but the political influence of their strong Labor, Social Democratic, and Socialist parties make their form of capitalism much more humane than our own," says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the New York-based Democratic Socialists of America , the largest U.S. Socialist party. . .

Socialists say that far from creating a state in which workers rule, the Obama team is instead scrambling to rescue and preserve capitalism.
DUNCAN THREATENS STATES WITH LOSS OF FUNDS IF THEY DON'T PRIVATIZE SCHOOLS
Boston Globe - States will hurt their chance to compete for millions of federal stimulus dollars if they fail to embrace innovations like charter schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. Duncan was responding to a question about Tennessee, where Democratic state lawmakers have blocked an effort to let more kids into charter schools. . .

The federal stimulus law gives Obama a powerful incentive to push the expansion of charter schools. The law set up a $5 billion fund to reward states and school districts that adopt innovations the administration supports. The fund is part of $100 billion for education over the next two years.
SAVE SOME CASH WITH YOUR TRASH

Inhabitat - Philadelphia's new landfill-crunching compacting bins are entirely powered by the sun and are able to accept close to eight times as much waste as a regular trash can. They are predicted to save the city close to $12 million over the next ten years.
DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, WORDS FROM BILL AYERS?
Jack Cashill, a conservative journalist, raises an issue that Obamites have declined to consider: whatever happened to Obama's literary skills after he wrote Dreams From My Father?

Jack Cashill, American Thinker - The first question I had to resolve was whether the 33 year-old Barack Obama was capable of writing what Time Magazine has called "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." The answer is almost assuredly "no."

In his bestselling study of success, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell painstakingly lays out what he calls the "ten-thousand-hour rule." Gladwell quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin to the effect that "ten thousand hours of practice [in any subject] is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert" and cites example after example to make his case.

Obama appears to have lopped about 9900 hours off that standard. In Dreams, he speaks of writing only the occasional journal entry and some "very bad poetry." . . .

It was not Obama's style but his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990-more of a popularity than a literary contest-that netted him a roughly $125,000 advance for a proposed book. According to a 2006 article by liberal publisher Peter Osnos, Simon & Schuster canceled the contract when Obama could not deliver, despite a sojourn to Bali to help him write.

It was about this time that Bill Ayers entered the picture. "I met [Obama] sometime in the mid-1990s." he would later tell Salon. "And everyone who knew him thought that he was politically ambitious. For the first two years, I thought, his ambition is so huge that he wants to be mayor of Chicago."

Obama needed help, and Ayers had the means, the motive, and the ability to provide it. Unlike Obama, he has a well-established paper trail. .

Ayers, we know, provided an informal editing service for like-minded friends in the neighborhood. Aspiring radical Rashid Khalidi attests to this in the acknowledgements in his 2004 book, Resurrecting Empire. "Bill was particularly generous in letting me use his family's dining room table to do some writing for the project." Khalidi did not need the table. He had one of his own. He needed the help. Having no political ambitions, Khalidi was willing to acknowledge it. . .

After Dreams was published in 1995, Obama's typewriter fell silent once again. He contributed not one signed word to any law journal or other publication of note until his unexceptional and conspicuously ghosted 2006 book, Audacity of Hope. Obama was not a writer. As his lame inaugural address proved, he still isn't. . .

The opening scene of Dreams takes place in the early 1980s in and around Obama's New York City apartment with its "slanting" floors. As the scene unfolds, Obama is making breakfast "with coffee on the stove and two eggs in the skillet." In Fugitive Days, Ayers inhabits an apartment with "sloping floors." He too cooks a lot -- his books are rich with often sensual food imagery -- and uses a "skillet," a southern regionalism. . .

In the opening pages, Obama makes an exception to his unlikely New York "solitude" for an elderly neighbor, a "stooped" gentleman who wore a "fedora." In Fugitive Days, it was Ayers' grandfather who is "stooped" and a helpful stranger who wears a "fedora."

One day, Obama's roommate finds his neighbor dead, "crumpled up on the third-floor landing, his eyes wide open, his limbs stiff and curled up like a baby's." Ayers tells of watching his mother die, "eyes half open, curled up and panting." In both cases, the eyes are "open" and the body is "curled up."

At the climax of the opening sequence, Obama receives a phone call. It comes from an African aunt. "Listen, Barry, your father is dead," she tells him. Obama has a hard time understanding. "Can you hear me?" she repeats. "I say, your father is dead." The line is cut, and the conversation ends abruptly.

The opening sequence of Fugitive Days climaxes in nearly identical fashion. This phone call comes from Ayers' future wife, Bernardine Dohrn. "Diana is dead," says Dohrn of Ayers' lover Diana Oughton, killed in a bomb blast. Ayers has a hard time understanding. "Diana is dead," she "repeats slowly." Ayers drops the line, and the conversation ends abruptly.

At the conclusion of Dreams' opening scene, a stunned Obama "sat down on the couch, smelling eggs burn in the kitchen, staring at cracks in the plaster, trying to measure my loss." This passage features Obama's signature rhetorical flourish, the triple parallel without a joining conjunction. There are scores of such examples throughout Dreams, perhaps hundreds:

"the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds."

"Her face powdered, her hips girdled, her thinning hair bolstered, she would board the six-thirty bus to arrive at her downtown office before anyone else."

"his eyes were closed, his head leaning against the back of his chair, his big wrinkled face like a carving stone."

As it happens, Ayers' signature rhetorical flourish, likely cribbed from Joseph Conrad, is the triple parallel without a joining conjunction. There are scores of such examples throughout Fugitive Days, perhaps hundreds:

"He inhabited an anarchic solitude-disconnected, smart, obsessive."

"We swarmed over and around that car, smashing windows, slashing tires, trashing lights and fenders-it seemed the only conceivable thing to do."

"trees are shattered, doors ripped from their hinges, shorelines rearranged.". . .

Ayers lived a considerably more adventurous life than Obama, beginning with his youthful days as a merchant seaman in the North Atlantic. "I realized that no one else could ever know this singular experience," Ayers writes. Yet much of the nautical language that flows through Fugitive Days flows through Obama's earth-bound memoir.

Although there are only the briefest of literal sea experiences in Dreams, the following words appear in both Dreams and in Ayers' work: fog, mist, ships, seas, boats, oceans, calms, captains, charts, first mates, storms, streams, wind, waves, anchors, barges, horizons, ports, panoramas, moorings, tides, currents, and things howling, fluttering, knotted, ragged, tangled, and murky. . .

More convincing still are those complex tropes in Dreams that appear, only slightly altered, in Ayers' books. In his 1993 book, To Teach, Ayers writes, "Education is for self-activating explorers of life, for those who would challenge fate, for doers and activists, for citizens." "Training," on the other hand, "is for slaves, for loyal subjects, for tractable employees, for willing consumers, for obedient soldiers."

In Dreams, these thoughts find colloquial expression in the person of "Frank," the real life poet, pornographer and Stalinist, Frank Marshall Davis. "Understand something, boy," Frank tells the college-bound Obama. "You're not going to college to get educated. You're going there to get trained." Both authors make the point that "training" strips the individual of his racial identity.

In To Teach, Ayers recounts the story of an ambitious teacher who takes her students out to the streets of New York to learn about its culture and history. These students ask to see the nearby Hudson River. When they get to the river's edge, one student says, " Look, the river is flowing up." A second student says, "No, it has to flow south-down." Upon further research, the teacher discovers "that the Hudson River is a tidal river, that it flows both north and south, and they had visited the exact spot where the tide stops its northward push."

In Dreams, written two years later, Obama takes an unlikely detour to the exact spot on the parallel East River where the north-flowing tide meets the south-flowing river. There, improbably, a young black boy approaches this strange man and asks, "You know why sometimes the river runs that way and then sometimes it goes this way?" Obama tells the boy it "had to do with the tides."
FOUND

FOUND BY FOUND
GREAT MOMENTS IN ACADEMIA
NY Times - A historic month for women in British poetry turned sour on hen the first woman in 301 years elected to Oxford University's prestigious chair in poetry resigned and admitted what she had previously denied - that she had played a part in a covert effort to taint her main rival for the post with old allegations of sexual impropriety.

Derek Walcott, 79, was the main rival of Ms. Padel. Ruth Padel, 63, was chosen only 10 days ago for the Oxford post, which is regarded as second only to poet laureate among the formal distinctions for poets in Britain. Two weeks earlier, Carol Ann Duffy, 53, became Britain's first female poet laureate, a post formally created in 1668.

Ms. Padel's admission that she sent e-mail messages to two reporters last month alerting them to allegations of sexual harassment against her main rival for the Oxford post, the Nobel literature laureate Derek Walcott, was a stunning turn in a saga of skullduggery that had opened a bitter schism in Britain's literary world.

Just as much, it has scandalized the ivy-walled cloisters of Oxford, exposing a culture of jealousy and mean-spirited connivance at sharp odds with the university's public posture of academic tolerance and reason. .

During the campaign for the post and after her election, Ms. Padel, a great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, insistently condemned the smear tactics that led Mr. Walcott, 79, to withdraw from a contest he had been favored to win. Mr. Walcott, born in St. Lucia, has spent much of the past 30 years commuting between his home on Trinidad and his teaching duties in the United States, and it was those duties that led to the allegations of sexual misconduct.

Ms. Padel's resignation came the day after two national newspapers, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph, published articles detailing the e-mail messages.

The two papers said that Ms. Padel had noted Mr. Walcott's age, claimed that he was in poor health and pointed out that he lived in the Caribbean, not Britain. The Sunday Times quoted her as having gone on to say that "what he does for students can be found in a book called 'The Lecherous Professor,' recording one of his two reported cases of sexual harassment."

In the book, the authors, Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner, describe how Mr. Walcott was accused in 1982 of trying to seduce a student in his poetry class at Harvard, saying at one point: "Imagine me making love to you. What would I do?" According to the book, the student rebuffed the poet, and he gave her a C that was later changed to "pass" after the university reviewed the episode and reprimanded the poet.. . .
PAY FOR PLAY CONTINUES UNDER OBAMA
Bloomberg - Louis Susman has one thing in common with many of his predecessors nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom: money.

Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for President Barack Obama's presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James.

Like Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy and Walter Annenberg before him, Susman's credentials stem more from involvement in financing party politics than foreign policy experience.

Obama is following the tradition of his predecessors by offering some ambassadorships to top campaign backers, including four of the 12 nominations this week. The president acknowledged in a news conference in January that donors might get plum postings.

"The practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service," said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. "It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system. That said, the republic will survive the president selling a few embassies."
THE PLAN TO REPLACE THE UNITED NATIONS WITH A GLOBAL NATO
Rick Rozoff, Global Research - In the last five years of the 20th Century and the first five of the 21st NATO had evolved from a regional alliance based in Western Europe to a global force contending with the United Nations for the number and geographical range of the missions it was conducting.

That expansion in both extent and essence was not limited to frequently overshadowing and nullifying the role of the UN, but has also been a component in undoing the entire post-World War II order of which the UN was the cornerstone. . .

This past February Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, wrote a probing indictment called The United Nations and NATO for a Swiss Journal.

In it he warned that "The world of the 192 UN member states has come to a fork in the road. One way leads to a world focused on the well being of society, conflict resolution and peace, i.e. to a life of dignity and human security with social and economic progress for all, wherever they may be as stated in the United Nations Charter. Down the other road is where the nineteenth century 'Great Game' for power will be further played out, a course which, in the twenty-first century, will become more extensive and dangerously more aggressive than ever. This road supposedly leads to democracy, but in truth it is all about power, control and exploitation."

Contrasting explicitly what the above excerpt had done tacitly, he remarked of his former employer and its would-be replacement:

"A comparison of the mandates of the United Nations and of NATO shows clearly how opposed the purposes of these two institutions are. In the 63 years of its existence, the United Nations mandate has remained the same.

"The United Nations was created to promote and maintain worldwide peace. NATO exists to assure the self-interest of a group of 26 UN member countries."

von Sponeck added, "In 1999, NATO acknowledged that it was seeking to orient itself according to a new fundamental strategic concept. From a narrow military defense alliance it was to become a broad based alliance for the protection of the vital resources" needs of its members. Besides the defense of member states' borders, it set itself new purposes such as assured access to energy sources and the right to intervene in 'movements of large numbers of persons' and in conflicts far from the boarders of NATO countries. The readiness of the new alliance to include other countries, particularly those that had previously been part of the Soviet Union, shows how the character of this military alliance has altered."

"The United Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine.

"NATO's territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its member to encompass the whole world in keeping with a strategic context that was global in its sweep."

In a following section, he exposed a clandestine accord signed between the secretaries general of NATO and the United Nations, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Ban Ki-moon, respectively, on September 23, 2008, which "took place without any reference to the United Nations Security Council.

"In the generally accepted agreement of stated purposes, one reads of a 'broader council' and 'operative cooperation, for example in 'peace keeping in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Both secretaries general committed themselves to acting in common to meet threats and challenges.

"The UN/NATO accord is anything but neutral and will thus not remain without serious consequences."

Shortly after the unauthorized pact signed behind the backs of the UN Security Council, in addition to the General Assembly, by NATO chief Scheffer and Ban, who has proven to be as obsequious toward and obedient to the interests of the West as his predecessor had been, the Russian press reported:

"Russia's representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said that in the document there is not a single word on the UN's leading role in ensuring stability in the world.

"NATO and the United Nations have signed a new cooperation accord on prerogatives for UN member states - but have angered Russia by not telling them about it in advance."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was similarly caught off guard and indignant alike, stating ""We knew that the UN and NATO secretariats were drawing up an agreement. And we assumed that before the signing, its draft should be shown to the member states. But it never happened," accusing Scheffer and Ban of operating secretly and in violation of UN norms. . .

The advocates of the ultimate "coalition of the willing" call for expanding NATO from its current 28 full members, 22 Partnership for Peace states in Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, seven Middle Eastern and North African nations in the Mediterranean Dialogue, six Persian Gulf countries covered under the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and several individual Contact Countries - in total over a third of the nations in the world - into a comprehensive, worldwide political-economic-military bloc with members in six of the world's seven continents and with its eye set on the remaining one, Antarctica.

The nations targeted for the NATO-led Alliance of Democracies include Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and South Korea inter alia. . .

Conceived during the waning days of the world's most destructive and deadly war and born two months after the only use to date of nuclear weapons, the United Nation's still bears its birth marks. Seventy four years later the five chief victors of World War II remain the only permanent members of the Security Council and alone have veto power. Three of them are founding members of NATO and all five are nuclear powers, hardly representative of the world community.

Not a single nation in Africa, Latin America and Oceania have such status.

Also, the 192-member General Assembly has largely been shunted aside in favor of the five permanent and ten rotating members of the Security Council, not to mention events of major world importance being conducted by the secretary general and other officials behind the backs of even permanent members of the Security Council as with last September's agreement with NATO.

The General Assembly represents humanity not only on a day-to-day basis but in a more substantive and legitimate manner than ten of its 192 members on the Security Council at any given time. It must play a larger role in all deliberations. . .

The record of the past thirteen years under the stewardship of Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon has been abysmal. Three major wars have been conducted by the United States and its NATO allies, the first against a founding member of the UN, Yugoslavia, while the organization made no meaningful efforts to prevent or halt them once started and has even legitimized them after the fact with assorted resolutions. . .

However, even with its manifold problems, the United Nations was intended to prevent the replication of the horrors of World War II which ended only two months before its creation. The world would hardly gain by having it further weakened, sidelined and in effect reduced to a hollow shell by an expanding military bloc that has already waged wars on two continents and set its sights on penetrating and dominating the entire world.
THREE MYTHS OF EDUCATION
William Astore, Tom Dispatch - Based on a decidedly non-bohemian life -- 20 years' service in the military and 10 years teaching at the college level -- I'm convinced that American education, even in the worst of times, even recognizing the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, is far too utilitarian, vocational, and narrow. It's simply not enough to prepare students for a job: We need to prepare them for life, while challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (As a child of the working class from a provincial background, I speak from experience.)

And here's one compelling lesson all of us, students and teachers alike, need to relearn constantly: If you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job -- if it's merely a mechanism for mass customization within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods -- you've effectively given a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it.

Three myths serve to restrict our education to the narrowly utilitarian and practical. The first, particularly pervasive among conservative-minded critics, is that our system of higher education is way too liberal, as well as thoroughly dominated by anti-free-market radicals and refugee Marxists from the 1960s who, like so many Ward Churchills, are indoctrinating our youth in how to hate America.

Today's college students are being indoctrinated in the idea that they need to earn "degrees that work" (the official motto of the technically-oriented college where I teach). They're being taught to measure their self-worth by their post-college paycheck. They're being urged to be lifelong learners, not because learning is transformative or even enjoyable, but because to "keep current" is to "stay competitive in the global marketplace." (Never mind that keeping current is hardly a guarantee that your job won't be outsourced to the lowest bidder.)

And here's a second, more pervasive myth from the world of technology: technical skills are the key to success as well as life itself, and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide are doomed to lives of misery. From this it necessarily follows that computers are a panacea, that putting the right technology into the classroom and into the hands of students and faculty solves all problems. The keys to success, in other words, are interactive SMART boards, not smart teachers interacting with curious students. Instead, canned lessons are offered with PowerPoint efficiency, and students respond robotically, trying to copy everything on the slides, or clamoring for all presentations to be posted on the local server. . .

A third pervasive myth -- one that's found its way from the military and business worlds into higher education -- is: If it's not quantifiable, it's not important. With this mindset, the old-fashioned idea that education is about molding character, forming a moral and ethical identity, or even becoming a more self-aware person, heads down the drain. After all, how could you quantify such elusive traits as assessable goals, or showcase such non-measurements in the glossy marketing brochures, glowing press releases, and gushing DVDs that compete to entice prospective students and their anxiety-ridden parents to hand over ever larger sums of money to ensure a lucrative future?
GALLERY

CATERPILLARS

REPUBLICAN CAR DEALERS TARGETED IN CLOSURES
Chelsea Schillin, Worldnet Daily - As part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Chrysler is terminating one-fourth of its franchises – but some say its catalog of doomed dealerships looks more like a hit list that specifically seeks to put Republican donors out of business. . .

WND reviewed the list of 789 closing franchises and databases of political donors and found that of dealership majority owners making contributions in the November 2008 election, less than 10 percent gifted to Democrats while 90 percent gave substantial sums to Republican candidates.

The listed franchise owners contributed at least $450,000 to Republican presidential candidates and the GOP, while only $7,970 was donated to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign and $2,200 was given to Sen. John Edwards' campaign.

Obama received a combined total of only $450 in donations – $250 from dealer Jane Baldock in Wenatchee, Wash., and $200 from Waco, Texas, dealer Jeffrey Hunter. . .

With 2,392 Chrysler dealerships remaining, some bloggers claim to have already begun the exhaustive process of checking each majority owner to determine whether Chrysler has been more merciful toward those who donate to Democrats while simultaneously giving walking papers to Republican contributors.

Chrysler has not responded to WND's requests for comment. The company claims it evaluated the dealerships based on raw sales volume, location, market, history of experience and market share. According to the company's bankruptcy court filing, the 789 dealerships listed for closure "lack the operational, market, facility and linemaker characteristics necessary to best contribute to the ongoing dealer network under current or future ownership."

Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News' Neil Cavuto he doesn't understand why Chrysler is shutting down his Long Island dealership because he claims his dealership is quite profitable – with sales volume ranking in the top 2 percent.

Asked why he believes the company targeted him, Anderer said, "They won't tell us. They seem to be running for cover right now because they won't give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense."

He continued, "This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. And they're telling me there's nothing I can do about it."
GREAT MOMENTS WITH BLACKBERRIES
Peter Bregman, Harvard Business School - I was late for my meeting with the CEO of a technology company and I was emailing him from my iPhone as I walked onto the elevator in his company's office building. I stayed focused on the screen as I rode to the sixth floor. I was still typing with my thumbs when the elevator doors opened and I walked out without looking up. Then I heard a voice behind me, "Wrong floor." I looked back at the man who was holding the door open for me to get back in; it was the CEO, a big smile on his face. He had been in the elevator with me the whole time. "Busted," he said. . .

After the CEO busted me in the elevator, he told me about the meeting he had just come from. It was a gathering of all the finalists, of which he was one, for the title of Entrepreneur of the Year. This was an important meeting for him - as it was for everyone who aspired to the title (the judges were all in attendance) - and before he entered he had made two explicit decisions: 1. To focus on the meeting itself and 2. Not to check his BlackBerry.

What amazed him was that he was the only one not glued to a mobile device. . .
SIX WAYS THE BAILOUT IS A SCAM
Andy Kroll, The Nation - Seven months in, the bailout's impact is unclear. . . . What cannot be disputed, however, is the financial bailout's biggest loser: the American taxpayer. The US government, led by the Treasury Department, has done little, if anything, to maximize returns on its trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded investment. So far, the bailout has favored rescued financial institutions by subsidizing their losses to the tune of $356 billion, shying away from much-needed management changes and--with the exception of the automakers--letting companies take taxpayer money without a coherent plan for how they might return to viability. . .

Given the lack of transparency and accountability, don't expect taxpayers to be able to object too much. After all, remarkably little is known about how TARP recipients have used the government aid received. Nonetheless, recent government reports, Congressional testimony and commentaries offer those patient enough to pore over hundreds of pages of material glimpses of just how Wall Street friendly the bailout actually is. Here, then, based on the most definitive data and analyses available, are six of the most blatant and alarming ways taxpayers have been scammed by the government's $1.1-trillion, publicly funded bailout.

1. By overpaying for its TARP investments, the Treasury Department provided bailout recipients with generous subsidies at the taxpayer's expense. . .

2. As the government has no real oversight over bailout funds, taxpayers remain in the dark about how their money has been used and if it has made any difference. . .

3. The bailout's newer programs heavily favor the private sector, giving investors an opportunity to earn lucrative profits and leaving taxpayers with most of the risk. . .

4. The government has no coherent plan for returning failing financial institutions to profitability and maximizing returns on taxpayers' investments. . .

5. The bailout's focus on Wall Street mega-banks ignores smaller banks serving millions of American taxpayers that face an equally uncertain future. . .

6. The bailout encourages the very behaviors that created the economic crisis in the first place instead of overhauling our broken financial system and helping the individuals most affected by the crisis. .

MUCH MORE
STUDY FINDS DAMAGED ECO SYSTEMS CAN RECOVER
ENN - A recent study by Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reports that if humans commit to the restoration effort, most ecosystems can recover from very major disruption within decades to half-centuries. . . According to the study, researchers compiled information from 240 independent studies conducted since 1910 that examined large, human-scale ecosystems recovery following the termination of both human and naturally imposed disruption. . .

83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 demonstrated a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; 67 demonstrated no recovery for any variable; and 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery. The average recovery time was 20 years or less, and reportedly did not exceed more than 56 years. It was found that recovery from human disturbances was slower than natural disturbances, such as hurricanes.
BREVITAS
ECO CLIPS

Guardian, UK - Dell, the world's second largest PC manufacturer, announced earlier this month that it is imposing a ban on the export of used equipment bearing its name to developing countries - unless the equipment is in full working order and intended for legitimate use. The idea is to undermine the huge trade in e-waste, too much of which ends up in giant trash piles in Africa, India and China, from where it is dismantled, burned, treated with corrosive chemicals and otherwise persuaded to give up tiny amounts of chemicals that can be sold on. The big question is why all the other manufacturers don't have a similar policy. . . Greenpeace reckons that as much as 80% of the electronic waste sent for recycling in the US ends up being "recycled" using dangerous low-tech methods in foreign countries. And, despite Europe's tougher laws, a lot gets through the net there, too.

Guardian, UK - Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300m people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming. It projects that increasingly severe heatwaves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030, making it the greatest humanitarian challenge the world faces. Economic losses due to climate change today amount to more than $125bn a year - more than the all present world aid. The report comes from former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's think tank, the Global Humanitarian Forum. By 2030, the report says, climate change could cost $600bn a year.

Portland Press Herald, ME - Maine is about to become the first state in the nation to require the makers of fluorescent lighting to recycle burned-out bulbs and keep mercury out of the environment. The Maine House and Senate both voted overwhelmingly for the bill and are expected to give it final approval as soon as today. Gov. John Baldacci, whose administration supported the proposal, is expected to sign it into law soon after. Under the bill, Maine would require manufacturers to submit plans for a recycling program by 2010 and begin collecting the fluorescent bulbs by 2011. Burned-out bulbs can now be returned to hardware stores and other retailers through a program financed by electricity surcharges.

Alt Use is a new web site that deals with ways of using

THE LOCAL

Wall Street Journal - As the recession batters city budgets around the U.S., some municipalities are considering the once-unthinkable option of dissolving themselves through "disincorporation." Benefits of this move vary from state to state. In some cases, dissolution allows residents to escape local taxes. In others, it saves the cost of local salaries and pensions. And residents may get services more cheaply after consolidating with a county. Incorporation brings residents a local government with the ability to raise money through taxes and bond issuances. It also gives them more control of zoning decisions and development, and usually provides for local services such as trash pickup and police as well. Dissolving a town government, on the other hand, often shifts responsibility for providing services to the county or state. A city's unexpired contracts usually remain binding, and residents are still obligated to pay off any debt.

CIVIL LIBERTIES IN ISRAEL

Ma'an/Agencies - Israel's parliament, the Knesset, gave preliminary approval to a bill that would mandate a year jail term for anyone who speaks against Israel's status as a Jewish state. . . The bill's passage comes three days after lawmakers advanced a bill that would ban all commemorations of Nakba Day, on which Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens, remember their expulsion of 1948. According to news reports, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, Jamal Zahalka, was removed from the auditorium during an argument after the vote.

THE MIX

Lou Chibbaro Jr, Washington Blade - A group of local ministers filed papers Wednesday with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics requesting a voter referendum to overturn a city law recognizing same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. The action by the ministers is expected to set in motion a political fight that gay activists fear could rival the divisive referendum campaign in California that led to the narrow approval of Proposition 8, which overturned that state's same-sex marriage law. Among those asking the election board to begin the process for putting the D.C. gay marriage equality law on the ballot were Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., and Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the city's former delegate to Congress. . . Some gay activists have argued that a referendum calling for prohibiting same-sex marriage in the District could not be allowed because it would violate the Human Rights Act's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. But some legal observers believe the subject of marriage could be interpreted as being separate from the Human Rights Act and would likely be approved for a referendum.

MONEY & WORK

BET - The National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers fears that 140 of Chrysler's 170 to 175 minority-owned dealerships could face being closed. And the figure could almost double if General Motors follows up with closing an estimated 174 of the 300 minority-owned dealers

HEALTH

Medical News Today, 2004 - The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage. These results are derived from detailed data on administrative costs in the U.S. and Canada in 1999 which appears in New England Journal of Medicine.

Press Watch - Mobile telephones are to be banned from French primary schools, and operators must offer handsets that allow only text messages, under government measures to reduce the health risk to children. The measures, which emerged from a six-week review of mobile phone and wi-fi radiation, have been attacked as inadequate by campaigners who accuse the state of playing down dangers from phones and transmitter masts.

Press Watch - Contact lenses that can cure blindness for millions in days Millions of blind and partially sighted people could be given their sight back after a major breakthrough by scientists. Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales School of Medical Sciences used patients' own stem cells grown on a simple contact lens. This was placed into the sufferer's eye and within days new cells attached themselves to the damaged area. The revolutionary finding could cure corneal blindness - a condition that affects 5,000 people in Britain and millions worldwide.

FURTHERMORE. . .

WHOM DID WE KILL TODAY? TRACKING US. BOMBS

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