Undernews For 28 July 2009

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28 July 2009

PAGE ONE MUST

MINIMUM WAGE STUCK IN THE 1950S

Holly Sklar ZNet - Are you better off than you were 40 years ago? Not if you're a minimum wage worker. It would take $9.92 today to match the buying power of the minimum wage at its peak in 1968, the year Martin Luther King died fighting for living wages for sanitation workers. In today's dollars, the 1968 hourly minimum wage adds up to $20,634 a year working full time. The new federal minimum wage of $7.25 comes to just $15,080. That's $5,554 in lost wages. . . The minimum wage is stuck in the 1950s. With the raise, the minimum wage is higher than 1950's inflation- adjusted $6.71, but lower than the 1956 minimum wage of $7.93 in today's dollars.

NEW LAW COULD HURT SMALL FARMS

Supermarket News - During the past few years, the growing popularity of local foods has been a boon to both supermarkets and independent farmers. . . But, a lot of small farmers are concerned about a bill being debated in the House this month - H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.

If passed in its current form, the bill would give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to oversee on-farm production activities, and would expand the FDA's authority to quarantine geographic areas for certain foods when illness outbreaks occur, among other powers.

The bill does not distinguish between large farms and small ones, and those fees, penalties and new requirements become more and more onerous the smaller the farming operation.

While the bill has been amended since it first appeared in June, directing the FDA "to take into consideration, consistent with ensuring enforceable public health protection, the impact on small-scale and diversified farms," the new requirements would still seem to apply to all farmers that performed even the most minimal processing on-site, such as washing greens, making jams or preserves, or simply cutting fruits or vegetables.

When it comes to food safety, small farms are not the problem. If an independent grower takes a load of spinach to a farmers' market in Kansas, and that spinach makes 10 people sick, it's unfortunate, but it's hardly a crisis. . .

Small farms cause small outbreaks when they cause them at all. Big farms, big packers and big processors are the only operations with the scale to cause the big problems that these new regulations would purport to solve. .

REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL FORCE 75 MILLION PACIFIC ISLANDERS TO RELOCATE

Bonnie Malkin, Telegraph UK - More than 75 million people living on Pacific islands will have to relocate by 2050 because of the effects of climate change, Oxfam has warned.
A report by the charity said Pacific Islanders were already feeling the effects of global warming, including food and water shortages, rising cases of malaria and more frequent flooding and storms. Some had already been forced from their homes and the number of displaced people was rising, it warned. . . . Half of the population of the Pacific live less than 1.5km from the coast.

CRASH TALK

ABC News - The country is finally starting to see some positive signs in the housing market. But don't tell that to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner . . . Geithner Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner bought this home in 2004 for $1.602 million. . .

After leaving the tony New York City suburb of Mamaroneck to take his new post in Washington, D.C., Geithner put his five-bedroom Tudor home on the market for $1.635 million.

That was in February. By May, he cut the price $60,000 but still got no takers. A few weeks later, May 21, the home in New York's Westchester County was reportedly rented for $7,500 a month. . . .

BBC - The annual rate of US new home sales jumped 11% in June, government figures have shown, a further indication that the housing sector is over the worst. . . June's sales figure was the strongest pace seen since November 2008. However, the median sale price was $206,200, down 5.8% from May and 12% lower than a year ago.

LA Times - From 2001 through 2008, more than 8,000 condominium units were built in downtown San Diego. That's double the number of downtown units constructed over the same period in Los Angeles, a city three times its size. So while sales of urban high-rise units are convulsing elsewhere, nowhere is the collapse more dramatic than in downtown San Diego. . .

At the height of the frenzy, hopeful purchasers queued up outside sales offices to plunk down deposits. There were occasional arguments over who was first in line. No one wanted to miss out with condo values riding an elevator to the sky.

Near the peak, in May 2004, median resale prices of downtown condos hit $647,500, a 56% increase in just three years, according to San Diego research firm MDA Data Quick.

Irrational exuberance has long since given way to buyer's remorse. Median resale prices for downtown units stood at $370,000 in June. . .

Downtown San Diego, a 2.2-square-mile area, is now awash in condos. About 400 new and occupied ones are listed for sale, and more than 450 are in some stage of foreclosure and will eventually be put on the market. An additional 1,000 units that were under construction when the market soured are slated to be completed this year, adding to the glut and putting further downward pressure on prices.

Dean Baker - The folks in Washington have developed a series of complex mortgage modification schemes designed to keep people in their homes. President Bush put forward the first plan in the summer of 2007. It was entirely voluntary for lenders and came with no government money.

Last summer, Congress developed a package that committed up to $300 billion in loan guarantees to support modification efforts. Eight months after the plan went into effect, there had been less than 1,000 applications and only 52 completed modifications.

The most recent set of proposals came from President Obama in February. This plan focused more on giving incentives to servicers, offering them $1,000 to carry out a modification and an additional $1,000 for each year that the homeowner stayed in their home. This program also appears to be having a limited effect, as foreclosure rates hit a new high in the second quarter of this year.

There is an easier route. In recognition of the extraordinary situation created by the housing bubble and its collapse, Congress could approve a temporary change of the rules governing the foreclosure process. This change would give homeowners facing foreclosure the right to stay in their home paying the market rent for a substantial period of time (e.g. 7-10 years).

This change would have two effects. First, it would immediately give housing security to the millions of families facing foreclosure. If they like the house, the neighborhood, the schools for their kids, they would have the option to remain there for a substantial period of time.

Also by keeping homes occupied, this rule change can help to prevent the blight of foreclosures that has depressed property values in many areas. Vacant homes are often not maintained and can become havens for drug use and crime.

The other effect of a right to rent rule would be that it would give lenders substantially more incentive to modify a mortgage. Under the rule, the lender could still carry through with the foreclosure process and take possession of the house. The lender would also be free to resell the property, but the former homeowner would still have the option to remain as a tenant paying the market rent for the period specified in the law.

Since a house that comes with a renter attached is much less valuable to the bank, foreclosure would be a much less attractive option. Therefore lenders would have more incentive to try to work out a modification plan that allowed the homeowner to remain in their house as an owner.

Washington Post - Policymakers often say it's a good deal for lenders to cut borrowers a break on mortgage payments to keep them in their homes. But, according to researchers and industry experts, foreclosing can be more profitable.

The problem is that modifying mortgages is profitable to banks for only one set of distressed borrowers, while lenders are actually dealing with three very different types. Modification makes economic sense for a bank or other lender only if the borrower can't sustain payments without it yet will be able to keep up with new, more modest terms.

A second set are those who are likely to fall behind on their payments again even after receiving a modified loan and are likely to lose their homes one way or another. Lenders don't want to help these borrowers because waiting to foreclose can be costly.

Finally, there are those delinquent borrowers who can somehow, even at great sacrifice, catch up without a modification. Lenders have little financial incentive to help them.. . .

Foreclosed homes continue to flood the market, forcing down home prices. That contributed to the unexpectedly large jump in new-home sales in June, reported yesterday by the Commerce Department.

NT Times - The long slide in housing prices is continuing to brake, figures released Tuesday indicate.

For the fourth consecutive month, there was modest improvement in May in the rate prices are falling, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a closely watched measure of the market.

The index of 20 metropolitan areas had an annual decline of 17.1 percent in May from the same month in 2008, an improvement over April's 18.1 percent fall. . .

While the numbers are still grim, the important thing is the direction they are heading, Wells Fargo chief economist John E. Silvia said.

WTOP - Baskin-Robbins plans to open more than 35 new stores in the Washington area. . . The move is part of the ice cream company's new growth campaign that will try to increase its U.S. presence by creating new concepts like high-end dessert bars and drive-through shops. . . Ice cream production has remained fairly consistent over the past few years, said Cary Frye, vice president of regulatory affairs for the International Dairy Foods Association. The industry noticed an increase in both dollar sales and the volume of private label or "store brand" ice cream in 2008.

STUDY FINDS GIULIANI-BLOOMBERG COPS IN SCHOOLS APPROACH DOESN'T WORK

The New York Civil Liberties Union, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and Make the Road New York have released a report documenting the successes of six New York City public high schools in maintaining safe, nurturing educational environments without using metal detectors, aggressive policing and harsh disciplinary policies-measures widely employed in city schools.

"These schools have chosen a different path, developing effective school safety strategies while promoting and protecting students' rights," NYCLU Advocacy Director Udi Ofer said.

The schools profiled in the report demonstrate their success through improved attendance, student retention and graduation rates, as well as dramatically fewer criminal and non-criminal incidents and school suspensions than schools equipped with permanent metal detectors.

For example, the six successful schools cumulatively had a nearly 62 percent graduation rate for the class of 2007 – compared to a graduation rate of less than 55 percent at schools that employ metal detectors. Likewise, during the 2006-07 school year, the suspension rate in schools with metal detectors was nearly 78 percent higher than at the successful schools.

Since 1998, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani transferred school security responsibilities to the NYPD, the number of police personnel in the schools soared by 62 percent, from 3,200 to 5,200. The police force in New York City schools is now the fifth largest police force in the country-there are more police in New York City schools than there are on the streets of cities such as Baltimore, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington D.C.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg imported Giuliani's "broken windows" policing strategy into the schools-cracking down heavily on minor disciplinary violations. Students, some as young as five, have been handcuffed, taken to jail, and ordered to appear in court for infractions such as tardiness, talking back, truancy, refusing to show identification, and refusing to turn over cell phones.

Bloomberg has also introduced such controversial practices as the "Impact Schools" initiative-which doubles the number of police personnel permanently assigned to certain schools and has police agents enforce a zero tolerance policy for rule infractions-and the "roving" metal detector program, which often subjects youth to bag searches and body pat downs on their way to class. The Department of Education now spends 65 percent more per year-an additional $88 million this year alone-than it did in 2002 on school safety, despite the fact that student enrollment has decreased over the same period.

The escalation of police activity in the schools has created a de facto zero tolerance policy in schools that serve the city's poorest neighborhoods. In these schools, which often have permanent metal detectors, students can be suspended, expelled or arrested for any number of disciplinary infractions.

These punitive measures contribute to the school to prison pipeline, a system of local, state and federal education and public safety policies that pushes students out of school and into the criminal justice system. The pipeline disproportionately affects youth of color and youth with disabilities.

The report recommends that the DOE:

- Discourage the installation of metal detectors. Schools can create safe and successful learning environments without relying on metal detectors.

- Restore discipline responsibilities to educators. Minor disciplinary infractions must be handled exclusively by school officials, not police personnel.

- Assign fewer School Safety Agents to patrol schools. The number of police personnel patrolling the city's schools should be reduced significantly, creating financial savings and strengthening the educational mission of the schools.

- Mandate alternatives to harsh discipline. Restorative justice practices, a conflict resolution method used at several schools profiled in the report, should be implemented in all city schools.

- Ensure students' input into school rules. Giving students a sense of ownership over the school rules makes them more willing to obey codes of conduct.

- Provide support services for students' non-academic needs. Partnering with local hospitals and community based organizations to provide students health care and social services addresses non-academic challenges before they develop into behavioral problems.

HEALTH CARE

Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, Progressive Media Project - 0nce Congress finishes mandating that we all buy private health insurance, it can move on to requiring Americans to purchase other defective products.

A Ford Pinto in every garage?

Lead-painted toys for every child?

Melamine-laced chow for every puppy?

Private health insurance doesn't work.

Even middle-class families with supposedly good coverage are just one serious illness away from financial ruin.

Illness and medical bills contribute to 62 percent of personal bankruptcies - a 50 percent increase since 2001. And three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance, at least when they first got sick.

Coverage that families bought in good faith failed to protect them. Some were bankrupted by co-payments, deductibles, and loopholes. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured.

Now Congress plans to make it a federal offence not to purchase such faulty insurance.

On top of that, it's threatening to tax workers' health benefits to meet the costs of simultaneously covering the poor and keeping private insurers in business.

President Obama's plan would finance reform by draining funds from hospitals that serve the neediest patients. His other funding plans aren't harmful, just illusory. He's gotten unenforceable pledges from hospitals, insurers and the American Medical Association to rein in costs, a replay of promises they made (and broke) to Presidents Nixon and Carter. And Obama trumpets savings from computerized medical records and better care management, savings the Congressional Budget Office has dismissed as wishful thinking.

The president's health plan can't make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable.

Only single-payer health reform - Medicare for All - can achieve that goal.

Single-payer national health care could realize about $400 billion in savings annually - enough to cover the uninsured and to upgrade coverage for all Americans. But the vast majority of these savings aren't available unless we go all the way to single payer.

A public plan option might cut into private insurers' profits. That's why they hate it. But their profits - roughly $10 billion annually - are dwarfed by the money they waste in search of profit. They spend vast sums for marketing (to attract the healthy); demarketing (to avoid the sick); billing their ever-shifting roster of enrollees; fighting with providers over bills; and lobbying politicians. And doctors and hospitals spend billions more meeting insurers' demands for documentation.

A single-payer plan would eliminate most insurance overhead, as well as these other paperwork expenses. Hospitals could be paid like a fire department, receiving a single monthly check for their entire budget. Physicians' billing could be similarly simplified.

With a public insurance option, by contrast, hospitals and doctors would still need elaborate billing and cost-tracking systems. And overhead for even the most efficient competitive public option would be far higher than for traditional Medicare, which is efficient precisely because it doesn't compete. It automatically enrolls seniors at 65 and deducts their premiums through the social security system, contracts with any willing provider, and does no marketing.

Health insurers compete by not paying for care: by seeking out the healthy and avoiding the sick; by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients; and by lobbying for unfair public subsidies (as under the Medicare HMO program). A kinder, gentler public plan that failed to emulate these behaviors would soon be saddled with the sickest, costliest patients and the highest payouts, driving premiums to uncompetitive levels. To compete successfully, a public plan would have to copy private plans.

Decades of experience teach that private insurers cannot control costs or provide families with the coverage they need. And a government-run clone of private insurers cannot fix these flaws.

Washington Times - The health care reform plan proposed by House Democrats would create at least a dozen new federal programs, boards and task forces, contributing to the proposal's hefty price tag that has drawn criticism from Congress' official scorekeeper.

Democrats say the bureaucratic infrastructure is necessary to administer the expansion of health care benefits to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans while creating more competition for private insurers to drive down out-of-control costs.

The health care reform bill, which is expected to cost roughly $1 trillion over 10 years, would create a public health insurance plan and a health insurance "exchange," a clearinghouse where consumers will be able to shop for public or private coverage. The programs will require a massive undertaking by the federal government that analysts say likely will take years to fully implement. . .

At least three boards will be set up to advise the health and human services secretary on policy. The Health Benefits Advisory Committee, for instance, will recommend the basic requirements of insurance plans. All Americans would be required to carry at least basic coverage under the bill, with exceptions for the poor

Monte Ladner MD, NY Times - I quit practicing medicine in 2003 at the age of 43. Burned out. Like most doctors I went into medicine with a lot of idealism. The first half of my medical career was in the Army (they paid for my medical education). The second half was in private practice.

In the Army system, a single payer system, I was free to focus my attention on patient care, as were my colleagues. Conversations between doctors revolved around the latest medical research on how to best care for our patients. I never thought about how much money a particular treatment option for a patient would earn for me - I was paid a salary and it was the same no matter what treatment options I chose. I never had to deal with getting an insurance company to pay me for my medical services after I had already given them. I never had to argue with an insurance company after they denied my treatment plan for a patient as "medically unnecessary."

In private practice I was horrified to see how money was the driving force behind everything doctors did. Doctors talked with each other about opening their own specialty clinics to capture fees that had previously gone to hospitals. Over the years the discussions at medical conferences began to devote less time to the science behind new innovations and more time to teaching doctors how to make money with the new innovations.

Worst of all, I saw patients routinely suffer from unnecessary, expensive, and often harmful treatment interventions that were clearly chosen because they earned the most money for the doctor and the hospital. . .

It used to be government and universities with an interest in advancing medical knowledge. Today most medical research is financed and directed by pharmaceutical companies and their main objective is getting research data that can be used to market their products - whether the products are really useful or not. . .

There is no place for "free market ideas" in medicine - at least not if you want your doctor to actually take care of you.

GOOD CHART ON THE HEALTH CARE MEASURES

THE HIGH TIDE MYSTERY

Charlotte Observer - Weather experts are contemplating a new mystery of the deep blue sea: why it's been deeper than usual at high tide all along the East Coast for the past several weeks.

Since June, tides have been running from 6 inches to 2 feet above what would normally be expected, even considering seasonal and lunar fluctuations. While local tidal changes are not uncommon, researchers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aren't sure they have ever recorded an event like this one, which is showing up all the way from Maine to Florida. . .

"Right now we're trying to get a better understanding of what's the cause," said Mike Szabados, director of NOAA's tide and current program in Silver Spring, Md. Global warming isn't to blame, scientists say, as the rise was too sudden. Possibly, Szabados said, the explanation lies in something called the North Atlantic oscillation, a disturbance in the atmospheric pressure in the area of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High.

A change in the atmospheric pressure can change wind velocities and directions, which can affect ocean circulation, Szabados said. . .

The higher tides have also flooded the nests of shore birds and sea turtles close to the water line. The higher water brings an increased risk of rip tides. And if a tropical storm or hurricane strikes before the phenomenon subsides, damage near the shore could be magnified. . .

Szabados said that while the surge has diminished, it hasn't disappeared, and researchers don't know when it will.

GREAT THOUGHTS OF BARACK OBAMA BEFORE HE WAS PRESIDENT AND TRYING TO RUSH THROUGH A 1000 PAGE HEALTH CARE PLAN

From a 2004 interview

BARACK OBAMA: ...When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what's in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA: Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen. And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

WHY CAN'T OUR SPY STORIES BE AS MUCH FUN?

Independent UK - David Shayler, former MI5 whistleblower and self-proclaimed Messiah, is now squatting on a farm in Abinger Hammer with members of the Rainbow movement. David often dresses as his alter-ego Dolores. . .

A short distance from the home of the novelist E M Forster, David Shayler and his miniskirt-clad alter ego have taken up residence in a 17th-century National Trust farmhouse after a decade of spiritual contemplation which has led the one-time MI5 officer to the conclusion that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that all of humanity's ills can be cured by a four-year program of hemp cultivation.

For the man who came to public attention in spectacular fashion 12 years ago by lifting the lid on a catalogue of dark deeds allegedly carried out in the name of Queen and Country by the intelligence services, it is a reinvention every bit as dramatic as his claims that MI6 funded Islamist fighters to assassinate Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and that MI5 failed to keep track of an IRA bombing cell - revelations that ultimately forced him into exile and earned him two spells in prison. . .

But as he came to the door of the salubrious squat close to Guildford dressed as Delores in a blonde wig, sheer black tights, a leopard skin skirt and a cropped top with prosthetic breasts, before explaining that the world as it is known will end of 23 December 2012, it is perhaps clear why some of his former friends are concerned that he has suffered some form of mental collapse. . .

Far from being unwell, Mr Shayler insisted he was merely following the same instincts that persuaded him to blow the whistle on the alleged misdeeds of MI5 and MI6 in 1997 – and illegally print extracts from Spycatcher while a student – by bringing into the open unpalatable "facts" about the state of humanity. . .

"I have spent my life telling difficult truths and now I am in the same situation again. I am the latest reincarnation of the Christ and live a life of unconditional love. Suddenly my whole life makes sense. By exercising the common law right of free will, we can all break out of the system that has enslaved us, started wars and left us mired in debt.". . .

Between drags on a roll-up cigarette, he explained how the engravings on the Rod of Aaron, the staff carried by Moses' older brother in the Old Testament, contained an anagram of "David Shayler, Righteous King".

A NEW WALL STREET FRAUD

Open Left - Over the weekend the high frequency trading story exploded. HFT is when large traders place their own trading computers in exchanges. Doing this gives them a very slight (microseconds) speed advantage over anyone who doesn't have their computers co-located. Not only do they have a slight speed edge, in exchange for a fee they see orders slightly (a few microseconds) before other traders. They use this speed advantage to front run slower investors. In addition, they issue and then cancel orders to see what prices other traders are willing to pay. Using their speed advantage they can then, if they, for example, see you want to buy X stock at $5 or less, and it's trading for $4.80, buy it before you and sell it to you at $5, capturing the profit in between.

About 50% of market volume is now high frequence trading. Large firms front running smaller traders, engaging in strategies normal traders can't engage in, to make sure that they make small profits on as much of the business going on as possible, all the while creating the illusion of real stock market activity when there is half the fundamental demand that there appears to be.

Fleecing sheep and manipulating the market seems to be the mild way to put it.

TEXAS FACING WORST DROUGHT IN A HALF CENTURY


Tom Benning, Wall Street Journal - A combination of record-high heat and record-low rainfall has pushed south and central Texas into the region's deepest drought in a half century, with $3.6 billion of crop and livestock losses piling up during the past nine months.

The heat wave has drastically reduced reservoirs and forced about 230 public water systems to declare mandatory water restrictions. Lower levels in lakes and rivers have been a blow to tourism, too, making summer boating, swimming and fishing activities impossible in some places.

Nearly 80 of Texas' 254 counties are in "extreme" or "exceptional" drought, the worst possible levels on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's index.

PORTUGAL PLANS 1300 ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING STATIONS

Global Post - Prime Minister Jose Socrates is seeking to make Portugal a European trendsetter in green transport. In June, he launched groundbreaking plans for a nationwide network of recharging stations that would allow battery driven electric automobiles to cruise the highways.

By 2011, Socrates’ Socialist administration wants 1,300 stations around the country where environment-friendly motorists can plug-in their electric cars as part of a drive to “liberate Portugal from its dependency on foreign oil.â€

The first station in the Mobi-E network opened in Lisbon on July 23. A hundred are due to be up and running by the end of this year and 320 should be in place in 2010. In the meantime Renault-Nissan says that Portugal will be one of the first markets for the launch of its electric vehicles in 2011. . .

FLOTSAM & JETSAM: WHEN BAD GUYS DO GOOD
Sam Smith

A friend recently tweaked me for having supported John Edwards for president. Which raised a familiar question in my mind: why do the bad guys sometimes have the best politics?

After all, Edwards was the only major candidate who was pressing programs that might have eased, though not prevented, the fiscal crisis and the only one with serious ideas about what to do to set the country on a better economic course.

He was also a shmuck who couldn't control his shmuck.

Then there was Lyndon Johnson who once told Richard Burton he reckoned that between the two of them they had screwed more women than anyone. Yet it was LBJ, with the equally undisciplined Adam Clayton Powell Jr. who got more good legislation passed in less time that at any point in our history.

And there is the totally disintegrated Marion Barry, long time mayor of Washington, whose first term still was probably the best for the city since it got partial home rule in 1974.

To be sure, this is not typical of the ill behaved. For example, the Clintons never thought of doing anything significant to redeem themselves. The Clintons were instead the harbinger of the contemporary style of corrupt politician who felt no need to tithe to the people.

Neither does there seem to be any theoretical principle behind all this, save that it is far harder to find bad guys doing good things in politics any more.

Barry, for example, continues to stand out, because he is a holdover from an early age of corruption, in which the politician got little more than power and press, while his buddies and his constituents go the favors and the bucks. While Barry can't even pay his taxes, he is currently under attack for the money he got the city council to give organizations in his ward.

But one of the things I learned while covering Washington for many decades, however, is that the corruption hasn't disappeared, it just had a new name: economic development. As you watched the multimillion payoffs to developer campaign contributors, it made you long for a time when bribes were delivered in paper bags and a politician's misbegotten sex life was more entertaining than a losing baseball team brought to town at the voters' expense to please some pals of a mayor.

Because the media is so heavily into the business of enabling, rather than busting, political myths these days, we repeatedly are encouraged to fall for good looking, nice talking candidates who turn out to be far from what they promised. And we've been taught to accept the idea that the mere existence of a Clinton or Obama is a reasonable substitute for a good political agenda.

But life doesn't work that way. As William Riordan wrote of an earlier time:

"The Tammany district leader reaches out into the homes of his district, keeps watch not only on the men, but also on the women and children, knows their needs, their likes and dislikes, their troubles and their hopes, and places himself in a position to use his knowledge for the benefit of his organization and himself. Is it any wonder that scandals do not permanently disable Tammany and that it speedily recovers from what seems to be crushing defeat?"

Sure, it was corrupt. But we don't have much to be priggish about. The corruption of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Wall Street, Whitewater or the S&Ls fed no widows, found no jobs for the needy or, in the words of one Tammany leader, "grafted to the Republic" no newly arrived immigrants. At least Tammny's brand of corruption got down to the streets. Manipulation of the voter and corruption describe both Tammany and contemporary politics. The big difference is that in the former the voter could with greater regularity count on something in return.

Today, we are repeatedly disappointed by politicians who look and talk good and turn out quite the opposite. There's no better formula for detecting this than making personality take a far back seat to the politics. And bearing in mind that sometimes even bad guys do things better.

BREVITAS

GALLERY: CARRYING STUFF ON A BIKE
ECO CLIPS

Vancouver Sun - According to City Farmer, 44 per cent of Vancouver's population is involved in some form of urban agriculture. . . Today, there are more than 1,700 new plots in more than 40 community, or resident-shared, gardens. There are also 20 farmers' markets. Unlike gardens grown for and by private gardeners, gardens grown for commercial purposes have historically met resistance by urban authorities and planners. Considered relics of a rural past, they were either prohibited or severely restricted.

OBAMALAND

The Hill - In a significant change, the Obama administration will now allow lobbyists to meet and have telephonic discussions with government officials regarding economic recovery projects. The lifting of the ban comes after K Street has cried foul for months and has challenged the White House on its restrictions. In March, President Obama announced that government officials would not be allowed to consider the views of lobbyists regarding specific stimulus projects unless the requests are put in writing. The materials also had to be posted on an agency's website within three business days of receipt. Lobbyists have said that the policy was one more example of the administration's disdain for their industry. Now, the just-revised rules will allow government personnel to accept meetings and calls from federally registered lobbyists on the implementation of stimulus projects.

JUST POLITICS

We've started posting the latest polls again and it does't look all that good for the Democrats. As things now stand, they may lose two governorships and one Senate seat with another up in the air.

Green Party Watch - In the German city of Stuttgart, the Greens recently won the largest vote total. In a city with more than 500,000 people, that's a considerable feat for The Greens.

Nation - Since 1940, Republicans have controlled the White House for thirty-six years; Democrats for thirty-three. Yet Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that almost two-thirds of new jobs were created during Democratic administrations.

ENTROPY UPDATE

Telegraph, UK - Under the Government scheme, members of "Shameless" families are given intensive 24-hour supervision to make sure children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals. Parents are also given help to stop them leading dysfunctional lives and to combat drug or alcohol addiction. Ministers hope expanding the scheme will reduce the number of youngster who become drawn into lives of crime because of their chaotic family lives. The projects are operating in around half of all council areas, but Children's Secretary Ed Balls said he wanted every local authority to fund them.. . . "There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need that support."

THE MIX

CNN - A fight over books depicting sex and homosexuality has riled up a small Wisconsin city, cost some library board members their positions and prompted a call for a public book burning. The battle has stirred much of West Bend, a city of roughly 30,000 people about 35 miles north of Milwaukee. Residents have sparred for months on blogs, airwaves and at meetings, including one where a man told the city's library director he should be tarred and feathered. The row even spread to this year's Fourth of July parade, which included a float featuring a washing machine and a sign that read "keep our library clean.". . .

Washington Examiner - Shirts advocating the legalization of gay marriage sparked vandalism and violent threats this week at two American Apparel clothing stores in the Washington area. When manager Kassandra Powell arrived at the American Apparel in Silver Spring on Monday morning, she found one of the windows shattered -- in front of a "Legalize Gay" T-shirt on display. . . On Tuesday morning, there were threats of more trouble, this time at the chain's Georgetown location. American Apparel's M Street store received a call from an angry man demanding that the "Legalize Gay" shirt be removed from the window or the window would be broken. Despite the threats, both stores continued displaying the shirts. . . . The threats intensified Wednesday with a call to the manager on duty at the Silver Spring store. "He asked why the shirt was still on the mannequin and told me that I should be very careful for what I did because 'bad things could happen to me,' " the manager wrote in an e-mail to the company's fashion media director. . .

FREEDOM & JUSTICE

Reason - "Legal Age 21 has not worked." Of course, any 20-year-old could, and probably would, tell you that. But the quote in question was written by Dr. Morris Chafet, a psychiatrist who served on the presidential committee that pushed to have the legal drinking age raised to 21. That push paid off on July 17, 1984, when President Ronald Reagan signed the new drinking age into law. Since that time, however, Chafet has apparently had a change of heart. The Los Angeles Times reports that in an editorial that has yet to be published, Chafet describes his effort to raise the drinking age as the "single most regrettable decision" of his career. "To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982," Chafet notes. "But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.". .

Today's taser story comes from Mobile Alabama, where the cop toy was used on a deaf and mentally disabled man who refused to leave a store's restroom. . . And just to make sure this sort of cruelty can continue, Taser has come up with a stun gun that can be fired three times without reloading. Fourteen thousand police agencies across the country can hardly wait.

Seattle Weekly - Ever sit and chat in a parked car? That may warrant a 911 call for suspicious activity. So says a post on neighborhood blog Phinneywood, where a resident recounts witnessing a drug transaction in front of his house. He called the police, who he says told him: "Do call 911 immediately if you see a car with people sitting in it apparently going no where. They are waiting to make a drug connection.". . .

Unsilent Generation - Angola prison in Louisiana boasts that some 90 percent of its population will die there. The prison has managed to equip itself with a hospice, and trained inmates to attend to a convict's last days. Burl Cain, the warden, is backed up by a phalanx of Christian fundamentalist preachers who freely roam the 18,000 acre former slave plantation recruiting inmates to be preachers. The clergy instruct prisoners their only way out is through redemption made possible by the acceptance of Jesus Christ. When an elderly inmate, knowing his end was near, sought to be win release so as to die in the so-called "free world," the parole board refused. The procedure is to go to your death in the Christian way - from cell to hospice to a prison cemetery where your grave will be dug by the inmates who will mark your burial with gospel hymns. The travesty at Angola is held up as a model for the nation and Cain celebrated by the media as a new corrections messiah.

FURTHERMORE. . .

Progressive Historians features a video of Robert Oppenheimer, the person most responsible for the success of the atomic bomb after Albert Einstein. The date is 1965. "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.'"

Yesterday we ran the above as an example from a gallery of confusing warning signs. Reader Davers offers an explanation: "It means stop rolling over and letting Republicans stomp all over you."

Another reader says of Twitter journalism: " Andy Warhol said everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. It seems that in the age of twitter, it has become 140 characters of fame."

Headline of the week (from Digg): John Barry, inventor of WD-40, dies. Rust in Peace

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