Undernews January 17

Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it

End of the Euro?

Paul Krugman, NY Times - Not long ago Europeans could, with considerable justification, say that the current economic crisis was actually demonstrating the advantages of their economic and social model. Like the United States, Europe suffered a severe slump in the wake of the global financial meltdown; but the human costs of that slump seemed far less in Europe than in America. In much of Europe, rules governing worker firing helped limit job loss, while strong social-welfare programs ensured that even the jobless retained their health care and received a basic income. Europe’s gross domestic product might have fallen as much as ours, but the Europeans weren’t suffering anything like the same amount of misery. And the truth is that they still aren’t.

Yet Europe is in deep crisis ¬ because its proudest achievement, the single currency adopted by most European nations, is now in danger. More than that, it’s looking increasingly like a trap. Ireland, hailed as the Celtic Tiger not so long ago, is now struggling to avoid bankruptcy. Spain, a booming economy until recent years, now has 20 percent unemployment and faces the prospect of years of painful, grinding deflation.

The tragedy of the Euromess is that the creation of the euro was supposed to be the finest moment in a grand and noble undertaking: the generations-long effort to bring peace, democracy and shared prosperity to a once and frequently war-torn continent. But the architects of the euro, caught up in their project’s sweep and romance, chose to ignore the mundane difficulties a shared currency would predictably encounter ¬ to ignore warnings, which were issued right from the beginning, that Europe lacked the institutions needed to make a common currency workable. Instead, they engaged in magical thinking, acting as if the nobility of their mission transcended such concerns. . .

The Europeans have shown us that peace and unity can be brought to a region with a history of violence, and in the process they have created perhaps the most decent societies in human history, combining democracy and human rights with a level of individual economic security that America comes nowhere close to matching. These achievements are now in the process of being tarnished, as the European dream turns into a nightmare for all too many people. . .

So much for the post-racial society

45% of likely voters say race relations have worsened over the two years that Barack Obama has been president, while 13% see an improvement and 37% see no difference, reports Zogby. There was no statistically significant difference in responses between white, African-American and Hispanic voters. Most likely to say race relations have worsened are: voters who are more likely to vote for Tea party endorsements (78%), conservatives (75%), Republicans (68%), NASCAR fans (58%), weekly Wal-Mart shoppers (57%), those who attend religious services weekly or more often (54%) and military veterans (54%).

Recovered history: Why King talked about his dream

Two things usually ignored about Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech: John Kennedy tried to stop it and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson got King to to talk about his dreame. Gary Younge described it in the British Guardian in 2003:

It was June 22 1963, when Kennedy met with the nation's civil rights leaders. Just one month before, segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama had turned hoses and dogs on black teenagers. Only a few days later the president went to Germany where he slammed Soviet repression at the Berlin Wall, calling for freedom abroad that he could not secure for black people at home. The state of America's racial politics had reached the stage of domestic crisis and international embarrassment. Plans for a march on Washington for jobs and freedom on August 28 organized by the black union leader A Philip Randolph, were already under way. Kennedy was preparing a civil-rights bill that would antagonize white southerners in his own party who were opposed to integration. "I may lose the next election because of this," he told them. "I don't care."

The truth is that he cared very deeply. He asked them to call the march off. "We want success in Congress," said Kennedy. "Not just a big show at the Capitol." Randolph refused. "The Negroes are already in the streets," he told Kennedy.

King, who deferred in age and experience to Randolph did not speak until the end of the meeting. "It may seem ill-timed," he said. "Frankly, I have never engaged in a direct-action movement that did not seem ill-timed." The march went ahead. By the time Kennedy came back from Europe he had decided that he would try to co-opt what he could not cancel. He declared his support for the march, hailing it as a "peaceful assembly for the redress of grievances".. .

By most accounts it was not [King's] greatest speech. Indeed, he had actually started to wind it up without its signature passage when the singer Mahalia Jackson, who stood nearby, encouraged him to go on. When he began to tell the crowd: "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama," she urged him: "Tell them about your dream Martin. Tell them about the dream."

With encouragement from the audience King went on to draw upon a version of a speech he had made many times before (he had delivered it to insurance executives in Detroit only a week before) which centered on his dream of a society in which race was no longer a boundary to individual opportunity and collective strength.

Mahalia Jackson was standing in the row right below King when she made her suggestion. She was an extraordinary figure in her own right and when she died, some 50,000 people walked past her coffin to pay their respects. Here she is singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus

The scary man the Republicans have chosen to run its congressional investigations

Ryan Lizz, New Yorker - [Darrell] Issa’s early business career was equally tumultuous. He started his car-alarm empire by acquiring the Steal Stopper brand in what was essentially a hostile takeover. A man named Joey B. Adkins owned the company, and Issa loaned him sixty thousand dollars. When Adkins was late on a payment, Issa went to court and foreclosed on the loan. Two days later, Adkins told me, Issa called and said that he wanted Adkins to come visit him at his new office. He gave Adkins the address of Steal Stopper. “I just took your company,” Adkins recalled him saying.

Once in control, Issa allegedly used an unusual method to fire Jack Frantz, an employee. Frantz told the Los Angeles Times that Issa came into his office, placed a box on the table, and opened it to reveal a gun. Issa told the paper, “Shots were never fired. If I asked Jack to leave, then I think I had every right to ask Jack to leave. . . . I don’t recall [having a gun]. I really don’t. I don’t think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.”

Issa was soon suspected of doing something worse: burning down the factory. The initial notion that an electrical socket had caused the fire was challenged. The science of determining whether a fire was caused by arson can be flawed. But a fire-analysis report commissioned by the St. Paul insurance company, and dated October 19, 1982, a month after the incident, concluded that the fire was “incendiary.” . .

Great thoughts of Alan Greenspan

We run the risk, by laying out the pros and cons of a particular argument, of inducing people to join in on the debate, and in this regard it is possible to lose control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve System chair at board of governor's meeting, March 16, 2004

Cathie Black and the collapse of public education

Christopher Lawrence, Truthout - The appointment of Cathie Black - the Hearst magazine executive with zero education experience - as New York City schools chancellor is further evidence of the complete collapse of the 20th century model of liberal public education in the US. The cynical compromise between Mayor Bloomberg and his liberal opponents to appoint an educator as deputy chancellor only serves to highlight the obvious message: education is a business that is too lucrative in these difficult times to leave to teachers and communities. It now seems inevitable that we will move to a dual education system not seen since the days of legal segregation, with minorities and the poor shuttled through a system of for-profit institutions emphasizing standardized testing, uniform lessons and rote learning.

It is remarkable how quickly the liberals caved. Maybe this is because of the way pro-business education reformers co-opted the traditional liberal discourse of equality and civil rights. Or maybe it's the money. It is heart-warming to see the captains of industry, hedge fund managers and politicians across the political spectrum lining up to bankroll an attempt to level the playing field for the poor. This equalization is a noble cause, and one that is difficult to criticize. Unfortunately, it is also a scam. Once again, the rich are preying on the hopes of the poor in order to further their monopoly on wealth and power. The education reforms enshrined in the No Child Left Behind Act , like charter schools, increased testing and subcontracted tutoring and provided a huge opening for private education entrepreneurs, even as public school budgets are repeatedly slashed. If anyone had any doubts about the true intentions of these corporate conquistadores, the announced departure of current New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein to Murdoch's News Corp in order to pursue opportunities in the "education marketplace" makes clear their objectives.

Judges backing Obama's contempt for Constitution

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - A FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people -- roughly half of whom are American citizens -- were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. But the willingness of courts to act is unclear at best. The judiciary, with a few exceptions, has been shamelessly deferential in the post-9/11 era to even the most egregious assertions of Executive Branch power in the name of security. Combine that with the stunning ignorance of technology on the part of many judges -- many of whom have been on the bench a long time and are insulated by their office from everyday life -- and it's not hard to envision these practices being endorsed. Indeed, two appellate courts have thus far held -- reversing the rulings of lower courts -- that Homeland Security agents do not even need to show "reasonable suspicion" to search and seize a citizens' electronic products when re-entering their country.

A progressive-libertarian alliance?

Raw Story - Prepare for the rise of libertarian progressives. That was the message earlier in the week from trends analyst Gerald Celente, who predicted that the rapid acceleration of wealth into the coffers of the ultra-rich would drive a global youth resistance movement in 2011 and reformat long-held political boundaries.

Longtime American politics gadfly Ralph Nader, a man of many ideas almost diametrically opposed by most libertarian conservatives, said Wednesday that he sees a coming convergence of liberals, progressives and libertarian conservatives in the wake of a worsening financial crisis and dogged partisanship that's put the government into gridlock.

Speaking to Fox Business's libertarian host Judge Napolitano, Nader called these shifting alliances "the most exciting new political dynamic" in the US today.

So how will this left-right alliance begin?

Nader suggested that it already has, thanks to the unity of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the most conservative and most liberal members of their respective chambers. They've teamed up to propose cuts to the US defense budget, which has long been by far the largest sector of America's annual budget, and to push a more thorough audit of the Federal Reserve, the private central bank which controls America's currency.

This is nowhere near as far fetched as it may seem. Here's a chart we did some time ago analyzing where the various ideologies really stood

Obama to ease travel restrictions to Cuba, allow more U.S. cash to island

Miami Herald - The Obama administration Friday said it will allow for more U.S. travel to Cuba, making it easier for schools, churches and cultural groups to visit the island.

A senior Obama official told The Miami Herald the much-expected move to expand cultural, religious and educational travel to Cuba is part of the administration's continuing ``effort to support the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their own future.

President Barack Obama is also restoring the amount of money ($2,000) that can be sent to nonfamily members to the level they were at during part of the Clinton and Bush administrations. There will be a quarterly limit on the amount that any American can send: $500 per quarter to ``support private economic activity.''

Tunisia: the first Wikileaks revolution?

Foreign Policy - Tunisians didn't need any more reasons to protest when they took to the streets these past weeks -- food prices were rising, corruption was rampant, and unemployment was staggering. But we might also count Tunisia as the first time that WikiLeaks pushed people over the brink. These protests are also about the country's utter lack of freedom of expression -- including when it comes to WikiLeaks.

Tunisia's government doesn't exactly get a flattering portrayal in the leaked State Department cables. The country's ruling family is described as "The Family" -- a mafiaesque elite who have their hands in every cookie jar in the entire economy. "President Ben Ali is aging, his regime is sclerotic and there is no clear successor," a June 2009 cable reads. And to this kleptocracy there is no recourse; one June 2008 cable claims: "persistent rumors of corruption, coupled with rising inflation and continued unemployment, have helped to fuel frustration with the GOT [government of Tunisia] and have contributed to recent protests in southwestern Tunisia. With those at the top believed to be the worst offenders, and likely to remain in power, there are no checks in the system."

Of course, Tunisians didn't need anyone to tell them this. But the details noted in the cables -- for example, the fact that the first lady may have made massive profits off a private school -- stirred things up. Matters got worse, not better (as surely the government hoped), when WikiLeaks was blocked by the authorities and started seeking out dissidents and activists on social networking sites.

The Pentagon remembers Martin Luther King Jr

Defense Department News Release - If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he understand why the United States is at war?

Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel, posed that question at today’s Pentagon commemoration of King’s legacy.

In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today’s wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner’s teachings.

“I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack,” he said.

Johnson goes on to argue that American soldiers play the role of the Biblical Good Samaritan cited by King because they "have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people."

Paul LePage and the complexities of anger

Sam Smith

There are plenty of reasons to fight with Maine's new Republican governor - over immigration policy, energy, environment, and public education. But I'm not including his response to the NAACP's reaction to his failure to attend some MLK Day events: "They can kiss my butt."

I've spent much of my life listening to politicians from the White House down use tortured and tedious euphemisms for that phrase, and it is an odd - if somewhat perverted - relief to hear someone in public office actually say it.

Of course, the NAACP, Maine liberals, and the media didn't like it because - like much of America - they prefer their leaders use semiotic subversion to verbal reality. Some even call it civility. But for those of us who have been unduly subjected to it on a regular basis, it's like having to eat only Froot Loops three times a day - pleasantly colored and tasteless circles wrapped around exactly nothing.

The head of the Maine NAACP was typically huffy over LePage's comment. I would have suggested in response to LePage's proposal of amorous posterior proximity something more along the lines of, "I wouldn't even think of it until he lost some weight, but I would like to take him up on his dinner invitation so we can discuss this seriously."
[It turned out a few days later that Paul LePage wasn't boycotting the NAACP observance of Martin Luther King Day after all . . . only the ones in Portland and Orono. For the past several years he has gone to the one in Waterville and he went today.]

Yes, LePage had, right after his butt bomb, invited the NAACP over for dinner along with his son:

“If they want to play the race card, come to dinner and my son will talk to them."

Actually more like a semi-son. The LePages started raising Devon Raymond, from Jamaica, since he was 17. He is now a graduate student.

The NAACP huffed and puffed about that, too, accusing LePage of using the race card just as he had said of them.

But the fascinating thing about this story is that this is just its beginning. . . and therein lies a lesson about ethnic and other forms of conflict. The salvation is not to be found in superficial responses but in hidden complexities.

Maine Public Broadcasting was one of the few media to look deeper:

"LePage often refers to 25-year-old Devon Raymond of Jamaica as his 'adopted son.' And although the governor and his wife are putting Raymond through college, and Raymond has attended LePage family gatherings with the LePage's other children on a regular basis since the age of 17, Raymond has not been formally adopted. He is also not a U.S. citizen."

Not a U.S. citizen? That makes him a prime target of the US Customs service which puts all of Maine within its border boundaries for intrusive searches and questioning.

Further, there was this, as described by the Bangor Daily News

"In one of his first official acts, Gov. Paul LePage issued an order allowing officials in state agencies to question people with whom they come into contact about their immigration status, infuriating civil libertarians. . . LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt said the governor wanted to send a message to those who have heard it’s easy for illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses and social services in Maine."

Even assuming that Devon is perfectly legal, it still dumps him in the perpetually suspect bin of Maine residents.

And LePage's inconsistencies don't stop there. For example, he dubbed the NAACP a "special interest" to which he owes no special attention, but has spent his opening days meeting with other special interests known as businesses. The problem with the NAACP seems to be mainly that it doesn't have "Inc." after its name.

Yet behind inconsistency is often complexity and that certainly is true in LePage's case. Consider this from a story by Tom Bell of the Portland Press Herald:

|||| When Paul LePage is sworn into office today as Maine's governor, Maurice "Moe" LePage will be there, a witness to his big brother's remarkable escape from an impoverished and abusive childhood. .

Moe LePage, 56, grew up with Paul LePage and their 15 brothers and sisters in a four-room house on Lisbon Street in Lewiston.

Their only hot water came from a pot on the wood stove in the kitchen. Their toilet was an outhouse for much of their childhood. Their parents, Teresa and Gerard LePage, slept downstairs on couches while the children slept in the two bedrooms upstairs, four or five to a bed.

But those material hardships, Moe LePage said, were nothing compared to the terror that sprang from their father's violent temper. A heavy drinker, he once slammed Moe's head against a table so hard that he was taken to the hospital for stitches.

His father also beat Paul. Moe LePage recalls that when Paul was 11, his father sent him to the hospital with a broken nose. Paul ran away from home and never came back.

Moe LePage said he wouldn't go to bed at night until he was sure his father was asleep, because his father -- when he was angry and drunk -- would sometimes stuff newspapers into a slipper and douse it with kerosene. He would put the slipper under the family's old television, light it with a match and then leave the house. . .

There often wasn't enough food in the LePage household because their father was too busy drinking, she said.

After Paul ran away and was taken in by another family, he worked at various odd jobs, such as shining shoes and delivering the local newspapers, the Lewiston Daily Sun and the Evening Journal. He would use some of the money to buy food, and for his brothers and sisters.

The family lived in a French-speaking section of Lewiston called Little Canada, and the children didn't learned to speak English until they were teenagers. Paul was admitted to Husson College only after he was allowed to take an achievement test in French. He eventually received a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Maine. Paul was the only one of his siblings to complete college. ||||

Add to this the fact that during the time that LePage was growing up, Franco Americans in Maine were still suffering at least some of the discrimination that has defined black life in America. In 2000, Franco Americans made up about 9% of the state's population compared to less than 2% for blacks. And they had their own story to tell.

For example in 1925, the KKK had some 150,000 members in Maine. That’s over 30,000 more than the current number of Franco Americans in the state. Their target was heavily Franco Americans and other Catholics.

A Franco American wasn't appointed to the state's Supreme Court until 1954, about the same time as the black civil rights movement was getting rolling.

Discrimination is never neat. It targets the weakest in a particular place: blacks in the south, latinos in the southwest, Franco Americans in Maine. And it recruits heavily from the misery of those who aren't, in fact, that much better off than those against whom they discriminate. Southern segregation depended in no small part on the white elite convincing poor whites that poor blacks were their real problem. And even today, that great sleeping political giant - a latino-black coalition - can't be born in part because of each part's suspicions of the other.

So it isn't all that surprising that a once bitterly poor and abused Franco American from Waterville doesn't know how to deal with the NAACP. But the solution doesn't lie in scolding; it lies in the more secure helping the less secure evolve towards better ways. In effect, helping the LePages of the world rewrite their stories so they don't keep blaming the wrong people for the wrong things.

A good place to start would be to remain cool about being told to "kiss my ass" and, instead, to just keep one's eyes on the prize.

Words and news

Sam Smith

One of the things I learned early in reporting was that words and actions were two different things. On average, actions made far better news than words.

I once designed a new paper called USA Tomorrow. Among its principles:
"News is defined as something that has happened, something that is happening or something that is going to happen. News is not what someone said about what is happening nor what someone perceived was going to happen nor what the editors thought the impact of something happening would be on its readership. . .

"All perceptions (including those excised from the front page and those typical of op-ed pages) will be published in a section called Perceptions. Space will be given based on a rigorous analysis of the perceptiveness of previous perceptions. This is unlike the current situation in which people are allowed to perceive based solely on their position or fame rather than actual prescience. Letters to the editors will thus compete on a equal basis with paid columnists. . .

"Somewhere towards the back of the paper will be several pages devoted to quotations, official and otherwise. This section will have something of the feel (and small type size) of the classified section."

These are principles that have been broadly ignored over the past week in the wake of the Tucson killings. Obviously, lots of people (including me) have had a lot to say, but there comes a point when the discussion veers markedly from what happened into a bottomless pile of opinions about it all and about what other people said about what happened. For example, the Review was one of the first to post Sarah Palin's bullseye map, but after a day we moved it into the Palin archives and went on to other stuff. For Chris Matthews it was a major obsession for much of the week.

Rachel Maddow spun her view of the spin the Republicans gave the healthcare repeal bill by calling it "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" even though if the bill were actually repealed - which it won't be - then either side's spin on the name would be of minimal importance compared to what was really happening.

Then we have Barack Obama wanting to escalate the Af-Pak war and civility at the same time. And journalists in awe of his deep thoughts on the latter while totally ignoring the former. So forth into the late edition.

And these, remember, are the people who are meant to be on our side. Listen to the right and you'll be lucky to find one fact all day.

I believe in reporting idiocies, lies, and hypocritical hype wherever one finds them. But I also understand this can become like interviewing spectators high in the stadium at a game. You can easily miss the long pass behind and below you while all you're getting is some more truisms.

The media owes it to its readers and viewers not to let the noise in the stadium distract them too much. Report it, sure, but then get back to the game.

Consider the fact that though Mitt Romney beats Palin in just about every poll, a Google of news mentions over the past month finds Palin ten times ahead. Why? Not because of anything she's done. The last newsworthy thing she's accomplished was to desert her post as governor. Ever since then all she's done is talk. And that's what the media likes to cover: talk not action. It has taken the easy route big time.

Well, look who's violating copyright law

Torrent Freak - The major record labels are known for their harsh stance on copyright infringements, which in an ironic turn of events is now costing them millions of dollars. Revealing a double standard when it comes to ‘piracy’, Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, EMI Music and Universal Music now have to pay Canadian artists $45 Million for the illegal use of thousands of tracks on compilation CDs.

It is no secret that the major record labels have a double standard when it comes to copyright. On the one hand they try to put operators of BitTorrent sites in jail and ruin the lives of single mothers and students by demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and on the other they sell CDs containing music for which they haven’t always cleared the rights. This happens worldwide and more frequently than one would think.

Over the years the labels have made a habit of using songs from a wide variety of artists for compilation CDs without securing the rights. They simply use the recording and make note of it on “pending list” so they can deal with it later. This has been going on since the 1980s and since then the list of unpaid tracks (or copyright infringements) has grown to 300,000 in Canada alone.

Teenagers suffering increased hearing loss

NY Times - One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association. These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.” The number of teenagers with hearing loss ¬ from slight to severe ¬ has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Given the current ubiquity of personal media players ¬ the iPod appeared almost a decade ago ¬ many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones. (Earbuds, in particular, don’t cancel as much noise from outside as do headphones that rest on or around the ear, so earbud users typically listen at higher volume to drown out interference.) Indeed, the August report reinforces the findings of a 2008 European study of people who habitually blast MP3 players, including iPods and smartphones. According to that report, headphone users who listen to music at high volumes for more than an hour a day risk permanent hearing loss after five years.

Recovered history: Some of the founders hated the idea of an undemocratic Senate

Sam Smith - For some four decades, the Progressive Review has been a lonely journalistic voice calling for more equitable representation in the Senate, a cause that stemmed from our involvement in starting the DC statehood movement. For example, based on the 2010 census, there are 21 states with a combined population less than that of California that together have 40 more senators than does California. Other victims of the Senate system have been minorities, women, and causes that don't go down well in places like Wyoming.

Now Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker adds some historical perspective on this issue:
Hendrick Hertzberg, New Yorker - [Alexander] Hamilton hated¬hated-the compromise under which the Constitutional Convention was blackmailed into giving every state the same number of senators regardless of population. . .

But it wasn’t just the future Federalist party stalwart Hamilton who hated the two-senators-per-state provision. The future Democratic-Republican party boss Madison hated it, too. At the time, the infant nation’s most populous state had around twelve times as many people as its least populous. To Madison and Hamilton, the idea that one citizen should have twelve times as much representation in the Senate as another citizen, simply because they lived in different places, was self-evidently offensive and absurd. (Two hundred and twenty years later, the absurdity is five and a half times worse: a Wyoming voter gets sixty-eight times more representation in the Senate than a Californian.)

Hamilton and Madison (Washington, too, by the way; I’m not sure about Jay) strongly favored what was then called “proportional representation.“ (Modern P.R., under which legislative seats are distributed roughly in line with aggregate party shares of the vote, hadn’t been invented yet.) Obama-like, they forced themselves to pay what they knew was a corrupt and immoral price in order to get a barely acceptable deal¬which deal they sold, Obama-like, as a fine, public-spirited solution. . .

There are two sensible cures to end the Senate's position as an overwhelmingly undemocratic institution:

- Add more states such as DC and other urban centers. This is not hard to do by law. All it requires is a majority vote of Congress and the president's signature.

- In addition, the Constitution could be amended to provide for a mixed proportional representation system as used in Germany. One half would be elected geographically as at present, but an equal amount would be added - selected by the proportional results of the various parties in an election such as the presidential one.

It is hard to see how the collapse of the American story can be reversed without the introduction of real democracy into the US Senate.

Why we love music

Guardian, UK - Ever had goosebumps or felt euphoric chills when listening to a piece of music? If so, your brain is reacting to the music in the same way as it would to some delicious food or a psychoactive drug such as cocaine, according to scientists.

The experience of pleasure is mediated in all these situations by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine, according to results of experiments carried out by a team led by Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which are published in Nature Neuroscience.

Music seems to tap into the circuitry in the brain that has evolved to drive human motivation – any time we do something our brains want us to do again, dopamine is released into these circuits. "Now we're showing that this ancient reward system that's involved in biologically adaptive behaviors is being tapped into by a cognitive reward," said Salimpoor.

She said music provided an intellectual reward, because the listener has to follow the sequence of notes to appreciate it. "A single tone won't be pleasurable in isolation. However, a series of single tones arranged in time can become some of the most pleasurable experiences that humans have ever reported. That's amazing because it suggests that somehow our cerebral cortex is following these tones over time and there must be a component of build-up, anticipation, expectation."

The real American theology

PSALM OF THE FAST LANE

SAM SMITH, 1986

The Lord is my mentor; I shall want it all.

He feedeth me in world-class restaurants and leadeth me beside the sparkling mineral waters.

He restoreth my house and bringeth me in the path of good access.

Yea, though I jog through the valley of the shadow of high rises I shall fear no viable competition; thy clout and thy bottom line shall comfort me.

He shall prepare a game plan against mine enemies, and shall bloweth dry my head and my Volvo shall runneth over to Bloomingdales.

Surely perks and power lunches shall follow me all the days of my life and 1 shall dwell in an upscale neighborhood forever and ever.

For thine is the power and the glory -

But not for long, sucker. I'm right behind you.

Facebook: As retro as AOL

John Dvorak, PC Mag - Facebook is retro because, like AOL, it's retro by its nature. It's a closed system. Some people like a closed comfy system and others don't. I, for one, don't. If I want a personal webpage with all sorts of information about myself, I'll go to Wordpress.com and make one. By doing this, I don't turn over any data, control, or information to an onerous third party to sell, use, or exploit. I can close down the site when I want. I can say what I want. I can pretty much do whatever. . .

Facebook is a simple system for the masses that do not really care about technology and do not want to learn anything new except something easy like Facebook.

There is no reason for anyone with any chops online to be remotely involved with Facebook, except to peruse it for lost relatives. So, next time you log on, remember it's really AOL with a different layout.

Welcome to the past.

Myth busted: Fast growing urban areas not better off

Eben Fodor, Steady State - Most cities in the U.S. have operated on the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial and that more and faster growth will benefit local residents economically. Local growth is often cited as the cure for urban ailments, especially the need for local jobs. But where is the empirical evidence that growth is providing these benefits?

I have completed a new study examining the relationship between growth and prosperity in U.S. metro areas. I found that those metro areas with the most growth fared the worst in terms of basic measures of economic well-being.

The study looked at the 100 largest U.S. metro areas (representing 66% of the total U.S. population) using the latest federal data for the 2000-09 period. The average annual population growth rate of each metro area was compared with unemployment rate, per capita income, and poverty rate using graphical and statistical analysis.

Some of the remarkable findings:

* Faster-growing areas did not have lower unemployment rates.

* Faster-growing areas tended to have lower per capita income than slower-growing areas. Per capita income in 2009 tended to decline almost $2,500 for each 1% increase in growth rate.

* Residents of faster-growing areas had greater income declines during the recession.

* Faster-growing areas tended to have higher poverty rates.

I also compared the 25 slowest-growing and 25 fastest-growing areas. The 25 slowest-growing metro areas outperformed the 25 fastest-growing in every category and averaged $8,455 more in per capita personal income in 2009. They also had lower unemployment and poverty rates.

Another remarkable finding is that stable metro areas (those with little or no growth) did relatively well. Statistically speaking, residents of an area with no growth over the 9-year period tended to have 43% more income gain than an area growing at 3% per year. Undoubtedly these findings offer a ray of hope that stable, sustainable communities may be perfectly viable - even prosperous - within our current economic system.

Eben Fodor is the founder of Fodor & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in community planning, land use, and environmental sustainability. Fodor is also the author of Better, Not Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community.

Sony shutting down a CD plant

CNET - Sony Corp., the company that brought us the Walkman and the parent company of music label Sony Music Entertainment, plans to shut down a CD-manufacturing plant in southern New Jersey in March.
About 300 employees will be laid off once the 50-year-old Sony DADC plant in Pitman, N.J., is closed. Sony said it plans to shift CD-making operations to a facility in Indiana. The company moved DVD manufacturing from the plant about a year ago.

Who couldn't see these kinds of closures coming? The music CD has become nearly a relic. The emergence of digital music and music players, as well as the rise of illegal file sharing, helped to hasten the demise of the CD as the main music distribution format.

Retired generals & admirals double dipping big time

Dina Rasor, Truthout - From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to [a Boston] Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.

In some years, the move from general staff to industry is a virtual clean sweep. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense roles - nearly 90 percent.

In addition to these disturbing facts, the Pentagon started a "Senior Mentor" program where generals who had retired from military service had been hired back as consultants to offer advice to their colleagues. USA Today did an expose on that program in late 2009 and "identified 158 mentors and found that 80% had ties to the defense industry."

So, these generals, who retire at full pay which ranges from about $100,000 to $200,000 a year and generous benefits including health care, were pulling down large salaries from a defense contractor to lobby and pressure their former colleagues (these defense contractors then bill the Department of Defense for their salary) and the Department of Defense was hiring them back as mentor consultants making double or more money than their general's salary (which they still also received).

To give you an idea of how much a general pulls in salary from a defense contractor after they retire, the USA Today article found that in 2008, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni made $946,000 from DoD contractor DynCorp along with a $129,000 in retirement pay. It is unknown exactly how much he made in the mentor program, but the Joint Forces Command said in a statement to USA Today that a three-star general (Zinni had four stars) made about $1,600 a day plus expenses.

Endangered library urges users to check out all its books

Boing Boing - The library in Stony Stratford near Milton Keynes, England, urged its patrons to check out every book on the shelves as a way of proving to the local council that its collection and facilities provide a vital service to the community. Stony Stratford is one of many towns across the UK that are facing severe library closures as the Tory-LibDem coalition government recklessly slashes its transfer payments to local governments (while breaking their promise to rein in enormous bonuses at the banks, even the ones that are owned by the taxpayer).

Guardian, UK - Stony Stratford council got wind in December and wrote to all 6,000 residents - not entirely disinterestedly, as the council meets in the library, like many other groups in the town. "In theory the closure is only out for consultation," Gifford said, "but if we sit back it will be too late. One man stopped me in the street and said, 'The library is the one place where you find five-year-olds and 90-year-olds together, and it's where young people learn to be proper citizens'. It's crazy even to consider closing it - they should be finding ways to expand its services and bring even more people in."

Meanwhile. . .

Question of the day

Punk Patriot: If corporations are people, does that make shareholders slaveowners? Shouldn't that be challanged on the grounds of the 13th amendment?

Wilileaks

The GOP chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security wants to "strangle the viability" of WikiLeaks by placing the publisher and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, on a US "enemies list" normally reserved for terrorists and dictators. Placement on the US "Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List" would criminalize US companies who deal with WikiLeaks or its editor.

The real GOP platform

Senator Mike Lee of Utah thinks child labor laws are unconstitutional Also federal minimum wage laws, civil rights laws or to provide Medicare and Social Security.

Federal report on handling of oil spill - “Coast Guard responders watched Governor Jindal ¬ and the TV cameras following him ¬ return to what appeared to be the same spot of oiled marsh day after day to complain about the inadequacy of the federal response, even though only a small amount of marsh was then oiled,” the report stated, citing an interview with a Coast Guard official. “When the Coast Guard sought to clean up that piece of affected marsh, Governor Jindal refused to confirm its location.”

An Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house.

Department of Good Stuff

Great interview with Alan Ginsberg via Tim Shorrock in which Ginsberg talks about the history of rap and reading Howl in front of Federal Court.

Why can't we recover civility in our debate?

Eschewing standard parliamentary procedure, in 1798 Vermont Rep. Matthew Lyon, a Republican, spit tobacco in the face of his bitter rival, Connecticut Federalist Rep. Roger Griswold. Griswold responded with a cane (this would become a trend), and Lyon, in a display of one-upmanship, seized a pair of fireplace tongs. Eventually sentenced to four months in prison for violating the Sedition Act, "the spitting Lyon" became the first member of Congress to win reelection from jail.

Federal study finds natural supplements safe

Natural News - There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2009, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 200-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin. Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid, herb, or dietary mineral supplement.

Two people died from non-nutritional mineral poisoning, one from a sodium salt and one from an iron salt or iron. On page 1139, the AAPCC report specifically indicates that the iron fatality was not from a nutritional supplement. One other person is alleged to have died from an "Unknown Dietary Supplement or Homeopathic Agent." This claim remains speculative, as no verification information was provided.

Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 155,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of nearly 57 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.

Secret Service study on assassinations suggests Tucson killings may not have been political

NPR - "In the space of 18 months, four [successful or attempted assassination] situations came to the attention of the Secret Service," says Robert Fein, who in the mid-1980s worked with the Secret Service as a psychologist. In two of these incidents, he says, people with weapons and an intent to kill appeared at public events. In the two other incidents, the would-be assassins were intercepted before the events. Ultimately, all four cases were prosecuted. Two were convicted, and two were sent to psychiatric facilities, Fein says, though the government didn't exactly advertise it. .

Fein and Secret Service agent Bryan Vossekuil undertook the most extensive study of assassins and would-be assassins ever done.

In the Secret Service Exception Case Study Project, they identified 83 people who had completed assassinations or made assassination attempts since 1949 ¬ some cases known to the public, some not ¬ and collected every document they could find. Fein and Vossekuil also went to visit many of these people in jail. . .

What emerges from the study is that rather than being politically motivated, many of the assassins and would-be assassins simply felt invisible. In the year before their attacks, most struggled with acute reversals and disappointment in their lives, which, the paper argues, was the true motive. They didn't want to see themselves as nonentities.

"They experienced failure after failure after failure, and decided that rather than being a 'nobody,' they wanted to be a 'somebody,' " Fein says.

They chose political targets, then, because political targets were a sure way to transform this situation: They would be known.

"If the objective is notoriety or fame, that's the most efficient instrumental mechanism by which to achieve that. I don't mean to be flip about that, but a public official is likely to bring them a substantial amount of recognition instantly, without having to achieve something," says Randy Borum, a professor at the University of South Florida who worked on the study.

And one thing Borum and Fein say about choosing a political figure ¬ as opposed to choosing a show-business celebrity ¬ is that the would-be assassins are able to associate themselves with a broader political movement or goal. That allows them to see themselves as not such a bad person. In this way, Borum says, assassins are basically murderers in search of a cause.

"People make decisions to act, and then from that, construct for themselves and potentially for others a narrative about why that is OK, or what the rationale would be, or how this could be justified," Borum says. "It's sort of a reverse pattern from what we would typically think.". . .

"About half of the assassins in this study had multiple targets or what sometimes are referred to as directions of interest, throughout the course of deliberating about an attack," he says.

For example, there was one guy who was fixated on his governor until he heard that the vice president was coming to his area.

"He said he had read enough to know that there hadn't been anybody who had attempted to assassinate a sitting vice president," Borum says.

So he made the vice president his target. He told the researchers he thought he'd get more attention from historians. "He said in the books on assassination, there might even be a whole chapter on him," Borum recalls.

US immigration officials deny 9 year old British boy entry to America

Telegraph, UK- A nine-year-old boy's dream trip to Disney World was ruined when US immigration officials ruled he was a threat. Civil servants Kathy and Edward Francis planned to surprise their grandson Micah Strachan with the holiday of a lifetime to Florida in February. . . They had already spent more than £1,500 on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months. But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US. They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Micah was born in Britain and has lived in Middlesex all his life with his mum Claudia Lewis. He holds a South African passport because his grandparents Kathy and Edward, who have lived and worked in Britain since 1990, only got him a South African passport. They are originally from South Africa.

A letter from Micah's primary school was included in his visa application confirming he attended the school. But the US Embassy's rejection letter to Micah said: "Because you either did not demonstrate strong ties outside the United States or were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the US would be consistent with the visa status, you are ineligible."

Cops aren't high on stricter gun control laws

Examiner - A poll of U.S. police and law enforcement chiefs shows gun control is not as popular with cops as some in the media would have you believe. . . For example, in a survey conducted by the National Association of Chiefs of Police of the nation's police executives, with regard to private citizens owning firearms for sport or self-defense, 93.6 percent of the respondents supported civilian gun-ownership rights.

Meanwhile, 96 percent of the police chiefs and sheriffs believe criminals obtain firearms from illegal sources and 92.2 percent revealed they hadn't arrested anyone for violation of the so-called "waiting period" laws.

When asked if citizens being issued concealed-weapons permits would reduce violent crime, 63.1 percent of the responding police chiefs said yes.

Although gun-control enthusiasts are quick to point to accidental shootings or misuse of firearms cases to bolster their claims, numerous studies have shown that there are between 600,000 and one million protective uses of firearms by citizens

Israel outdoes TSA

Haaretz, Israel - The Foreign Press Association in Israel is threatening to boycott briefings held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if security procedures are not changed immediately. . . The statement followed a complaint filed yesterday by Al Jazeera with the Government Press Office and the Foreign Press Association, over what the channel said was a humiliating and lengthy security check at the invitation-only foreign press briefing with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. . .

Najwan Simri Diab, a producer and reporter, and another reporter, Shirin Abu Aqla, were part of the Al Jazeera team that arrived to the Jerusalem event. Abu Aqla was reportedly made to wait over an hour and not permitted to enter in the end, while Simri Diab was asked by security to remove her clothing, including her bra.

According to the Foreign Press Association, the members of the Al Jazeera team were not the only journalists treated in a humiliating manner at the event. Photographers and reporters were also asked to strip, among them Charles Levinson, the Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Israel.

Why U.S. schools aren't as bad as Duncan & Rhee want you to believe

Vivek Wadhwa, Business Week - The perception is that American children live a relatively easy life and coast their way through school. They don't do any more homework than they have to; they spend an extraordinary amount of time playing games, socializing on the Internet, text-messaging each other; they work part time to pay for their schooling and social habits. And they party. A lot. These stereotypes worry many Americans. They believe the American education system puts the country at a great disadvantage. But this is far from true.

The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back.

My research team at Duke looked in depth at the engineering education of China and India. We documented that these countries now graduate four to seven times as many engineers as does the U.S. The quality of these engineers, however, is so poor that most are not fit to work as engineers; their system of rote learning handicaps those who do get jobs, so it takes two to three years for them to achieve the same productivity as fresh American graduates. As a result, significant proportions of China's engineering graduates end up working on factory floors and Indian industry has to spend large sums of money retraining its employees. After four or five years in the workforce, Indians do become innovative and produce, overall, at the same quality as Americans, but they lose a valuable two to three years in their retraining.

And then there is the matter of the PISA rankings that supposedly show the U.S. trailing the rest of the world. Hal Salzman, a professor at Rutgers' John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development, debunked myths about these in a May 2008 article in Nature magazine. Salzman noted that international tests use different sampling criteria from country to country, so we're not always comparing apples to apples. As well, the tests compare select populations of small countries such as Singapore and Finland, which each have about 5 million people, with the U.S., which has 310 million. These countries achieve the top rankings on the PISA list. Compare these countries to similar-sized U.S. states, however, and you find that some of those states, including Massachusetts (population 6.5 million), produce the top students. Additionally, we're comparing America's diverse population¬which includes disadvantaged minorities and unskilled immigrants with little education¬with the homogeneous populations of countries like Finland, Japan, and New Zealand.

ENDS

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