Undernews: March 5, 2012

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Republicans would rather buy a used car from Santorum than Romney

Craigslist asked who they would rather buy a car from: More Republicans (47%) in the Super Tuesday states say that they would not buy a used car from Romney than the percentage that would (46%). Only 27% of them say they would not buy one from Santorum.

Americans generally seem to feel more trust for Santorum than for Romney, judging from the fact that 36% say they would buy a used car from the former compared to 29% who would buy one from the latter. But Santorum’s lead over Romney is even greater among Republicans (where it’s 13%) than it is among Americans of all political stripes (7%).

Good news department

UN Wire - Some 89% of people across the globe have access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations. More than 2 billion people worldwide gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2010.

Where the action is

Twitter just sold your tweets

G8 summit flees to hiding at Camp David

Protesters use duct tape to make their point

Koch brothers own 50% of Cato Institute, want more

POGO adds 40 new firms to its federal contractor misconductd database

Ben and Jerry add dough to the Occupy movement What the Situationists could tell the Occupiers
Record 59% of California voters support gay marriage

The right to unionize should be treated as a civil right

Reenactment of Selma to Montgomery march

Can Occupy pull off a general strike on May 1?

Bus riders' union seeks to end cuts in service

Democracy Alliance dumps progressive organizations

Grad students campaign to unionize

Nearly two thirds of Vermonters want to decriminalize marijuana

Nader calls for $10 minimum wage

Upcoming

Secularists plan big rally on National Mall in March Rally site

Morning line

Obama 6 ahead of Romney
Romney leads GOP by 10
Romney leads Santorum by 111 delegates
Electoral count: Obama 226 -94
Based on our moving average of polls

The corporate media don't want to give away the plot, but the truth is that Romney is walking away with it in the GOP primaries and Obama not only leads him by six points, but in many states Obama is showing a clear improvement, probably reflecting growing independent voter discomfort with the Republican circus.

What we've been fighting for in Afghanistan

Guardian, UK - Women are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education and must always have a male guardian when they travel, according to new guidelines from Afghanistan's top clerics which critics say are dangerously reminiscent of the Taliban era.

The edicts appeared in a statement that also encouraged insurgents to join peace talks, fueling fears that efforts to negotiate an end to a decade of war, now gathering pace after years of false starts and dead ends, will come at a high cost to women.

The points agreed at a regular meeting of the Ulema Council of top clerics are not legally binding. But the statement detailing them was published by the president's office with no further comment, a move that has been taken as a tacit seal of approval.

"Ultimately, I don't see a way you can read it as not coming from (Hamid) Karzai," said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. "It's probably not an extreme position for the Ulema Council, but it's an extreme position for Karzai, and not compatible with the constitution, or Afghanistan's obligations under international law."

Infrequently asked questions

Why do liberals worry more about what the poor eat than what they earn?

Best medical journal letter of the week

Ashley M Croft & Joanne V Palmer, Lancet - Chi Pang Wen and colleagues claim that exercising for 15 min per day results in a 14% reduced risk of all-cause mortality (0•86, 95% CI 0•81¬0•91). Further, they claim that every additional 15 min of daily exercise beyond the minimum daily amount of 15 min reduces all-cause mortality by an additional 4% (2•5¬7•0). This cannot be true, however, since the risk of mortality is an absolute. The risk can be postponed, but it cannot be reduced, as Wen and colleagues claim, and nor can it be eliminated. In other words you can run faster, but you arrive later.

We are aware of just two reported exceptions to this otherwise invariable rule and they are Elijah, who while still alive went up by a whirlwind into heaven (Kings 2:11), and Enoch, who was translated that he should not see death (Genesis 5:24). The details of Enoch's final end are veiled in mystery but Elijah's heavenward passage in a fiery chariot was witnessed by his servant Elisha, who picked up Elijah's mantle as it fell to the ground and thereafter assumed his master's role as prophet. In any event, neither episode occurred in the context of a randomized controlled trial. We contend, therefore, that the risk of mortality for everyone—prophets included—is 1•0 (1•0-1•0).

Holder explains why he & Obama can murder who they want

A dictionary of regionalisms

How much America's police state is costing

Stephan Salisbury, Salon - So much money has gone into armoring and arming local law-enforcement since 9/11 that the federal government could have rebuilt post-Katrina New Orleans five times over and had enough money left in the kitty to provide job training and housing for every one of the record 41,000-plus homeless people in New York City. It could have added in the growing population of 15,000 homeless in Philadelphia, my hometown, and still have had money to spare. Add disintegrating Detroit, Newark, and Camden to the list. Throw in some crumbling bridges and roads, too...

Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security alone has doled out somewhere between $30 billion and $40 billion in direct grants to state and local law enforcement, as well as other first responders...

All told, the federal government has appropriated about $635 billion, accounting for inflation, for homeland security-related activities and equipment since the 9/11 attacks. To conclude, though, that “the police” have become increasingly militarized casts too narrow a net. The truth is that virtually the entire apparatus of government has been mobilized and militarized right down to the university campus.

Protesters use duct tape to make their point

WPTV - Officers arrived at the old City Hall site at North Olive Avenue and Banyan Boulevard this morning, arresting several 'Occupy' protesters who held their ground there despite eviction notices from the city.

Several protesters wrapped their arms in a combination of PVC piping and duct tape as a way to stay attached to a pipe on the second floor balcony over the entrance to the old City Hall building, according to PBSO. Fire rescue personnel were required to use a special tool to cut the piping and tape from protesters' arms without injuring them.

Warm weather eliminates maple syrup at New England farm

Eagle Tribune - Most Merrimack Valley residents are not complaining about what has so far been a mild, almost snowless winter.

The warmer-than-usual weather, however, has caused at least one drawback. Turtle Lane Maple Farm will not be able to make maple syrup this year.

Paul Boulanger and Kathy Gallagher, owners of the farm, explained that a tree needs a combination of cold temperatures at night and warm temperatures during the daytime to get the sap flowing.

The mild winter has affected other producers as well, Boulanger added.

Obama threatens illegal war against Iran

Michael Hirsh, National Journal - In a rousing election-year speech to the powerful Jewish lobby in Washington, President Obama on Sunday sought to eliminate any remaining daylight between the United States and Israel, especially on the threat from Iran. In so doing he may have succeeded both at firing up Jewish voter support¬and at bringing America closer to another war.

Directly confronting the threat from Tehran in a more aggressive way than he ever has before, Obama declared that a nuclear-armed Iran equally violates Israel’s interests and “the national security interests of the United States.” He tried to remove any remaining doubts about his willingness to use force himself and to green-light, under the right circumstances, Israel’s own right to use it, even while urging Israeli leaders to observe a timetable that would delay action until after the U.S. election in November. Deploying important code words familiar to AIPAC and its supporters, Obama said Iran’s leaders “should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

Obama delivered something close to the guarantee that Israelis and many American Jewish supporters of Israel were looking for: a pledge that if diplomacy, sanctions and pressure don’t work, he will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. “I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power,” Obama said. “A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.”

AIPAC bars three progressive journalists from its conference

Jerusalem Post - AIPAC turned down requests for coverage of its annual policy conference from at least three web and news sites known for their critical and sometimes hostile coverage of Israel.

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said there were a number of considerations in turning away the journalists, but would only name one -- the volume of applications for coverage.

Journalists turned away include Mitchell Plitnick, a liberal blogger who has sparred with right-wing pro-Israel groups as well as anti-Zionists, and who was going to provide coverage for Inter Press Service, which emphasizes developing nations coverage as well as what it calls marginalized groups; Adele Stan of AlterNet, a news site that says it encourages advocacy in a number of areas, including human rights and social justice; and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist site.

Plitnick had been cleared for coverage, only to be told that it was rescinded, and Weiss has covered AIPAC policy conferences at least three times without incident.

Barring coverage in Washington is rare; Government institutions in Washington are known for accommodating a broad range of journalists, including those adamantly hostile to the government of the day.

It can happen: Congressional Republicans and Democrats did something sensible

Alternet - One of the little-noticed items attached to the extension of the payroll tax cut was a provision that would promote work-sharing as part of state unemployment insurance systems. The provision, which is based on a bill introduced in the Senate by Jack Reed and in the House by Rosa DeLauro, would reimburse states for money spent on work-sharing programs that are part of their unemployment insurance system. It would also provide funds for the states that do not currently have work-sharing systems to establish them.

This provision is a rare victory of bipartisanship and commonsense. The basic logic of work-sharing is straightforward. Under the current system of unemployment insurance, workers who lose their jobs can get roughly half of their pay in benefits. However, if a worker has their hours cut back because of inadequate demand, they don't get in any way compensated for the lost pay. This effectively encourages employers to go the route of layoffs, rather than shortening work hours, since that is the only way that workers can benefit from unemployment insurance.

Work-sharing gets around this asymmetry. It allows workers to be compensated for part of their lost pay when their employer reduces their work hours. This means that if an employer decides to reduce the work hours of 50 workers by 20%, as opposed to laying off 10 workers, the 50 workers can get half of their lost pay (10% of their total pay) covered by unemployment insurance. This means that workers will end up working 20% fewer hours for roughly 10% less pay.

This is an outcome that is likely to better for workers, employers, and the economy as a whole. It is better for workers because it keeps them on the job and in a situation where they can be continually upgrading their skills in accordance with changes in the workplace.

By contrast, workers who are unemployed for long periods of time have great difficulty getting re-employed. Employers are reluctant to hire workers who have been out of the workforce for one to two years or longer. Unfortunately, a large number of workers now fall into this category.

G8 summit flees to hiding at Camp David

Infrequently asked questions

Name one other country that our leaders and our media treat as obsequiously as Israel.

Why climate change skeptics are wrong: the basic facts

Great moments in transparency

“At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs’ Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press." - Announcement from the Vice President's office

British police conspired to bar progressive construction workers

The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country's major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that records that could only have come from the police or MI5 have been discovered in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims who were deemed leftwing or troublesome.

The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry.- Guardian, UK.

Over one million Americans live on less than $2 a day

The collapse of print advertising in one graphic

Why Wendell Barry doesn't like movements

Wendell Barry, The Greenhorns - I have had with my friend Wes Jackson a number of useful conversations about the necessity of getting out of movements even movements that have seemed necessary and dear to us when they have lapsed into self-righteousness and self-betrayal, as movements seem almost invariably to do. People in movements too readily learn to deny to others the rights and privileges they demand for themselves. They too easily become unable to mean their own language, as when a “peace movement” becomes violent. They often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not be radical enough.

And so I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of children. Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone. I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized, they are not comprehensive enough, they are not radical enough, they virtually predict their own failure by implying that we can remedy or control effects while leaving causes in place. Ultimately, I think, they are insincere; they propose that the trouble is caused by other people; they would like to change policy but not behaviour.

CONTINUE

Hartford school superintendent to engage in mass child abuse

Vanessa de la Torre, Hartford Courant - Superintendent Christina Kishimoto ... wants all children entering kindergarten at the city's lowest-performing schools to have an 11-month school year. That means the tearful first day of class would be July 30.

The kindergartners would remain in school through Aug. 17, and then return for the districtwide 2012-13 opening day on Aug. 28, according to plans recently outlined to the city school board.

The state Department of Education is not aware of other Connecticut school systems that have taken this approach with kindergarten, department spokesman Mark Linabury said.

School officials readily acknowledge that kindergarten skipped past Play-Doh long ago and has barreled into first grade territory.

"Play? No. No, no, no," Betances Principal Immacula Didier said. "This is no longer the case. Even in pre-K, for us, it's no longer the case."

The national Common Core State Standards that Connecticut adopted in 2010 raise the expectations of what public school students should know...

Keystone XL oil won't even stay in the U.S.

Eleanor Cift, Daily Beast - The easy caricature [about Keystone XL] is not true, and it’s not the whole story, says Rep. Ed Markey, the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. Markey agrees it would be “a very good thing if the U.S. could be reliant on North American-produced oil,” but that’s not what the Canadians intend, he says. Keystone oil is headed for Port Arthur, Texas¬a foreign-trade zone that allows tax-free transactions¬and then on to Asia, not the U.S. This is an important point that is rarely made. “That foreign-trade zone is what made me suspicious of what the real agenda was for this oil,” says Markey. Keystone Pipeline Protest

At a congressional hearing in December, Markey asked the president of TransCanada if he would agree to allowing Keystone XL oil and its refined products to stay in the U.S. He said no. So Markey then proposed an amendment to that effect, and Republicans said no¬that it couldn’t be done, because the market for oil is not just domestic; it’s global. What Canada wants to do, says Markey, “is create a connection between Alberta and Asia and use the United States as the place where the pipeline gets constructed. And so if that’s all we are is a middleman in this transaction, then the American people should know that.”

House trashes Constitution again

Boing Boing - HR437, "the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011" makes it illegal to protest in the vicinity of anyone who rates a Secret Service detail (even if you aren't aware of the person's presence), thus sparing politicians and VIPs the ugly and unseemly spectacle of having to confront voters who disagree with their policies. Only three Congressmen voted against it.

Highly rated NYC teacher strikes back at the honor

Julie Cavanagh, NY Daily News - According to the numbers, I am a highly effective New York City public school teacher. But you won't see me jumping for joy over the news.

My teacher data report, along with those of 18,000 other teachers, was released last week by the Education Department after a lengthy legal battle. That report says I have a career rating that falls at or above the 95th percentile in both English and math...

In fact, plenty of teachers in my school also have average-to-high ratings. Every year, however, when test scores are released, we do not celebrate; instead, we exhale and then get back to the real work of teaching.

Since the reports were released last week, the debate has been raging about whether a formula prone to as much as 53% in margin of error is the best way to judge the effectiveness of teachers. Self-proclaimed reformers say yes; those who understand teaching say otherwise...

Imagine if doctors were held accountable based on the death rate of their patients, regardless of environmental factors and whether prescribed treatment was followed.

Imagine if firefighters were held accountable based on fire injuries and deaths, even though they didn’t start the fires, their budgets had been cut and most of the homes in their district didn’t have fire alarms...

No standardized test score can quantify what we do. In fact, we succeed in spite of -- not because of -- the testing culture that has pervaded our classrooms since Mayor Bloomberg took office.

Students are not created the same, even though the DOE seems to believe we can compare their teachers as if the classroom were nothing more than a repository of numerical data to be finessed and analyzed.

I know countless teachers whose ratings were not as favorable as mine and my colleagues'. These teachers are no less successful with their students. In fact, many of these teachers serve children who actually outperform the children I serve. But because they didn’t show as much progress, their teacher’s "value" is lower.

In other cases, teachers serve children with more significant needs. For example, children who need English-language instruction or special education -- as well as students who fall below the poverty line. All these factors impact the validity of test scores.

In a democracy, our elected leaders are supposed to be responsive to the people they serve. As a teacher, I apply this same democratic principle to my work. And so the parents I serve know I am a good teacher not because of their child's test score, but because they come to our classroom, see their child's work and hear my estimation of that child's growth.

No formula can measure the value of the relationships at the heart of good teaching.

Test tyrants attack Swiss schools

Stats

Percentage of Americans who have been arrested by the age of twenty-three: 30 - Harper's Index

Marijuana can help prevent suicide

Why the problem isn't lack of bipartisanship

Jonathan Weiler, Huffington Post - The Olympia Snowes of the world can complain all they want about the lack of middle ground. And the mainstream media can continue to whine about a lack of bi-partisanship. But these plaints misapprehend fundamentally the dynamics of American politics. Right-wing extremism has gone mainstream in today's GOP and not just via the Tea Party, as is evident almost every time Rick Santorum opens his mouth or Romney repudiates yet another of his formerly moderate positions. We're polarized largely because one party has simply gone off the deep end.

Costa Concordia was second cruise ship crashed by captain

Radar Online - The Costa Concordia was the second cruise ship crashed with Captain Francesco Schettino at the helm, according to internal company documents leaked and published in several Italian newspapers.

The captain, who has denied any wrongdoing in the wreck of the Costa Concordia, also damaged the Aida Blu cruise ship in June 2010 after sailing too quickly into a German harbor where he “maneuvered at a speed of 7.7 to 7.9 knots during entry into the port of Warnemunde.”

Schettino's response to his employer: “I did not know the speed limit and have not received notification of an infraction from the relevant authorities."

NY Times joins Santorum campaign

From ‘Nominal Catholic’ to Clarion of Faith - Actual headline in the NY Times

Disaster hints

Boing Boing - The Disaster Preparedness Plan prepared by the local DHS for Union County NC explains what steps you should take if you have to evacuate and take your pet fish: "Your name and where you will be located should be on an ID tag and taped to the fish bowl. This should include your description of all your fish and pictures of them with you in the pictures for identification purposes."

Bender Bending Rodríguez elected to school board thanks to electronic vote hacking

Recovered history: press hype goes back a long way

Wikipedia - In 1922, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter undertook a detailed quantitative study of crime reporting in Cleveland newspapers for the month of January 1919, using column inch counts. They found that, whereas, in the first half of the month, the total amount of space given over to crime was 925 inches, in the second half it leapt to 6642 inches. This was in spite the fact that the number of crimes reported had only increased from 345 to 363. They concluded that although the city's much publicized "crime wave" was largely fictitious and manufactured by the press, the coverage had a very real consequence for the administration of criminal justice.

Because the public believed they were in the middle of a crime epidemic, they demanded an immediate response from the police and the city authorities. These agencies wishing to retain public support, complied, caring "more to satisfy popular demand than to be observant of the tried process of law." The result was a greatly increased likelihood of miscarriages of justice and sentences more severe than the offenses warranted.

Via Mike Bell

Seventeen states have introducted bills for state banks

Infrequently asked questions

Why do liberals spend so much time talking about something mean that Rush Limbaugh said and so little about how to get out of Afghanistan, restore civil liberties, find jobs for the unemployed, or help homeowners threatened with foreclosure? Could this be one reason that Rush Limbaugh is so powerful and that we can't get out of Afghanistan?

So how come Hillary Clinton's allowed to be Secretary of State

Washington Post - Foreign Service members who cheat on their spouses could wind up in hot water with their employer--even if their liaisons take place off the government clock and between consenting adults.

The State Department has proposed disciplinary action against Foreign Service members for engaging in extramarital affairs, and in at least one case, indicated that the number of partners involved constituted “notoriously disgraceful conduct,” according to a report in the March issue of the Foreign Service Journal, a publication produced by the American Foreign Service Association.

The article described how the department in 2011 proposed disciplinary action against “a handful” of employees for their off-duty conduct, which included extra-marital affairs. The association complained that the department had never advised employees that the number of partners they slept with could subject them to discipline. It also decried the “tenuous connection” between the accused employees’ jobs and their supposedly randy off-duty behavior.

Judge’s Decision on Illinois Eavesdropping Law a Victory for the Right to Record

Firedog Lake - In a ruling that could be considered good news for citizen journalists or livestreamers planning to cover the G8/NATO summit protests in Chicago in May, a Cook County judge in Illinois ruled the state’s eavesdropping law is unconstitutional.

According to a Chicago Tribune report, Judge Stanley Sacks found the law is unconstitutional because it has the potential to criminalize “wholly innocent conduct.”
The Illinois eavesdropping law is a state law that makes it illegal to record police without their consent.

The ruling issued was handed down in the case of artist Christopher Drew. In December 2009, Drew, who has a history of challenging the city’s restrictions on the selling of art, was peddling silk-screened patches for $1 in an act of civil disobedience. A First Amendment lawyer and a team of photographers filmed his arrest. The police let the filming go, and Drew was arrested. When it was time for Drew to face his charges, he found out he had been given a Class 1 felony charge for violating the Illinois Eavesdropping Act and filming his arrest. This meant he faced a possible sentence of fifteen years in prison.

How loss of sea ice can cause more winter snowfall

National Geographic - From 2007 to 2011, large parts of the U.S., northwestern Europe, and northern and central China experienced early or abnormally heavy snowfall.

Some scientists have speculated that such harsh winters might be a result of disappearing Arctic sea ice, which reached a record low in 2007 due to global warming, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

To test that theory, scientists entered data about Arctic sea ice and sea-surface temperatures into a climate model created by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The results pinpointed two mechanisms for how a decline in sea ice could lead to more snowfall.

For one, major sea ice loss could alter how air circulates in the atmosphere, so that more cold air masses from the Arctic would travel farther south. At the same time, melting sea ice also exposes more ocean water, which results in increased water vapor in the atmosphere that can be transformed into snow.

"The implication from this research is, if Arctic sea ice continues to decrease, we will probably see more snowfall and stronger snowstorms in the winter," said study leader Jiping Liu, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The Keystone XL Will Raise Gas Prices

Obama Likens Himself To Gandhi And Nelson Mandela

Real Clear Politics - "The civil rights movement was hard. Winning the vote for women was hard. Making sure that workers had some basic protections was hard," President Obama said at a fundraiser while talking about how difficult it is to bring about "change" in politics.

"Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president. It takes more than a single individual," Obama said.

"What it takes is ordinary citizens who keep believe, who are committed to fighting and pushing and inching this country closer and closer to our highest ideals. And I said in 2008, 'that I am not a perfect man and I will not be a perfect president.' But I promised you, but I promised you, I promised you back then that I would always tell you what I believe. I would always tell you where I stood," he also said at a fundraiser in NYC.

TSA Asks Female Passenger to 'Prove' Breast Pump is Real

POGO Adds 40 New Cases to Federal Contractor Misconduct Database¬Here are 5 Doozies

POGO has added 40 new cases to its Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. From charging for imaginary employees, to ripping off firefighters and defrauding Medicaid. . .

Huge Mortgage Deal Will Help Almost None Of Those Hit Hardest

Huffington Post:

How many homeowners will benefit from the $25 billion mortgage settlement that state attorneys general reached with the banks last month? The biggest portion of the deal -- about $17 billion -- is dedicated to reducing the mortgage principal for those who owe more than their homes are worth. Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institution runs the numbers and finds that 500,000 homeowners will get principal reductions -- just 5 percent of underwater mortgages.

States where Americans Elect, group promoting bipartisan ticket, has qualified ... - Washington Post

Washington Post:

States where the group has cleared signature or access thresholds: Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Florida Kansas Maine Michigan Mississippi Nevada New Mexico Ohio Rhode Island Utah Vermont Wyoming

What America Can Learn From Portugal's Drug War Reforms

What America Can Learn From Portugal's Drug War Reforms: The level of conflicts on the street are reduced. Drug-related robberies are reduced. And now the police are not the enemies of the consumers.

Oceans Turning Acidic Faster than Past 300 Million Years

Oceans Turning Acidic Faster than Past 300 Million Years: The oceans are becoming acidic more rapidly than ever before, research indicates.

Ben And Jerry Raise Dough For Occupy Movement

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founder's of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, are part of a group of business leaders trying to raise money for Occupy Wall Street to help it regain its earlier momentum. Host Scott Simon talks with them about how they've already raised $300,000 and aim to raise $1.5 million more.

Recovered history: Dealing with LL Bean

Sam Smith

In the early 1980s, I set out to buy some fishing tackle for my sons. My first stop was LL Beans, now celebrating its 100th anniversary. I wasn't going to waste money on fancy gear but I thought I might pick up some nice hooks in the display case there.
I said to the clerk, "I haven't been fishing since I was a kid and all we used were mackerel jigs."

"They still work pretty good."

Mackerel jigs were simply a hook extending from a elongated diamond - shaped weight, so I left Beans having spent all of $2.19. My next stop was Mel's Sports. Mel had some nice but inexpensive metal reels so I picked up a couple.

"These for fresh watah or salt?" he asked unsolicited.

"Salt."

"You'd do better with the plastic reels."

It was true, but Mel lost a couple of bucks in the deal.

My last stop was a hardware store in the Falmouth shopping center. I walked in with my sons and asked about rods.

"These for you or your boys?"

"My boys."

"Well, I wouldn't buy these; they're too good. Go over to Zayres and get the Zebco Z-29. That'll do just fine."

L.L. Bean has a worldwide reputation of honesty and good customer relations, but Bean's wasn't that exceptional for Maine. I once bought a used car for my son sight unseen over the phone from David DeGrandpre at R & D Automotive. I figured I'd do better that way than buying a visible vehicle in a Washington lot. I was right. The car made two round trips across the country and innumerable college commutes before collapsing in Mohab, Utah. Even then, my son got enough for the car to complete his trip to the west coast by train and bus.

Some of the best stories still come from Beans, though. Like the New York lady who complained that her wood stove was smoking up her living room. When pressed about how she had the flue set up, it turned out that she was not aware of flues and had just plunked the device down in her Manhattan living room and started burning wood. Bean's convinced her to send the stove back and gave her a refund. Another urban customer was upset because the wreath bought the previous December had turned brown in the intervening year. Bean's sent $25 so the customer could buy a new one in time for Christmas.

Once my mother called on what she suspected was a hopeless search to find a certain color yarn to finish her L.L Bean hunting boot needlepoint. The operator said she had been working on the same pattern and had some left to which my mother was welcomed if she'd come by her house to pick it up.

And in the 60s when we received a damaged order, the company promptly replaced it. In the package were postage stamps in the same amount as the ones we had used returning the item.

Of course, LL Bean was also the pinnacle of local power. For a number of years after dial service was introduced, the store - being the only place in town open 24 hours a day and the town being without operators -served as the emergency center.

At one local tells it, "A person dialing to report a fire got the register counter in the LL Bean salesroom. A clerk took the call, got the necessary information, hung up, flipped the necessary switches activating the whistle and. . . wholesale clerk evacuation usually followed. . .Of course, the size and demands of the Bean salesroom today would not permit half of the sales staff hurtling out the door every time the fire whistle sounded."

Much more useful for Bean was the fact that the US Post Office below the store and factory was a tenant of its biggest mailer and that LL's brother Guy was the postmaster.

Public likes Medicare better than private fee for service

Mark Blumenthal, National Journal, 2011 -Americans "are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care." So writes Republican pollster Frank Luntz in a widely circulated set of talking points on how to stop a "government takeover" of health care.

Yet in summing up recent survey results, the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly and Jon Cohen write that poll questions "that equate the public option approach with the popular, patient-friendly Medicare system tend to get high approval, as do ones that emphasize the prospect of more choices."

Indeed, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found 62 percent of Americans expressing support for "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans." Other pollsters describing the public option as "government administered" and "similar to Medicare" gauged even more positive reactions: 67 percent in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April and 72 percent in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll....

According to a national CAHPS survey conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2007, 56 percent of enrollees in traditional fee-for-service Medicare give their "health plan" a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale. Similarly, 60 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare Managed Care rated their plans a 9 or 10. But according to the CAHPS surveys compiled by HHS, only 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans a 9 or 10 rating.

Nature disappearing from children's books

USA Today - Researchers at several universities reviewed about 8,100 images in 296 children's books. The books were all Caldecott Medal winners and honorees from 1938 to 2008. The Caldecott awards are given annually to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Researchers categorized images as containing either a natural environment, such as a jungle or forest; a built environment, such as a house, school or office; or a modified environment, such as a mowed lawn, park or farm field. They also identified wild and domestic animals. The findings, published in February's Sociological Inquiry:

•Early in the study period, built environments were the primary environments in about 35% of images. By the end of the study, they were primary environments about 55% of the time.

•Early in the study, natural environments were the primary environments about 40% of the time; by the end, the figure was roughly 25%.

Images of wild animals and domestic animals declined dramatically over time, says lead author Al Williams of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: "The natural environment and wild animals have all but disappeared in these books."

Rating Congress

Most liberal and most conservative members of the Senate & House

How the war on drugs hurts businesses and investors

What Olympia Snowe's 'moderation' cost cities and states

Jamelle Bouie, American Prospect - You might remember that in 2009, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe pressed for Democrats to reduce the size of the bill [to provide aid to teachers, police and firefighters] by $100 billion as a condition for securing her support. There was no particular reason for shaving that much off of the bill¬it was just a nice, round number that she liked. And because she occupied the important pivot point in the Senate, Democrats couldn’t do much to limit her cuts.

The problem, besides the fact that the smaller the stimulus the less effective it would be, is that her cuts came directly from aid for states and localities. Aid that could have saved public jobs as the recession continued, and aid that might have kept colleges from cutting valuable training.

In a lot of ways, this sums up the problem with Snowe’s vaunted moderation¬it had no point. It was moderation for the sake of moderation, and more often than not (as with the Bush tax cuts, for example), it resulted in bad policy. Her retirement might be bad for Senate comity, but as far as actual lawmaking is concerned, it strikes me as a good thing.

The foreclosure-rental boondoggle

Mike Whitney, Counterpunch - The reason that housing prices have dipped only 33.6 percent in the United States instead of 60 percent as they have in Ireland, is because the big banks have been keeping inventory off the market. If the millions of homes–that are presently headed for foreclosure–were suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would plunge and the biggest banks in the country would be declared insolvent. That’s why the banks have slowed the flow of foreclosures....

New home buyers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would be if the banks were not manipulating inventory, so there are real victims in this scam. ... The bankers even have a name for this arrangement; they call it “squatters rent” and they estimate it costs them an extra $60 billion per year. They would rather pay that hefty sum then foreclose quickly and have to write down the losses which would leave them broke.

Gingrich's amazing history of debts, bankruptcies, and other screw ups

The Senate: America's most powerful private club

For many years, we have argued that if the Senate were a public school it would be under court ordered busing, if it was a corporation it couldn't get any government contracts, and if it was a private club, members would want to resign before running for public office.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service supports this view.

At the beginning of the 112th Congress only 2% of the senators were latino, 2% Asian American and none were black.

There have been some changes, however. Back in the 79th Congress (1945-47) only 56% of members of the House held a bachelor's degree. By the latest Congress the figure was 95%. Nationally, only 27% of of adult Americans have attended four years of college.
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Capital's unemployment chart shows an American story

Why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill

Bruce Levine - In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority¬sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and sometimes not.

Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities.

Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world¬a diagnosable one.

I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.

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