I heard it in reference to our atmosphere passing beyond the “tipping point” of 400 parts per million CO2. Climate change has happened – we’ve passed the tipping point. I saw this graphically presented this week in the striking images in the feature-length documentary, “HOME.”

http://www.youtube.com/movie/HOME

I heard the term used in the PBS documentary series, “Why Poverty? Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream,” which I also viewed this week. It’s a look at the dangerously widening gap between the rich and poor, and the Koch brothers and others who are promoting and exacerbating that gap.

http://www.youtube.com/user/WhyPoverty

And finally I heard the term “tipping point” used by the Dalai Lama in New Orleans over the weekend. His Holiness referred to both the economic crisis of our planet and the environmental crisis of our planet as “tipping points.” In glaring contrast to the image of a global economy that we are destroying and a global environment that we are destroying, His Holiness preached the following message:

Dalai Lama in New Orleans

“This must become a century of compassion, on a global level, if we are to overcome our false and dangerous understanding of ‘our country’ and ‘their country,’ in order to overcome the widening gap between rich and poor, in order to reverse the trend of global warming. These will be the root causes of violence going forward if we are not successful in developing a sense of global community through the cultivation of a profound sense of personal and communal compassion. Today’s problems are global and will require global solutions, but that must start with our individual efforts to cultivate compassion.”

       I urge you to take the time to view both documentaries, “HOME” and “Why Poverty?” and then ponder the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama:

“Global warming does not discriminate. We all live under the same atmospheric roof.”

“Whether you believe in religion or not, we all need to have a concern for others.”

His Holiness noted that we are at a tipping point, then ended by saying, “I’m optimistic.”

* * * * *

]]> http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2013/05/21/tipping-points/feed/ 0 http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2013/05/20/scandal-eyes/ http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2013/05/20/scandal-eyes/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 01:32:53 +0000 Hart Williams http://thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=16856 Continue reading → ]]> The “Whitewater” school of phony outrage has been turned all the way up to eleven on the media amplifiers.

from “This is Spinal Tap”

There is nothing surprising in this. What is surprising is that the same tired con works on the same tired brains with the same tired conclusions that it did back in the good ‘ol Ken Starr daze:

Obama’s Counsel Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago
Peter Nicholas / Wall Street Journal

The White House’s chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday…

Making the case for evolution even more dodgy.

Worse: this:

 Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
Jeffrey Lord / American Spectator

“For me, it’s about collaboration.”  — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House  —  Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?

You would think that intelligent reporters who WEREN’T pushing the Goebbels-esque agit-prop of Rupert Murdoch would KNOW better than to swallow this swill at face value, or would have the INTELLECTUAL ACUMEN to perform the syllogism:

If A, then B.

If B, then C, therefore

If A, then C,

where

A = IRS investigation

B = “Tea Party”  and

C = Koch Brothers founded and funded

But no logic courses are required to become a “journalist” a “pundit” or someone with their panties perpetually in a knot. None whatsoever, and they put their ignorance to good use in missing the forest for the trees.

Therefore, these pseudo-Watergate phony time lines and “who knew what when” and nobody ever asking why the most vicious crypto-oligarchs get to skate, scot-free of any inquiry, while the mentally challenged (like TIME‘s Joe Klein) can write imbecilic analyses like this and retain their jobs when journalism professionals are rife as dandelions and journalism jobs are scarce as “news” on Faux Nooz™:

The irs’s  [sic] targeting of Tea Party groups is, however, an actual full-blown scandal. In fact, it is several scandals…

Or, rather, he WILL say next Monday, since the TIME article online says

Sorting Out the Scandals

By Joe Klein Monday, May 27, 2013

Screencap on May 20, 2013
on the “TIME” magazine site

How credible do you rate a news organization that can’t even get the date to within, say, six days of the ACTUAL date? Especially when it calls itself “TIME”?

What truly frightens me, however, is the sheer, raw ignorance and cluelessness that this paragraph from the redoubtable Mr. Klein represents, surely a proof of how easily media types are hornswoggled by Murdochian media machinations:

A less obvious scandal is the question of why we have 501(c)(4)s in the first place. Why should groups promoting “social welfare”–now there’s a category!–get a tax break? And also: How on earth did we get to the point where we have a tax code so complicated that regulation 501 has a subset (c) and a further subset (4)?

Seriously, dude? Did you dress yourself this morning, because the sheer dumbassery of that statement blows my mind. Here’s the easy one: how did we get to the point? Uh, we have a COMPLEX society, oh dumbass. I bet there are that many chapters in your Smith-Corona Shop Manual, which you undoubtedly own, since you can’t possibly have figured out computers, and would have to own, since nobody services your typewriter anymore.

Ditto reporters

But to take a moment to UNDERSTAND the depth of this dumbassery, I’ve explained AT LENGTH on this blog since 2006 what 501(c)3′s and (c)4′s are. Here’s the code that Mr. Retarded finds so impossibly complex.

(BTW: USC, means The Code of Laws of the United States of America, period. Not “tax code.” Title 26 is Tax Code. Title 18 deals with federal crimes, penalties and prisons. Title 42 is a grab bag that INCLUDES Social Security and Medicare, and Title 50 covers War and National Defense, including the secrecy and espionage laws that are the basis for the big Faux Nooz riff on the AP ‘scandal’. Just skim down and read the red HIGHLIGHTED stuff):

26 U.S.C. § 501 : US Code – Section 501: Exemption from tax on corporations, certain trusts, etc.

(a) Exemption from taxation

An organization described in subsection (c) or (d) or section 401(a) shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle unless such exemption is denied under section 502 or 503.

(b) Tax on unrelated business income and certain other activities An organization exempt from taxation under subsection (a) shall be subject to tax to the extent provided in parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter, but (notwithstanding parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter) shall be considered an organization exempt from income taxes for the purpose of any law which refers to organizations exempt from income taxes.

(c) List of exempt organizations
The following organizations are referred to in subsection (a):

(1) Any corporation organized under Act of Congress which is an instrumentality of the United States but only if such corporation – (A) is exempt from Federal income taxes – (i) under such Act as amended and supplemented before July 18, 1984, or (ii) under this title without regard to any provision of law which is not contained in this title and which is not contained in a revenue Act, or (B) is described in subsection (l).

(2) Corporations organized for the exclusive purpose of holding title to property, collecting income therefrom, and turning over the entire amount thereof, less expenses, to an organization which itself is exempt under this section. Rules similar to the rules of subparagraph (G) of paragraph (25) shall apply for purposes of this paragraph.

(3) Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.

(4)(A) Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of a designated person or persons in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes. (B) Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to an entity unless no part of the net earnings of such entity inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

(5) Labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations.

(6) Business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade, or professional football leagues (whether or not administering a pension fund for football players), not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

(7) Clubs organized for pleasure, recreation, and other nonprofitable purposes, substantially all of the activities of which are for such purposes and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder.

(8) Fraternal beneficiary societies, orders, or associations  … etc

That was Title 26 of the US Code, section 501 sub-paragraphs (c)( 3) and (c)( 4)!

You could look it up!

Got it?

Joe Klein sure doesn’t. A high school kid could figure that out, Joe. Now, a leap outside the box/bottle Klein keeps his brains in.

A Klein Bottle
(impossible in three-dimensional space)

But before we jump, consider how it is that a successful pickpocket gang runs a crowd. The wallet has already passed through two sets of hands before the quickest ‘mark’ can react.

Republicans are expected to zero in on the question of who in the Obama administration’s senior ranks knew about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, especially before the November election last year.

Republican lawmakers on House oversight committees are pressing the investigation, with more hearings set for this week. (Wall St. Journal, above, or ibid.)

“the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups”? You mean looking for anonymous Koch bucks in Tea Party 501(c)4′s? Take a gander at this, kiddies, and tell me that C4′s aren’t being abused by long-time Koch associates:

• Did Howie Rich Break the Law in Illinois … Again? (17 January 2010)

How a 501(c)4 is used in straight-up illegal campaigning

Like any good con game, distraction is the key to the crime. The distraction is obvious, so what’s the crime it’s covering, GOPs?

Stages of the Con

In Confessions of a Confidence Man, Edward H. Smith lists the “six definite steps or stages of growth in every finely balanced and well-conceived confidence game.”

“One follows the other with absolute precision. In some games one or more of these acts, to use a theatrical comparison, may be dropped out, but where that happens the game is not a model one. The reference to the stage is apt, for the fine con game has its introduction, development, climax, dénouement and close, just like any good play. And this is not the only analogy to the drama, for the scenes are often as carefully set; the background is always a vital factor. In the colorful and mirthful language of the bunko man, all these parts of the game have their special names. I give them with their definitions:

Foundation Work

The preparations which are made before the scheme is put in motion, including the elaboration of the plan, the employment of assistants and so forth.

Approach

The manner of getting in touch with the victim—often most elaborately and carefully prepared.

Build-up

Rousing and sustaining the interest of the victim, introducing the scheme to him, rousing his greed, showing him the chance of profit and filling him so full of anticipation and cupidity that his judgment is warped and his caution thrown away.

Pay-off or Convincer

An actual or apparent paying of money by the conspirators to convince the victim and settle doubts by a cash demonstration. In the old banco game the initial small bets which the victim was allowed to win were the pay-off. In stock swindles the fake dividends sent to stockholders to encourage larger investments are the pay-off.

The Hurrah

This is like the dénouement in a play and no con scheme is complete without it. It is a sudden crisis or unexpected development by which the sucker is pushed over the last doubt or obstacle and forced to act. Once the hurrah is sprung the victim is clay in the schemer’s hands or there is no game.

The In-and-In

This is the point in a con game where the conspirator puts some of his money into the deal with that of the victim; first, to remove the last doubt that may tarry in the gull’s mind, and, second, to put the con man in control of the situation after the deal is completed, thus forestalling a squeal. Often the whole game is built up around this feature and just as often it does not figure at all.

In addition, some games require what is called “corroboration,” which means what it says. This is important in games where a banker or other shrewd customer is to be the victim.”

Now, I don’t exactly know the game they’re playing, but this seems the most likely parallel:

Mystery shopping 

There is a fraudulent confidence trick (a form of advance fee fraud) perpetrated on people in several countries who wish to be mystery shoppers. A person is sent amoney order, often from Western Union, or check for a larger sum than a mystery purchase he is required to make, with a request to deposit it into his bank account, use a portion for a mystery purchase and fee, and wire the remainder through a wire transfer company such as Western Union or MoneyGram; the money is to be wired immediately as response time is being evaluated. The check is fraudulent, and is returned unpaid by the victim’s bank, after the money has been wired.

Or, to put it another way: Certain treasonous vermin cannot accept the results of elections. As part of their fundamental rejection of the Constitution AND Declaration, they continually create fifth columns entitled Whitewater, then Birth Certificate, and now Benghazi. Fortunately, like planaria, their behaviors are not the result of thought, but of instinct, and are equally predictable.

Courage.

Cross-posted from his vorpal sword.

by Walter Brasch

Julia Trigg Crawford of Direct, Texas, is the manager of a 650-acre farm that her grandfather first bought in 1948. The farm produces mostly corn, wheat, and soy. On its north border is the Red River; to the west is the Bois d’Arc Creek.

TransCanada is an Alberta-based corporation that is building the controversial Keystone Pipeline that will carry bitumen—thicker, more corrosive and toxic, than crude oil—through 36-inch diameter pipes from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast, mostly to be exported. The $2.3 billion southern segment, about 485 miles from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast is nearly complete. With the exception of a 300-mile extension between Cushing and Steele City, Neb., the rest of the $7 billion 1,959 mile pipeline is being held up until President Obama either succumbs to corporate and business pressures or blocks the construction because of environmental and health concerns.

When TransCanada first approached Crawford’s father in 2008, and offered to pay about $7,000 for easement rights, he refused, telling the company, “We don’t want you here.” He said the corporation could reroute the line, just as other pipeline companies in oil-rich Texas had done for decades. TransCanada increased the offer in the following years, but the family still refused. In August 2012, with Dick Crawford’s daughter, Julia Trigg Crawford now managing the farm, TransCanada offered $21,626 for an easement—and a threat. “We were given three days to accept their offer,” she says, “and if we didn’t, they would condemn the land and seize it anyway.” She still refused.

And so, TransCanada, a foreign corporation exercised the right of eminent domain to seize two acres of the farm so it could build a pipeline.

Governments may seize private property if that property must be taken for public use and the owner is given fair compensation. Although the exercise of eminent domain to seize land for the public good is commonly believed to be restricted to the government, federal law permits natural gas companies to use it. To get that “right,” all TransCanada had to do was fill out a one-page form and check a box that the corporation to declare itself to be a “common carrier.” The Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas in Texas, merely processes the paper, rather than investigates the claim; it has admitted it has never denied “common carrier” status. In the contorted logic that is often spun by corporations, TransCanada then declared itself to be a common carrier because the Railroad Commission said it was, even though the Commission’s jurisdiction applies only to intrastate, not interstate, carriers.

On Aug. 21, 2012, the day before Judge Bill Harris of Lamar County rendered his decision on Crawford’s complaint, the sheriff, with the judge’s signature, issued a writ of possession giving TransCanada the right to seize the land. The next day, Harris issued a 15-word decision, transmitted by his iPhone, that upheld TransCanada’s rights. In Texas, as in most states, the landowner can only challenge the settlement not the action.

Crawford’s refusal to sell is based upon a mixture of reasons. The Crawford Farm is home to one of the most recognized Caddo Nation Indian burial sites in Texas, and the 30 acre pasture that TransCanada wants to trench represents the southern most boundary of this archeological site. Both the Texas Historical Commission and TransCanada’s archeological firm concur that  the vast majority of this 30 acres pasture in question qualifies for the National Registry of Historic Places. An archeological dig undertaken after TransCanada showed up to seize the land recovered 145 artifacts in just a 1,200 foot by 20 foot section, and three feet deep. But the executive director of the Texas Historical Commission recently sent a letter stating that no new artifacts had been found in the slice of land TransCanada planned to build.

Another reason Crawford refused to be bought out was that she didn’t want TransCanada to drill under the Bois d’Arc Creek “where we have state-given water rights.” That creek irrigates about 400 acres of her land. “Any leak, she says, “would contaminate our equipment, and then our crops in minutes.” It isn’t unreasonable to expect there will be an incident that could pollute the water, air, and soil for several miles.

During the past decade, there were 6,367 pipeline incidents, resulting in 154 deaths, 540 injuries, and more than 56 injuries, and $4.7 billion in property damage, according to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. A report released a year ago by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute concludes that economic damage caused by potential spills from the Keystone pipeline could outweigh the benefits of jobs created by the project. In the past three years, there have already been 14 spills on the operational parts of the Keystone Pipeline.

Crawford and her attorney, Wendi Hammond, have challenged TransCanada’s right to seize public property, arguing not only is TransCanada, which had net earnings of $1.3 billion last year, a foreign corporation, but it also doesn’t qualify as a “common carrier” since the benefit is primarily to itself. However, the Texas Court of Appeals may not rule until after the pipeline is laid down and covered. And even if it does rule for Crawford, TransCanada is likely to appeal. “They have far more lawyers and funds than we have,” says Crawford, who held a music festival last month to help raise funds. Additional donations have come from around the world, many from those who aren’t immediately affected by oil and gas exploration, transportation, and processing, but who understand the need to fight a battle that could, at some time, affect them.

“The company basically goes to court, files condemnation petitions, says, ‘We are common carrier, have the power of eminent domain, we are taking this property.’ And that’s all there is to it,” says Debra Medina, of WeTexans, a grassroots organization opposed to the seizure of private land by private companies.

At least 89 Texas landowners have had their properties condemned and then seized by TransCanada. Eleanor Fairchild, a 78-year-old great-grandmother living on a 300-acre farm near Winnsboro, Texas, also protested the seizure of her land. She and her husband, a retired oil company geologist now deceased, bought the land in 1983. TransCanada planned to bisected her farm, which includes wetlands, natural springs, and woods.

In October, Fairchild and activist/actor Darryl Hannah raised their arms and stood before bulldozers and heavy equipment that were about to dig up the farm. Both women were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. Hannah was also charged with resisting arrest.

TransCanada isn’t the only oil and gas company that uses and bends eminent domain laws.

Chuck Paul, who lost about 30 of his 64 acre horse farm because of required easements by the natural gas industry, told the Fort Worth Weekly, “The gas companies pay a one-time fee for your land, but you lose the right to utilize it as anything more than grassland forever. . . . You can never build on those easements. They took my retirement away by eminent domain.”

In Arlington, Texas, Ranjana Bhandari and her husband, Kaushik De, refused to grant Chesapeake Energy the right to take gas beneath their home, although Chesapeake promised several thousand dollars in payments. “We decided not to sign because we didn’t think it was safe, but the Railroad Commission doesn’t seem to care about whose property is taken,” Bhandari told Reuters. Chesapeake seized the mineral rights and will capture natural gas beneath the family’s homes. Between January 2005 and October 2012, the Railroad Commission approved all but five of Chesapeake’s 1,628 requests to seize mineral rights, according to the Reuters investigation.

The Texas Supreme Court, in Texas Rice Land Partners and Mike Latta v. Denbury Green Pipeline–Texas (2012), had previously ruled, “Even when the Legislature grants certain private entities ‘the right and power of eminent domain,’ the overarching constitutional rule controls: no taking of property for private use.” In that same opinion, the Court also ruled, “A private enterprise cannot acquire unchallenged-able condemnation power . . .  merely by checking boxes on a one-page form and self-declaring its common-carrier status.” However, Texas has no public agency to set standards for seizing property by eminent domain.

Texas isn’t the only state that has a broad eminent domain policy that allows Big Energy to seize private property.

Most states’ new laws that “regulate” fracking were written by conservatives who traditionally object to “Big Government” and say they are the defenders of individual property rights. But, these laws allow oil and gas corporations to use the power of eminent domain to seize private property if the corporations can’t get the landowner to agree to an easement, lease, or sale. In Pennsylvania, Act 13 allows the natural gas industry to “appropriate an interest in real property [for] injection, storage and removal” of natural gas.

Sandra McDaniel, of Clearville, Pa., was forced to lease five of her 154 acres to Spectra Energy Corp., which planned to build a drilling pad. The government, says McDaniel, “took it away, and they have destroyed it.” According to Reuters, “McDaniel watched from the perimeter of the installation as three pipes spewed metallic gray water into plastic-lined pits, one of which was partially covered in a gray crust. As a sulfurous smell wafted from the rig, two tanker trucks marked ‘residual waste’ drove from the site.”

In Tyrone Twp., Mich., Debora Hense returned from work in August 2012 to find that Enbridge workers had created a 200 yard path on her property and destroyed 80 trees in order to run a pipeline. Because of an easement created in 1968 next to Hense’s property, Joe Martucci of Enbridge Energy Partners said his company had a legal right to “to use property adjacent to the pipeline.” Martucci says his company offered Hense $40,000 prior to tearing up her land, but she refused. Hense says she had a legal document to prevent Enbridge from destroying her property; Enbridge says it had permission from the Michigan Public Service Commission.

This week, heavy machinery rolled onto Julia Trigg Crawford’s farm. Crossing an easement and into a barbed wire enclosure that separates the land TransCanada seized from the rest of the farm, the bulldozers and graders are peeling away the topsoil of a 1,200 foot strip. Hundreds of wooden ties, now stacked like matchsticks a story high, brought by 18-wheelers crossing the agricultural land that Crawford and her family work, will be placed as tracks for more equipment.

On the farm is an old and creaky windmill, ravaged by time and a few shotgun shells. “But it’s still standing there,” says Crawford who may be a bit like that windmill. She’s a 6-foot tall former star basketball player for Texas A&M who is now standing tall and proud in a fight she says “began as a fight for my family,” but has now become one “for the people, for the landowners who wanted to stand up and fight for their rights but didn’t think they could.”

[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning syndicated columnist and professor emeritus of mass communications and journalism. Some of the information in this column appears in Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth overview of the effects of the fracking process upon health, the environment, agriculture, and worker safety; the book also has a broad discussion of the collusion between the energy industry and politics, and presents the truth about the economic effects.] 

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told CBS’ Face the Nation that ”some critics of the administration have a “cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.”"

Gates, a Republican who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2006 and agreed to stay through more than two years of President Obama’s first term, repeatedly declined to criticize the policymakers who devised a response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

“Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were,” said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.

“We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible.” he explained.

Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to “scare them with the noise or something,” Gates said, ignored the “number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi’s arsenals.”

“I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances,” he said.

Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, “send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous.”

“It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he said. “The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and there just wasn’t time to do that.”

Watch Bob Gates on Face The Nation:

by Walter Brasch

About 1.8 million students will graduate from college this year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At least one-third of them will graduate with honors. In some colleges, about half will be honor graduates.

It’s not that the current crop is that bright, it’s that honors is determined by grade point average. Because of runaway grade inflation, the average grade in college is now an “A.” About 43 percent of all college grades are “A”s, according to a recent study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, and published in the prestigious Teachers College Record.  About three-fourths of all grades are “A”s or “B”s.

Throw out the universal curve that applies to everything from height to house prices. That curve is reality. College grades are not.

At one time, the universal curve applied to college grades: “A”s were about 10 percent of all grades; “B”s were about 20 percent; “C”s were about 40 percent; “D”s were about 20 percent; and “F”s were about 10 percent. That grade break-down, which could be more or less, depending upon a number of factors, isn’t even ancient history—it’s more like an ethereal ghost that no one understands.

Drs. Rojstaczer and Healy report that in 1940 about 15 percent of all grades were “A”s. While grades of “B” have remained stable at about 35 percent for the past six decades, grades of “C” have dropped sharply from 35 percent to about 15 percent.  Grades of “D” have dropped by half over the past six decades, while grades of “F” apparently are issued only to those students who didn’t show up for class or whose brain is bottled in formaldehyde in a science lab.

Several studies show a high correlation between high grades issued by professors to students and high evaluations of professors by students.

Why that matters is that professors are pragmatic. College administrations have taken an easy way to evaluate professors’ teaching abilities by having students fill out a multi-question survey at the end of the semester. Professors know that 19-year-olds will typically rate “likable” and non-demanding professors higher. Add those evaluations to a few meaningless professional papers delivered to a couple of dozen yawning academics at boring conferences and a list of university committees the professor was appointed or elected to, and opportunities for tenure and promotion increase.

Although there are thousands of excellent professors who excel in all areas of teaching and scholarship, many professors, even those with a string of academic letters after their names, may not even be aware they are not as rigorous as they should be. After all, their own professors, wanting to be liked and promoted, may not have demanded significant academic sweat, so they aren’t aware of what reasonable criteria should be for their own students. There is also the reality that collegial “get-togethers” and participation on useless college committees—and being liked by one’s colleagues—may be an easier route to tenure and promotion than doing rigorous scholarship and demanding the same from students.

Because of grade inflation, students avoid professors who believe the grade of “C” is the average grade and who set up standards that require students to do more than show up, read a couple of hundred pages, and answer a few questions. Fewer students in classes usually results in questions from administrators who may claim they believe in academic rigor and integrity, but who have the souls of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Some departments traditionally grade tougher than others. Science and engineering departments tend to have lower overall grade averages than those in social sciences and humanities. Education programs tend to have the highest grade averages. It’s not unusual for the average grade in elementary education courses to be an A-minus, and in secondary education to be a B-plus. That means either our future teachers are brighter than the light from a supernova—or that some of the profs who are teaching our future teachers don’t know there are more than just two letters in the alphabet.

In some classes, at all educational levels, we don’t even require students to know anything more than hand signals, preparation of crib sheets, and techniques of paraphrasing five different articles and calling the result a research paper—assuming the professor even requires that much. The one class in which most students can legitimately earn a grade of “A” without cheating is Cheating.

Add into the slurpy mix of academics a few inconvenient pressures. Athletics coaches want to make sure their pack of future draft picks stay academically eligible. A significant minority of students spend more time trying to plea-bargain the professor into raising the grade than they do studying for the exams. And when plea-bargaining fails, hovering overhead are the helicopter parents who want to make sure professors truly understand how brilliant their darling children are, and how (horror!) a B-minus not only is the wrong grade, but can damage their darling little Boo-Boo’s fragile psyche and chances to become a Fortune 500 CEO. Besides, the parent reasons that buying a college degree is like buying a car—if you pay the money, you should get a car.

If the professor doesn’t yield to parental pressure, there’s always some administrator with jelly for a spine, and a pencil-brain that equates quality of education with how many children she or he can capture and put into brick-and-mortar buildings. The pursuit in college has been of achieving a critical mass of students who earn high enough grades to stay in college, sometimes for six years, rather than in developing knowledge and critical thinking skills—traits that administrators all claim they believe but don’t do more than pay “lip service.”

The problem of runaway grade inflation is that the exceptional student receives the same grade as the above average student, and the mediocre student can slide into a degree. Until professors stand up for academic rigor, even against the prattling of their administrators and the practices of their more “likable” peers, and are willing to push not only themselves but their students beyond their limits, there is no reason for students to expect academic rigor—and every reason for them to expect to be able to graduate with honors.

[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and professor emeritus from a Pennsylvania state university. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the health and environmental effects of deep earth drilling in the Marcellus Shale.]

Well, the rumor is that Sharyl Attkisson is going over to Faux Nooz, after a bizarre series of “walking Right Wing Konspiracies’ into the “mainstream” media. And lookie what the Faux Nooz crowd got today (not exactly refuting the rumor):

click to enlarge; click here to go there

Look at that sea of red.  Only Little Green Footballs and Daily Kos have any rebuttal to the massive right-wing red/pink blog kkkonspiracies. Because, you  know, the REAL criminals of the Benghazi attack were, conveniently, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. I mean, Terrists gone be terrists, raht?

This is naked Big Brother propaganda, only, weirdly, the evil Eurasians aren’t nearly the problems that our Very Own Oceana Official Is! War is peace! Ignorance is strength! (Right Winston?)

And here’s what Sharyl has to say … 

Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces told “you can’t go” to Benghazi during attacks By SHARYL ATTKISSON / CBS NEWS/ May 6, 2013, 12:00 PM

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday…

Awww. Naturally, Sharyl was only acting as stenographer for California Governor Gray Davis assassin and co-conspirator (with the Tea Party Express’ Sal Russo and Howard Kaloogian) Darryl Issa, who has found “whistleblowers” to say the things they want Sharyl Attkisson to say. Freedom is slavery! So, why do they keep dry-humping this corpse of a story, without even bothering with crocodile tears for the actual corpses?

Southerners killed invading Pennsylvania during the “War of Northern Aggression,” as the new NRA president calls it

Because they’re TRAITORS, that’s why. You know, like looting the treasury for their banker buddies, refusing to raise taxes, even in the face of financial ruin, imposing draconian and self-admittedly stupid mindless “sequester” cuts, etcetera etcetera etcetera, only this time, they’ve already cost one potential secretary of state any consideration while the creepy-buddy tag team of John McCranky and Lindsay Graham extended their endless streak of Sunday Morning Nobody In America Watches News Shows appearances.

You know, a mildly precocious five-year old could suss it out, but the Watchers of Faux Nooz and the Mouths that Scream Mindlessly on the Radio have nothing better to do with their time than to try and hang a terrorist attack on the Administration that killed, what? Three Americans?

But we can IGNORE the four thousand dead Americans (and will ALWAYS ignore the 100,000 to 250,000 dead Iraqis) from a morally, legally, intellectually and in every other manner WRONG war?  And the 2000 plus dead  Americans from Afghanistan, again, arguably, not the most justifiable of wars, sorry. (Dead Afghans, of course, don’t matter.) Just out of curiousity, WHO gets to decide which deaths count and which don’t?

No: this is part and parcel to a whole new vicious  cycle of attempting to “steal” foreign policy and military policy as an issue, as was made abundantly clear at the NRA convention in Houston. What? you ask. And well you might, because I asked myself the same thing when I saw it: WHAT?

Click here to view the embedded video.

John Bolton addresses the 2013 NRA Convention

Now, you can either believe me on this, or else your punishment is that you have to WATCH THE ENTIRE SPEECH, which ought to be more than sufficient punishment for insulting the proprietor of this blog. If not, watch it again, as if you were a political penitente, and Bolton were your self-flagellation.

Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight from Libya… (Attkisson, CBS)

“it might have saved lives.” That’s a hell of a thing to paralyze somnolent congress* over (although, to be fair, it was already deep into catatonia to begin with.)

[* as in the definition of catatonia: "Patients may also show stereotyped, repetitive movements."]

So, what interesting “gun stuff” does John Bolton have up his mustache?

Congress responds to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks with all the traditional speed and intellectual agility that Congress has come to be known for.

Er, none, except, perhaps if all law and order breaks down after Obama’s disastrous foreign policy causes the collapse of Civilization As We Know It, and then, perhaps, you’ll thank your lucky stars that you have your trusty Winchester — and that your late next door neighbor had lots of extra ammo for your Winchester.  (Tragic accident, that. How he managed to shoot himself five times in the back of the head is a mystery, but at least there’s plenty of ammo.)

Beginning with the crazy proposition (vis-a-vis guns) that Obama isn’t allowing DRILLING FOR OIL OFFSHORE AND IN ALASKAN GAME PRESERVES (and conveniently ignoring that we’re producing MORE oil domestically than at any time in US history, etc. etc. etc.), Bolton spews this (transcript courtesy of “Decide America” which is yet another shadowy,  faceless 501(c)4 advocacy group who paid for this transcription [emphasis added]:

Sooper genius John Bolteen
(click for the Bolton Theme Song)

We’ve got turmoil in the Middle East, we’ve got uncertainty about the strength of our efforts to defend Israel and to defend other friends in the region who produce the oil and gas that fuel our economy.

Yeah. Because the Middle East is USUALLY stable as hell and easy for any Administration to grapple with.

(00:01:14): And one consequence of that we see every day when we go to the gasoline station to fill up, uh, the tanks of our cars. The price of gasoline has been rising steadily; it’s more than double what it was when the president took office. And in large part it’s because of the incoherence of his policy in the Middle East, the uncertainty that the oil producers see is driving up prices now, uh, and it also directly relates to our own domestic policy. The president and his party don’t want to drill offshore, they don’t want to drill on the North Slope of Alaska, they won’t free up, uh, oil shale and gas shale the way that, uh, uh, could materially bring down the price of oil.

Not merely a foreign policy whizz (sic), Bolton is also a genius at macro-economics and, as we’ll see, monetary policy …

(00:01:58): You can see this, uh, disdain for the American people in their understanding of the inner relationship between foreign and domestic policy, and a host of other areas as well. You can see it in the president’s ill-considered policy to drive down the value of the American dollar, to take a strong dollar, the backbone of, uh, American, uh, influence in international, economic, political affairs, uh, and drive it to historic lows. You can see it in the policy of the president’s National Labor Relations Board filing a complaint against Boeing, uh, for trying to set up a plant in South Carolina because of the complaints of the labor unions when Boeing is in difficult competition with foreign manufacturers of airplanes, …

And this has WHAT to do with guns? (Other than shooting off his clueless cakehole)…

And so forth. There are long sections on the “drug war” and Mexico and dead people from guns, all about “fast and furious” without ever directly mentioning it. The connection to universal background checks is every bit as non-existent as the connection to “second amendment gun rights” is tenuous. It’s just old Bolton saying all the bad things about Obama that he can say short of the N-word. Typical Republican, in other words.

The Party of (Dream) Linkin’

At the end of this “guns” speech, Bolton pulls the trigger:

(00:09:47): Now you know a few days ago in a, what I think will be a very famous article in the New Yorker magazine, an anonymous White House aide, defending the president’s, uh, policy, if you can call it that, in Libya, said, “Well this, you know, this is the Obama doctrine. It’s leading from behind.” (00:10:12): Now, now I give that anonymous White House aide, uh, high marks for creativity because there’s not an awful else that, that he could say about this debacle of a policy in Libya and the Middle East. But I think we must also be concerned that there’s a real grain of truth in it, and that the “leading from behind” that he’s talking about is representative of the kind of subterfuge that Obama has carried out in much of his first term, and nowhere more acutely than in the area of, uh, gun control at the federal level.

The single most tortuous segue in the history of Englitch. Bravo, Mendacifier! Well played! Let’s repeat that: “this debacle of a policy in Libya.”

Funny. Nobody ever held HIM responsible for Nine-Eleven attacks on Americans. Hmm.

Now, what the hell is Bolton doing at the NRA convention talking about Libya, while Darryl Issa holds his “whistleblower” hearings to magnify a molehill into Mount Everest? I think I just answered my own question. And why is Sharyl Attkisson doing Bolton’s dirty work (or at least the bidding of his shadow-masters)? Ditto.

Oh, and what the hell is discredited warmongering stooge and probably war criminal John Bolton doing on the streets without an ankle monitor and seven figures’ worth of bail? Courage.

Cross-posted from his vorpal sword.

The Bonfire of the Hannitys focuses its annual loon-fest in Houston this weekend. Sarah Palin, looking more and more like a clever Alien simulacrum of what they consider a generic middle-aged SUV driver brought down the house with a paean to stupidity, as mellifluous as fingernails on a blackboard …

Sarah Palin gets standing O from NRA crowd
James Hohmann / Politico

HOUSTON — Sarah Palin said Friday that the elite media would never let a Republican president get away with what Barack Obama has done in his push for new gun laws.  —  The former Alaska governor recalled that the national press “tore apart” …

And did a whole chewing tobacco schtick and threw out her catchphrases, variants of “Big Brother Loves You” one and all, and, expressing hatred and contempt for thought, observation and reason, and accomplishing a spectacular non-trashing of Shakespeare in perhaps the worst riff on Henry V ever enunciamated by the underedumacated.

Is our children learning? No.

T’wer NOT A little touch of Harry in the night. *

YouTube Official NRA Palin Speech

I watched it (all twelve minutes) so that you don’t have to. But, if you feel the masochistic NEED, you can click on the video link above.

I don’t recommend it.

The death squawk of the dying boobie is not a thing to hear for long.

Next up, Ted Nugent explains his prognosticatorial failure and sechlike.

We loves us some guns. Hoo haw.

That’s why there’s a national ammunition shortage and it isn’t even hunting season.

Courage.

* Google it, dammit!

Cross-posted from Mr. Williams’ blog.

Cupid swings both ways

Sooner or later the day would come, as we knew it would. The question, however, was when and who. Now we know:

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center.  I’m black.  And I’m gay,” says Jason Collins.
Sports Illustrated

I’m a 34-year-old NBA center.  I’m black.  And I’m gay.  —  I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport.  But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation….

Emphasis on “start.” 

Now, you’d think they’d know about teh gay in sports. The number of stories told me by men and women, boys and girls regarding their gym coach and their first gay or sexual experiences is quite astonishingly large. And well known, but, like the old title for what they called homosexuality in the 1950s (other than ‘perversion’) not discussed in society, polite or un-.

They used to call it “the love that dare not speak its name.”

Nothing gay here

And, as with all absurd taboos, the prohibition against talking about or discussing or acknowledging that teh gay exists in the world of sports is as ridiculous as it is improbable. Sportsmen and sportswomen know about it just as surely we all know that Grandma just farted at the Thanksgiving dinner, but, like all non-Grandmas present, no one will break the taboo and speak about it openly. (Later is a different matter.)

Early Greek action

But Jason Collins has, and we all ought to applaud him. It remains a courageous act, because there is so much   hysterical (pun intended) homophobia in sports, and professional sports in particular. Like the old porn moguls, who grew visibly disturbed whenever I raised the question as to why so many MEN were obsessed with the size of another man’s penis (see “Rambone”), the Feudal Lords who hold baronial sway over sports are insanely sensitive when one asks, reasonably, why so many men are fawning over other men?

And why the need for all these suited, macho men and reporters to be in the sweaty locker room, surrounded by nude and semi-nude athletes praising their own and others’ prowess on the fields of glory?

Remember how upset they all were when the prospect of WOMEN REPORTERS IN THE LOCKER ROOM was raised?

Frankly, I always thought THAT was weird, going back to the late 1960s, when my little brother and I had access to the Wyoming Cowboys’ locker room after home games, and watched the Wyoming radio and print reporters interviewing the stars and goats of the day’s contest.

But, since the admission of female sportswriters into locker rooms, mass orgies have not broken out, nor has a single gang-rape been reported, a thousand hysterical editorials notwithstanding. If the fabric of society has unraveled in the interim, no one reasonable would suggest that it were wimmen in them locker rooms what dun it.

Listen:

I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

My journey of self-discovery and self-acknowledgement began in my hometown of Los Angeles and has taken me through two state high school championships, the NCAA Final Four and the Elite Eight, and nine playoffs in 12 NBA seasons.

I’ve played for six pro teams and have appeared in two NBA Finals. Ever heard of a parlor game called Three Degrees of Jason Collins? If you’re in the league, and I haven’t been your teammate, I surely have been one of your teammates’ teammates. Or one of your teammates’ teammates’ teammates.

Now I’m a free agent, literally and figuratively. I’ve reached that enviable state in life in which I can do pretty much what I want. And what I want is to continue to play basketball. I still love the game, and I still have something to offer. My coaches and teammates recognize that. At the same time, I want to be genuine and authentic and truthful….

Maybe a few other souls will follow Collins’ brave example.

In fact, I can just about guarantee it, long term. But, short term, it might be interesting to watch how this plays out. And, as with Grandma’s Thanksgiving Treat, perhaps civility can grip us all, and it will be the subject of some closed-door jokes, but very little else.

Rubicon crossed. Tolerance 1, Bigotry 0, but it’s only a partial score, at present.

Courage.
====================
This is cross-posted from Mr. Williams’ blog

But now breaks the wind … er, news, that the TERRORIST BROTHERS WERE HEADED FOR TIMES SQUARE!

NYPD chief: Marathon suspect says brothers were headed for New York to party
U.S. News

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is telling authorities he and his brother, Tamerlan, learned how to make bombs from Al Qaeda’s online magazine, which recommends using fireworks. Officials say Tamerlan bought fireworks in New Hampshire before the bombing…

Ah, but it gets worse:

The Big Story
Police: Boston suspects planned to attack New York
By COLLEEN LONG and JENNIFER PELTZ — Apr. 25 8:44 PM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — The Boston Marathon bombers were headed for New York’s Times Square to blow up the rest of their explosives, authorities said Thursday, in what they portrayed as a chilling, spur-of-the-moment scheme that fell apart when the brothers realized the car they had hijacked was low on gas. “New York City was next on their list of targets,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said….

And the parade of the hand-wringing went on through the Thursday dusk.

Except that this so-called attack plan is a fantasy from the mind of a dazed 19-year-old alleged mass murderer.

It is interesting, perhaps, even possibly true that it was TALKED about, and explains the deadly gore of a Keystone Kops evening beginning with the murder of an MIT policeman for a gun they couldn’t get out of his holster, then a carjacking, the decision to drive to drive to Times Square in Manhattan, the discovery that the car was low on gas, the escape of the hostage at the gas station, etc.

Except that the so-called plot was, AT BEST, a momentary impulse, a thought. The PLAN TO ATTACK MANHATTAN has no more substance or reality than the millions of imaginary babies crazed Amerikans justify murder, bombings and arson in the name of. Or of Santa Clause, whom millions have dressed as, pretending to be the myth0logical figure.

Which is where non-fiction (the madness of the media pack straining to get “scoops”) turns into purest fiction.

Now they are writing about “the planned ATTACK ON NEW YORK!”

How eerily coincidental that all this happens on the very day of the Dedication of the George W. Bush Prezudenshul Liberry at SMU (giving this TCU alum a certain mild Mustang schadenfreude, unless, of course, they’re “proud” of the 1984-ish exhibit, which managed to omit any mention of Iraq among four past and present Presidents and the Usurper himself and his Mommy).

Official Dubya Liberry Commemorative Coloring Book
Ahead of the liberry’s opening, only two books were available
and “the Decider” hadn’t finished coloring the second one.

But this is the danger we fall into, as the “narrative” (a term whose fundamental premises — in this usage — I profoundly disagree with) shifts from reconstructions of fact into squalid brays of self-righteous fantasy.

This was what produced the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Sekurity (a term that still sets my teeth on edge and takes me back to Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here), and, just BTW, an ILLEGAL and IMMORAL, UNCONSCIONABLE and UNJUSTIFIABLE INVASION OF IRAQ.

Yeah.

We are the prisoners of a broken epistemology, where facts and fancy are woven together unashamedly to create the “reality” desired by the weavers.

Oh, and NPR is reporting (mere weeks late) that the Koch Brothers might be buying the Los Angeles Times from Sam Zell, who snapped up the Tribune Company (parent company of WGN, the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago Tribune, etc. etc.) which had, in turn, bought the Times Mirror Company (parent company of the LA Times) from the Chandler family, as in the “Dorothy Chandler Pavilion” where several Academy Awards have been held, etc. etc.

A nineteen year old kid tells the FBI various things and New York City reacts to the imaginary attack the same way a “pro-life” fanatic reacts to an imaginary baby. Or that Faux Nooz reacts to anything Muslim/Middle-Eastern/Arab/Immigrant/non-Fascist.

Beware: it is in this stew of raw emotions and bad fiction that Patriot Acts are foisted on us. When we lose sight of the difference between the real and the imagined, we become the slaves of anyone with a microphone and a slick story to tell.

It is like what happens when some nasty little teenage goon decides to take a can of black spray paint and tag the local synagogue with a giant swastika.

The reality — a teenage stunt, a semi-normal misdemeanor — is conflated with the memory of a symbol, and guest editorials loudly thump their chests for weeks thereafter as a general rule. Was the root cause antisemitism, or was the root cause the kind of stupid prank teenagers the world over are prone to? I can’t say (even if it IS my hypothetical and I OUGHT to know), but it is always the former conclusion leapt to, which is, in many cases, a fantasy created by the mind of the viewer, and not a communiqué from the spray-can of the prankster.

Now: young fellow is in deep trouble and talking to the FBI (who are, evidently, leaking the details of that interview to the media) and suddenly the Mayor of New York and the Police Chief are holding press conferences about Big Apple Security and about WHY any self-respecting terrorist would NATURALLY target New York.

Fig. 1: this is not a pipe bomb
Fig. 2: this is not the Big Apple

Because, quoth Mr. Ban on Soft Drinks for your OWN GOOD Authoritarian, New York City is “iconic.”

Nope. The media are headquartered there, and the unadulterated voltage of sheer narcissism has the ability to white-out any other event, as the bombed survivors of the Pentagon suicide plane and everyone else on the face of Planet Earth learned on 9-12-01.

Trust me: in what is coming, the ability to tell the difference between what is REAL and what is fantasy may well be the difference between life and death, all the Santa Claus suits in the universe notwithstanding.

And back to cyber-limbo. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Courage.

This is cross-posted from his vorpal sword

by Walter Brasch

 Harry Strausser III owns a successful small business with 25 employees in Bloomsburg, Pa. As an undergraduate, he was a national champion in several forensics categories, and represented the Boy Scouts of America in national competitions sponsored by the Reader’s Digest. As a graduate student, he coached a college forensics team. He has never been arrested or suspected of any crime.

Strausser is an Eagle Scout. He is also gay. The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America says he doesn’t have the right “core values” to be a Scout leader.

Denny Meyer, who lives in New York City, wasn’t a Scout, but often tagged along with his older brother to Scout meetings. During college, Meyer, the son of Holocaust refugees, enlisted in the Navy in 1968 “to pay my country back for my family’s freedom.” After four years, he had quickly advanced to Petty Officer Second Class (E-5), got a job as a civilian with the Department of the Army, and enlisted in the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of Sergeant First Class (E-7). He later worked in international sales and office administration.

Meyer had to pass rigorous background checks to serve in two branches of the Armed Forces, but he can’t pass the background checks become a Boy Scout leader because he’s gay.

Gregory Bourke is a mainframe computer programmer and analyst in Louisville, Ky. He had been a Scout for almost three years. His 15-year-old son is a Life Scout who has finished most of his requirements to be an Eagle Scout. His 14-year-old daughter is a Girl Scout. He has been a leader in her troop for eight years; he had been an assistant Scoutmaster for five years. Last September, he received a special Legislative Citation from the Kentucky House of representatives honoring him for his community involvement and dedication to Scouting.

Bourke is no longer with the Boy Scouts. His local Council, against strong opposition from his troop and the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic church, which sponsors both the Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, ordered him to resign because he’s gay, and threatened to pull the church’s Scouting charter if Bourke didn’t resign. The Girl Scouts, like the 4H Club, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and numerous other organizations, has no discriminatory policies, and Bourke’s church is pleased he continues as Girl Scouts leader

In contrast, the Boy Scouts have a long history of allowing local councils to discriminate against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. It wasn’t until 1974 that the national organization finally ended racial discrimination. In 1991, with the emergence of a “family values” conservative movement, the Boy Scouts formalized a policy to exclude gays from membership and leadership positions. The existing position is that the BSA believes “homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” Nine years later, the Supreme Court, by a 5–4 vote largely along political lines, said that the Boy Scouts of America was a private organization and had every right to discriminate.

Several Fortune 500 corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, CVS, Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Mills, Intel, Levi Strauss, 3M, UPS, and Verizon—have suspended funding to the BSA.

Although local United Way agencies have the autonomy to decide whether or not to continue to provide funds to the BSA, the national organization has reaffirmed its principle that “embraces inclusiveness, diversity, and equal opportunity as part of our core values, Code of Ethics, and human resource policies.” Keri Albright, president of the Greater Susquehanna Valley United Sway (Pa.), like more than 50 other United Way local organizations, has suspended Boy Scout funding, and argues that “accepting gays is not in conflict with having good values.”

Faced by significant income loss, the Boy Scouts last Summer rethought their position about excluding gays from membership. A backlash by the right-wing, which also threatened to pull funding and membership, slapped them back into their policy of discrimination.

A petition with 64,000 signatures opposing the Boy Scout policy of exclusion was delivered to the United Way; several petitions, with about 1.4 million signatures opposing the Scouts’ anti-gay policies, were delivered to its national headquarters in Irving, Texas.

And so the flip-flopping Scouts decided to survey its members and sponsors. From surveys filled out by more than 200,000 Scouts and their leaders, 50,000 alumni, 270 councils, and about 100 religious and community organizations, the surveys revealed, according to the National Council, that “a majority of adults in the Scouting community [about 61 percent] support the BSA’s current policy of excluding open and avowed homosexuals [but] younger parents and teens tend to oppose the policy.” The Los Angeles Area Council, and several others in Southern California, proposes to disregard National policy and to admit to membership and leadership roles anyone who meets Scouting standards, whether gay or straight

Among those who oppose inclusion of gays as members or leaders are several churches. Franklin Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, says he’s “gravely distressed” that the Scouts are even considering revising their policy, and if they allow gays as members his churches are likely to sever ties with the Scouts. The Latter Day Saints and Roman Catholic churches also oppose removing barriers to permit gays to become Scouts and leaders. In contrast, the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association, among other religions that sponsor Scout packs and troops, demand discriminatory policies be eliminated. About two-thirds of all Scout groups are sponsored by religious organizations.

The 70-member executive committee is now recommending to the 1,400 voting members of the National Council that gay youth under 18 be allowed to be Scouts, but to continue to exclude gay adults from becoming leaders.

This Swiss-hole plan, which could be approved by the National Council, May 20, perpetuates the Scouts’ image as an organization that openly discriminates. It would allow a gay youth to pass the rigorous tests to become an Eagle Scout, including a requirement to “serve six months in a troop leadership position,” yet not be allowed to become an adult leader. Such a decision perpetuates stereotypes and shows that the national leadership is buried in a morass of homophobic fear.

The proposed policy revision implies that youth are still exploring their worldviews and beliefs, and that being gay is a choice that gay youth make, and one they can “outgrow” if they wish to have the BSA “core values.”

If there was a Pathfinder merit badge, the Scout leadership would be unable to earn it—they’ve been wandering the wrong trail for many years.

[Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, a look at the impact of fracking upon public health and environment. Rosemary R. Brasch assisted on this column.]