Undernews

On the other hand. . .

2013-05-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

Only 27 percent of college grads have a job related to their major

GOP senators from Oklahoma have repeatedly voted against federal disaster aid

A tornado chaser explains what he does and why he does it

Quotes

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. -- Jane Jacobs

Pocket paradigm

One of the greatest myths of America's elite is that it functions by logic and reason and that it is devoid of myth. In truth, elites function like other people; they choose their gods and worship them. The gods, to be sure, are different. For example, many in Washington believe fervently in the sanctity of data, the Ivy League, the New York Times op pages and the Calvinist notion that their power is an outward, visible sign of an inner, invisible grace. And some, even while professing to be without myth, spend their lives creating myths for others. We call them political consultants and ghostwriters...- Sam Smith

Rebuilding America: Do it from the bottom up

2013-05-21T13:35:00.001-04:00

Another in our series on Rebuilding America

Sam Smith - From the American revolution to the underground railroad, to the organizing of labor, to the drive for universal suffrage, to the civil rights, women's, peace and environmental movements, every significant political and social change in this country has been propelled by large numbers of highly autonomous small groups linked not by a bureaucracy or a master organization but by the mutuality of their thought, their faith and their determination.

Whatever the source, it now takes longer, requires more paper, and stirs up more intimations of liability to do almost anything worthwhile than it once did. While our rhetoric overflows with phrases like "entrepreneurship" and "risk-taking," the average enterprise of any magnitude is actually characterized by cringing caution with carefully constructed emergency exits leading from every corner of chance. We have been taught that were we to move unprotected into time and space, they might implode into us. Every law office is a testament to our fear and lack of trust.

The reporter risking status by telling the truth, the government official risking employment by exposing the wrong, the civic leader refusing to go with the flow -- these are all essential catalysts of change. A transformation in the order of things is not the product of immaculate conception; rather it is the end of something that starts with the willingness of just a few people to do something differently. There must then come a critical second wave of others stepping out of a character long enough to help something happen -- such as the white Mississippian who spoke out for civil rights, the housewife who read Betty Friedan and became a feminist, the parents of a gay son angered by the prejudice surrounding him.

Too often today, we expect our leaders to do our work for us, to save us, to redeem us. There is little sense of the wisdom laid down by Eugene Debs: "Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could for if you could be led out, you could be led back again."

A crib sheet for organizing from the bottom up

Hillary Clinton on torture

2013-05-21T13:23:00.005-04:00

BEN SMITH, NY DAILY NEWS, 2006 - Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice is acceptable in some circumstances. .

At yesterday's Daily News editorial board meeting, it emerged that she's not actually against torture in all instances, and that her dispute with McCain and Bush is largely procedural.
She was asked about the "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which you've captured the terrorist and don't have time for a normal interrogation, and said that there is a place for what she called "severity," in a conversation that included mentioning water-boarding, hypothermia, and other techniques commonly described as torture.

"I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that," she responded. "Again, I think the President has to take responsibility. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don't mind if it's reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn't be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule."

Children losing contact with outdoors

2013-05-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

From the National Wildlife Federation

Children are spending half as much time outdoors as they did 20 years ago.
Today, kids 8-18 years old devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes using entertainment media in a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).
In a typical week, only 6% of children ages 9-13 play outside on their own.
Children who play outside are more physically active, more creative in their play, less aggressive and show better concentration. (Burdette and Whitaker,
Sixty minutes of daily unstructured free play is essential to children’s physical and mental health.
The most direct route to caring for the environment as an adult is participating in “wild nature activities” before the age of 11.

What was Homeland Security doing when it could have been checking on the Boston bombers?

2013-05-21T13:10:00.000-04:00

Progressive Magazine - Thousands of documents obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy show how Homeland Security and local law enforcement were obsessed with the Occupy movement and other activists.

They treated Occupy activists as potential terrorists.

They infiltrated Occupy meetings.

They tracked Occupy activists online.

They kept an eye on the Rev. Jesse Jackson when he visited an Occupy protest in Phoenix.

They also monitored the protests against the American Legislative Exchange Council.

And they shared information and coordinated planning with some of the very financial institutions that Occupy was protesting.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, you have to wonder why Homeland Security and law enforcement were focusing so much attention on Occupy and ALEC activists rather than on those who presented a real risk of terrorism in the United States.

Michael Isikoff of NBC News notes that law enforcement in Boston were tracking Occupy protesters at the same time they were not following up on Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The pursuit of Occupy activists was not a mere bureaucratic foul-up, as occurred in the IRS office in Cincinnati. It was a systematic effort by Homeland Security and law enforcement offices around the country to monitor left wing activists who were simply exercising their First Amendment rights

Entropy update: Elite New York parents using nannies for school functions

2013-05-21T13:01:00.001-04:00

New York Post - Wealthy New Yorkers are shunning their parental duties — choosing instead to send nannies to their children’s private schools to take part in everything from “safety patrol” to accompanying the kids on their entrance interviews.

“They’re sending nannies for bake sales, book clubs, for the ice-skating group,” Amanda Uhry of Manhattan Private School Advisors told The Post. “Parents can’t be bothered two days a year for an hour.”

Nannies are working fund-raisers, designing sets for school plays and taking seats at graduations and public performances.

“Now the schools are getting angry — and other parents are getting angry. They don’t want to work the school bake sale with someone’s paid employee,” Uhry said.

Both the prestigious Marymount and Buckley schools warned parents about ditching safety patrol, a biannual duty in which parents walk students to cars and buses.

But one Upper East Side mom whose daughter attends The Birch Wathen Lenox School sniffed that she pays the school $40,000 a year — and can’t be bothered with such menial duties.

Former Horace Mann admissions director Dana Haddad said schools now accept nannies at admissions interviews because kids tend to perform better in front of them.

“When I was a director of admissions and children would act up, I would tell parents, ‘Don’t worry, send them back with the nanny,’ ” said Haddad.

But other advisers warn that sending a nanny can be the kiss of death when applying to the ultra-competitive schools.

Obama's criminal war against journalists

2013-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, UK - Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment's guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This new found theory of the Obama DOJ - that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for "soliciting" the disclosure of classified information - is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself. These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama DOJ submitted court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this.

That same "solicitation" theory, as the New York Times reported back in 2011, is the one the Obama DOJ has been using to justify its ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: that because Assange solicited or encouraged Manning to leak classified information, the US government can "charge [Assange] as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them." When that theory was first disclosed, I wrote that it would enable the criminalization of investigative journalism generally:

"Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren't typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau described how they granted anonymity to 'nearly a dozen current and former officials' to induce them to reveal information about Bush's NSA eavesdropping program. Dana Priest contacted numerous 'U.S. and foreign officials' to reveal the details of the CIA's 'black site' program. Both stories won Pulitzer Prizes and entailed numerous, active steps to cajole sources to reveal classified information for publication.

"In sum, investigative journalists routinely - really, by definition - do exactly that which the DOJ's new theory would seek to prove WikiLeaks did. To indict someone as a criminal 'conspirator' in a leak on the ground that they took steps to encourage the disclosures would be to criminalize investigative journalism every bit as much as charging Assange with 'espionage' for publishing classified information."

Obamacare encouraging employers to cut health services

2013-05-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

Wall Street Journal - Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.

Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.

Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.

It is unclear how many employers will adopt the strategy, but a handful of companies have signed on and an industry is sprouting around the tactic. More than a dozen brokers and benefit-administrators in 10 states said they were discussing the strategy with their clients.

GOP hypocrite of the day

2013-05-21T12:40:00.003-04:00

Alternet - Stephen Fincher, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, is very angry that the federal government is committed to preventing poor people from starving to death:

Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, who supports cuts to the program, had his own Bible verse from the Book of Thessalonians: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat,” he said.

The program in question is SNAP, better known as food stamps. Fincher and his ultra-right-wing friends in the House are furious about the fact that the worst economic crisis in 80 years has resulted in more Americans needing food stamps.

He fulminates about people who are allegedly "unwilling to work" sucking off the government teat with impunity. ... The reason this is even more egregious than the usual Republican class warfare is that Fincher himself ... has received millions - $3.2 million as of June 2010 - in federal crop subsidies. ... Fincher's brother and father also snatched another $6.7 million in subsidies as Stephen geared up to run for Congress on a platform of eliminating "wasteful government spending."

Underground water supply dropping at much larger rate

2013-05-21T12:13:00.003-04:00

Reuters - Water levels in U.S. aquifers, the vast underground storage areas tapped for agriculture, energy and human consumption, between 2000 and 2008 dropped at a rate that was almost three times as great as any time during the 20th century, U.S. officials said .

The big rise in water use started in 1950, at the time of an economic boom and the spread of U.S. suburbs. However, the steep increase in water use and the drop in groundwater levels that followed World War 2 were eclipsed by the changes during the first years of the 21st century, the study showed.

As consumers, farms and industry used more water starting in 2000, aquifers were also affected by climate changes, with less rain and snow filtering underground to replenish what was being pumped out.

PBS pulls documentary out of fear of Koch brothers

2013-05-21T12:10:00.000-04:00

Truthout - "Citizen Koch," a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in "public" television and raises even further concerns about the Kochs potentially purchasing eight major daily newspapers.

The film from Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin documents how the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision helped pave the way for secret political spending by players like the Kochs, who contributed directly and indirectly to the election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2010 and came to his aid again when the battle broke out over his effort to limit collective bargaining.

Originally slated to appear on PBS stations nationwide as part of the "Independent Lens" series, "Citizen Koch" had its funding pulled after David Koch was offended by another PBS documentary critical of the billionaire industrialists.

San Diego mayor urges jury nullification in medical marijuana case

2013-05-21T11:11:00.003-04:00

Hit & Run - San Diego Bob Filner ... held a press conference to encourage potential jury members to reject federal charges against Ronnie Chang of San Marcos, who was arrested by feds in 2009 for operating a medical marijuana dispensary, legal under state law. NBC San Diego reports:

"This is way overdoing it when local laws, state laws allow compassionate use of medical marijuana,” Filner told reporters at the downtown U.S. District Court complex Monday. “Someone should not be going through this stage of prosecution for trying to help people to have access to medical marijuana."

The case is scheduled for trial in the fall. There’s also some strong evidence the federal government knows how badly it’s losing this war....

Prosecutors wanted all material regarding the case removed from the internet and social networks. A federal judge did not enforce the gag order, but instead McCabe agreed to the stipulation that he would not “try” the case in front of the press. Prosecutors also back down from the request of removing material from the internet.

More on jury nullification

An award winning principal runs into Gates Foundation child (and teacher) abuse

2013-05-21T10:05:00.000-04:00

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York [writes] her newest post on Year Two of New York’s controversial educator evaluation system. Burris, named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State, is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by more than 1,535 New York principals and more than 6,500 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens.

Carol Burris - “I hope I’m not sounding like an elitist,” my friend the music director said. “But I’ve got a problem with being ‘trained.’ You train a puppy to not jump on the couch and a parakeet to poop on the cage paper…but people? Don’t we educate people?”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Calibration,” he replied. “They want to calibrate us with a Calibration Event… But I am not a machine. I’m a man, not a printer.”

I worried I might need the school nurse.

The Music Man explained. He had just returned from Teacher Evaluator Year 2 training. I stopped worrying about his mental hygiene. This was a healthy response, I thought. “So the class began with a video,” he said.

“Not the one that likened the teacher evaluation plan to a plane being built in the air again?” I groaned.

“No. It was an old ‘think different’ commercial from Apple,” he said. “But here’s the thing. After they made us watch a video about how important it is to think differently, the rest of the day they tried to make us all think the same…The commercial said ‘think out of the box’ but they wanted us to be in the same box…to sync up with the Master ‘oda.”

I tried to listen to the last word as the second period bell rang. “Why would they want us to sync with the Master Yoda?” I wondered as the Music Man sadly walked away.

Two days later I would understand. It was my time to be calibrated, and off to Boards of Cooperative Educational Services I went. Apparently, the reformers of New York had been having Calibration Events with ambassadors who even got to attend a Gates Ambassador Reception. Now it was their turn to bring the Calibration Event to us.

“Wow”, I thought, “This is sounding more like Star Wars all the time.” I was disappointed. I was not to be synced with the Master Yoda but rather with the Master Coder, the recently calibrated Ambassador told our class.

Master Coder? Our curiosity was piqued. An administrator from another district asked who the Master Coder was. “He is someone in Albany; we do not know who,” was the reply.

The trainers went on to explain why we were there. We would have four sessions to prepare for Calibration Day. We would learn “the tool,” and watch teaching videos for two days. Day Three—the pre-test. Day Four—Calibration Day and the Calibration Event. We would see a video of a teacher, use the rubric to rate her, and then try to sync up with the Master Coder.

“If you miss one or two, you might not be misaligned,” one of the Ambassadors reassured us. The Music Man was right—they surely have mistaken us for printers.

A colleague from another district asked, “Does the video pause on Calibration Day?” The Ambassador replied, “I am not sure, but I am going to speak for the tool…..”

I stopped listening to the reply. “I am in the Star Wars Cantina,” I thought.

Before calibrating up with the videos, we first needed to be taught to avoid “bias words” in our observations. “The tool” has a list of bias words and if you use them, “the tool” will turn the bias words red. “Do you think it will give us a shock?” a colleague nervously asked me. “Only the Master Coder knows,” I replied. The Ambassador of the Tool gave examples.

Expressive—“The teacher read the poem in an expressive way.” We can’t say that anymore—it’s judgmental.

Monotone—“Can we say the reading was not monotone?” someone asked. “No, no, no. monotone is a bias word” Ambassador #2 replied.

Challenging?—Never, nunca y jamas, nie wieder.

Bias, bias everywhere. “Will my skill improve? Will I be scored on the teaching evidence I include?” you could hear the frustration in the questioner’s voice.

“As long as we get the right number with the Master Coder, that is all that matters. The ultimate goal is you want to be calibrated” was the reply. I prayed a Wookie would enter the room and save us.

DarthI was starting to feel sorry for the calibrated presenter. In an attempt to make sense out of nonsense, she blurted, “Think of it this way. In first grade we teach kids how to fill in the bubbles…today we are learning to fill in the bubbles.” I prayed Darth Vader would enter the room and end it all.

But there would be no rescue, no reprieve. So I thought of Madeline Hunter and a time when teaching was both an art and a science. How she abhorred it when anyone tried to create a checklist from her work. She understood the importance of classroom feeling tone in student learning—described by bias words like patience and warmth. She often said the only thing that a teacher must do in every lesson was to think, and to never humiliate a child.

Now, we are driven by data, and checklists and mindless calibration—all being done in the name of a reform that fritters away tax dollars on tests, test prep and calibration events. I stopped listening and searched for the source of the calibration obsession.

Morning Line: Three decidedly different controversies mushed into one

2013-05-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

Sam Smith: If you feel confused about the real story in the hat trick of controversies overwhelming the media these days, don't feel bad. There are an extraordinary number of officials manipulating these tales for their own use, with the help of an extraordinarily manipulated media.

In happier times, the media would have seen its job as coming up with the closest version of the truth it could find. Instead it has, in the best tradition of post-modernism, put talking points repeatedly ahead of reality, something that greatly pleases Republicans but doesn't help the public much as all. The major media has switched from the standards, say, of the AP and chosen instead the who said what to whom standards of, say, TMZ. Remember: talking points are a form of political gossip and shouldn't be taken any more seriously than the Hollywood version.

The three incidents are, in fact, quite different and it doesn't help to mush them together. For example:

Benghazi

The Benghazi incident raises one serious question that has been neatly shoved into the dark by the arguments over talking points. It is important to remember that no one was killed in Benghazi because of talking points. If anything could have prevented the deaths, it would have been better security. This is well worth looking into, including the hardly mentioned question of whether Congress provided enough money for the security and whether the State Department and/or CIA allocated enough. But remember: these questions could also be asked of every military setback in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Turning such questions into a mock scandal is not a wise way for pretend patriots on the Hill to behave.

The IRS

The who said what to whom approach has also dominated the discussion of the IRS incident with little utility other than for media coverage. In fact, unlike Benghazi, there are some serious issues here but placing blame on the case in question does next to nothing to resolve them. In fact, the non-profit tax status issue is complex and confused and the victims have included those on both left and right, A rational solution would be for some grownups in the Senate to hold hearings not on the specific issues that brought the controversy forward but on rational solutions to make the tax code better. The president could also name a bipartisan commission to take a look at the problem. Among the things they might was to consider are those outlined in these stories:

Spying on reporters

This is far and away the most dangerous issue but Republicans don't mind abusing the press and the press acts like an over-abused child. What Obama has done is an impeachable offense.

The First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That's no law, and not a "press shield law" Obama's mistreatment of the media is as clear a cause for impeachment as one needs, though no one in Washington would be up to it. Further, it turns out that the Obama administration was spying on reporters in congressional press rooms which means it was violating the separation of powers clause of the Constitution as well.

The sad irony of all this is that the GOP has badly trivialized and distorted some real issues in the name of making some political points. And much of the media - afraid to stand up even for itself - has gone along with the Republicans' definition of the problem.

Rebuilding America: A movement, not a campaign

2013-05-20T15:03:00.002-04:00

Sam Smith - In 1997, WW Norton published my book the Great American Repair Manual, a title that, sixteen years later, seems overly optimistic. Repair is no longer enough. Today, America needs to be rebuilt. Here is the first in a series of ways we could go about it, based in part on a remix of earlier writings.

A movement is not like a campaign. No one gets to start a movement and no one gets to own it. You don't have to file any contribution reports. The archaic media pretends you don't even exist for as long as it can. And it doesn't even have to have a name.

It's sort of like the Gulf Stream, hard to see yet undeniable as it moves you faster in a certain direction.

The system that envelops us becomes normal by its mere mass, its ubiquitous messages, its sheer noise. Our society faces what William Burroughs called a biologic crisis -- "like being dead and not knowing it."

The unwitting dead -- universities, newspapers, publishing houses, institutes, councils, foundations, churches, political parties -- reach out from the past to rule us with fetid paradigms from the bloodiest and most ecologically destructive century of human existence.

Yet, in a perverse way, our predicament makes life simpler. We have clearly lost what we have lost. We can give up our futile efforts to preserve the illusion and turn our energies instead to the construction of a new time.

It is this willingness to walk away from the seductive power of the present that first divides the mere reformer from the rebel -- the courage to emigrate from one's own ways in order to meet the future not as an entitlement but as a frontier.

We have lost much of what was gained in the 1960s and 1970s because we traded in our passion, our energy, our magic and our music for the rational, technocratic and media ways of our leaders. We will not overcome the current crisis solely with political logic. We need living rooms like those in which women once discovered they were not alone. The freedom schools of SNCC. The politics of the folk guitar. The plays of Vaclav Havel. The pain of James Baldwin. The laughter of Abbie Hoffman. The strategy of Gandhi and King. Unexpected gatherings and unpredicted coalitions.

People coming together because they disagree on every subject save one: the need to preserve the human. Savage satire and gentle poetry. Boisterous revival and silent meditation. Grand assemblies and simple suppers.

Above all, we must understand that in leaving the toxic ways of the present we are healing ourselves, our places, and our planet. We rebel not as a last act of desperation but as a first act of creation.

Movements work differently. They don't use popes; they rely on independent congregations. They are driven not by saviors but by substance. They assume a commitment beyond the voting booth, they think politicians should respond to them rather than the other way around, and they believe in "Here's how" as well as "Yes, we can."

If you are presently doing anything to try to repair the damage that has been done by our cynical, greedy and incompetent leadership you are part of the movement. Student, union worker, teacher, retiree, infirm, ecologist, defense attorney, community organizer, informed or reformed - you are part of the movement.

So welcome to the movement. If you don't believe there is one, trying using the word anyway. The very term is a weapon in our arsenal. If the politicians and the press start hearing the phrase in places they thought had little in common, they will start to pay attention. We can leave it to the historians to define it. In its very ambiguity lies its strength.

US arrests about 400,000 immigrants a year

2013-05-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

TRAC - On a typical work day Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 1,509 individuals into custody, according to the latest available ICE data from November and December 2012. If activity continues at this pace, ICE will detain around 400,000 individuals during the current fiscal year.

Seven out of every ten individuals were originally detained in states along the southwest border with Mexico. Three states head the list: Texas (37% of detainees), Arizona (17% of detainees) and California (15% of detainees). Florida and Georgia were the two non-border states with the most individuals detained by ICE. Six additional states -- New York, Louisiana, Virginia, Illinois, Washington and Colorado -- had the next highest levels of enforcement activity. In these states in a typical week, between 100 and 200 individuals were picked up and detained by ICE.

Cleveland hostage house visited by officials & meter readers 120 times

2013-05-20T12:27:00.000-04:00

WKYC - Police and the county sheriff visited Ariel Castro's Seymour Avenue home five times in the 10 years that Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight were held hostage.

Dominion East Ohio Gas installed automated meters between 2007 and last year, during the time the women were held captive.

Photos:Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight found alive

But the gas company refused to tell Channel 3 News if an indoor meter was replaced with the newer model.

Cleveland Public Power, or CPP, says it normally checks residential power use monthly, which would mean employees would have visited Castro's home about 120 times over 10 years.

Did they notice or hear anything suspicious?

"Our contact with customers is limited to the outside of the home. It is a very rare occasion that we are called to go into a home," said Shelley Shockley, the spokesperson for CPP.

The Cleveland Division of Water reads meters every three months. That means they would have checked Castro's meter about 40 times while the women were held against their will. Did the employees ever go inside to repair the meter?

Channel 3 news has asked the city to provide all records involving visits to the home and repairs done to meters.

Poor now predominantly in the suburbs

2013-05-20T11:12:00.001-04:00

The Review has argued for years that pro-gentrification policies would push the poor into the suburbs where they would find it hard to find jobs, transportation and social services. It seems to have happened big time.

LA Times - More poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis.

As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67% between 2000 and 2011 — a much bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published today. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities.

Authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube cited a long list of reasons for the shift.

More poor people moved to the suburbs, pulled by more affordable homes or pushed by urban gentrification, the authors said. Some used the increased mobility of housing vouchers, which used to be restricted by area, to seek better schools and safer neighborhoods in suburbia. Still others, including immigrants, followed jobs as the booming suburbs demanded more workers, many for low-paying, service-sector jobs.

Change also came from within. More people in the suburbs slipped into poverty as manufacturing jobs disappeared, the authors found. The housing boom and bust also walloped many homeowners on the outer ridges of metropolitan areas, hitting pocketbooks hard. On top of that, the booming numbers of poor people in the suburbs were driven, in part, by the exploding growth of the suburbs themselves.

The shift caught many communities by surprise, the authors found, with public and private agencies unprepared to meet the need in suburban areas.

"The myth of suburban prosperity has been a stubborn one," said Christopher Niedt, who as academic director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University is familiar with the trend Brookings described. Even as suburban poverty emerged, "many poorer communities were so segregated from the wealthy in suburbs that many people were able to ignore it."

In Irvine, one of the fastest growing cities in California, the estimated number of poor people rose from roughly 12,400 to nearly 21,000 in a decade, Brookings found in its analysis of U.S. Census data. Every month, hundreds of struggling families call or stop into the Irvine offices of Families Forward — far more people than the Orange County nonprofit can help house. It once handed out groceries to roughly 25 families a week. Now it's more than 160.

... As poverty shifted to the suburbs across the country, help has not always kept pace, Brookings researchers said. Many suburbs are thin on safety nets. Public transportation is often scant, making it harder for the suburban poor to reach jobs and assistance.

From our overstocked archives: Notice

2013-05-20T10:56:00.001-04:00

Progressive Review, 2000 - The Review intends to resist as long as possible the unruly and repugnant trend towards Germanization and cyberization of the English language. If for no other reason than it makes spell-checking more tedious, TPR will continue to frown upon compound words and excessive capitalization (especially in the middle of words).

TPR believes, as a rule, that only something one might expect find in a telephone book, on a door or a map, or in a bibliography or discography, should be capitalized and that proper spacing must be maintained or we willsoonfindourselvesreadingsomethinglikethis.

Even at the risk of offending corporate lawyers and public relations departments TPR will, wherever possible, translate such words back into English. It will also continue to regard the ugly and ubiquitous appendage known as "dot com" as the moral equivalent of "Inc." or "Ph.D." or "Esq." and will excise it for other than ironic purposes.

Seattle teachers, students win major battle against test tyrants

2013-05-20T10:38:00.006-04:00

Democracy Now - After months of protest, teachers, students and parents in Seattle, Washington, have won their campaign to reject standardized tests in reading and math. In January, teachers at Garfield High School began a boycott of the test, saying it was wasteful and being used unfairly to assess their performance. The boycott spread to other schools, with hundreds of teachers, students and parents participating. Last week, the school district backed down, announcing that the Measures of Academic Progress — or MAP test — is now optional for high schools, but those refusing the test must find another way to gauge student performance.

Hollywood corporations try to censor Pirate Bay documentary

2013-05-20T10:08:00.001-04:00

Torrent Freak - After years of anticipation, The Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK was finally released to the public in February.

It is no secret that Hollywood is trying to take down as many pirated movies as they can, but their targeting of a Creative Commons Pirate Bay documentary is something new. Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have all asked Google to take down links pointing to the Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK. But is it a secret plot to silence the voices of the Pirate Bay’s founders, or just another screw up of automated DMCA takedowns?

The film, created by Simon Klose, is available for no cost and has already been watched by millions of people. The public response to this free release model has been overwhelmingly positive, but it’s now meeting resistance from Hollywood, TPB’s arch rival.

Over the past weeks several movie studios have been trying to suppress the availability of TPB-AFK by asking Google to remove links to the documentary from its search engine. The links are carefully hidden in standard DMCA takedown notices for popular movies and TV-shows.

The silent attacks come from multiple Hollywood sources including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate and are being sent out by multiple anti-piracy outfits.

On the other hand. . .

2013-05-19T11:59:00.001-04:00

Quotes

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. - Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail", 1963

FBI harasses Smoking Gun website

How the IRS nonprofit division got so dysfunctional

Action notes
Britain getting a new party on the left
Three days of Chicago marches to save its schools
Electric car website
March on Monsanto May 25

Pocket paradigm

We need a trial to judge all those who bear significant responsibility for the past century - the most murderous and ecologically destructive in human history. We could call it the war, air and fiscal crimes tribunal and we could put politicians and CEOs and major media owners in the dock with earphones like Eichmann and make them listen to the evidence of how they killed millions of people and almost murdered the planet and made most of us far more miserable than we needed to be. Of course, we wouldn't have time to go after them one by one. We'd have to lump Wall Street investment bankers in one trial, the Council on Foreign Relations in another, and any remaining Harvard Business School or Yale Law graduates in a third. We don't need this for retribution, only for edification. So there would be no capital punishment, but rather banishment to an overseas Nike factory with a vow of perpetual silence..- Sam Smith

China running out of water

2013-05-19T11:37:00.002-04:00

Financial Times - In the face of China's rapid economic expansion and growing presence on the global stage, it is often forgotten that the country is running out of water. In per capita terms, China's water resources are just a quarter of the world average. Eight of China's 28 provinces are as parched as countries in the Middle East such as Jordan and Syria, according to China Water Risk, a consultancy based in Hong Kong.

Chinese officials identify water scarcity as one of the nation's most pressing difficulties. The problems are social, political and economic. This year Beijing for the first time issued water quotas to every province, setting targets for annual consumption by 2015.

The water shortage is made even more urgent by China's rapid urbanization, as expanding cities have greater water needs. More than 300m people are expected to move into cities between now and 2030.

This transformation comes as the Chinese are becoming far more critical and vocal about the way they are governed. Weibo, a Twitter-like social network, is routinely filled with users sharing information about pollution violations. Some users even dare officials to take a dip in the rivers they are supposed to be in charge of keeping clean. At times the government's inability to control its waterways has made it the object of public ridicule, such as when more than 16,000 dead pig carcases floated down Shanghai's main waterway this year.

Angus King challenges Obama's endless war

2013-05-19T11:06:00.002-04:00

Truth Dig - Pentagon officials said during a Senate hearing on Authorization for the Use of Military Force, enacted by Congress in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, that the global war on terror could last up to 20 more years, and that its legal mandate gives the president the power to wage war anywhere on the globe for as long as he deems necessary.

Sen. Angus King was the lone voice of sanity at the creepy hearing, where Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham goaded two reluctant-to-speak Pentagon officials, Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan and the acting general counsel of the Defense Department, Robert Taylor, into agreeing that the United States is in a “worldwide struggle” against “international terrorism,” that “the war against radical Islam, or terror … will go on after the second term of President Obama,” and that “the battlefield is wherever the enemy chooses to make it.”

Of course Graham’s formulation is not as simple as he makes it out to be. Enemies of the United States are created wherever and whenever the government chooses to interfere militarily in the affairs of foreign people.

King did not say as much, but he did describe the hearing as the most “astoundingly disturbing” session he had attended since taking office this year, in addition to accusing the Obama administration and the Pentagon officials of rewriting the Constitution. First, the independent from Maine reminded everyone present that only Congress has the power to declare war. Then he states that the AUMF was adopted exclusively to fight the individuals who were directly responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001—not just anyone the government may wish to attack, and which the generals attempt to include in the mandate by referring to them as “associated forces,” a term that appears nowhere in the 2001 document.

“You’re reading this AUMF in such a way as to apply clearly outside of what it says,” King said. “Senator McCain was absolutely right: It refers to the people who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11. That’s a date. … It doesn’t go into the future. And then it says, ‘or harbored such organizations’—past tense—‘or persons in order to prevent any future acts by such nations, organizations or persons.’ ”

“I don’t disagree that we need to fight terrorism,” he continued. “But we need to do it in a constitutionally sound way. Now, I’m just a little, old lawyer from Brunswick, Maine, but I don’t see how you can possibly read this to be in comport with the Constitution and authorize any acts by the president.”

Sheehan responded by listing prior attacks perpetrated by al-Qaida, and by saying in effect that all past, present and future affiliates of the organization were responsible for the 9/11 attack and thus eligible for targeting under the AUMF.

The “organization that attacked us on 9/11 already had its tentacles in—around the world with associated groups,” he said. “That was the nature of the organization then; it is the nature of the organization now. In order to attack that organization, we have to attack it with those affiliates that are its operational arm that have previously attacked and killed Americans, and at high-level interests, and continue to try to do that.”

King responded in the manner of a baffled high school teacher dealing with a student who is determined to fail a test in reading comprehension. “That’s fine, he said, “but that’s not what the AUMF says. … We may need new authority, but don’t—if you expand this to the extent that you have, it’s meaningless, and the limitation in the war power is meaningless. I’m not disagreeing that we need to attack terrorism wherever it comes from and whoever is doing it. But what I’m saying is, let’s do it in a constitutional way, not by putting a gloss on a document that clearly won’t support it.”

“It just—it just doesn’t—it just doesn’t work,” he continued, stammering.” I’m just reading the words. It’s all focused on September 11 and who was involved. … Why not say—come back to us and say, ‘Yes, you’re correct that this is an overbroad reading that renders the war powers of the Congress a nullity; therefore, we need new authorization to respond to the new situation’? I don’t understand why—I mean, I do understand it, because the way you read it, there’s no limit. But that’s not what the Constitution contemplates.”

King’s objection fell short of an unequivocal recognition of the unconstitutionality of the last 12 years of American military adventures. But his insistence that the Obama administration adhere to the rule of law with regard to the document that enables those wars gave Americans another chance to see how little respect their government has for the rules and the lives and well-being those rules were intended to protect.

A journalism professor explains why a shield law is dangerous

2013-05-19T10:31:00.002-04:00

Christopher B. Daley - A shield law for reporters? Thanks, but no thanks!

First, the Obama administration antagonized the news media by seizing the phone records of The Associated Press. Now, in an effort to make up, the president has thrown his support behind a Senate bill that would create a federal “shield law” that would allow journalists to legally protect their confidential sources.

A lot of journalists have embraced the idea. But I believe that journalists should say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Tempting as it might be, a federal shield law is a bad idea for journalists. We do not need it, and we may ultimately regret it. The relevant part of the First Amendment to the Constitution says: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. That powerful simple phrase “no law” means just that – no law, period. It means Congress simply cannot legislate in this area.

As a near-absolutist about the First Amendment, I think that part is clear and simple.
Furthermore, I believe that a proper reading of the First Amendment makes a shield law superfluous...

In the normal course of news-gathering, journalists seek information in all quarters. They observe some events first-hand, they examine documents, and they interview people. Often, the most sensitive and valuable kinds of news come to journalists from sources who need to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation such as being fired or prosecuted. In those cases, journalists promise the source confidentiality. They say something along these lines: Please give me the important information you have, and in return, I will promise to keep your identity a secret.

These kinds of promises are not routine, but they are fairly commonplace — especially in certain kinds of fields, such as reporting about the military, our spy agencies, or any sort of abuse of power. The source wants to blow the whistle on a secret that the source considers illegal, immoral, or just plain wrong. Often, the reporter is indifferent on that question, but the reporter can see that the material should reach the general public, so that the American people can decide the issue.

Should we, for example, use drones to kill American citizens abroad? That’s an important question, but we could not even debate it without “leaks” from confidential sources. Without a constitutional privilege, reporters make such promises to their sources at their peril. It is perfectly predictable that those in power (from either party) will reflexively attempt to control the flow of information to the people. One attractive mechanism for doing that is to force journalists to name their confidential sources and then to go after the sources and punish them. If I were a tyrant seeking to use the limited powers of government to create unlimited personal power, that is one of the ways I would go about it.

That is exactly what Thomas Jefferson and his supporters among the Founders foresaw and sought to prevent. One of the remedies they came up with was an absolute guarantee of press freedom. That’s why I believe we journalists do not need to ask Congress to bestow such protections on the practice of journalism. Indeed, we should be wary of inviting Congress to legislate about the press at all, because once legislators start writing laws, it is exceedingly difficult to get them to stop. Today, they may say they are proposing to do us a favor by granting us a shield. Tomorrow, having established the precedent, they may decide to improve that law by “clarifying” just who is a journalist. Before long, Congress might decide to license journalists or protect confidential sources in the Executive branch but deny such protection to their own staffers. There would be no end to it.

Instead, I believe that journalists should stand firm and insist on the rights we already have under the First Amendment. That was essentially the view expressed by one of the dissenters in the Branzburg case. In an eloquent and penetrating opinion, Justice William O. Douglas argued that the First Amendment exists for the ultimate benefit of the American people. When reporters do their jobs, Douglas wrote, “the press is often engaged in projects that bring anxiety and even fear to the bureaucracies, departments, or officials of government.” But if journalists can be intimidated into giving up their confidential sources, he warned, then “the reporter’s main function in American society will be to pass on to the public the press releases which the various departments of government issue.”

Texas joins four other states in suing BP, Hallburton over oil spill

2013-05-19T09:21:00.001-04:00

Al Jazeera - Texas has joined the crowd of Gulf of Mexico states to file suit against BP Plc, Halliburton Co and others for their role in one of the worst oil spills in US history.

The complaint, filed on Friday in US District Court in Beaumont, Texas, alleges that the companies and others "engaged in wilful and wanton misconduct" for their role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The state has accused the firms - as well as Transocean, Anadarko and BP America in its suit - of violating Texas' environmental regulations. Texas is seeking money from "lost" tourism revenues due to the spill, as well as monies that would have been generated from state park entrance and concession fees by visitors to the coastal communities.

In addition, the state is seeking civil penalties for each day the oil spilled into the Gulf, and each barrel spilled into the water, as compensation for natural resources that were "injured, destroyed or lost."

Texas joins four other states that have sued BP and other companies in connection to the spill: Florida and Mississippi filed complaints last month, while Alabama and Louisiana did in 2010.

Obama regime considers war on terror endless

2013-05-18T10:38:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, UK - That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

Update on the Supreme Court assault on individual rights you may have forgotten about

2013-05-18T10:18:00.002-04:00

Hit & Run - In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed New London officials to seize an entire neighborhood via eminent domain on the basis that the city had a "carefully considered" plan to boost economic development.

After the initial plan—a corporate campus with hotels, condos, and office space—fell apart, officials selected a new developer to build an apartment complex on a portion of the razed neighborhood, Fort Trumbull, in 2010. Yesterday, the developer missed a second deadline to show they had secured financing.

David Collins at The Day has details on the deal:

On deck to take the land for free, and then not pay taxes on it, is a father-and-son development team from Fairfield County and New York City, Irwin and Robert Stillman.

In return for the free land, the Stillmans, according to the development agreement they signed 2½ years ago, are supposed to prove they are going to build a big apartment complex and have the financing to finish it.

That proof was lacking, so officials axed Monday's planned groundbreaking.

Military claims power to police streets without local or state approval

2013-05-18T09:53:00.003-04:00

Alternet - For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefited from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “war on drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule: “Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military.” He says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

Flotsam & Jetsam: In the beginning Monsanto patented the earth

2013-05-17T17:20:00.000-04:00

Sam Smith - Having been involved in farming on and off much of my life, I was stunned to hear on CSPAN radio the justices of the Supreme Court speaking of soy beans as though they were a product of Monsanto.

At least that’s how it sounded. To be sure, Monsanto had fired a gene gun into some seeds that gave them a friendly attitude towards the corporation’s Roundup herbicide but apparently unrealized by the justices is the fact that soybeans are a product of nature and not of capitalism and the legal system.

In the portion of the debate I heard, no one bothered to mention this.

As I understood Monsanto’s successful argument, if it invented a DNA twister that would allow inoculated prospective parents to have their child avoid measles, those parents’ payment for the shots would be good for their baby but not for the baby’s children, in which case another license fee would be required even if another shot wasn’t. And all three generations were be considered effectively patented by Monsanto even if there is more to life than the avoidance of measles. They might even have to wear a shirt that confirmed the fact.

If I were a soybean I would be totally insulted by the court’s decision, for it implies that it is my herbicide resistance and not my delicious and nutritious taste that defines my being.

If I were more godly, I would consider it atrociously anti-Christian. What’s next? In the beginning, Monsanto patented earth?

And as one with some farming experience – including working on an organic beef farm my parents started before Silent Spring – I can promise you I have never heard the term “exhaustion doctrine” used in connection with any living creature or plant until the Supreme Court took up the matter.

There are a lot of other reasons to worry about Monsanto but I’m also worried about a Supreme Court that refers to a plant as a “self-replicating technology” that was “invented” by a corporation.

Did Monsanto plant the seed, care for it, harvest it and sell it?

It’s role in the whole process was, in fact, pretty damn small. That’s the way nature works.

And if you don’t believe me, ask any farmer. Or God.