Undernews

Rebuilding America: Concentrate on specific issues

2013-05-22T15:06:00.001-04:00

Another in our series on Rebuilding America

Sam Smith - I learned this secret many years ago when I first became involved in activism. The issue then was an unwanted fare increase by DC Transit. The organizer was the heavily black and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee but the participants came from all over including 100,000 riders who stayed off the buses. Then we went on to stop a Los Angeles like freeway system planned for the capital with an alliance that included old leftists, preservationists, SNCC, and black and white middle class homeowners threatened with removal.

Over and over, the best causes of the sixties and seventies - from ending the Vietnam War to the young environmental movement - found their strength in issues that could attract people who might not agree on everything but did on those issues. Just like Saul Alinksky, the god father of issue based activism, told us.

The real Hillary Clinton: Whether or not to indict

2013-05-22T15:03:00.000-04:00

On April 27, 1998, deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing met with his prosecutors to decide on whether to indict Hillary Clinton. Here's what happened as reported by Sue Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf in their book, "Truth at Any Cost:"

"[Ewing] paced the room for more than three hours, recalling facts from memory in his distinctive Memphis twang. He spoke passionately, laying out a case that the first lady had obstructed government investigators and made false statements about her legal work for McDougal's S & L, particularly the thrift's notorious multimillion-dollar Castle Grande real estate project. . .The biggest problem was the death a month earlier of Jim McDougal. . . Without him, prosecutors would have a hard time describing the S & L dealings they suspected Hillary Clinton had lied about."

CNN, MAR 18, 1999 - Deputy independent counsel Hickman Ewing testified at the Susan McDougal trial Thursday that he had written a "rough draft indictment" of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after he doubted her truthfulness in a deposition. Ewing, who questioned Mrs. Clinton in a deposition at the White House on April 22, 1995, said, "I had questions about whether what she was saying were accurate. We had no records. She was in conflict with a number of interviews."

Ewing said those interviews by investigators were primarily with other people in the Rose Law Firm. Ewing said he had questioned Mrs. Clinton about her representation of Jim McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan when she was at the Rose Law firm in Little Rock. "I don't know if she was telling the truth. I did not circulate the draft. I showed it to one lawyer (in the independent counsel's office) who said he didn't want to see it," Ewing said, under questioning from McDougal attorney Mark Geragos. . .

Ewing also testified that in a later deposition with both the president and first lady on July 22, 1995, he had questions about the truthfulness of both Clintons. McDougal's attorney Mark Geragos asked Ewing: "Did you say the Clintons were liars?" "I don't know if I used the 'L-word' but I expressed internally that I was concerned," Ewing said.

State Department names Israel lobbyist as special envoy on anti-semitism

2013-05-22T14:38:00.001-04:00

MJ Rosenberg, Mondoweiss - The new State Department Envoy on anti-Semitism is former AIPAC lobbyist Ira Forman, a guy whose entire career has been dedicated to advancing the policies of the Israeli government, at AIPAC and then as head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, where he worked to ensure that Democrats were more hawkish on Israel than Republicans.

And why is there a Special Envoy on anti-Semitism? Why is that the one form of hate granted a special post at the State Department? You know why: because the lobby wanted it. And it gets to place its ex-lobbyist in it.

What does the Special Envoy do? He does the same thing that David Harris of the American Jewish Committee does (except Harris doesn't do it on the taxpayers' dime). He travels around the world, kibitzes with various world leaders, stays in fancy hotels, eats in great restaurants, goes on great tours and then, every now and then, admonishes his hosts to be more vigilant about anti-Semitism (which, nowadays, usually means criticism of Israeli policies-- demonizing Israel, delegitimizing it, or applying a double standard). Then he issues a report (an official State Department report) that announces that anti-Semitism is on the rise.

To what purpose: To buttress the case for standing with the Israeli government, no matter what it does. In other words, the lobby has succeeded in creating one more "pro-Israel" organization, headed by another organizational hack, but housing it in the State Department where it can do what these organizations usually do (nothing except help crush opposition to Israeli government policies) but with the imprimatur of the State Department and paid for by taxpayers

FBI spied on leading anti-war online news journal

2013-05-22T14:34:00.000-04:00

Economic Policy Journal - The editors of Antiwar.com have known for some time that the FBI has had an eye on them. Naturally enough, they used the Freedom of Information Act to request bureau’s files on them and their organization—but the FBI hasn’t been forthcoming. Now the ACLU has filed suit to force the bureau to divulge the extent of its snooping on anti-interventionist journalists. As Kelley Vlahos reports:

According to the suit, the ACLU has made several futile attempts to obtain the FBI files since a reader alerted [Antiwar.com editors] Garris and Raimondo to this lengthy FBI memo in 2011. The details in question begin at page 62 of the heavily redacted 94-page document. It’s clear from these documents, the suit alleges, that the FBI has files on Garris and Raimondo, and at one point the FBI agent writing the April 30, 2004 memo on Antiwar.com recommends further monitoring of the website in the form of opening a “preliminary investigation …to determine if [redaction] are engaging in, or have engaged in, activities which constitute a threat to national security.”

“On one hand it seemed almost funny that we would be considered a threat to national security, but it’s very scary, because what we are engaging in is free speech, and free speech by ordinary citizens and journalists is now being considered a threat to national security and they don’t have to prove it because the government has the ability to suppress information and not disclose any of their activities – as witnessed with what is going on now at the AP and other things,” said Garris. “The government’s attitude is they want to know all, but they want the public to know as little as possible.”

Police blotter

2013-05-22T14:31:00.003-04:00

Daily Mail, UK - A market trader who ran an illegal lending racket from his fruit and veg stall has avoided jail after a court heard his interest rates were over 100 times lower than licensed payday loan firms.

Stephen Fossey, 45, used his pitch at Bacup market, Lancashire, to give credit to up to 180 customers over a four-year period.

He typically charged between 25 and 30 per cent interest on loans - compared with online credit firms who have been known to charge up to 4000 per cent on repayments.

Fossey was caught after investigators from the England Illegal Money Lending Team were tipped off by trading standards officers who were investigating a black market tobacco racket he was running

More on federal governrment telephone spying

2013-05-22T14:22:00.002-04:00

Gregory J. Millman, Wall Street Journal - U.S.-based telecoms companies routinely supply hundreds of thousands of records annually in response to subpoenas, which might come from federal, state or local government law enforcement bodies, and any entity with subpoena power can obtain phone records without notice being given to the target of an investigation, with the media no exception.

My first-hand experience of this came when agents of the Secret Service (then part of the Treasury Department, now part of the Department of Homeland Security) appeared at my door in 1991. I was a freelance journalist at the time, and had written a story about a tax issue for a now-defunct magazine called “Corporate Finance.” Two agents in suits knocked on my back door one autumn day as the children were sitting down to lunch, came in and urged me to identify my sources for the story, in which I had cited an Internal Revenue Service memo. When I refused to identify anyone, the agents told me I could wind up spending five years in prison. I didn’t know at the time that they already had a record of every phone call I had made.

At the request of the IRS, my telephone company had already turned over my phone records covering an unspecified period, and agents had been at work identifying calls to numbers they thought might be leads. They seem to have thought my source was in the Washington-Maryland area, because after finding numbers I had called in that area they went after the records of calls made from those numbers, as holders of those numbers later told me. That’s how they happened to scoop up the phone records of a home builder, a trade association of corporate finance officers, an old friend who happened to live in Washington, D.C., and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which supports investigative journalism and which I had called to discuss a fellowship. None of these people or organizations had anything to do with the story at issue, and none learned until long afterward that IRS investigators had been secretly riffling through records of all their phone calls.

Green Shadow Cabinet: A dehumanized society and emotional suffering

2013-05-22T14:01:00.001-04:00

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine is assistant secretary for health in the Green Party shadow cabinet

Bruce Levine - Big Pharma corruption of mental health institutions has meant an ever-increasing focus on our biochemistry. We are diverted from the reality that many emotional problems are not caused by biochemical or genetic defects but are often natural human reactions to powerlessness, hopelessness, and loss of community and autonomy that have been created by public policies. Mental health is hugely political, and it is very much connected to the sanity and humanity of a society and culture.

In the United States today, Native Americans have the highest suicide rate among all ethnic groups, and suicide is the second leading cause of death among Native American adolescents. Prior to colonialism and their subjugation, suicide was virtually nonexistent among young Native Americans. Social and cultural upheaval has resulted not only in depression and suicide for Native Americans but also in alcohol abuse and other destructive behaviors. Psychologist Roland Chrisjohn in The Circle Game notes: “In truth, does not the history of Jewish suicide during the holocaust, like the histories of suicide in the Arawaks, the Home Children, and the Marshallese Islanders, and countless other oppressed groups, teach us that suicide is in part a normal human reaction to conditions of prolonged, ruthless domination.”

The Centers for Disease Control reported on May 3, 2013 that the suicide rate among Americans aged 35–64 years increased 28.4 percent between 1999-2010, and the Lancet estimates that the three-year recessionary period from 2008 thru 2010 was a source in the United States for “4,750 excess suicide deaths.”

An exclusive focus on giant corporations’ profits comes at the expense of important components necessary for mental health. One such component is community — face-to-face contact with emotional and economic interdependence. Another component is autonomy — the experience of some control over one’s life.

Postpartum depression occurs in 10 to 20 percent of women in the the United States but is considered rare in Fiji and some African populations, according to a 2004 BMJ article, Based on a review of the literature, the authors concluded, “Structured social supports after childbirth are described in groups of women with low rates of postpartum depression.” Because of politics and public policies, many American woman lack social support before and after childbirth.

Genuine community in America is increasingly obliterated as social isolation increases. A major study reported in the American Sociological Review in 2006 examined Americans’ core network of confidants (those people in our lives we consider close enough to trust with personal information and whom we rely on as a sounding board). Authors reported that in 1985, 10 percent of Americans said that they had no confidants in their lives; but by 2004, 25 percent of Americans stated they had no confidants in their lives. This study confirmed the continuation of trends that came to public attention in sociologist Robert Putnam’s 2000 book Bowling Alone, which reported a decline in U.S. social capital (his term for social connectedness) in virtually every area people have historically found community.

Social isolation is related to depression and many other emotional problems. Increasing social isolation in America is not caused by genetics and biochemistry but by public policies that focus only on increasing the profits of giant corporations.

Large empires can enslave people, and large corporations can create standardized, assembly-line, robotic living. Until recently, it was common sense that all bigness was a threat to autonomy and freedom. Before the terms mental illness and depression entered our lexicon, it was basic common sense that if a few big guys had all the power, then the rest of us would have none, and if we had no autonomy or control over our lives, then we would more likely have emotional difficulties.

Because of corporate domination, Americans have increasingly lost community and autonomy, and have acquired instead the tyranny of institutionalization: domination by gigantic, impersonal, bureaucratic, standardized entities — visible in large corporations, the workplace, health care, schools, and much of our lives. This institutionalization has made many Americans feel small, isolated, helpless, scared, inattentive, bored, angry, alienated, and depressed.

Bruce E. Levine;s latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite. His web site

Morning Line: If you have to ask, there's a problem

2013-05-22T13:02:00.001-04:00

Sam Smith - There has been a lot of talk - here and elsewhere - about various Obama violations of the Constitution and, of course, the lawyers are having a field day about it all.

But here's something that gets missed. People who support and practice constitutional principles don't need lawyers to argue their case. You just know it.

Virtue has a curious way of proving its existence without argument. Those who have it don't have to explain it (or have their Attorney General do it for them). It's just there.

As soon as you make a legal case to prove you've got a conscience, you've got a problem.

Death notice

2013-05-22T12:45:00.001-04:00

Legacy - HOLCOMB, Robert (Bob) Died a couple of days ago which wasn't exactly unexpected as he had been in poopy health for years. While he never complained much, those that knew him were aware that he suffered several heart attacks and had quadruple bypass open heart surgery before age 40, and it kinda went downhill from there.

... In addition to his beloved sister, Sarjim Wenzel of Lubbock, Texas, he is survived by his wife, business partner, lover, and best friend of 52 years, Rhoda Antoinette (Toni) Holcomb with whom he was co-owner/operator of the Cab-N-Facet Fine Jewelry in Springfield, Ohio for some 35 years.

.... In accordance with his wishes, Bob will be cremated with half of his cremated remains to be buried in the Ohio Masonic Community Cemetery and the remainder scattered over some favorite haunts of his somewhat misspent youth in Lubbock, Texas. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. Saturday in the Wooley Chapel of the Ohio Masonic Community with Chaplain Bruce Vincent presiding. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service. Don't waste money on flowers...if you have extra bucks, send them to the Ohio Masonic Home Benevolent Endowment Foundation, 5 Masonic Dr., Springfield, Ohio 45504 where they will be put to good use and appreciated.

How not to tame the IRS controversy

2013-05-22T12:12:00.001-04:00

For an IRS official to put herself in the same category as Oliver North - prominent government officials who took the Fifth - places this whole story in a new political environment. Especially, as some one noted, the average citizen doesn't get to take the Fifth when dealing with an IRS agent. This is not good for the Obamadmin.

Buzzfeed - The IRS official who first disclosed the service’s targeting of conservative organizations refused to answer questions during a House oversight hearing Wednesday, insisting that she has not broken any laws.

During a House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee hearing, the IRS’ Lois Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself, even as she insisted she had not done anything wrong.

“I have not broken any laws… I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” Lerner said in an opening statement.

Earlier this month Lerner disclosed that the IRS had targeted conservative groups during the 2012 election. Lerner heads up the division of the IRS that conducted the extended reviews of Tea Party organizations.

Although Chairman Darrel Issa pressed Lerner to answer some questions, she repeatedly denied to do so and invoked her rights. But the fact that she gave an opening statement created some confusion: Issa and committee Republicans argued that it constituted testimony, and as such was a waiver of her Fifth Amendment rights.

But Lerner was unmoved and continued to refuse to testify further. “I will not answer any questions or testify here today,” she told the committee.

Republicans were clearly frustrated. “That’s not the way it works. She waived her Fifth Amendment right by giving an opening statement,” Rep. Trey Gowdy argued angrily.

Bloomberg and taxi fleet chief come to blows

2013-05-22T11:47:00.003-04:00

NY Post - Mayor Bloomberg went on a spitting-mad rant against a city cab-fleet boss who won a court victory over Hizzoner’s planned “Taxi of Tomorrow” — vowing to “destroy your f--king industry” when he leaves office, The Post has learned.

A fuming Bloomberg made the threat against Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman at Madison Square Garden’s private 1879 Club during last Thursday’s Knick playoff game, a witness said yesterday.

“It was like Gene had kidnapped his child. He used the f-word twice,” the witness said.

Freidman confirmed the blow-up to The Post, and said Bloomberg’s tirade included the warning that, “After January, I am going to destroy all you f--king guys.”

Freidman approached Bloomberg at the exclusive club a day after a judge ruled that the mayor’s plan to replace the city’s taxi fleet with the Taxi of Tomorrow violated a city code requiring a hybrid-cab option for garage owners.

“I saw Bloomberg and his security there in the club, so I went over and said, ‘Tell me what is going on with the Taxi of Tomorrow?’ ” Freidman, 42, said yesterday.

“He turns to me, and said, ‘Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your f--king industry.’

“I said, ‘Whoa, Mr. Mayor, calm down! Why can’t I sit down with you and figure out something that works?’ He got back in my face and said, ‘After January, I am going to destroy all you f--king guys,’ ” said Freidman, whose company operates a fleet of 925 yellow cabs.

“He was very angry, very scary, very violent in a non-physical way. He was grinding his teeth, he was spitting, he was red and he was in my face,” the self-styled “King of the Road” claimed.

“The mayor was extremely disrespectful, and not ‘mayorly’ at all. He cursed at me, and when we walked away, I asked a friend who was with me, ‘Did the mayor just threaten me?’

“My friend responded, ‘No, he threatened you twice.’ ”

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

The Taxi of Tomorrow is a Bloomberg pet project that would have replaced nearly the entire of fleet of yellow cabs with a more spacious model that Nissan won the right to design in an open competition.

The taxi industry, led by Freidman, challenged the overhaul — and Bloomberg seeing his foe at MSG set him off, the witness said.

“Bloomberg thinks that everyone should just follow his decisions,” he said.

UN head says world will run out of water

2013-05-22T11:11:00.003-04:00

Guardian, UK - Ban Ki-moon has warned the world is on course to run out of freshwater unless greater efforts are made to improve water security.

Speaking on the UN's International Day of Biological Diversity, [the UN Secretary General] said there was a "mutually reinforcing" relationship between biodiversity and water that should be harnessed.

"We live in an increasingly water insecure world where demand often outstrips supply and where water quality often fails to meet minimum standards. Under current trends, future demands for water will not be met," Ban said.

White House correspondents fail to stand up for fellow journalists

2013-05-21T20:56:00.001-04:00

Buzzfeed- As news outlets and press advocates pile on the Obama administration for the Justice Department’s long-term spying operations against the Associated Press and Fox News, one group has remained conspicuously absent from the debate: the White House Correspondents Association.

The WHCA, considered the primary organization representing reporters and news outlets covering the executive branch, has so far resisted pressure to challenge the DOJ and White House on its investigations into the AP and Fox reporter James Rosen, several sources familiar with the situation said.

WHCA president Ed Henry, also a Fox News correspondent, did not respond to queries about whether or not the organization will take a formal stance on the administration’s treatment of reporters in the wake of recent revelations. Additionally, past WHCA presidents either did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment on the record.

Some observers say the WHCA, best known for the annual dinner it hosts for press, celebrities, and the political establishment, tends to avoid formally engaging in controversies like this one. A former WHCA president suggested it might be too early for the organization to comment while the focus is still on DOJ rather than the White House in particular.

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.