The ruling can now be appealed to the Supreme Court, but it is likely to be first appealed to the full en banc court of appeals.

The three-judge panel is composed of Reinhardt, an appointee of former President Carter; Michael Daly Hawkins, an appointee of former President Clinton; and N. Randy Smith, appointed by former President George W. Bush. During oral argument, the questions appeared to favor those challenging Proposition 8. The panel, however, did raise procedural concerns.

Walker’s status as a gay man in a same-sex relationship became part of the appeal with Proposition 8 backers arguing that he had a potential conflict-of-interest. They insist that he did not properly reveal his relationship before declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional in August 2010. On April 6, 2011, Walker disclosed that he is gay and has been in a relationship with a male doctor for about ten years.

The panel held “Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

The court notably found standing for the parties to sue — a major question in the case. Even in his partial dissent, Smith still agrees with the majority that the parties had standing and that the motion to vacate should be denied. However, he believes the law satisfied the rational basis test and should have been upheld.

I expect an en banc challenge in the case, particularly with a divided panel decision.

Both opinions are well-reasoned, though I agree with the majority. Reinhardt is viewed as one of the most liberal judges in the country and he seems an attractive foil for some of the conservative justices. Many have said that in the past these justices appeared to be gunning for the Ninth Circuit and particularly Reinhardt. Justices like Scalia are likely to favor cert in the case. However, it is to the advantage of the challengers to try their hand at the en banc first. There is always the danger that one of the four most reliable conservative justices might not want to take the risk of granting cert. As it stands, this is precedent controlling only in the Ninth Circuit.

The matter could not be more central to a nation built on both the rule of law and pluralistic values. If discriminatory views are enough to satisfy the rational basis test, a host of insular minorities would face majoritarian harassment and abuse. Quoting an earlier Supreme Court ruling in Moreno, the court ruled that “[j]ust as a ‘desire to harm . . . cannot While race and religion trigger strict scrutiny, sexual preference is not treated as a suspect classification for the purposes of the constitute a legitimate governmental interest,’ . . . neither can a more basic disapproval of a class of people.”

Here is the opinion: Prop 8 ruling

Source: LA Times

For the first time I am writing a guest blog with a blatant message supporting a cause that you might say is near and dear to my heart.  I hope Professor Turley excuses this personal usage of my guest blogging
privileges, as hopefully will my fellow guest bloggers. Here is my pitch. Some regulars here at the Turley blog know that I am a heart transplant recipient. I received my new heart in October 17, 2010, two days after the birth of my third grandchild. I am, needless to say, an extremely lucky man. My nuclear family all had heart issues. My parents both died at the age of 54 from heart attacks (Myocardial Infarctions {MI’s} as they’re known in the trade). It was my mother’s fourth or fifth and came as a result of her third stroke. When my father died, the requisite autopsy found that this was actually his second MI. My older brother has also had a severe stroke and an MI, but thankfully he is doing quite well today at age 75.

The main reason I am alive today, beyond the fact of my heart transplant, is because my wife during the worst stages of my illness, literally saved my life four times. Her love, care-giving, watchfulness and fierceness in ensuring my medical care, pulled me through very difficult times. We married thirty years ago when I was thirty-seven and six months later I suffered a massive MI, literally destroying one of my three main arteries. Unlike me, she had never experienced the severe illness of someone close, so this transition was obviously shattering but she saw me through. I guess you could say that there is a certain resiliency about me because I was to have two more MI’s at five year periods and yet was able to recover from them and work productively. However, seven years ago at age sixty, in the prime of my profession; I developed Congestive Heart Failure (Cardio Myopathy) and was forced to retire.

What I had was a progressively degenerating condition, where my heart was gradually becoming too weak to be able to pump my blood. Yet by losing weight and living healthy I was able to stave off the inevitable until the winter of 2009. My Cardiologist let me have it straight and told me I’d better get on a heart transplant list, or I wouldn’t have much time left. I was first seen at The University of Miami/Jackson Hospital in March of 2010. Two months later I was hospitalized with Ventricular Tachycardia (VTac) after flat-lining in my living room. I recovered after three weeks hospitalization and on June 1^st, 2010 I was officially put on the UNOS Heart Transplant List.

UNOS is the organization that deals with all transplants country wide and ensures that the organs are distributed fairly to those in need. However, by August I was dying. I had no strength and I kept losing weight no matter what I did to keep it on. I was scheduled to go into the hospital to get what is known as an LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device). Since the left ventricle of my heart was virtually dead, this device replaced its function and kept me alive. Coincidentally, Dick Cheney received the exact same device, the HeartMate II LVAD about two weeks prior to this time. Given my distaste for him, it was yet comforting to know that he had gotten it, because obviously he receives the best medical care.

With the device implant scheduled for early August I was told to sign into the hospital a few days before the scheduled date and surprisingly was told the next day that a heart was available. I was prepped for surgery and for the next fourteen hours my wife and I waited expectantly for the operation, hope, fear, tension and anxiety making us emotionally exhausted. The operation had been scheduled for 8:00 AM, but that time came and went with no word. Finally, at 11:00 AM, we were told that the operation was not to be for technical, legal reasons dealing with the donor. The effect upon us was devastating, but I have to honestly say that feeling the worst of it fell to my wife, my love and my caregiver. You can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it, that being on the verge of death from non-traumatic causes is modulated by a state called “reverie” where your mind slows down. This could be due to lack of oxygen, or some other physical means that is hardwired into us. Given this, the burden of this sudden disappearance of hope fell on my wife and I can’t even begin to imagine what she went through, yet while at the same time being able to look after and minister to me.

The LVAD was implanted a few days later and for the rest of the month I was in the hospital rehabbing and learning to live with this device. With a LVAD there is a power cord in your abdomen that must either be connected to an external powering device, or to a set of heavy batteries. You literally can’t live without external power. Give my extremely physical weak state prior to the operation, rehab was not an easy process. Learning to switch to batteries and back within a two minute window is hard and initially fills one with dread. Nevertheless, my wife and I mastered the process, which included her learning to change my dressings over the abdomen tube regularly to prevent infection. I made it home by September and must admit that as the days passed I began to despair about ever receiving a transplant.

I was approaching age 66 rapidly, utilizing the LVAD was difficult (imagine the process of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night attached to a 10 foot cord in your belly) and  despite my wife’s best efforts, I was feeling uncharacteristically depressed.  Miraculously in mid October we were awakened by a call from The University of Miami/Jackson Transplant Center and told there was a heart available for me. We needed to be in Miami in two hours and the drive itself is one hour at full speed. Since I hadn’t been allowed to drive since my condition had deteriorated in May, my wife had driven there and back too may times to count. We made it and the following day I received my heart transplant, recovery from which is no walk in the park. In fact after I came out of the operation I was in a psychotic state induced by one of the medications used during transplant, combined with morphine for the pain. I couldn’t speak because I was Enturbated and my wife and daughter had to deal with my psychotic belief that the hospital staff was trying to murder me, after they had just saved my life. When I refused pain medication after two days, the psychosis abated and I could begin to let some of the joy of my new life begin to take effect.

I’ve far simplified the experiences I’ve gone through; to really detail it might well take a book. Today, I am healthier than I’ve been in perhaps 20 years. My wife and I have recovered somewhat from the PTSD like state that people normally get going through an experience like this and our lives get progressively more fulfilling than they’ve been for years. My gratitude to my magnificent Heart Surgeon Dr. Si Pham, Chief of the UM/Jackson Heart Transplant Center is boundless. He is perhaps the most unpretentious, yet powerfully charismatic human being that I have ever met. He is quintessentially all that we hope for in a Physician. His 5:00 AM calls to the intensive care nurses for his patients vitals, giving followup instructions based on the results, even when on vacation, indicates his dedication to his patients and his work. I would say categorically that he is perhaps the most impressive human being I have ever met. I feel the gratitude also to the entire staff of the University of Miami/Jackson Transplant Team, that are as good as in any like facility in the nation statistically, but don’t get the equal credit that other more prestigious institutions receive.

The overwhelming bulk of my gratitude must go to the unknown donor and his family, whose strong heart now beats within me. I know nothing of this donor save that he was a 26 year old man, of approximately my height and build. I am working through an agency that will anonymously contact his family to see if they are willing to receive my personal letter of gratitude, now that some time has passed for them to begin to have processed their own heavy grief. That he and they were willing to allow this life saving donation, at a time for them which must have been tragic, is a testament to their humanity. It is to recognize that humanity, coupled with my own blessings, that I am impelled to find some way to pay back for the gift I’ve received. This post is but a beginning. Below there are links that first give a excellent, short presentation of the case for you to designate yourself as a organ donor and following it are links that will allow you to do so.

As someone who has both commented frequently here through the years and is a guest blogger, many of you know who I am. If in any way I have connected with you on any level, even if it was in disagreement, please understand that I would have been dead a year and a half ago without the blessing of this donation. I implore you the to consider putting yourself on the list as a potential organ donor and perhaps save someone’s life. It could well be the ultimate gift of your life.

An excellent video briefly explaining the need for donors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifyRsh4qKF4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Other links that can help you get involved in this.
 

http://www.unos.org/donation/index.php?topic=fact_sheet_9

http://www.thenationalnetworkoforgandonors.org/index.html

http://donatelife.net/register-now/

http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/Want-To-Encourage-Organ-Donation/56405

 Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Last December, the NAACP released a report titled Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America. The report reveals “direct connections between the trend of increasing, unprecedented African American and Latino voter turnout and an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength among communities of color.”

Benjamin Jealous, NAACP President and CEO, said, “It’s been more than a century since we’ve seen such a tidal wave of assaults on the right to vote. Historically, when voting rights are attacked, it’s done to facilitate attacks on other rights. It is no mistake that the groups who are behind this are simultaneously attacking very basic women’s rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and educational access for working people and minorities.” He added, “Voting rights attacks are the flip side of buying a democracy. First you buy all the leaders you can, and then you suppress as many votes as possible of the people who might object.”

I should add that African American and Latino voters aren’t the only people who are being targeted by the “block the vote” effort. Young people and the elderly in some states may also face hurdles if they hope to exercise their right to vote in the November elections.

From the NAACP report:

 “The heart of the modern block the vote campaign is a wave of restrictive government-issued photo identification requirements. In a coordinated effort, legislators in thirty-four states introduced bills imposing such requirements. Many of these bills were modeled on legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a conservative advocacy group whose founder explained: ‘Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.’”

In a Nation article titled The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy, John Nichols addresses the issue of ALEC’s involvement in the “block the vote” effort:

For the Koch brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich. And ALEC has made it clear, through its ambitious “Public Safety and Elections Task Force,” that while it wants to dismantle any barriers to corporate cash and billionaire bucks’ influencing elections, it wants very much to erect barriers to the primary tool that Americans who are not CEOs have to influence the politics and the government of the nation: voting.

That crude calculus, usually cloaked in bureaucracy and back-room dealmaking, came into full view in 2011.

Across the country, and to a greater extent than at any time since the last days of Southern resistance to desegregation, voting rights were being systematically diminished rather than expanded.

ALEC has been organizing and promoting the assault, encouraging its legislative minions to enact rigid Voter ID laws and related attacks on voting rights in more than three dozen states.

With their requirements that the millions of Americans who lack driver’s licenses and other forms of official paperwork go out and purchase identification cards in order to cast ballots, the Voter ID push put in place new variations on an old evil: the poll tax.

Some states are becoming extremely selective about the types of voter ID’s that they will accept at the polls. Take Texas, for example: In the Lone Star State, you’ll be allowed to vote if you present a military ID or a concealed-gun license—but not if you present your college ID.

Democrats have argued that the enactment of these new restrictive voter laws was politically motivated.  They have claimed that groups that tend to vote Democratic—the elderly, the young, minorities, and the poor—include many people who lack photo ID’s.

Last October, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University released a report about the new voting laws and how they could affect the 2012 elections. Here is an excerpt from the report’s summary:

State governments across the country enacted an array of new laws making it harder to register or to vote. Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.

These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election. Based on the Brennan Center’s analysis of the 19 laws and two executive actions that passed in 14 states, it is clear that:

• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

Is this what our legislators and others who have been elected to represent us should be working on—writing and enacting laws that will make it more difficult for some citizens to vote?

From the ACLU’s Oppose Voter Registration Fact Sheet:

VOTING IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE

• Nothing is more fundamental to our democracy than the right to vote.
• The right to vote is protected by more constitutional amendments – the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th – than any other right we enjoy as Americans.
• There are additional federal and state statutes which guarantee and protect voting rights, as well as declarations by the Supreme Court that the right to vote is fundamental because it is protective of all our other rights.

We have heard a lot about voter fraud in the past couple of years. So…one has to ask: “How big a problem is voter fraud in this country?” An editorial that appeared in the New York Times last fall says that there is actually little voter fraud in America—and that “none of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases.” The Times editorial also suggested that Republicans are passing these restrictive voter laws in order “to give themselves a political edge by suppressing Democratic votes”

Would you describe these attempts by politicians to disenfranchise voters in this country as un-American? Do you think it’s an attack on democracy?

SOURCES

Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America (NAACP)

A Report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. & the NAACP (PDF)

Block the Vote: How the Koch-Backed American Legislative Exchange Council Aims to Keep You from Voting (AFL-CIO)

NAACP Denounces Role of ALEC in “Jim Crow, Esquire” Voting Laws (PRWatch)

Voting Law Changes in 2012 (Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law)

The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy (The Nation)

ALEC Exposed: Rigging Elections (The Nation)

The GOP War on Democracy: How Conservatives Shamelessly Disenfranchise People Who Vote Democrat: Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth (Alternet)

New Hampshire GOP Speaker Discourages Students From Voting Because They’ll Vote ‘Liberal’ (ThinkProgress)

Students hit by voter ID restrictions (Politico)

GOP War on Voting: AG Holder Joins the Fight (Rolling Stone)

The Myth of Voter Fraud (New York Times)

“There Is Almost No Voter Fraud in America.” (ACLU)

Oppose Voter ID Legislation – Fact Sheet (ACLU)

Who Stole the Election?: Dominating many state legislatures, Republicans have launched a full-on assault on voting rights (Prospect)

Various countries, including our own, are constantly complaining about the use of diplomatic immunity to shield diplomats from liability. While this is often brazen traffic and driving violations, it can include more serious crimes.

While the Germans punish this offense with as much as two years in jail, the ambassador continued to fish before the policemen in mocking silence.

For its part, the North Korea press did report a notable occurrence in Berlin this week: the “natural wonder” of a small songbird landing on the entrance of the embassy and staying for an hour after the death of leader Kim Jong-il: “It seemed that upon hearing the sad news of the demise of the outstanding great man, the bird flew to the mourning station to express condolences and flew away after standing vigil.” That is right up there with snow in the winter as evidence that Nature is grieving the loss of the Dear One.

Next Si Hong Ri will go on North Korean television and proclaimed “I caught a fish THIS BIG after the Dear One died.” For an entire nation built on fish stories, it would be the perfect send off for the Dear One. After all, his parting gift to the nation he starved and oppressed was a truckload of fish.

Source: Spiegel

The rock was part of a meteorite shower and is only the fifth time scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites. The scientists believe that the 15 pounds of rocks (including one two-pound chunk) was sent hurling toward Earth millions of years ago when something struck the Red Planet. However, since creationism maintains that the Earth is only roughly 6000 years old, that is clearly as wrong as suggesting the Moon does not shine on its own power. As Sherlock Holmes has noted, “once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” The truth is that Martians are throwing rocks at us and our presidential candidates are ignoring or denying reality.

Ok, I saw “Cowboys versus Aliens” last night, but that does not mean that this could not happen. I, for one, am having the kids gather rocks to defend our town . . . at least until the Martians develop a stick with a nail in it.
Source: Physorg

Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

Freedom of speech is a well established right in this country and rooted in the 1st Amendment.  ”Congress shall make no law [. . .] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”.  The U.N.’s  Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 reads, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”  Within the United States and our jurisprudence there are some exceptions to this freedom, but by in large (up to this point in history) the restrictions are both reasonable and necessary: the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, laws prohibiting speech that incites imminent lawless action, restrictions on fighting words, regulation of commercial speech such as advertising, copyright and patent laws protecting authors and inventors control over their work, and the prohibition of slander and defamation.

Let’s be clear here that the subject isn’t just free speech, but anonymous political free speech.

Here at Res Ipsa Loqitur, there is a long standing policy of allowing anonymous posting to comments and protecting poster’s anonymity.   The decision to post under your own name or not is entirely yours.  This policy encourages free speech while allowing that having an unpopular or minority point of view should not have negative political consequences for the speaker or unnecessarily complicate their lives simply for expressing their views.  Many political insiders and Washington professionals have told Professor Turley that they enjoy reading this blog and have enjoyed posting anonymously.  The only posters here required to use their real identities are the guest bloggers and the requirement is voluntary.  None of us were coerced into using our real names.  When offered the honor of being a guest blogger, it was simply (and I think I speak for all the guest bloggers when I say fairly) a requirement in assuming editorial responsibilities.  However, all of this raises an important question.

Do you have a right to anonymous political free speech?

According to the Supreme Court, you do.  According to the Department of Homeland Security, you don’t.  They’ve hired General Dynamics to track U.S. citizens exercising this critical civil right.

The history of anonymous political free speech in America dates back to our founding.  The seminal essays found in “The Federalist Papers” were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the nom de plume of “Publius” although this was not confirmed until a list of authorship complied by Hamilton was posthumously released to the public.  As previously discussed on this blog, the right to anonymous political free speech has been addressed by the Supreme Court.  Most notably in the cases of Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995).  In Talley, Justice Hugo Black writing for the majority said that, “Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all.”  In McIntyre, Justice John Paul Stevens writing for the majority said that, “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. [… ] an author’s decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.”  That seems clear enough in defining that citizens do have a Constitutionally protected right to anonymous political free speech.

The full DHS policy statement regarding its activities can be viewed in the DHS Privacy Compliance Review of the NOC Media Monitoring Initiative (November 15, 2011), but rt.com’s summary spells out the basics:

“Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.

Also included in the roster of those subjected to the spying are government officials, domestic or not, who make public statements, private sector employees that do the same and “persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest,” which to itself opens up the possibilities even wider.

The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses.” – rt.com

This question about the right to anonymous political free speech is also asked over the background of the Electronic Privacy Information Center filing a FOIA request against the DHS to find out the details of the agency’s social network monitoring program.  On April 12, 2011, EPIC submitted a FOIA request to the DHS regarding agency records detailing the media monitoring program and seeking the following documents:

• “All contracts, proposals, and communications between the federal government and third parties, including, but not limited to, H.B. Gary Federal, Palantir Technologies, and/or Berico Technologies, and/or parent or subsidiary companies, that include provisions concerning the capability of social media monitoring technology to capture, store, aggregate, analyze, and/or match personally-identifiable information.
• All contracts, proposals, and communications between DHS and any states, localities, tribes, territories, and foreign governments, and/or their agencies or subsidiaries, and/or any corporate entities, including but not limited to H.B. Gary Federal, Palantir Technologies, and/or Berico Technologies, regarding the implementation of any social media monitoring initiative.
• All documents used by DHS for internal training of staff and personnel regarding social media monitoring, including any correspondence and communications between DHS, internal staff and personnel, and/or privacy officers, regarding the receipt, use, and/or implementation of training and evaluation documents.
• All documents detailing the technical specifications of social media monitoring software and analytic tools, including any security measures to protect records of collected information and analysis.
• All documents concerning data breaches of records generated by social media monitoring technology.”

EPIC asked the DHS to expedite the processing of its request, citing extraordinary public interest in the plan and the public’s right to comment on the measures.  The DHS response can best be categorized as stonewalling.  The DHS acknowledged receipt of EPIC’s FOIA request on April 28, 2011, but denied the request for expedited processing.  At that time, the DHS did not disclose any records in response to the FOIA request. On May 18, 2011, EPIC appealed the DHS’s failure to make a timely substantive determination and the agency’s denial of EPIC’s expedited processing request. The DHS did not respond to EPIC’s administrative appeal and again did not disclose any records.  Left with no other recourse, EPIC filed a lawsuit against the DHS  on December 20, 2011 to compel the disclosure of documents relating to the agency’s media monitoring program.  In response to EPIC’s FOIA lawsuit, the DHS disclosed 285 pages of agency records earlier this month (January, 2012).

As part of recent disclosures related to the EPIC suit, it is revealed that the DHS has hired and instructed General Dynamics to monitor political dissent and the dissenters.  The range of websites listed as being monitored is quite impressive.  Notably, jonathanturley.org is not on this list, but equally of note is that this list is by the DHS’ own admission “representative” and not “comprehensive”.

“8. Appendices

8.1 Social Media Web Sites Monitored by the NOC’s MMC-SN Desk
This is a representative list of sites that the NOC’s MMC-SN Desk will start to monitor in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture under this Initiative. Initial sites listed may link to other sites not listed. The NOC’s MMC-SN Desk may also monitor those sites if they are within the scope of this Initiative.

This list is based on Appendix A of the ‘Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative” PIA, dated June 22, 2010.’” DHS Response to EPIC FOIA Request, p. 191.

The representative list can be found on page 191-194 of the DHS Response to EPIC FOIA Request.  Notably, jonathanturley.org is not on this list, but equally of note is that other WordPress blogs are on the list.  Some of the more high profile and highly trafficked sites being monitored include the comments sections of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, Wired, and ABC News.  In addition, social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are being monitored.  For the first time, the public not only has an idea who the DHS is pursuing with their surveillance and where, but what they are looking for as well.  General Dynamics contract requires them to “[identify] media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities.”  The DHS also instructed General Dynamics to generate “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS.”  In other words, the DHS wants to know who you are if you say anything critical about the government.

Anybody thinking of the name “Goebbels” at this point is not out of line.  It is a sad commentary on the degradation of civil rights in this country since 9/11 that a blog better protects your right to anonymous political free speech than the government.  Conversely, it speaks volumes about Professor Turley’s commitment to the Constitution and the wisdom of this blog’s anonymity policy.

Is the DHS overstepping in adopting a policy that is counter to the jurisprudence surrounding anonymous free speech?

Is the DHS tracking of bloggers and journalists – the gathering of such information obviously being used for investigative and possibly prosecutorial actions –  going to have a chilling effect on political free speech?

Is this yet another argument for repealing the Patriot Act and dismantling the Department of Homeland Security for blatant abuses of civil rights?

What do you think?

Source(s): DailyKos, rt.com, U.S. Constitution, U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, DHS Privacy Compliance Review of the NOC Media Monitoring Initiative (November 15, 2011) (.pdf),  EPIC.org, DHS Response to EPIC FOIA Request (.pdf)

Kudos: Otteray Scribe for pointing out the DailyKos article.

~ Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

What this guy can do in less than three minutes is pretty darn impressive.

This case has everything a Fourth Amendment nerd could want, it’s got curtilage, sniff tests, and unreasonable searches. The case is Jardines v. State in which Miami, Florida, police, supported by DEA agents, conducted a “sniff test” by a detection dog, a chocolate lab named Franky (left). The warrentless sniff test, based on an anonymous tip, occurred at the front door of Jardines’ private residence. Franky alerted to the odor of narcotics and a search warrant was obtained. The search found marijuana was being grown inside the home.

Jardines filed a motion to surpress and the trial court granted that motion. The State appealed and the district court reversed and Jardines appealed to the Florida Supreme Court.

The Florida Supreme Court held that:

… the warrantless “sniff test” that was conducted at the front door of the residence in the present case was an unreasonable government intrusion into the sanctity of the home and violated the Fourth Amendment.

Sniff tests for cars are allowed via Illinois v. Caballes where the Supreme Court held:

A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

While the front porch might be consider curtilage, courts have generally found no Fourth Amendment violation when the porch is assessable to the public. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Davis v. United States wrote:

Absent express orders from the person in possession against any possible trespass, there is no rule of private or public conduct which makes it illegal per se, or a condemned invasion of the person’s right of privacy, for anyone openly and peaceably, at high noon, to walk up the steps and knock on the front door of any man’s “castle” with the honest intent of asking questions of the occupant thereof — whether the questioner be a pollster, a salesman, or an officer of the law.

In Jardines, the Florida Supreme Court recognized this front porch exception rule and said that “a dog “sniff test” is a qualitatively different matter.”

In Kyllo v. United States, a case involving the use of a thermal imaging device to scan the outside of a residence for the heat signature indicating the possible presence of high-intensity  lamps used for growing marijuana indoors, the Supreme Court held:

Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment “search,” and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.

A detector dog is certainly a device not in general public use. It will be interesting to see if the Court follows Kyllo or Caballes.

If the Jardines sniff test is allowed to stand, police, with a detector dog, will be able to walk up to any front door and test for illegal odors.

H/T: Orin Kerr, SCOTUSblog, Fourth Amendment.com, Fourth Amendment.com.

When you contemplate all of the problems that beset us in this election year it is hard not to feel daunted by the task of finding solutions. Many millions of American’s are without jobs, with the prospect of future employment seeming illusory. The top 1% of the American population controls vast amounts of the country’s wealth.  http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1  Wages of average Americans have stagnated for the past 40 years to such an extent that our middle class is shrinking rapidly. The housing boom of years past has become a bust of monumental proportions and foreclosures are destroying formerly viable neighborhoods. Our once barely adequate “safety net” has been shredded and there are attempts to destroy both Social Security and Medicare as we know it. Despite a weak attempt at Medical reform millions of Americans find health care unaffordable, with many dying and others forced into bankruptcy to stay alive. Due to lack of money America’s once magnificent infrastructure is rotting and solutions are not on the horizon.

The collapse and bailout of our banking industry has cost us trillions and appears to have been brought about by fraudulent practices on the part of the industry, yet no one has been indicted. In fact the remuneration of top executives in this duplicitous industry has actually increased. Efforts to impose stiff controls ensuring that these artificial crises don’t happen again and that these huge financial entities do business ethically, have failed to pass the Congress. We see that the fallout from the American banking crisis has undercut the world’s economy and that economic crises in other industrialized nations appear regularly. Please notice I’m only referring to the economic problems we face and only producing a partial list of those economic problems.

We have seemingly come to the conclusion of an unnecessary war in Iraq, where trillions were spent and perhaps a million were killed, yet the withdrawal of troops is to bases that surround Iraq. We are leaving about 40,000 Americans in country, many as mercenaries (contractors is a euphemism) as we support the largest diplomatic infrastructure in any foreign nation. The war in Afghanistan still rages in a land that has never been significantly shaped by any outside empire, this despite the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the virtual destruction of Al Qaeda.  Hundreds of billions are being spent and the lives of our troops are put in danger, in an exercise with little hope of success. Billions are going towards building Afghanistan’s infrastructure as ours is falling apart. Yet these instances fail to raise the broad spectrum of the military/foreign policy problems continuing to plague us. These issues include a military budget that far greater than that of all other nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures 

However, these three paragraphs still do not encompass the broad range of problems we Americans face. There is more to be touched on before we come to the conclusion that I’ve reached, that there is one problem that not only transcends all of these, but its need for immediate solution supersedes any of the others in importance.

On this blog the issue of civil liberties is constantly with us because our host/founder is a distinguished Constitutional Law Professor and Lawyer. Jonathan Turley’s career has been spent fighting for civil liberties and for our freedoms. One result of the tragedy of 9/11 has been the steady erosion of our civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism. The formation of a “Super Agency”, the frighteningly named (on so many levels)  Department of Homeland Security has centralized LEO’s of all levels, both civilian and military intelligence organizations, into an establishment with unprecedented vigilance of American’s daily lives. We have allowed torture, used brainwashing and unlimited preventive detention. This doesn’t fully subsume the efforts made in the losing War on Drugs that has cost hundreds of billions and in fact has proved to be an utter failure. The major drug dealers receive the main benefits via higher profits created by this enforcement. A side effect, but perhaps far more costly has been the phenomenon of our country having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Our incarceration rate is way beyond Russia and China, not to mention other nations whose names are synonymous with oppression. We have literally created a prison industry, with privatization and hiring out of prisoners to work for private industries in virtual chain gangs. This is a return byAmericato indentured servitude and perhaps slavery. As any of our regular readers on this blog know the above merely superficially touches upon the problems we have in ensuring civil liberties and staving off prejudice.

So far I’ve touched on the critical issues we face regarding the economy, the Military/Foreign Policy establishment and on the erosion of our constitutional freedoms. The last area I’d like to briefly explore is that of the encroachment of religion into our political life and the radical new interpretations of Church/State separation it has brought. It is true that in America there has always been a tension between those who wear their religiosity on their metaphoric sleeves and the right of average Americans to live their lives as they see fit. This encompasses the right to believe, or disbelieve as we choose. I grew up in a time when great literary works were banned from our shores, where movies were censored, where an actual husband and wife on a TV show (I Love Lucy) had to be depicted as sleeping in separate beds and when she was obviously pregnant, the word pregnant couldn’t be used. In my native New York State, our Governor’s wife had to established residence in Reno,Nevada in order to divorce him, since divorce was not allowed in New York. This was how far religion already had encroached upon civil life and the lives of ordinary people in times past.

Today we are faced with the specter of religion once again dominating our society. These new religious zealots disdain separation of church and state; re-write history to suit their narrow views; would force a woman to bear children she doesn’t want and enforce their peculiar notions of sin upon all of us. They would resurrect the marginalization of homosexuals via depriving them of their constitutional rights and even go so far as some as suggesting we ban contraception. They raise a legitimate fear of returning us to the “Dark Ages” of only sixty years ago. Sadly, these problems with religious zealots that I’ve enumerated aren’t even a complete catalog of things we should fear by their renewed rise to political power through overwhelming wealth. 

What I propose to you here is that all of these difficult situations, to those who view them as problems, have arisen out of one overarching issue. This is the source for all of those dilemmas detailed above and therefore must be dealt with before all of the others. It is America’s transcendent issue. This is the problem of the influence of wealth upon our political system. All of the evils (to my mind) listed above arise from the power to control government that money gives. Think about that in context of every issue I’ve detailed above and you will see that at its root is the influence of entrenched wealth upon our political system. The economy is a no-brainer. The Military/Security/Industrial Complex, of which Dwight Eisenhower warned, has controlled our military budget and our foreign policy. This interlocking self interest group has required diminishing our civil liberties to justify the money spent on wars and intrusion into foreign affairs, by promoting a climate of fear. They also use unconstitutional intrusion to intimidate and/or punish those who expose their misdeeds. Religious institutions free of taxation and oversight have developed huge war chests to control politicians and ensure that they adhere to certain litmus tests of “putative piety”. 

From lobbying efforts and emoluments offered politicians, to the vital need for campaign financing that politicians rely on to get elected/re-elected, money drives our system. All of the difficulties we face arise because of the influence of wealth upon our political system. Therefore, in my opinion this should be the transcendent issue that must be addressed if we have any hope of making America conform to the vision of our Founding Fathers. While some may argue that I’m belaboring the obvious, I would put to them that nothing else can be changed until we change our laws on campaign financing, lobbying and corporate personhood. In that mix we should ban religious entities, not from their right to freely practice their beliefs, but from the ability to influence politicians through money that is un-taxed. In America everyone should have the right to have their say, but it is intolerable that the opinions of some “elite” citizens prevail because their money is considered “free speech” as was formulated in the SCOTUS case Buckley v. Valeo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo and then recently expanded in the infamous “Citizens United Case”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission .

 An example of “Citizens United” impact was seen this week in Iowa where there were massive infusions of so-called “Super-Pac” money for campaign ads, which changed the dynamic of the Iowa Caucus. The Jack Abramoff lobbying case brought out the sickening details of how politicians were bought and corrupted. Abramoff  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff ) was recently released from a minor jail term, but most of those he was involved with, like the ubiquitous Grover Norquist and Karl Rove were never indicted. That Abramoff is trying to atone for his behavior by speaking out against money in politics, is but a cruel irony of how powerless the system is to deal with its corruption by money. 

My conclusion is that with so many problems to deal with in our country our efforts to bring significant reform must “follow the money”. If we can’t limit the destructive effect of wealth upon our political system, our efforts at dealing with the many other issues destroying our Constitutional government will fail. I believe we must start here. What do you think? Below are links to organizations that have been formed to fight the influence of wealth and to overturn Citizens United. If you agree with me you might check some of them out to see if they are worthy of your support.

http://pac.progressivesunited.org/page/rein-in-influence?sc=google_pac_rein-in-influence_3&gclid=COzhw7HFu60CFUKR7QodoWUI_w

http://democracyisforpeople.org/

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/28/free_speech_for_people_coalition_urges

http://www.movementforthepeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CfAW_ActionToolkit.pdf

http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=f1c2660f-54b9-4193-86a4-ec2c39342c6c 

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

Under Utah’s SB 314, it will now be a crime to offer drink specials. In addition, SB 314 bans minikegs and ties the number of liquor licenses to population quotas and public-safety officers.

Utah has a long history of harassing people who drink in contradiction to the teachings of the Church of Latter Day Saints, including the imposition of so called “Zion Curtains” at bars. This rather transparent sectarian policy does not seem to bother politicians who claim to be for small government and libertarian values. It also contradict the desire of the state to pull in tourists and change the image of the state as controlled by the LDS leadership.

Source: Time

One of the commentators reaffirmed that this is not computer generated:

They are using Digital Lights and other Media Servers, like High End DL3 units, or a Green Hypo Hypotizer. You can see the lights often moving across the front of of the building as the visual media is played back in sync with the light’s position. Usually, this is all designed by a creative team made up of a lighting designer, media designer and a couple of lighting programmers.

FLOG THE BLOG: Have you voted yet for the top legal opinion blog? WE NEED YOUR VOTE! You can vote at HERE by clicking on the “opinion” category. Voting ends December 30, 2011.

During the miserable trench warfare of WWI, a night of humanity offered some hope of peace. Arthur Conan Doyle called it  “one human episode amid all the atrocities.”  If Christmas means anything, it surely means this:

Christmas Day, 1914

My dear sister Janet,

It is 2:00 in the morning and most of our men are asleep in their dugouts—yet I could not sleep myself before writing to you of the wonderful events of Christmas Eve. In truth, what happened seems almost like a fairy tale, and if I hadn’t been through it myself, I would scarce believe it. Just imagine: While you and the family sang carols before the fire there in London, I did the same with enemy soldiers here on the battlefields of France!

As I wrote before, there has been little serious fighting of late. The first battles of the war left so many dead that both sides have held back until replacements could come from home. So we have mostly stayed in our trenches and waited.

But what a terrible waiting it has been! Knowing that any moment an artillery shell might land and explode beside us in the trench, killing or maiming several men. And in daylight not daring to lift our heads above ground, for fear of a sniper’s bullet.

And the rain—it has fallen almost daily. Of course, it collects right in our trenches, where we must bail it out with pots and pans. And with the rain has come mud—a good foot or more deep. It splatters and cakes everything, and constantly sucks at our boots. One new recruit got his feet stuck in it, and then his hands too when he tried to get out—just like in that American story of the tar baby!

Through all this, we couldn’t help feeling curious about the German soldiers across the way. After all, they faced the same dangers we did, and slogged about in the same muck. What’s more, their first trench was only 50 yards from ours. Between us lay No Man’s Land, bordered on both sides by barbed wire—yet they were close enough we sometimes heard their voices.

Of course, we hated them when they killed our friends. But other times, we joked about them and almost felt we had something in common. And now it seems they felt the same.

Just yesterday morning—Christmas Eve Day—we had our first good freeze. Cold as we were, we welcomed it, because at least the mud froze solid. Everything was tinged white with frost, while a bright sun shone over all. Perfect Christmas weather.

During the day, there was little shelling or rifle fire from either side. And as darkness fell on our Christmas Eve, the shooting stopped entirely. Our first complete silence in months! We hoped it might promise a peaceful holiday, but we didn’t count on it. We’d been told the Germans might attack and try to catch us off guard.

I went to the dugout to rest, and lying on my cot, I must have drifted asleep. All at once my friend John was shaking me awake, saying, “Come and see! See what the Germans are doing!” I grabbed my rifle, stumbled out into the trench, and stuck my head cautiously above the sandbags.

I never hope to see a stranger and more lovely sight. Clusters of tiny lights were shining all along the German line, left and right as far as the eye could see.

“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment, and John answered, “Christmas trees!”

And so it was. The Germans had placed Christmas trees in front of their trenches, lit by candle or lantern like beacons of good will.

And then we heard their voices raised in song.

Stille nacht, heilige nacht . . . .

This carol may not yet be familiar to us in Britain, but John knew it and translated: “Silent night, holy night.” I’ve never heard one lovelier—or more meaningful, in that quiet, clear night, its dark softened by a first-quarter moon.

When the song finished, the men in our trenches applauded. Yes, British soldiers applauding Germans! Then one of our own men started singing, and we all joined in.

The first Nowell, the angel did say . . . .

In truth, we sounded not nearly as good as the Germans, with their fine harmonies. But they responded with enthusiastic applause of their own and then began another.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum . . . .

Then we replied.

O come all ye faithful . . . .

But this time they joined in, singing the same words in Latin.

Adeste fideles . . . .

British and German harmonizing across No Man’s Land! I would have thought nothing could be more amazing—but what came next was more so.

“English, come over!” we heard one of them shout. “You no shoot, we no shoot.”

There in the trenches, we looked at each other in bewilderment. Then one of us shouted jokingly, “You come over here.”

To our astonishment, we saw two figures rise from the trench, climb over their barbed wire, and advance unprotected across No Man’s Land. One of them called, “Send officer to talk.”

I saw one of our men lift his rifle to the ready, and no doubt others did the same—but our captain called out, “Hold your fire.” Then he climbed out and went to meet the Germans halfway. We heard them talking, and a few minutes later, the captain came back with a German cigar in his mouth!

“We’ve agreed there will be no shooting before midnight tomorrow,” he announced. “But sentries are to remain on duty, and the rest of you, stay alert.”

Across the way, we could make out groups of two or three men starting out of trenches and coming toward us. Then some of us were climbing out too, and in minutes more, there we were in No Man’s Land, over a hundred soldiers and officers of each side, shaking hands with men we’d been trying to kill just hours earlier!

Before long a bonfire was built, and around it we mingled—British khaki and German grey. I must say, the Germans were the better dressed, with fresh uniforms for the holiday.

Only a couple of our men knew German, but more of the Germans knew English. I asked one of them why that was.

“Because many have worked in England!” he said. “Before all this, I was a waiter at the Hotel Cecil. Perhaps I waited on your table!”

“Perhaps you did!” I said, laughing.

He told me he had a girlfriend in London and that the war had interrupted their plans for marriage. I told him, “Don’t worry. We’ll have you beat by Easter, then you can come back and marry the girl.”

He laughed at that. Then he asked if I’d send her a postcard he’d give me later, and I promised I would.

Another German had been a porter at Victoria Station. He showed me a picture of his family back in Munich. His eldest sister was so lovely, I said I should like to meet her someday. He beamed and said he would like that very much and gave me his family’s address.

Even those who could not converse could still exchange gifts—our cigarettes for their cigars, our tea for their coffee, our corned beef for their sausage. Badges and buttons from uniforms changed owners, and one of our lads walked off with the infamous spiked helmet! I myself traded a jackknife for a leather equipment belt—a fine souvenir to show when I get home.

Newspapers too changed hands, and the Germans howled with laughter at ours. They assured us that France was finished and Russia nearly beaten too. We told them that was nonsense, and one of them said, “Well, you believe your newspapers and we’ll believe ours.”

Clearly they are lied to—yet after meeting these men, I wonder how truthful our own newspapers have been. These are not the “savage barbarians” we’ve read so much about. They are men with homes and families, hopes and fears, principles and, yes, love of country. In other words, men like ourselves. Why are we led to believe otherwise?

As it grew late, a few more songs were traded around the fire, and then all joined in for—I am not lying to you—“Auld Lang Syne.” Then we parted with promises to meet again tomorrow, and even some talk of a football match.

I was just starting back to the trenches when an older German clutched my arm. “My God,” he said, “why cannot we have peace and all go home?”

I told him gently, “That you must ask your emperor.”

He looked at me then, searchingly. “Perhaps, my friend. But also we must ask our hearts.”

And so, dear sister, tell me, has there ever been such a Christmas Eve in all history? And what does it all mean, this impossible befriending of enemies?

For the fighting here, of course, it means regrettably little. Decent fellows those soldiers may be, but they follow orders and we do the same. Besides, we are here to stop their army and send it home, and never could we shirk that duty.

Still, one cannot help imagine what would happen if the spirit shown here were caught by the nations of the world. Of course, disputes must always arise. But what if our leaders were to offer well wishes in place of warnings? Songs in place of slurs? Presents in place of reprisals? Would not all war end at once?

All nations say they want peace. Yet on this Christmas morning, I wonder if we want it quite enough.

Your Loving Brother,
Tom

Source: Australia Magazine

~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

Here’s an acrostic poem that I wrote a few years ago. If you read down the left side of the poem, it spells out the word “wreath.”

Wrapped around itself,

Red-ribboned

Evergreen, fragrant of winter forests,

Adorned with berries, baubles, bells of gold,

Tacked to the front door…

Home for the holidays.

Happy Holidays to all!!!

It’s Christmastime again and since my childhood, long ago, the Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life” has been shown time and again in this season, providing a message of redemption, hope and joy that we associate with this time of year. You all know the plot about selfless George Bailey (James Stewart) a man who has sacrificed his dreams for others and because of his selflessness winds up running the Bailey Building and Loan Association, of Bedford Falls, NY. Because of George this institution has provided home loans for the poor of this rural community and serves as its bank. With the Company on the verge of bankruptcy, through duplicity, George is on the verge of suicide distraught over the losses to those he loves and worried by needs of the average people of his town. You all know this plot and if you don’t its summary is here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life#Plot . I must warn you, perhaps it’s the time of year but I choked up reading the plot, yet again, as I do every time I see this beloved movie.

This introduction has not been made because I’m about to write about banks, or the depredations of the banking industry. Others here and our host have already written extensively on the predatory nature of the banking industry and the harm it has caused to our country. My point of this opening is that we have all grown up with certain mythologies about businesses that provide financial services to the public. This film has had a place in defining that American mythology, in this instance about a bank of sorts, whose leader believes in aiding the community first and profits second. Myths shape our thinking and from my youth I still remember the ad slogan “You have a friend at Chase Manhattan”.

We’ve discovered that banks are anything but our friends. Their bottom line has surpassed service to the point that each customer is looked at as a “cash cow”, to be plundered incessantly with usurious interest and fees for what should be free services. But what about “You’re in Good Hands with Allstate”, “Nationwide Is On Your Side”, or “Like A Good Neighbor State Farm is There”?  Surely the Insurance industry supplies the safety net we want for our homes and cars. Do they? Last week I was sent an article by the Independent Claims Adjuster handling my interminable case for mold damage to my home. He’s helping greatly so this isn’t about me, but the article he sent certainly puts into context all the delays in the process and how property insurance companies are maximizing their profits at the expense of their customers.

The article my claims adjuster sent was “Insurance Claim Delays Deliver Massive Profits To Industry By Shorting Customers” written by Mollie Reilly and Max Rosenthal. It appeared in the December 13th Huffington Post Business section. It describes a change in claims payment system procedures sold to Allstate and other Insurance Companies by the large consulting firm McKinsey and Company, which boosted their profits at claimants expense.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/insurance-claim-delays-industry-profits-allstate-mckinsey-company_n_1139102.html

“Unlike many other businesses, the insurance industry is bound by law to act in good faith with its customers. Because of their protective role in the lives of ordinary citizens, insurers have long operated as semi-public trusts. But since the mid-1990s, a new profit-hungry model, combined with weak regulation, has upended that ancient social contract. “Claims have been converted into a money-making process,” said Russ Roberts, a New Mexico-based management consultant and former business professor at Northwestern University who has studied the insurance industry’s evolution from a service business to a profit-driven machine. The change started when consulting giant McKinsey & Company sold Allstate and other leading insurance companies on a new system to boost the bottom line: Rather than adjusting claims the traditional way, which gave claims managers wide latitude to serve customers, insurers embraced a computer-driven method that produced purposefully low offers to claimants.

We have all been led to believe that a property insurer has our interest at heart and wants to make us whole after disaster strikes. While some problems have arisen in disputes where there has been massive damage done by natural disaster, the myths and the ads tell us that these companies are more than our friends, they are our protectors. It seems, as with many myths, this is no longer the case, if it ever has been.

“McKinsey’s strategy put profits above all. One slide in the McKinsey presentation illustrated this philosophy by painting the insurance business as a zero-sum game: “Improving Allstate’s casualty economics will have a negative economic impact on some medical providers, plaintiff attorneys, and claimants. … Allstate gains — others must lose. Allstate has certainly gained: It made $4.6 billion in profits in 2007, double its earnings in the 1990s. The stunning increase, said Russ Roberts, came through “driving down loss values to an average of 30 percent below the actual market cost” — that is, paying dramatically less on claims”.

We see that through delaying payment of claims, paying minimal claim amounts and forcing people already strapped by hardship to take it or sue, “Good Hands” companies like Allstate are making record profits, while some people’s lives are collapsing around them, even though they prudently bought property insurance. While I am not surprised by this, I am outraged. Is every purchase of ours whether product, or service to be based on “caveat emptor”? Is this what those who push so hard to have regulations on businesses stripped working for? Is the complete burden of having to painstakingly investigate every entity we deal with to be laid on our shoulders? Is this the type of society we all want?

“An insurance company can make a lot of money on the small claims,” said Jay Feinman, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, “because if you save a few dollars on a huge number of claims, it’s worth more than saving a lot of dollars on a very small number of claims.”

“Allstate is the best-known user of the McKinsey model, topping the list of the “Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America” published by the American Association for Justice. But Allstate’s rise in profits has led most of the industry to adopt the same approach. McKinsey has worked with State Farm, another insurance giant, and other companies in redesigning their claims systems. Feinman cautioned in his book “Delay, Deny, Defend” that the two major names “are just the largest players in the industry … [the ones] whose involvement with McKinsey & Company in the transformation of claims is the best documented.”

By using the tactic of “Delay, Deny, Defend” these companies are purposely avoiding paying claims, or paying much less than they should, because they in the end have the upper hand. Imagine, as a case presented in this article describes, losing your home and belongings in a claimable disaster. Most Americans would be totally at a loss about what to do next. Most of us don’t have the wherewithal to sustain a financial disaster like that. That is what this strategy counts on. People are being toyed with at a time of crisis and through that the Insurance Company reaps profits far beyond what their business should entitle them to make.

“Roberts, the management consultant, said that companies like Allstate attempt to pass off claims delays as fluke occurrences. But, he said, they are actually routine and intentional products of the McKinsey system: “The Allstate/McKinsey system for ‘lowballing’ claims payments … is driven by the claims performance management and pay systems from the top to the bottom of the organization.”

Feinman, the Rutgers law professor, also suggested the deck is stacked against individuals who make claims. “You have an accident or a fire in your house. You call up the insurance company. You describe the circumstances. Maybe they send an adjuster out, and they say it’s not covered, or it’s covered but here’s the dollar amount that we’re obligated to pay you,” he said. Most people, Feinman said, do not have the expertise “to know whether or not that’s right.”

What happens to those people with scant resources, with great damages to their home ad belongings? How have the lives of those with these companies coverage been adversely changed by this policy of greed? I think greed is the correct terminology, though to me it also verges on fraud. As a business major in college I was taught that when you supplied a service to someone, the best business practice was to make good on the service you offered. Now of course I graduated in the mid 60’s and as I understand it since Reagan and the 80’s, Business Schools are teaching a revised curriculum that makes the bottom line the only consideration of a business executive.

We have all seen insurance industry sponsored commercials telling us that “insurance fraud” is causing our rates to rise and asking us to pressure our legislators to draft even more severe legislation to combat this evil. Some I’ve seen have even suggested turning in our family and neighbors that we believe are committing insurance fraud “because insurance fraud hurts everyone”. I would submit that the real threat of insurance fraud is coming from the insurance industry itself as it searches for ways not to deliver services they have contracted to provide. Sadly, although both the Federal and the various State governments have agencies to regulate this industry, the regulators seem to have been seduced by the regulated.

“…experts like Feinman argue that insurance regulation has become little more than a fig leaf. State insurance departments are usually understaffed and overwhelmed. And even if they had the legal firepower to contend with giant insurance companies, Feinman said, “the regulators are closer to the industry than they are consumers.” Eleven of the past 15 presidents of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) went on to work for the insurance industry after leaving office, while a 17-year study from two Georgia State University professors found that around half of state-level insurance commissioners did so as well. When combined with penalties that Feinman described as “laughably low” in many states, this close relationship means that regulation does not provide an effective check on insurance companies. And state governments themselves have incentive to place consumers on the backburner. Because insurance taxes are a major source of revenue for the states, said Roberts, insurance oversight commissions are usually more concerned with keeping companies solvent than resolving the problems of policyholders”.

So we see also that government regulation of the Insurance Industry has been ineffective. Some of the reasons give above are a “revolving door” between regulator and industry. Also mentioned is that on State level insurance taxes provide the State with a good deal of revenue. I would also suggest though that the Insurance Industry is the source of a good deal of political campaign funds and their payback is lax oversight. This inevitably leads us to the great debate in America between the “Too Much Government” side and those like me who see a dire need for effective government regulation. I know there are more than a few who read this blog who rail against how government regulation has hurt the “free market”. I would ask them to use the link to the article I’ve posted and mull over if they think this method of doing business by the insurance industry is a fair one. If they agree with me that this is a bad, possibly fraudulent business practice, what then can we as a society do about it, or do they think that it is a matter in which government should not intervene?

The researchers found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds looked at by the study had been arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation. The prior study in 1965 showed a 22 percent rate for prior arrests — a significant increase that, in my view, seems to confirm the impact on the criminalization of our society.

We currently have the world’s highest rate of incarceration, currently 738 per 100,000. We seem to be moving toward a correctional economy where a significant part of our population is in the business of charging, convicting, and imprisoning another significant part of our population. The question is how this little discussed trend will change our society and our citizens.

Source: NY Times

FLOG THE BLOG: Have you voted yet for the top legal opinion blog? WE NEED YOUR VOTE! You can vote at HERE by clicking on the “opinion” category. Voting ends December 31, 2011.

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Nomi Prins, a former investment banker who once worked for Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, recently appeared on Democracy Now! Amy Goodman questioned Prins about the collapse of MF Global and John Corzine’s testimony before Congress.

Corzine has claimed that he never directed anyone at MF Global to misuse investors’ funds.  A witness named Terry Duffy, however, has testified that “Corzine was aware of loans that may have used customer money.” Duffy is chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

In her interview with Amy Goodman, Prins spoke about a clip of Corzine’s testimony that she and Goodman watched: “We’re listening to someone try and dodge his way out of responsibility and accountability, which is very much what all of the CEOs on Wall Street have done through the subprime crisis and through past crises.” Prins added, “And for him to sit there in front of Congress and talk about ‘not intending’ and ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘I didn’t instruct’ and ‘I didn’t misuse’ and all these sort of legal maneuvers around this issue really is deplorable.”

Deplorable indeed! Especially when one considers that we supposedly got “financial” reform after the financial crisis of 2008 with the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Goodman asked Prins to talk about the Dodd-Frank Act.

Prins replied that Dodd-Frank “doesn’t protect consumers, and it didn’t reform Wall Street. So, you can call it anything you want to call it, but the fact is that these banks, that were big before the subprime component of what is now a global crisis, are bigger than they were. They have more derivatives exposures than they did. They are taking more risks than they did. They are getting away with more than they did. And they are doing it with more reliance on federal subsidies than they did before what happened in 2008. So everything, by every standard, with respect to risk and coddling of Wall Street, is worse than it was before 2008, before that act. And there is no opposition in Washington, which is why—you know, talk about an Occupy movement. That’s about the only opposition that’s happening right now.”

Goodman spoke of how President Obama while adopting some of the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement “is also receiving more money from Wall Street than any president in history.”

Prins said that is the reason she thinks Obama won’t do anything that would hurt his relationship with the Wall Street community. “So, what he says—and I believe, truly, they discount what he says with respect to supporting the Occupy movement. And it’s nice that he’s saying it, but in terms of actually doing something, he has shown—he had the opportunity to really push through major reforms, and instead backed this very lukewarm act that does nothing. And I don’t see him doing anything different than that besides talking, unfortunately, between now and the election. He’s really acted more than he’s spoken. I mean, well, he’s done both, but his actions speak louder than his words, I should say.”

Goodman and Prins also talked about how thousands of the Occupy Wall Street movement protestors and demonstrators have been arrested while Wall Street executives seem to have been left untouched after the financial crisis that cost taxpayers trillions of dollars in bailout money.

Prins said that every now and then someone will be “thrown under a bus for some sort of minor trade that happened, but none of the executives that had the accountability, that made the millions of dollars, that had the power, that had the political connections, that had the meetings in Washington that enable them to do what they do, none of those people have been arrested.” She faulted the kind of questioning that Corzine received from members of Congress—and added that even when the testimony is sent to the Justice Department little is likely to happen because “there is a big punt going on at the Washington level.”

Earlier this year, Matt Taibbi wrote an article for Rolling Stone titled Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? In the article, he revealed how the feds have been doing more to protect than to prosecute the financial criminals who helped to bring down the world economy. Taibbi spoke to a former Senate investigator who laughed and explained the situation succinctly: “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail.” The former investigator added, “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

SOURCES

Corzine Grilled over MF Global Collapse After Witness Suggests Knowledge of Misused Funds (Democracy Now)

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? : Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them (Rolling Stone)

FURTHER READING

The Silver Rush at MF Global: Investors are furious that they can’t get back the gold and silver they stashed with the failed brokerage (Barron’s)

Corzine: MF Staff Said Fund Transfer Legal (Bloomberg)

Tossed Bomb: Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine Aware of Money Transfer, Says Senate Witness (ABC News)

TARP To Cost The U.S. Nearly Double The Initial Estimates: CBO (Huffington Post)

Bank of America & The Great Derivatives Transfer (Turley Blawg)

During the Cold War a phrase “The Enemy Within” became popular. It was a reference at first to Communist subversion exemplified by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt.  Later it was used with other issues such as in Robert F. Kennedy’s book “The Enemy Within” which dealt with corruption in the Labor Movement, specifically Jimmy Hoffa and his teamsters. Recently, Michael Savage, right wing talk show host, wrote a book using that same title, though in this case referring to liberals and progressives as being seditious. The connotation of this phrase is that the group so labeled represents an internal movement that is so dangerous to the interests of the United States, that it can be seen as subversive.

Some may be shocked then by the title of this post. Almost all of us have grown up thinking of the Chamber of Commerce as a uniquely American Institution. Throughout the US whether in cities or in hamlets, the business community has banded together to promote local commerce and build interrelated networks. When we think of this, we think mainly of local small businesses, which are the backbone of this nation’s economy. To be honest until this week I’ve never give much thought to the Chamber of Commerce until as a MoveOn.com member I received a petition from an affiliated new organization called SumOfUs.

“SumOfUs is a brand-new global movement of consumers, investors and workers using our collective economic power for good. Together, we will work to hold the world’s corporations accountable to the public interest and move our global economic system towards social equity, democratic principles, and long-term sustainability.” http://googlequitthechamber.org/about/

The purpose of the petition was to get Google to follow the lead of other large corporations and quit the US Chamber of Commerce. The petition made various claims regarding the US Chamber of Commerce which I’ll deal with in this post.

However, I wouldn’t present this post without doing some research on the “Chamber” and its’ activity to look into the validity of the claims being made by the SumOfUs organization. In doing this research I came to realize that in my opinion the United States Chamber of Commerce is an organization that does not act in the best interests of this country and that one can call it subversive, even though it is not treasonous. These are my reasons for this belief.

My supposition was that “chambers of commerce” were a uniquely American institution and I discovered I was wrong in that belief. The first chamber of commerce was founded in France in 1599. This type of institution is defined as:

 “A chamber of commerce (also referred to in some circles as a board of trade) is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community. Local businesses are members”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambers_of_commerce

Contrast the information contained in the above link with this information on the United States Chamber of Commerce:

 “The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is an American lobbying group representing the interests of many businesses and trade associations. It is not an agency of the United States government.”

“the Chamber claims a direct membership of 300,000 businesses, and 3 million through its various affiliates such as state and local chambers.^[6] Some of the Chamber’s members and donors are Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Texaco, and Aegon “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Commerce

We see that rather than a business networking organization, as are most local Chambers of Commerce. The US Chamber is specifically a lobbying organization. In fact it is the largest lobbyist in our country. Not only is it the largest lobbyist in the US, but its major source of support comes from a small number of multi-national corporations, whose natural interests are not those of the United States, or of its people.

“Although the Chamber has misrepresented itself and claimed to represent 3 million businesses (later modified to 300,000 after a Mother Jones exposé), in reality it actually represents a small group of multinational corporations. In 2008, half of its donations came from just 45 corporate donors. In 2009, nearly half of the Chamber’s money came from a single donation from the health insurance industry trade association. Moreover, the Chamber doesn’t appear to truly care about jobs or small businesses — evidenced by the fact that the Chamber killed legislation to create millions of new clean energy jobs and expand America’s competitive advantage in clean energy technology.”http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/11/23/131597/uschamber-obama/

Journalist, pundits and TV News Readers constantly reference the USCOC as an organization working in the interests of American Business. I contend that this is not the case. My opinion is that the interests of American Business and those of the multi-national base support of the USCOC are actually inimical to each other. The basis of my belief is first based on the logic of the contention. Were I the CEO of a multi-national corporation my correct interest would be in succeeding in the Global Marketplace. This would entail looking for the largest markets by population, catering to those populations and also finding the cheapest labor possible. In my long range planning as a multi-national CEO the tribulations of the US labor market, the needs of US based businesses and their inability to compete in the global market would be of little concern. The total populations of China and India in 2011 are 2.5 billion people; US population is 314 million. http://www.geohive.com/ As these and other population centers increase, their sheer numbers make them more attractive than a US market of declining income and vanishing industrial capacity.

Above I’ve laid out the schematics of my argument that the USCOC represents a subversive element in our country that will in the end succeed in making America indistinguishable from a third world nation. Now let me present some specific arguments that lead me to this conclusion.

1.-“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is responsible for many of the policies that have made America the most unequal in terms of income/wealth distribution in the industrialized world. On tax policy, the Chamber has pushed efforts to repeal the estate tax while helping to pass the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Corporate tax loopholes promoted by the Chamber ensure that corporations like ExxonMobil pay zero corporate income taxes while regular American workers foot much of the Treasury’s bill. The Chamber also opposed the creation of a minimum wage, and has lobbied against nearly every increase in the federal minimum wage. “

2.-”The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t even necessarily represent American businesses. As first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently began a fundraising program soliciting foreign corporations to give to the Chamber’s account that in turn was used to run attack ads during the midterm elections. The Chamber admitted that it fundraises from foreign donors, but has refused to reveal how it finances its political campaign expenditures. ThinkProgress noted that the Chamber has aided its foreign members by lobbying this year to kill a bill to close tax loopholes for businesses that ship jobs overseas, and has even sponsored seminars to teach businesses how to ship their jobs to places like China.”

3.-”The U.S. Chamber of Commerce often places the profits of its member companies over American foreign policy objectives. Last year, the Chamber lobbied against President Obama’s efforts to place economic sanctions on Iran. In 1941, the Chamber was one of the most outspoken opponents of intervening in World War II (Chamber officials feared that war would give Roosevelt more power and wartime spending would lead to higher deficits, then higher taxes).”

4.- “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has worked to give corporations unfettered control of government. For instance, the Chamber successfully filed an amicus brief in the Citizens United case to roll back nearly a century of campaign finance laws. Because of the Chamber’s efforts, corporations can spend unlimited amounts in American elections. Now the Chamber is attempting to repeal legislation aimed at discouraging American businesses from bribing foreign governments.” http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/11/23/131597/uschamber-obama/

My argument here has been specifically about the USCOC being an American organization, whose interests and actions are inimical to the interests of the United States in the global marketplace, focusing more on the needs of their chief funders which are multi-national Corporations. Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Texaco, Aegon, GE, Exxon and even Ford are no longer American companies, even if some were founded by Americas in America. They are multi-nationals and their interests are perforce not coincident to the interests of this country, or its’ people. The United States Chamber of Commerce is primarily supported by multi-national entities and its lobbying efforts are focussed upon the needs of these non-american entities. This must be recognized so that people can understand that not only does the USCOC work against the interests of the America people, but it also works against the interests of American businesses.

There are further arguments detailing the pernicious nature of the USCOC that can be found at this link: http://googlequitthechamber.org/reasons/  I think you will find them informative and persuasive. They discuss the opposition of the USCOC to worker’s rights; civil rights; women’s rights; LBGT rights; environmental responsibility; global warming; health care reform; net neutrality; and many other issues. The USCOC in my opinion is a pernicious lobbying organization. It probably has acted within legal boundaries and therefore it has a right as an organization to act in what it defines as its own interests. However, I think people should generally be aware of the nature of this institution and use that information to decide whether its policies ad efforts should be supported, or opposed. I’ve presented my opinion with what I consider to be evidence supporting my contention. I invite the reader to examine it and come to their own conclusions.

FLOG THE BLOG:  Have you voted yet for the top legal opinion blog?  WE NEED YOUR VOTE! You can vote at HERE by clicking on the “opinion” category. Voting ends December 31, 2011.

~Submitted by Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

In the aftermath of the financial crisis back in 2008, a number of conservative commentators—including Mike Huckabee and Neil Cavuto—blamed minorities and low income people for the subprime mortgage mess. According to some of these conservatives, the responsibility for the mortgage mess lay at the feet of the Community Reinvestment Act and the poor/minorities among us who took out subprime mortgages. There didn’t seem to be any mention of banks and their predatory lending practices being at fault in any way.

Well, James Theckson, a former banker who was a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, claims that banks are mostly culpable for the subprime mortgage fiasco. He told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages in 2007—and that some of them were “no documentation” mortgages. Theckson said, “On the application, you don’t put down a job; you don’t show income; you don’t show assets. But you still got a nod.” He continued, “If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan.”

From Kristof’s article, A Banker Speaks, With Regret, which appeared in the New York Times on November 30, 2011:

“You’ve got somebody making $20,000 buying a $500,000 home, thinking that she’d flip it,” he said. “That was crazy, but the banks put programs together to make those kinds of loans.”

Especially when mortgages were securitized and sold off to investors, he said, senior bankers turned a blind eye to shortcuts.

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

Theckson also said that some account executives would earn commissions seven times higher for subprime loans than they would receive for prime loans.

The unethical lenders often targeted “less savvy borrowers”—people with less education, people who had never taken out a mortgage before, or people who weren’t fluent in English. As you may have already deduced, a great proportion of those “less savvy borrowers” were blacks and Latinos.

Kristof isn’t the first person to write about the discriminatory practices that bankers/lenders were involved in perpetrating on minority borrowers. In 2009, Michael Powell wrote an article for the New York Times titled Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks. In the article, Powell explained why the city of Baltimore was suing Wells Fargo “over its mortgage lending practices in black neighborhoods.”

From Powell’s article:

As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

These loans, Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services.

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

Ms. Jacobson, who is white, said, “We just went right after them.” She added, “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”

It has been reported that a subprime loan on a $165,000 mortgage would add more than “$100,000 in interest payments.” I think one of the most tragic things about this sordid tale of discriminatory lending practices is that many of the minority individuals who were foreclosed upon or who are currently being threatened with foreclosure actually qualified for prime loans.

Isn’t it nice to know that we taxpayers bailed out Wells Fargo to the tune of $25 billion so it could remain “adequately capitalized despite holding ‘troubled assets,’ particularly subprime loans.”

SOURCES

A Banker Speaks, With Regret (New York Times)

Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks (New York Times)

Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout (New York Times)

Former Chase Banker Admits His Bank Pushed Minorities Into Subprime Mortgage Loans (ThinkProgress)

Report: Wall Street Firms Drove The Subprime Crisis, Fueled Drop In Lending Standards (ThinkProgress)

Bailed Out Bank Accused Of Intentionally Steering Minorities Toward Subprime Loans (ThinkProgress)

Conservatives Try To Dodge Responsibility For Crisis By Blaming Poor People  (ThinkProgress)

American Enterprise Institute Has The Mortgage Mess Backward (ThinkProgress)

Wells Fargo Accused of Pushing African Americans Into Subprime Loans (Legum’s New Line)

Scandal: Market Crisis (ProPublica)

Predatory Lending: A Decade of Warnings as Congress and the Fed Fiddled (Center for Public Integrity/Cutting Edge News)

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

A lot of interesting news stories have broken since I last posted at the Turley Blawg nearly a month ago. I’ve kept a running list of them. The story I decided to post about today is one that I placed under the heading “Asinine and Inane Ideas of the 2012 Presidential Candidates.” Now, truth be told, I had a plethora of stories from which to choose…so it wasn’t easy. I finally selected one about the new Republican frontrunner, a man who has worn many hats—former professor, author, ethically challenged Speaker of the House, serial adulterer, historian, covert lobbyist, king of bling—the one and only Newt Gingrich!

I have often heard talking heads on television refer to Newt Gingrich as the “Ideas Man” and the “intellectual” of the Republican Party. It may be true that Newt has a lot of ideas—but I have to question whether the talking heads consider all of his ideas to be good ideas. I admit that even I was surprised when I heard Newt’s recent pronouncement that child labor laws are stupid when he spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I was truly taken aback when he suggested that school janitors should be fired and that poor kids should clean the schools that they attended.

Newt’s Poor Kids Can Clean Concept

Newt Gingrich:

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

“You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America.”

That’s one radical proposal for sure. And one for which the “Ideas Man” received quite a bit of criticism. Newt bowed “to concerns that janitorial work is dangerous.” He then decided he needed to clarify his proposal and provided more specifics. He said poor kids could mop floors and clean bathrooms after school. He also suggested that they could sit in a clerical office greeting people.

I’m not sure where Newt thinks school systems will find money in their strained budgets to pay pupils to work after school hours. Has he thought about the valuable time school janitors and secretaries would have to spend training the children? And wouldn’t adults at the schools have to supervise the child workers?

I wonder what the little clerical school greeters might say to visitors. “Hi, my name’s Tommy. I’m poor and I got this job because I want to earn honest money and develop good work habits. I don’t want to grow up to be a lazy lump like my parents. Who are you?”

Do you think parents would be happy to learn that the bathrooms at the schools their children attend were being cleaned and disinfected by some of their fellow classmates?

Is this the kind of radical proposal that could actually change the face of poverty in America? Does putting poor children to work cleaning bathrooms and greeting visitors at their schools sound like a good idea to you?  Is Newt Gingrich really an “original or rigorous thinker?” David Boaz of the Cato Institute doesn’t think Newt merits that description “because he doesn’t drill down on ideas, integrate them into a larger philosophy or bat them around with peers.” Boaz said: “He strikes me as a guy who thinks of lots of ideas and never runs them through a sanity test before spilling them on a stage. I think he has had a tendency to just have idle thoughts occur to him as he’s reading the newspaper and then announce them without even running it by a colleague.”

According to an article in Politico, a number of conservatives think that Gingrich “is more idea impresario than idea generator, a bright and savvy politician who uses a facade of deep intellectualism effectively — but not authentically.”

Roderick Hills Jr., a constitutional law professor at New York University who’s active in the Federalist Society, said of Newt: “Nobody thinks of Gingrich as a wonky type. Nobody thinks of him as someone who has serious positions, white papers, policies on a wide array of issues coming from deep knowledge and experience. I don’t think of him that way, and I don’t know of any professor who thinks of him that way.”

The Republicans have been claiming that the Democrats are guilty of class warfare when they propose that people who earn $1 million dollars or more a year can afford to pay higher taxes. Do they think Newt is guilty of class warfare when he proposes that poor kids should mop floors and clean school bathrooms?

Newt’s Poem to Poor Kids

Go fetch a bucket

And grab a mop.

Now get to work.

Clean up that slop.

Scrub the bathrooms

From stem to stern.

Don’t be a slug.

It’s time to earn

Your living, kid.

You’re poor. Boohoo!

I have no pity

For kids like you.

SOURCES

Newt Gingrich, Pseudo-Intellectual Free-Trade Kool-Aid Drinker (Huffington Post)

Newt Gingrich: Child Labor Laws Are ‘Stupid’ (Huffington Post)

Newt Gingrich is an Idea Man (Quality of Ideas Not Guaranteed) (Huffington Post)

Is Newt Gingrich as smart as he thinks? (Politico)

Gingrich Doubles Down On Child Labor: Poor Kids Should ‘Clean The Bathroom’ (ThinkProgress)

Newt Gingrich says poor kids have no work habits, suggest janitorial work (Global Post)

Newt Gingrich’s child labor plan cleans up (The Guardian)

The National Review was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr. It defined its’ purpose in a statement of intentions:

“Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically, intellectually, and morally repugnant. We shall recommend policies for the simple reason that we consider them right (rather than “non-controversial”); and we consider them right because they are based on principles we deem right (rather than on popularity polls)…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review

Bill Buckley, the son of an oil baron, was born to wealth and privilege. He was a lieutenant in the Army from 1943 until 1945 when he entered Yale and became a member of Skull and Bones, along with future President George H.W. Bush. In 1953 Buckley became prominent for his book “God and Man at Yale”. So when he founded the National Review he was already prominent in Conservative circles. Oh yes, it should be mentioned he was a CIA field agent under E. Howard Hunt, from 1951 through 1953.

“George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement, believed that Buckley was “arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century… For an entire generation, he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure.”^[6] Buckley’s primary contribution to politics was a fusion of traditional American  political conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory and anti-communism, laying groundwork for the new American conservatism of U.S. presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan“. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.

Whether you like the National Review or not, you must admit that it is the single most important magazine of the Conservative movement in America and has been so since its’ founding. As you can see from their mission statement above they claim to eschew popularity and polls, serving higher priciples. I was therefore interested to come across a story this week that calls into question their true dedication to higher principles, or perhaps one of their principles is merely naked greed.

Nation of Change, an informative progressive web news outlet, ran a story by Lee Fang, their investigative reporter. The story dealt with cash donations given to the National Review, by PhRMA the lobbying entity of the pharmaceutical industry: http://www.nationofchange.org/exclusive-conservative-magazine-national-review-buoyed-drug-lobbyist-cash-1322751505  The story discloses that PhRMA  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhRMA  gave the National Review Institute $205,000 in 2009. This institute is the non-profit that supports the magazine. This amount constituted about one third of the institute’s income in 2009.

“The time period in which PhRMA made its contribution coincided with helpful political attacks emanating from the pages of the National Review. The National Review took a leading role demonizing a cost-saving proposal from the Obama administration that could diminish millions, if not billions, in pharmaceutical company profits. In 2009, President Obama fought to deliver reform by cutting some of the waste out of the health care system. His first signature accomplishment, the stimulus, contained some initial funding of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). CER would set up an independent body to develop a system to find the best medical outcomes, and in doing so, save up to $700 billion by some estimates in annual health spending. PhRMA recognized quickly that CER would most likely steer medical professional towards prescribing more generic medications over branded drugs, thus slicing a sizable share of corporate profits“. 

PhRMA also launched at series of attack ads at this time all aimed at ensuring that the government not put in place these restraints on their huge profits. This is a sad, yet telling tale, of the real motives behind the modern Conservative movement, as exemplified by its most respected institution.

The thrust of the article demonstrates intertwining of the modern Conservative movement with the needs of the most powerful corporations. Going back to the quote from conservative historian Nash above:” Buckley’s primary contribution to politics was a fusion of traditional American political conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory” we can see the changes that have been made to old fashioned American conservative belief by this  overlay of a doctrine of corporate laissez-faire. For 56 years the National Review has gradually reshaped Conservative thought from one of protection of the founding principles of this country into a pro-corporate rooting section. As the world’s economy has evolved this pro-corporate stance has further evolved into a pro-multinational corporate stance. In essence this movement no longer focuses on the needs of the United State of America, but instead caters to the “Captains” of “The New World Order”.

It might be noticed that nowhere above did I use the term business. This was intentional on my part because I’d like to make the further point that the modern Conservative movement is essentially an anti-business operation. In order for Capitalism to be a workable economic system it requires a dynamic market. The dynamics must mean that people with ideas, entrepreneurs if you will, must be free to enter the market at even a rudimentary level and thus be free to succeed or fail, based on the novelty of their innovation and/or the quality of product and/or service they deliver. When one talks of businesses and markets it should include the entire spectrum of the marketplace, not just those corporations who have become gigantic by absorbing less wealthy entities. The multi-national corporations by their nature stifle a free marketplace and in truth inhibit rapid innovation wherever they can.

This is the change that Bill Buckley has wrought, an American movement whose leaders no longer strive to uplift their country. Though to be charitable, I’m not sure he foresaw where the movement he set in motion was going, in the end he must share the damnation. This damnation that is responsible for the decline of this country and the uplifting of a Multi-National Corporate Empire.

Andy Warhol, said in 1968 that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Forty-Three years later the remark has become ubiquitously prescient. The world is awash in a celebrity culture and America is at the acme of this “culture”. From one perspective this is merely the harmless fluff that people use in order to distract themselves from the depressing things their lives have offered. It is the triumph of “kitsch” over substance in the business of being famous. This has been true throughout mankind’s history. The lives and activities of the powerful have been followed by the masses with avid interest and have been the fodder of discussion around what served as the ancient’s water coolers, perhaps the public wells. Without a doubt in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh’s comings and goings were constant conversational topics. Today, in a much different context, the American multitudes avidly follow the lives of the powerful, rich and famous, via innumerable outlets including Facebook and Twitter.

The question I’m broaching here is if this is a historic human trait, are there negative aspects of it that threaten the functioning and stability of our society? My own answer is that I’m not sure one way or another, but I am concerned about what I see all around me and perhaps would like the writers here to talk me down, so to speak. Now one might rightly ask what does this have to do with the law and the other topics we treat here on a daily basis. Only this week we have had news bulletins and stories about the sentencing of Michael Jackson’s doctor to four years in prison. On that same day no doubt there were dozens of news stories that had greater effect on our lives, yet every network paid much attention to it on their nightly news. At the risk of offending Michael Jackson fans, the death of this once famous “Pop Star”, self titled “King of Pop” if you will, was hardly worth the attention paid to it, when issues of economic collapse, wars, revolutions, genocides and famines raged throughout the media frenzy. Yet, I must say that the media knew their audience and this story catered to that audience. I understand the need for, and I myself have need of distraction from the woes of the world, so it is not as if I hold myself apart from the indulgence. Frequently instances of self loathing come to the fore as I slavishly behold the spectacle that our media creates for us surrounding people and issues that embarrass our attention, as they play out before our wide-eyed gazes.

If I mention Kim Kardashian, most of our highly astute readers and I have a vague notion of whom she is and how famous she has become. Yet probably, like me, you have absorbed a certain set of facts about her, while never watching her TV shows, nor reading articles about her. Yet other than being the daughter of one of OJ’s lawyers and the subject of  a viral porn video,  Kim is a person of shallow thought and little accomplishment. At this point in her life she has a TV show and an extensive Wikipedia page:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kardashian , which is larger and more detailed than Professor Turley’s page.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Turley . My guess is that she is a hell of a lot richer from her celebrity, than the Professor is from his own celebrity and TV appearances. I don’t have to convince any of you that celebrity gazing is a rampant phenomenon, growing rapidly with the spread of computing devices. Given that it is a long time human preoccupation though, is the expansion of it by today’s burgeoning technology dangerous?

I stated previously that I’m uncertain as to this trends danger to our society and I am, but let me give the basis of my uncertainty. Being in my late 60’s I’ve obviously been around for awhile and have seen the world change from what was science fiction in my youth, to reality in my dotage. The natural human tendency of the aged is to decry the ever changing present, in favor of the glowingly remembered past. Knowing this tendency in older folks, my confusion stems from the possibility that I am just viewing the expanding role of celebrity in our world, through the lens of my own inability to adjust to it. While I think I know myself well, I am as capable as the next person of self-deception and so in fairness must allow for it. My prevailing belief, while acknowledging my possible error of age, is that this upward trend of celebrity-gazing is quickly allowing our society to be distracted and ultimately taken over by an American version of Aristocracy. As with such Aristocratic advantage in the past, our new Aristocrats will continue to control/rule our lives for their personal benefit. Here are the reasons that persuade me.

First, celebrity distracts us from the world around us and its ubiquity blurs our focus on how the world is run and how we the 99% are being cheated. This distraction becomes one of desire for a rich lifestyle and the possibility of our achieving it. This is the American Dream after all. The abused child Norma Jean Baker can grow up to become the most desired woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe. She can marry an athletic icon; a distinguished intellectual playwright and even have sex with a President. Despite the tawdriness of her end, she remains an icon of achievement and therefore a role model to be copied. This week the TV music competition the “X Factor” had a night of Michael Jackson songs and on four occasions referred to this self-medicating, putative pedophile as the “Great Man”, an inspiration to us all. I think it is possible that within a hundred years religions may be founded based on worship of the miracles wrought by “Great Men”, celebrity Gods like Michael, or Elvis another drug abuser.

Celebrity confers an air of gravitas to people whose words and deeds bespeak the opposite. What do Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have in common besides a presidential nomination battle? They made appearances on the covers of Time and Newsweek, in stories that treated them with seriousness and gravitas. Celebrity gives a person instant credibility with the public. The wit who said “I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right” wasn’t wrong. Publicity grants celebrity, which bestows gravitas on even the infamous. With the air of gravitas celebrity bestows and millions from a giant corporation, it becomes possible for a “B” movie actor off limited intellectual prowess, to become a man considered by many Americans to be our greatest President.  http://www.gallup.com/poll/146183/americans-say-reagan-greatest-president.aspx

Another effect of celebrity is that it really does diminish and destroy our common and individual moral and ethical values. When a football star like Tim Tebow, bestows praise on Jesus for his game victories, isn’t his devotion really a trivialization of his God? The idea that the Creator (or co-creator) of this incredible universe cares about the result of a football game, or a player in it, is beyond sacrilege. Yet celebrity holds Tebow up as a righteous young man of great moral fortitude. This goes beyond religion and into other areas of achievement. Thus Donald Trump, a man of inherited wealth who has gone into bankruptcy three times, can write instruction books on how to get rich. George W. Bush, a failure in business and a man of no known self achievement can become President simply based on his family name. Once attaining office this man can then use a great tragedy to hasten the destruction of our countries hallowed, if often ignored, constitutional traditions.

The idea that fame itself, or fifteen minutes of it, is a desirable achievement is also a destructive force that affects our people and our country. I see parents whose children have been killed hours before, sitting and primping for TV interviews exploring their grief, my stomach churns and I wonder how it is possible for them to perform an interview. I then realize of course that the desire to be on TV will cause people to do anything, no matter how degrading or humiliating for their chance of fleeting fame. We hunger to be the “celebrity” we see on TV and we have redefined the notion of celebrity into an achievement that may be little more than brief notoriety.

If achievement is redefined into achieving celebrity status, then it makes sense to shoot John Lennon, for instance, because you can become an immortal via murder. Lee Harvey Oswald’s fame will always be tied to that of JFK. Now this was true in the past with John Wilkes Booth, but the difference is Booth was probably seeking revenge rather than notoriety. Mark David Chapman was seeking fame in Lennon’s death and he achieved it. However, examples are replete with those who’ve achieved celebrity via less vicious routes, yet were willing to take shortcuts to fame even if it entailed actions that were bizarre or humiliating.

I began with a quote from Andy Warhol, who in one sense I appreciate and in another sense loathe. He is to be appreciated by my lights, in that in his pursuit of his art career he demonstrated equal prescience to that of Marshall McCluhan,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan  in understanding the direction Culture was heading towards with the development of mass media. Warhol used his understanding and intelligence to market himself as an artist and to create a commercially successful brand. He was a supremely self-involved cynic, who used his art to recreate his dystopian vision of the world in his work. He became a celebrity among celebrities and in the process helped generate the current state of celebrity in our culture. As a creature of this culture I can’t hold myself above it, but I can feel pain at what we’ve become. Is this the ravings of an old fogy, or do you the reader sometimes feel the same?

The latest herbivore is small sized — about the size to a deer. Once again, for creationists, these scientists are necessarily about 66-million years off since the Earth itself is only a few thousand years old. For those who believe in science, however, it is pretty cool. For GOP presidential candidates, even if you do not believe in evolution or science, doesn’t this show a dangerous Dino Gap with the Canadians?

The name however is likely to be the bane of the existence of high school teachers from “T & A” to “Ass and Boy.” Of course, it is still better than Suchosaurus.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/28/new-plant-eating-dinosaur-species-identified/?test=faces#ixzz1f24sYIeQ

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty(rafflaw)-Guest Blogger

Now that I have digested some wonderful Thanksgiving food and celebrated my grandson’s first birthday, it is time to get back to work.  In light of the recent calls by Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Eric Cantor and former Speaker and current GOP Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich to terminate the non-partisan Congressional Budge Office (CBO), I couldn’t help but wonder why the Republicans have a problem with the CBO?  The CBO has been critical of both parties legislation in the past when the numbers just didn’t add up.  Could this latest announcement by the CBO that the Obama Stimulus package of 2009 is still stimulating the economy be the last straw for the Republicans in their support of the Congressional Budget Office?

“Despite Republican mythmaking that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) “created zero jobs,” the CBO reported that the stimulus added up to 2.4 million jobs and boosted GDP by as much as 1.9 points in the past quarter. As it turns out, that conclusion confirms the consensus of most economists – including John McCain’s 2008 brain trust- that President Obama’s recovery program is continuing to deliver benefits for the American people.  From the beginning, the CBO has testified to the success of the largely concluded 2009 stimulus package in driving employment and economic growth. (That’s one reason why Republicans like GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich want to abolish the agency.)

Now, as The Hill reported Tuesday, the CBO has found that “President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy”:  The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total.  CBO said that the stimulus also lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.2 and 1.3 percentage points and increased the number of people employed by between 0.4 million and 2.4 million…  By CBO’s numbers, the $800 billion stimulus added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011.”  Crooks and Liars 

The CBO Abstract that provided these numbers just won’t jive with candidate Newt Gingrich’s opinion of the stimulus and along with his past concern with the CBO’s projections on Obamacare might just have led to this recent call to abolish the CBO.  “Gingrich’s animus is hardly surprising. When House Republicans proposed HR 2 in January to repeal the dreaded “Obamacare,” they quickly got a rude awakening from the CBO. Demolishing Republican talking points on the subject, the CBO concluded repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase, not decrease, federal budget deficits:  Over the 2012-2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion.

That result did not fit the GOP script. So House Majority Leader Eric Cantor doubled down, essentially accusing the agency of lying.  Cantor also disputed the claim, put forth by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that the health care reform bill passed by Congress last year will actually reduce the deficit by $143 billion, calling the figure “budget gimmickry.”  “I think what we do know is the health care bill costs over $1 trillion,” Cantor told Hill. “And we know it was full of budget gimmickry. And it spends money we don’t have in this country.”‘  Perspectives

What facts do Newt and his fellow CBO detractors bring to try to prove that the CBO is lying or is inaccurate?  As best that I can tell the only argument that they use is the “Trust Us” argument. The CBO numbers tell us that the slow economy would be even worse had the stimulus package of 2009 not been passed and for some reason Mr. Gingrich and company can’t handle the truth.

If Speaker Gingrich does not want to believe the CBO numbers on anything that supports the Obama Administration, why has he praised and utilized the CBO in the past when it suited his agenda?  “Gingrich himself has been complimentary to the CBO in the past. In 1995, he bragged, “We’re still very proud of the fact that — as a team — House and Senate Republicans passed the first balanced budget in a generation. . . . We did it honestly, using the Congressional Budget Office, which was tough.” ‘  Washington Post

What will it take for politicians of any stripe to actually admit when legislation backed by their opponents has been successful?  I and many others here have criticized the Obama Administration in the past on its failure to prosecute the Torture enthusiasts from the Bush Administration and for declaring that it is legal for any President to put American citizens on assassination lists without any judicial oversight.  Bloggers and commenters have correctly excoriated the Obama Administration for not including single payer elements into Obamacare. Shouldn’t we hold the Republicans up to the same standard of truth when it comes to an agency of Congress that has been non-partisan since its inception?

For Rep. Cantor to claim that the CBO is basically lying and then not produce any evidence to back up the claim is egregious.  Especially since Cantor is the one making the incendiary claim and he is also the House Majority Leader.  Maybe we should be happy that Cantor only called the CBO liars.  He could have called them Socialists as Newt Gingrich did!  Do you think the Congressional Budge Office is truly non-partisan and if not, why not?  Let us hear what you think.  Don’t be shy!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

America has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, currently 738 per 100,000. Our nearest competitor for this dubious distinction is the Russian Federation with 607 and Cuba with 487. “The US incarcerates at a rate 4 to 7 times higher than other western nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany and up to 32 times higher than nations with the lowest rates such as Nepal, Nigeria, and India.”

 http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf                                                                                                                                           Despite possible protestations that this is because we have the best law enforcement, my sense is that the reasons lie more in the system, than those who enforce it. No one ever lost an election in America because of the perception they “were tough on crime”.

“Race: Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4 percent of the jail and prison population — even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall U.S population. Four percent of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanic males and .7 percent of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.”        http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf

Despite possible protestations that this is because we have the best law enforcement, my sense is that the reasons lie more in the system, than those who enforce it. No one ever lost an election in America because of the perception they “were tough on crime”. “Race: Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4 percent of the jail and prison population — even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall U.S population. Four percent of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanic males and .7 percent of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.”      

http://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/boiling-hot-mad/.html

These two sets of statistics when viewed together tell a terrible tale of how racial oppression still exists in this country despite our Black President and Black Attorney General. This Administration hasn’t caused of this problem, but they  don’t seem to have made any progress dealing with it. We do know that there has been a widespread effort to play down the racial division that continues to plague this country. This continues despite Civil Rights Laws, Martin Luther King’s Birthday and TV beer commercials that always include at least one black male friend enjoying the camaraderie. Clearly there is a disconnect between how we Americans want to see ourselves and the reality for many Black males. I’m focusing on the problem of black males in this piece, rather than the general oppression of Black people, because the effect of this process is a function of the general racist climate of this country and is a major contributor to the continuance of this oppression. There have often been discussions on this blog about the devastating effects of the “War on Drugs” and this quote is illustrative of the tenor of theses discussions. “Nationwide, black males convicted of drug felonies in state courts are sentenced to prison 52 percent of the time, while white males are sentenced to prison only 34 percent of the time. The ratio for women is similar – 41 percent of black female felony drug offenders are sentenced to  prison, as compared to 24 percent of white females. With respect to violent offenses, 74 percent of  black male convicted felons serve prison time, as opposed to only 60 percent of white male convicted felons. With respect to all felonies, 58 percent of black male convicted felons, as opposed to 45 percent of white men, serve prison sentences”.                                                                                                                                                                                    http://www.civilrights.org/publications/justice-on-trial sentencing.html                                                                     

It is clear to me that racism exists today in America, despite supposed gains and that this disparity in the treatment of race is not only devastating to Black people, but its continuance is disastrous for our entire society. The degeneration of our political system during the last five decades may not be solely due to racial prejudice, but those who have helped bring it about certainly have used racism to empower their viewpoints, even as their rhetoric has shifted from overt to covert. I’m moved to write this because I believe that unless this problem becomes accepted in our public consciousness, there will be no escape from the downward trend of our nation towards political and economic disaster.

I’ve presented enough evidence of the racialist tendency of our system and the reader either will accept what it suggests, or substitute their own pre-judgments of what these statistics mean. My discussion focuses on how this reality impacts upon Black people in America and thus impacts us all, despite our race and/or ethnicity. What set me off thinking about this was a TV Program called “Our America” with Lisa Ling. The episode was entitled “The Incarceration Generation”.      http://www.oprah.com/own-our-america-lisa-ling/our-america-video.html

Personally, this episode brought up an admixture of tears and anger as I watched. It showed the life arcs of some Black males about to be released from prison, the effects on their families of their incarceration and then by their release. The premise, which I endorse, is that this generation of jailed Black men will, and has already impacted on the coming generation of Black men. The message was we must somehow stop this cycle, but the solution to stopping the cycle is not clear macro-cosmically and too slow if change is measured person by person.

As much as I’m prone to pontification, I really can see only one way that this continued racism is ever going to change. To the possible delight of our more conservative and/or libertarian commenter’s, I don’t believe that the first step towards this change would benefit from government intervention via legislation or fiat. While the original issue decided in “Brown vs. Board of Education“, that Blacks and Whites were receiving unequal schooling due to segregation and unequal funding, the general judicial remedy which became School Busing was not only in hindsight a failure, but actually increased tension between races and diminished White support for Civil Rights. It was a decision that tried to solve the problem cheaply, rather than first ensuring that the funding for Black and White (indeed all) schoolchildren was equivalent. How much more elegant to have hoisted the segregationists on their own petard of “separate but equal”, than to have demanded and overseen that they indeed provided equal funding

and support to Black schools. I understand that this was not the remedy being requested in this suit, but looking back it might have been a far more effective strategy. All of the gains in White sympathy for the struggle of Black people for their Constitutional freedom, were negated when the sad results of hundreds of years of slavery was dumped upon the educational systems specifically of the working classes. It resulted in the “Southern Strategy” that got Richard Nixon elected, using code words in place of outright racist rhetoric. Fighting crime became the code for cracking down on Blacks and the upward spiral of the incarceration of Americans began with the inception of the ridiculous “War on Drugs”. When people are steeped in false, bigoted notions of the “other”,  reinforced by a corporate media that finds sensationalizing crime garners profits, minds won’t be changed by legislation.

Certainly, steps must be taken to end the “War on Drugs”, to deal with racist law enforcement issues and to ensure that each American, regardless of skin color and/or ethnicity, is afforded equal rights under our Constitution. But first, before any palliatives are presented by our politicians, the problem of America’s continuing racism and its disproportionate effect on Black males must be brought into the open, discussed and hopefully acknowledged. Without that nothing changes since racism cannot be obliterated by enforcement, it merely morphs underground where it nevertheless festers. It is preferable to directly know ones’ enemies by their words, than to have those beliefs covered up.

Among the great ironies of modern America is how bigots have learned to couch their bigotry in terms that are inherently dishonest, yet provide them verbal cover when challenged. At times, among the less controlled public voices like Limbaugh or Beck it, their bigotry comes through, but even then they will cry foul if they are called on it and pretend that charging them with bigotry is absurd and bigoted in itself. When people are accused of “playing the race card”, the accuser is probably racist, knowingly or unknowingly. I think that many refuse to personally acknowledge their own bigotry, knowing rationally it is wrong, yet they find comfort and cover in the hypocrisy of code words and denial, from even themselves.

The other effect of incarceration of Black men disproportionately, is that it then becomes extremely difficult to obtain jobs after their release. As one man put it on the Lisa Ling show “Would you hire a former felon?”. We’ve set up a system where recidivism is the norm for all prisoners and this is mainly because after serving ones sentence, there are far less opportunities to find gainful employment. I know this from personal experience since my father served time for a “white collar” crime before my birth and his whole working/economic life was affected until his death 20 years later. He was White, had a massive vocabulary and a dynamic personality. He could never get credit and a family member had to co-sign in order to get a mortgage for our house. My father earned a good living as a car salesman, but his many attempts at starting his own business was affected by an inability to obtain adequate financing due to his prior incarceration. My father had many advantages over many black men with criminal histories, but the primary one was his skin color

When you perpetuate a system that incarcerates such a large swath of the Black male population, sentences them disproportionately to other racial/ethnic groups and prevents them from going straight after they’ve served their time, you create instability and chaos within the Black community. The evil history of slavery and racism remains with us today. Until we acknowledge the reality of how it perpetuates itself, it will never cease and our country will continue its’ downward spiral of economic disparity and debilitating racial/ethnic tension.

Here is the line up:

Debaters arguing for the proposition that Bush and Obama engaged in war crimes

Bruce Fein is an attorney and constitutional scholar, and has consulted foreign nations on matters ranging from constitutional revision to telecommunications and cable regulation, and human rights. He appears regularly on national and international television, cable, and radio programs as an expert in foreign affairs, terrorism, national security, and has testified over 200 times before Congressional committees. .

Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer is a highly experienced U.S. Army intelligence officer, and is nationally known as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for intelligence collection and policy, terrorism, data mining, situational awareness and adaptive/disruptive technologies. He is also a senior advisor to multiple organizations on terrorism and counterinsurgency issues and a member of the US Nuclear Strategy Forum.

Debaters arguing against the proposition that Bush and Obama engaged in war crimes

David B. Rivkin is a member of Baker & Hostetler Law Firm’s litigation, international and environmental groups and co-chairs the firm’s appellate and major motions team. He served in the White House Counsel’s office and the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Prior to embarking on a legal career, Mr. Rivkin worked as a defense and foreign policy analyst, focusing on Soviet affairs, arms control, naval strategy and NATO-related issues, and served as a defense consultant to numerous government agencies and Washington think tanks.

Lee Casey a partner at Baker & Hostetler, focuses on federal environmental, constitutional and international law and Alien Tort Statute issues. He served in the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also advises clients on compliance issues under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), U.S. trade sanctions regimes, and federal ethics requirements. Mr. Casey’s practice includes federal, district and appellate court litigation, as well as matters before federal agencies. From 2004 through 2007 he served as a member of the United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:30 p.m.
What: Bush/Obama: War Crimes or Lawful Wars?
Where: 1530 P St NW, Washington, DC – Carnegie Institution building

My granddaughter Julia Anna already hit the “two-months-old” mark a couple of weeks ago.

Being a very involved grandmother, I spend a lot of time with Julia–feeding her….singing to her…talking to her…changing her. I’ve also been spending hefty sums of money buying books that I plan to read to her. I’ve recently begun to wonder what the future will hold in store for my first grandchild. (I do hope she’ll be a reader and have a great sense of humor–two things that I think are very important.)

I also hope that Julia will grow up to be a woman who has a mind of her own.

Seeing as she has already begun collecting a wide variety of hats…

I was wondering if she might follow in the footsteps of the late Bella Abzug.

Today we have Barbara George in glorious STEREO!

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

The GOP continues to wage its war on women’s rights. Last week, the House passed HR 358. HR 358, ironically named the “Protect Life Act,” could be the cause of women being left to die in hospital emergency rooms without treatment if the bill becomes a law—which is unlikely since President Obama has already released a statement in opposition to the bill.

Here’s a brief explanation of the bill from Human Rights Watch:

Bill Would Permit Hospitals to Let Women in Need of Care Die

(Washington, DC) – The United States House of Representatives approved a bill on October 13, 2011, that would put women’s lives at risk, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill, if it becomes law, would reverse longstanding federal policy requiring hospitals to provide life-saving care regardless of expense, Human Rights Watch said.

The Protect Life Act, HR 358, would amend the healthcare reform law to grant hospitals far-reaching powers to deny patients abortion care, without any exception for emergency situations. US law currently requires hospitals receiving federal funds to provide emergency care to anyone in need up to the point at which they can be stabilized or transferred, if the original hospital is incapable of providing the care they need.

“The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is a vicious attack on women’s rights and on the most basic right to life.”

HR 358—aka the “Let Women Die Bill”–was sponsored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA) and supported by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) brought up an example from her own life when she spoke out against HR 358 on the floor of the House.  Speier said, “I was pregnant, I was miscarrying, I was bleeding. If I had to go from one hospital to the next trying to find one emergency room that would take me in, who knows if I would even be here today. What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to do is misogynist.”

Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority, said the bill was “especially mean-spirited, irresponsible, and misogynistic, and would result in some young women dying without treatment from bleeding from either hemorrhaging or a tubal pregnancy that has erupted.”

It has been reported that HR 358 would provide legal protection to hospitals that refused to perform emergency abortions—even when a woman’s life is at stake. It would free these hospitals from the legal obligation of stabilizing and transferring individuals. That puts HR 358 in conflict with the Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which was passed in 1986. EMTALA requires hospital emergency rooms to stabilize and then transfer people if the hospitals don’t want to perform certain procedures on them. According to MS Magazine, the “‘conscience clause’ would also overturn the recent Health and Human Services Department decision that requires contraception be covered by insurance at no additional cost.”

From the website of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois):

Extension of Remarks
Rep. Jan Schakowsky
October 13, 2011

Mr. Speaker,

I rise in opposition to HR 358, the Protect Life Act.

The American people want us to work together to create jobs to bolster the economy.  Instead, we are here, once again, to consider legislation that endangers and attacks the right of women and is far out of the mainstream of American priorities.

HR 358 is extreme legislation.  It is another attempt to unravel the health care law while at the same time expanding anti-choice laws that will harm women’s health. 

This legislation revives a debate that has already been settled – there is no federal funding for abortion in the health care reform law.  Legal experts have said it.  Independent fact check organizations have said it.  Yet, Republicans continue to insist that the possibility of funding remains.

Federal funds are already prohibited from being used for abortions under the Hyde Amendment – at the expense of poor women, federal employees, women in the District of Columbia and women in the military.  But this bill goes way beyond that law.

It would take away a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her reproductive health – even with her own money.

It could expand the existing conscience objection to avoid providing contraception.

And, it would allow public hospitals to deny emergency abortion care to women in life-threatening situations.

HR 358 undermines the guarantee of emergency care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).  EMTALA creates a legal safety net that guarantees that anyone in need of emergency health care, including those unable to pay for health care, cannot be denied such care at hospitals. 

HR 358 would strip EMTALA of its power to ensure that women receive abortion care in emergency situations at hospitals by making their right to health care secondary to the hospital’s ability to refuse to provide abortion care.

Abortion care is necessary in some circumstances to save a woman’s life.  During the hearing on H.R. 358 in the Energy and Commerce Committee, some witnesses wrongly claimed that this was not the case.

In response to those claims, Dr. Cassing Hammond, Director of Northwestern University’s Center for Family Planning and Contraception as well as its academic Section of Family Planning, wrote a letter to the Committee to set the record straight.  Dr. Hammond has twenty years of experience in obstetric and complex abortion care. 

In his letter, Dr. Hammond states:

“Most patients are healthy women having healthy babies, but I am frequently asked to provide abortions for women confronting severely troubled pregnancies or their own life endangering health issues. Physicians who provide health care to women cannot choose to ignore the more tragic consequences of human pregnancy—and neither should Congress.” 

Dr. Hammond then proceeds to give several examples from his own experience of women who required abortion care in life-saving circumstances.  The following examples illustrate just a few of those instances:

• “One of my own obstetric patients carrying a desired pregnancy recently experienced rupture of the amniotic sac at 20 weeks gestation.  The patient had a complete placenta previa, a condition where the afterbirth covers the opening of the uterus.  Although the patient hoped the pregnancy might continue, she began contracting and suddenly hemorrhaged, losing nearly a liter of blood into her bed in a single gush.  Had we not quickly intervened to terminate the pregnancy, she would have bled to death, just as women do in countries with limited access to obstetric services.”

• “My service often receives consults regarding patients with serious medical issues complicating pregnancy.  We recently had a 44-year-old patient whose pregnancy had been complicated by a variety of non-specific symptoms.  A CT scan obtained at 23 weeks gestation revealed that the patient had lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain, liver, and other organs.  Her family confronted the difficult choice of terminating a desired pregnancy or continuing the pregnancy knowing that the physiological burden of pregnancy and cancer might worsen her already poor prognosis.  The family chose to proceed with the pregnancy termination.”

• “My service frequently sees patients with early pre-eclampsia, often referred to by the term ‘toxemia.’  Pre-eclampsia usually complicates later gestation, but occasionally complicates pregnancy as early as 18 to 20 weeks, well before the fetus is viable.  The only treatment for severe pre-eclampsia is delivery.  Otherwise, the condition will worsen, exposing the mother to kidney failure, liver failure, stroke and death.  One Christmas morning I had to leave my own family so that I could provide a pregnancy termination for a remarkably sick, pre-eclamptic teenager.”

These are women suffering from the most serious of health conditions.  If HR 358 were in place, they could be denied the emergency care they need.   

The attention Republicans are focusing on the private lives of women – what American families do with their own money – makes it clear that their real goal is to ban all abortions and end access to birth control and contraceptives.

Republicans don’t want government to protect the water we drink, the air we breathe, or the food we eat – but they do want to intrude in a women’s right to choose.

We are now at 280 days in this Congress without passing a jobs plan – yet the Republican majority has consistently managed to pass extreme and divisive legislation targeted at women’s health. 

The Administration strongly opposes HR 358, and this bill has no chance of becoming law. 

We are running out of legislative days left before the end of the year.  When is the Republican majority going to focus on jobs and the economy?

Now is the time to work on the issues that are most important to Americans – creating jobs and improving the economy – rather than restricting reproductive choice and access to family planning. 

This legislation is an extreme and mean-spirited way to roll back women’s health and rights.  It is too extreme for women, too extreme for America, and we must reject it.   

I have a parting thought for Rep. Pitts, Rep. Cantor, and all the members of the House who voted in favor of HR 358: I hope one day you will come to value the lives of women as much as you value the lives of the unborn.

SOURCES

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY (H. R. 358 – Protect Life Act)

H. R. 358

US: House Vote Puts Women at Risk (Human Rights Watch)

The Pitts Bill (H.R. 358): A Dangerous Bill that Threatens Women’s Health and Lives (National Women’s Law Center)

House GOP Proposes So-Called ‘Let Women Die’ Bill That Lets Hospitals Deny Life-Saving Care (ThinkProgress)

House Passes The ‘Let Women Die’ Bill (ThinkProgress)

US House Passes the “Let Her Die” Bill (MS Magazine)

This Again? House Votes to “Protect Life,” Kill Women (MS Magazine)

US: House Bill Would Permit Hospitals to Let Women in Need of Care, Die (Huffington Post)

New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion (TPMDC)

H.R. 358 would deny emergency abortions, allow women to die (Examiner)

Previous Turley Blawg Posts

Rape Redefined and Brought to You by Members of the US House of Representatives

The Right’s War on Women

The Right’s War on Women Continues…at the State Level

Redefining When Life Begins: A Post about Personhood USA and Legislative Bills That Could Make the Use of Some Contraceptives Illegal

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

From Climate Science Watch (March 18, 2010): To the libertarians, the widely-shared scientific assessment that human-caused climate change will likely produce major harmful consequences — and the communication of this evidence to the public by the leading climate scientists — poses a particularly serious threat. An informed public concerned about the likelihood of harmful impacts of unchecked global climatic disruption is more likely to call for significant government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In order to block proactive government policymaking and keep corporate interests unregulated, libertarian groups have focused a significant part of their efforts on climate change on distorting the science to confuse public opinion, denying the seriousness of the problem, and, most recently, impugning the integrity of the climate science community. The Koch brothers have stepped forward with deep pockets to bankroll such efforts.

Many people have already heard about the libertarian billionaire businessmen brothers Charles and David Koch who have helped to found and/or fund a number of non-profit organizations and think tanks—including the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Federalist Society, the Reason Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation—whose aim seems to be the advancement of the Kochs’ agenda “that government taxes and regulations impinge on prosperity.”

What many people may not be aware of is the number of academic centers/institutions that the Kochs are also helping to fund at both public and private colleges and universities—including Florida State University, West Virginia University, Brown University, Troy University, and Utah State University.

I’m going to focus on just one of these Koch-funded academic centers in this post—the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank located at George Mason University in Virginia—and on Susan B. Dudley, a woman who worked at Mercatus and was then appointed to a regulatory position at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2007.

THE MERCATUS CENTER

In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, the Mercatus Center was described as “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.” Previously known as the Center for the Study of Free Market Processes, the Mercatus Center was founded by Richard Fink—with a grant from Charles Koch. Koch currently serves on the center’s Board of Directors—as does Fink who is also an executive vice president and a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, Inc.

Jane Mayer wrote the following in Covert Operations, an article that appeared in the New Yorker in 2010: The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.

Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, has called the Mercatus Center  “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries and other corporate interests.” Richard Fink claims, however, that the center does not actively promote the Koch company’s private interests. He said that Koch “has other means of fighting its battles” in Washington and that they never had a nonprofit advance their agenda. Some people would disagree.

Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in environmental issues, told Mayer that “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency.” Another environmental lawyer who spoke to Mayer said that Mercatus was “a means of laundering economic aims.”  The lawyer described the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”

Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist, told Mayer that the relationship between George Mason University and Mercatus is an unusual arrangement. “George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds. Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control.” Stein claimed that Mercatus was “ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”

According to Sourcewatch, Mercatus “has engaged in campaigns involving deregulation, especially environmental deregulation.” It has been reported that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that George W. Bush put on his hit list were first suggested by academics who worked at the Mercatus Center.

In 2010, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute released a study that named Koch Industries as one of this country’s top ten polluters. That same year, Greenpeace released a report titled Koch Industries Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine. In the report’s executive summary, Greenpeace stated that Koch Industries had “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” (Greenpeace also reported that Koch foundations have contributed more than $48 million in grants to “climate opposition groups” since 1997—and that more than half of that has been donated since 2005.)

MEET SUSAN B. DUDLEY

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, wrote in 2007 about George W. Bush’s re-nomination of “a veritable rogues’ gallery of anti-environmental figures to key posts in federal agencies.” O’Donnell said that Susan B. Dudley, one of the nominees, was “a true anti-regulatory zealot. As director of regulatory studies at the industry-funded Mercatus Center, Dudley was like a wrecking ball out to smash key safeguards.” He added, “Putting Dudley in this key federal post would be like naming comedian Michael Richards to head the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.”

According to Lee Fang of Think Progress, George W. Bush appointed Susan B. Dudley, the director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center, to head the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—after the center had attacked the “EPA regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gases by challenging the science of climate change.” (Dudley’s was a recess appointment in 2007.)

O’Donnell said that as head of OIRA Dudley would have one “of the most obscure yet powerful jobs in Washington. The person in this position can, largely without public scrutiny, interfere with actions of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and become a conduit for industries seeking to avoid federal health, environmental and safety standards.”

The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections, a report produced by Public Citizen and OMB Watch in 2006, said that while Dudley worked at Mercatus, she “attacked proposed regulations in formal submissions to government agencies and orchestrated campaigns to derail other safeguards already on the books.” The report also claimed that Dudley displayed “an extreme anti-regulatory ideology” and “questioned the merit of regulation altogether in congressional testimony and regulatory comments, and she has urged weakening, if not eliminating entirely, public safeguards.”

Dudley worked to oppose public health regulations as a “hidden tax” that hinders profits when she was at Mercatus. She opposed all of the following: EPA plans that would have set tougher standards for smog; lower-polluting cars and SUVs—as well as cleaner gasoline; air bags in cars; stronger regulations for arsenic in drinking water; measures that could help curb global warming. (Think Progress)

Dudley has been quoted as stating that the “evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and…if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles.” In her testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety/Committee on Environment and Public on April 24, 1997, Dudley said: “Ozone in the troposphere, like ozone in the stratosphere, has the beneficial effect of screening ultraviolet radiation, which is known to have various health and welfare effects including melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, cataracts, and crop and fishery damage.”

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of more than seventy universities that offer Ph.D.s in atmospheric and related sciences, doesn’t see it the same way Dudley does. UCAR has said the following about ozone in the troposphere:

Ozone occurs naturally at ground-level in low concentrations. The two major sources of natural ground-level ozone are hydrocarbons, which are released by plants and soil, and small amounts of stratospheric ozone, which occasionally migrate down to the earth’s surface. Neither of these sources contributes enough ozone to be considered a threat to the health of humans or the environment.

But the ozone that is a byproduct of certain human activities does become a problem at ground level and this is what we think of as ‘bad’ ozone. With increasing populations, more automobiles, and more industry, there’s more ozone in the lower atmosphere. Since 1900 the amount of ozone near the earth’s surface has more than doubled. Unlike most other air pollutants, ozone is not directly emitted from any one source. Tropospheric ozone is formed by the interaction of sunlight, particularly ultraviolet light, with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which are emitted by automobiles, gasoline vapors, fossil fuel power plants, refineries, and certain other industries.

And this is what UCAR said about the negative impacts of tropospheric ozone:

While stratospheric ozone shields us from ultraviolet radiation, in the troposphere this irritating, reactive molecule damages forests and crops; destroys nylon, rubber, and other materials; and injures or destroys living tissue. It is a particular threat to people who exercise outdoors or who already have respiratory problems.

Ozone affects plants in several ways. High concentrations of ozone cause plants to close their stomata. These are the cells on the underside of the plant that allow carbon dioxide and water to diffuse into the plant tissue. This slows down photosynthesis and plant growth. Ozone may also enter the plants through the stomata and directly damage internal cells.

Rubber, textile dyes, fibers, and certain paints may be weakened or damaged by exposure to ozone. Some elastic materials can become brittle and crack, while paints and fabric dyes may fade more quickly.

When ozone pollution reaches high levels, pollution alerts are issued urging people with respiratory problems to take extra precautions or to remain indoors. Smog can damage respiratory tissues through inhalation. Ozone has been linked to tissue decay, the promotion of scar tissue formation, and cell damage by oxidation. It can impair an athlete’s performance, create more frequent attacks for individuals with asthma, cause eye irritation, chest pain, coughing, nausea, headaches and chest congestion and discomfort. It can worsen heart disease, bronchitis, and emphysema.

Prior to Dudley’s appointment to OIRA, Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, wrote in an email exchange with Media Transparency that “Dudley would be the most anti-regulatory zealot within the Bush Administration, bar none. Her ideology is based upon a core belief that regulations are generally bad and there should be no regulation unless it can be proven to be cost effective and supported from within the market place.”

The Cost is Too High report said that Dudley’s radicalism put her “right at home at Mercatus”—which was “founded by corporate interests and endowed by large corporations, free-market oriented foundations, and leaders from the corporate world”  and “has long operated at the intersection of money, power, and influence in order to promote corporate special interests at the expense of the public interest.”

Note: Susan B. Dudley is a Research Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration and is serving as the Director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

EPA Nemesis: Mercatus Center Another Koch Think Tank (Sourcewatch/Center for Media and Democracy)

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group Mercatus Center (Greenpeace)

From Promoting Acid Rain To Climate Denial: Over 20 Years Of David Koch’s Polluter Front Groups (Think Progress)

The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)

Koch’s Web of Influence (Center for Public Integrity)

Koch-Powered Tea Party Pushes Climate Denial Bill In New Hampshire (Think Progress)

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. (The New Yorker)

The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)

Does Bush know how to pick ‘em or does he know how to pick ‘em? (Daily Kos)

The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections (Public Citizen & OMB Watch)

Bush Nominates Anti-Regulatory Zealot To Head ‘Super-Powerful’ Public Safety Office (Think Progress)

Stop Susan Dudley: The air you breathe depends on it (Public Citizen)

Dudley Do-Wrong of George Mason University (Media Transparency)

With Senate on break, Bush appoints officials: The three, including a contentious regulatory director, most likely would not have been approved by lawmakers. (Los Angeles Times)

I Am OMB and I Write the Rules (Washington Post)

On First Day Of New Congress, Koch Operatives Met With GOP Chairman Planning To Gut The Clean Air Act (Think Progress)

ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection (The Nation)

Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution (ThinkProgress)

The Koch Energy and Commerce Committee (Turley Blog)

Koch Industries multibillionaire Koch brothers bankroll attacks on climate change science and policy (Climate Science Watch)

The Most Important Think Tank You’ve Never Heard Of (Richard C. Young)

Rule Breaker: In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation (Mercatus)

Meet Koch Industries (Oil Watchdog)

Mercatus Center—Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)

Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)

Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial 2011 Update (Greenpeace)

Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine (Greenpeace)

The Kochs’ Mercatus Center and Environmental Deregulation (The Green Market)

Does This Matter? Eliminating the EPA? (Watchdog Progressive)

REPORT: Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country (ThinkProgress)

FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom (ThinkProgress)

Billionaire’s role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions (St. Petersburg Times)

VIDEO: Why Oil Billionaire David Koch Is Secretly Funding Astroturf To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law AB 32 (Think Progress)

Wegman scandal rocks cornerstone of climate denial (Think Progress)

Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) – Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group (Greenpeace)

Climate Change Deniers Without Borders: How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad—and how they could derail any progress made in Copenhagen. (Mother Jones)

Bush Obstructs EPA, OSHA, CDC Regulations (Mother Jones)

Koch Industries and Lobbying in Washington (Desmogblog)

Koch and George Mason University (Desmogblog)

Still Hiring Tree Haters (Tom Paine)

Another big time fox nominated to be gatekeeper to the henhouse (Watching the Watchers)

Charles Koch’s Assault on Academic Freedom (Mother Jones)

In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation: With White House Ex-Staffers, Mercatus Helps Zap Codes It Says Restrict Business (Wall Street Journal)

Statutory Interpretation in the Era of OIRA (Georgetown University law Center)

Testimony of Susan E. Dudley
Before the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety
Committee on Environment and Public Works
April 24, 1997

So…I get this baby gift recently from one of my Grammy’s good friends. It’s a pink Red Sox hat. My mom—who happens to be a big fan of the Boston baseball team–loved it. She put it on me and made my grandma take a picture. Mom wanted me to wear it proudly every time she took me for a walk.

Little did my mom know when I got that gift that the Red Sox would collapse like a pup tent in a hurricane at the end of the regular baseball season. What a bunch of losers! From what I’ve overheard my parents talking about this week—the curse of the Bambino must have been reactivated! I wonder how long the curse will hang around this time???

Sports are life around my house. My parents are ardent fans of the New England Patriots too. (My dad also roots for the Giants. It’s a family thing passed down by his dad. Don’t tell anybody, okay?)

Well, this week, the Red Sox hat came off—and on went a Patriots’ onesie. Another photograph was taken.

I hope the Patriots don’t blow it today like they did last week when they played the Buffalo Bills. I hate it when my parents are disappointed by their favorite teams. They seem so forlorn.

I’m beginning to wonder what’s next for me wardrobe-wise. Bruins booties? A Celtics T-shirt? Oh no! Now it’s the “Kiss me I’m Irish” get-up!

I’d just like to wear some nice non-denominational apparel and footwear, Mom and Dad! Capiche?

Here is Eric’s description:

Amazing how a big city is full of people and how sometimes, you can get very lonely or isolated. I thought of the study I read last year about loneliness in France, when I saw this lady, alone on this wall by Beaubourg. The study (by Fondation de France) says that one French person in ten lives by him(her)self and that one in ten also, has less than 3 personal conversations per year. I find it hard to believe, but it seems to be true. Not a very joyful note, I agree…

Eric Tenin is the co-founder and CEO of polltogo.com, a mobile polling platform, but he is also a true Parisian (born and raised there). Since 2005, he’s been taking a photo of his home town every single day, to feed his www.parisdailyphoto.com (PDP) blog. Since the launch of PDP, thousands of other cities have joined his CityDailyPhoto.com community, sharing their cities from a local view. One of his pictures is featured each Sunday on the Turley blog.

 As a suitable companion piece to my last post, I present the less than dulcet tones of Bob Dylan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5eEgB2MQE.html

Banned Books Weeks 2011 will be observed September 24-October 1.

Jonah Goldberg claims that Banned Books Week (BBW) is nothing but hype. In a column he penned for USA Today in early September, Goldberg wrote that BBW “is an exercise in propaganda.” He continued, “For starters, as a legal matter no book in America is banned, period, full stop (not counting, I suppose, some hard-core illegal child porn or some such out there). Any citizen can go to a bookstore or Amazon.com and buy any book legally in print — or out of print for that matter.”

Evidently, Goldberg thinks that books which have been removed from the shelves of public and school libraries “due to pressure from someone who isn’t a librarian or a teacher” don’t count as “banned books.” He appears to believe they can only be considered banned books if they have been banned on a national level. So what if books are removed from school and public libraries? One can always get a copy at a book store or from Amazon.com. Right?

Goldberg got into the numbers of challenged books to demonstrate how “overhyped” stories about banned books are. He wrote that reported challenges had dropped from 513 in 2008 to 348 in 2010—and that the “historic norm is a mere 400 to 500 bans or challenges” a year. He said there are almost 100,00 public schools in this country educating approximately 50 million students—as well as 33,000 private schools and 10,000 public libraries. According to Goldberg’s math—if there were “500 parent-driven ‘bans or challenges’ in a given year in public schools, that would mean for every 200 public schools, or every 100,000 students, at least one parent even complained about an age-inappropriate book. What an epidemic!”

Reported challenges…a mere 400 to 500 bans or challenges…only one book challenge per 100,000 students. What’s the fuss all about? Why should people be concerned? Maybe the American Library Association, public libraries, and schools in this country should only begin to worry when the censorship, challenging, and banning of books becomes an epidemic. Why address the problem when the numbers are so small?

Well, one could conclude that many book challenges aren’t reported. As noted on the ALA website: “We do not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges as research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five that go unreported.” And I have little doubt that there are many librarians, teachers, readers, and defenders of the First Amendment who feel that an historic norm of 400 to 500 challenges a year are a few hundred too many.

I have to wonder at Goldberg’s motives for writing his column. Was it so he could get in a dig at teachers’ unions? Here’s what he wrote about them:

“These days, teachers unions are fond of claiming that apathetic parents deserve more of the blame for the woeful state of education today. Maybe so. But a national policy of bullying parents interested in what their kids are reading hardly seems like the best way to encourage them. Indeed, from these numbers, the real scandal might be that so few books are “banned or challenged.’”

I’m not sure how Goldberg drew the conclusion that there is a “national policy” of bullying parents who are interested in what their children read.  He didn’t provide any proof that there was. And why  would Goldberg suggest that the real scandal is that so few books are being banned or challenged? Does he think that more books should be banned and challenged every year?

 Molly Raphael, President of the American Library Association, responded to Goldberg’s column. She wrote:

 “When a library removes a book from its shelves because someone disapproves of the ideas or opinions contained in the book, that is censorship. When it is done by publicly funded schools and libraries — government agencies — it is a violation of the First Amendment.”

Raphael said we should remember that when a book is removed from a library it is an act of censorship that affects an entire community—not just one individual or one family. She also said that public libraries “serve everyone, including those who are too young or too poor to buy their own books or own a computer.” She added that the reason librarians and library users celebrate BBW is as “a testament to the strength of our freedom in the United States. We celebrate the freedom to read because we all know that we are so fortunate to live in a country that protects our freedom to choose what we want to read. If you doubt this, just ask anyone from a totalitarian society. That is why we draw attention to acts of censorship that chill the freedom to read.”

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.

You may kill him — another will be born.

Deeds and words shall be recorded.

~ Czeslaw Milosz, Poland

The lives of artists are more fragile than their creations. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis, but his poetry has outlasted the Roman Empire. Osip Mandelstam died in a Stalinist work camp, but his poetry has outlived the Soviet Union. Federico García Lorca was killed by the thugs of Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, but his poetry has survived that tyrannical regime.

 We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight.

~ Salman Rushdie, 19 April 2011

Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2010 (Out of 348 challenges as reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom)

1. And Tango Makes Three*, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
   Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
   Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit
4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, and sexually explicit
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
6. Lush, by Natasha Friend
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
7. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
   Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
   Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, and religious viewpoint
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
   Reasons:  homosexuality and sexually explicit
10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
    Reasons: religious viewpoint and violence

 (*And Tango Makes Three is a picture book.)

 Sources and Further Reading

Column: Banned Books Week is just hype (USA Today)

Banned Books Week celebrates freedom to read (USA Today)

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read (ALA)

Frequently Challenged Books (ALA)

Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century (ALA)

Banned Books Week 2011 (Amnesty International)

The 11 Most Surprising Banned Books (PHOTOS, POLL) (Huffington Post)

Letter re: Slaughterhouse Five Ban in Republic, MO (National Coalition Against Censorship)

First Lady Laura Bush Cancels Poetry Gathering Fearing Anti-War Poems: Democracy Now! Hosts Its Own Poetry Slam with Def Poetry Jam Stars Staceyann Chin, Suheir Hammad and Steve Colman (Democracy Now, 2/7/2003)

 
Other Turley Blog Posts on the Censorship, Challenging, and Banning of Books

Publisher Announces Intention to Edit Huckleberry Finn To Remove N-Word

On the Banning, Censorship, and Challenging of Books

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?—I See Anti-Marxists Looking at Me!

Most people who regularly visit this blog know that I am Jewish. While I am not what one would call a pious Jew, being a Deist in outlook, I have always been very proud of my ethnicity and of the religion, which plays a central part in it. From their infancy, my children were immersed in Judaism both through education and by our family regularly taking part in Jewish Rituals, including regular Synagogue attendance. Where I part personally from normative Judaism is that I view the Torah, The Five Books of Moses, as primarily allegory with some real history thrown in. To me it is a work of some wise and some not so wise men, not the writings of God. I believe and have seen demonstrated in many families though, that the Torah and its 613 Commandments can serve as blueprint for living a fulfilling life.

The issue becomes complicated when it comes to my feelings about Israel. To me the existence ofI srael is a necessity for Jews to have a future in this world and if it comes to it, a final haven to make our last stand. I am an American first, so I would not willingly emigrate away from the country of my birth, unless those who hate Jews come to power. Contrary to the opinion of many, Jews are far from being a homogeneous ethnicity/religion. One cannot for instance refer to being an Orthodox Jew with any precision of description since that movement is in itself splintered on many details of interpretation. This is true of the other main branches of Judaism: Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionism. Perhaps it is because there is no central Jewish religious authority speaking for all Jews, as much as organizations like ADL, AIPAC, et. al. would claim to, that the range of Jewish opinion is so wide on so many subjects.

This brings me to an article I read at the PublicEye.org titled: “The New Christian Zionism and the Jews”. Its’ thesis is that many Jewish supporters of Israel and the current Israeli government have allied themselves with Christian Fundamentalists whose “love” for Israel and Jews come from the wish to fulfill the prophecies of The Book of Revelations, where in fact Jews not willing to accept Jesus, will die in a horrid holocaust.  This trend has been one disturbing me for a long time. I have watched Jews and Israeli’s embrace Fundamentalist Christian support, in what to me is a shortsighted and irrational policy. This could be justified by saying that a country takes its allies where one can get them. Sometimes what seems an example of realpolitik is merely an instance of dangerously narrow opportunism, as I will elaborate. 

“In late October, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel spoke at a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) event hosted by the controversial Christian Zionist John Hagee at hisCornerstoneChurchinSan Antonio,Texas. Internationally broadcast on GodTV, Hagee presented $9 million in donations to 29 Israeli andU.S.Jewish organizations. Hagee is one of the world’s most successful televangelists and a prolific author who prophesizes that apocalyptic wars and the migration of Jews to the holy land will help trigger the return of Jesus and his thousand-year reign on earth.

Wiesel joins a long list of Jews and Israelis who show no discomfort at being in the center of someone else’s apocalyptic religious vision. Making common cause with Christian Zionists are the lobby group American Israel Political Action Committee, which hosted Hagee as a conference keynote speaker in 2007, and Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, who attended a CUFI summit last July.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a very different kind of “pro-Israel” gathering was taking place.J Street, the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobby group, was holding its first national conference with panels featuring American, Israeli and Palestinian speakers. Hundreds gathered in the ballroom of the Washington D.C. Grand e wayHyatt for the conference, whose program explicitly stated thatJ Streetaims to challenge “right-wing Christian Zionists” – the very people Wiesel was addressing.”

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v24n4/jews-new-christian-zionism.html

The above was the opening of the article I linked below it and it is the centerpiece of this post. My assumption is that you would read it, so I am writing this as if the full discussion has been laid out, in the interests of brevity. The current Israeli Government headed by Bibi Netanyahu is I believe wrong in its approach to the settlement of the ongoing conflict. Their power base is an amalgam of Orthodox Jews and settlers on the West Bank, which is pretty much the same thing. The aims of this government date back to the founding of the Likud Party and Menachem Begin. This party skewed Israel away from its original heritage and moved it towards a more nationalistic stance, which also was one embracing a philosophy that was economically/politically conservative. They actively sought and received the support of the more extreme elements of Jewish Orthodoxy, that except for the crucial issue of Jesus, are philosophically akin to Christian Fundamentalists. In my opinion, Likud’s rise to power reflects the same kind of public attitude that also brings Republican’s to power in the U.S..  That is a false perception of strength through militancy and an economic system favoring Corporate interests disguised as freedom.

Begin, in the 70’s began building settlements in the West Bank as a means of justifying the perpetual occupation of these areas. Through the years this policy has continued, despite the fact that world opinion sees the only viable solution being a “two state” result. Two discrete states represent to me the only viable answer to this ongoing conflict and the only one that really coincides with I believe to be Jewish values. I further feel that it is the only way to ensure Israel’s future viability, since no characteristically Jewish State can exist with apartheid.

The agenda of the fundamentalist Christians, however, is to encourage no viable solution, but to encourage the ongoing violent struggle. This is of course to bring on  the “Glorious End Times” and Jesus return. They are for the existence of Israel only up until Armageddon and then God help those Jews who don’t see the light and convert. As an outsider to Christianity, The Book of Revelations has always seemed to me to be the demented vision of a Christian persecuted by the Romans. Written perhaps 150 years after Jesus it is notable for its’ bloody and turgid style, which is at odds with both the Gospels and other writings of the Christian Canon. It was included in the Canon though at the council of Nicaea, 320 CE, because it serves as a bogeyman tale to keep the faithful in line. It presents a wholly different Jesus than the being presented in the Gospels.

Given the ends these Fundamentalists seek, it is actually suicidal for Jews and Israeli’s to share the same bed with them. It is in the best interests of the Israeli’s, Palestinians, U.S., and world peace to resolve this conflict in a viable fashion. Given the views of these Christian Fundamentalists, a peaceful solution would be a terrible idea and in their minds delay God’s Plan. The inconsistency of believing in an all-powerful God whose “plans” and schedules are affected by Humankind is not apparent to them in their delighted rush to bring on the Rapture and thus bring the “faithful believers” into Heaven.

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

In 2005, Karmeier voted with State Farm after securing his seat with the help of large amounts of contributions from the company. Now the attorneys are alleging the company lied and asking the court to reconsider a $1 billion verdict against State Farm. The former FBI agent Michael Reece hired by the plaintiffs states “The bottom line of my investigation is that State Farm used the Illinois Civil Justice League to elect Judge Karmeier and Judge Karmeier knew it.” Reece stated in his affidavit that accompanied the petition.

Karmeier was asked but had declined to recuse himself from the class-action case against State Farm.

In the 2009 opinion in Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., the Supreme Court held that a West Virginia appellate judge should have recused himself from a case where Charleston lawyer Brent Benjamin received $3 million in campaign contributions before his election. he then voted to overturn a verdict against a contributor due to the “serious risk of actual bias.” Justice Kennedy wrote that “[t]he inquiry centers on the contribution’s relative size in comparison to the total amount of money contributed to the campaign, the total amount spent in the election, and the apparent effect such contribution had on the outcome of the election.”

In this case, you have the added allegation that both company lawyers and Karmeier himself knew the earlier representation to the Court was false. It is also highly disturbing to see a company putting out this level of support for a judicial officer. Insurance companies are not known to be cavalier about their money. Giving millions to a single state judicial officer’s campaign is presumably done in anticipation of a positive return on the investment.

Source: Tribune as first seen on ABA Journal

On November 9, 2011, Justice Antonin Scalia will preside over the reenactment of Texas v. White (1869). The event is part of the Frank C. Jones Reenactment Lecture hosted by the Supreme Court Historical Society.

Each side get 20 minutes to present their case and then Justice Scalia will render his opinion. These reenactments are apparently enjoyed by the Justices who participate.

That the case involved bonds seems insignificant when compared to the gravity of the question of jurisdiction: was, or was not, the State of Texas one of the United States. If Texas was not a state, the Supreme Court would have no jurisdiction. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase (above) recognized the monumental nature of this question, “[w]e are very sensible of the magnitude and importance of this question … and we must determine it in the exercise of our best judgment, under the guidance of the Constitution alone.”

J. Chase discusses the origins of the Union of States and notes that the Articles of Confederation declared the Union to “be perpetual.” And then comes the money quote:

And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

What impeccable logic!

J. Chase therefore concludes:

Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null.

The ordinances of secession, enacted by the States of the Confederacy, were not constitutional.

Screenwriter Dan Turkewitz wrote to 10 Supreme Court Justices (including O’Connor) regarding a comedy about Maine seceding from the United States. J. Scalia responded (in part):

To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.

Constitutional issues are not resolved by war. This constitutional issue was resolved by the brilliant (in spots) decision of Salmon P. Chase. Reading some parts of this decision taxes one’s attention span.

It is now time for the commenters to present their case.

H/T: Salon, Internet Archive, VC, WSJ.

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

During the recent Congressional recess, House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) decided that he wasn’t going to hold any public face-to-face town meetings with the constituents in his district. Instead, according to Politico, he opted for town hall-style meetings that were strictly “pay-per-view.” And Ryan wasn’t the only member of Congress who chose to charge people for the privilege of speaking to them.

In a Politico article, Reid Epstein wrote:

By outsourcing the events to third parties that charge an entry fee to raise money, members of Congress can eliminate most of the riffraff while still — in some cases — allowing reporters and TV cameras for a positive local news story.

Evidently, Ryan didn’t want to be confronted at public forums with any protesters or with angry backlash or questions from voters upset with his positions on issues like taxes, Medicare, and Social Security—as he was last spring.

Yet, Ryan still faced angry Wisconsinites at a “pay-per-view” luncheon at a Rotary Club. One 71-year-old retired plumber was actually pushed to the ground and handcuffed by police at the event. Watch the videos:

It seems the natives have been getting restless in the Badger state. It’s hard to keep them quiet when the economy is in such trouble, so many people are unemployed, and some members of Congress insist on giving tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations while the average American sees the quality of his/her middle-class life being eroded.

In a Mother Jones article dated August 26, 2011, Andy Kroll wrote:

Over the past week, hundreds of people, a mix of constituents and other angry Wisconsinites, have marched outside Ryan’s Kenosha and Racine offices, angry over what they see as Ryan’s inaccessibility and refusal to face his constituents in a free, public, in-person town hall. For four days, they also held sit-ins inside Ryan’s Kenosha office—until police kicked them out. The only in-person event on Ryan’s recess calendar is an appearance at a Rotary hall outside his district with a $15 entrance fee; by contrast, Ryan held more than a dozen town halls in 2009. “This is a jobs crisis in his congressional district, an emergency,” says Scott Page, 37, an unemployed Kenosha resident. “Yet he’s not even listening to his own constituents.”

David Dayen (FireDogLake) wrote that the major media didn’t appear to be perturbed by this “indictment of our system.” He wrote:

The elites are by now used to walling themselves off in Davos or Aspen, unable to hear the concerns of the people whose lives they hold in their hands. They get very embarrassed when they are confronted by the rabble. So much so that they get the authorities to push the rabble around and make sure they don’t step out of line again. This looks a lot like hiring Pinkerton thugs to break up union protesters in the 19th century to me.

Is this what life in a representative democracy should look like? Shouldn’t our representatives and senators hold town hall meetings where their constituents can speak to them in a public forum?  Shouldn’t the politicians we send to Washington, D.C., be listening to the concerns and answering the questions of all of the people whom they represent? Isn’t that their job?

SOURCES
Paul Ryan Mocks Senior Citizen Handcuffed At His Town Hall: ‘I Hope He’s Taking His Blood Pressure Medication’ (Think Progress)

Unemployed Constituents Stage Sit-In At Paul Ryan’s Office, Ryan’s Staff Calls The Cops (Think Progress)

Talk to Paul Ryan? It’ll cost you (Politico)

Republican Lawmakers Face Angry, Confused Constituents on Medicare, Budget Cuts (ABC News)

Afraid To Face Angry Voters, Rep. Paul Ryan Sneaks Out A Back Door After Raucous Town Hall (Crooks and Liars)

Paul Ryan Dodges Angry Cheeseheads (Mother Jones)

The New Gilded Age: Protesters Roughed Up at Paul Ryan Pay-Per-View Town Hall (FireDogLake)

The ADA prohibits covered employers from discriminating against disabled individuals, 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a) (2006), and an individual is disabled if he has “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual.” 42 U.S.C. § 12102(2) (2006). A plaintiff must show (1) that he is disabled within the meaning of the ADA, (2) that he is otherwise qualified for the job, with or without reasonable accommodations, and (3) that he was subjected to an adverse employment decision as a result of discrimination.

Hamermesh notes that more attractive people not only receive higher pay and better mortgage rates but higher-earning spouses. One study shows American workers in the bottom seventh in terms of looks earn about $230,000 less in a lifetime than similar workers in the top third of looks. This leads Hamermesh to write:

A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?

The only problem is that it would be entirely unworkable and extend the ADA to the point that it would make a significant percentage of Americans legally disabled. Indeed, depending how deep you go on the attractiveness scale, we could be a majority disabled country when all recognized disabilities are considered from mental illness to physical disabilities are considered. If a lack of attractiveness is “a physical impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual,” 42 U.S.C. § 12102(2) (2006), I expect many people could name life activities denied by their looks. This includes the arbitrary denial of my repeated applications as a Chippendale dancer.

Yet, Hamermesh insists:

For purposes of administering a law, we surely could agree on who is truly ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population. The difficulties in classification are little greater than those faced in deciding who qualifies for protection on grounds of disabilities that limit the activities of daily life, as shown by conflicting decisions in numerous legal cases involving obesity.

I am not sure that “we surely could agree on who is truly ugly.” I would be particularly interested in how that standard would be codified or put into an objective regulatory system. I am afraid that this is an eye that would have been best left in the faculty lounge for fund debates over a good port. If nothing else, an evening of drinking would show that ideas like people look better with alcohol than they do the following morning.

Source: NY Timesas first read in the ABA Journal

Today I came across this fascinating exposition on a facet of American History often overlooked in our educational syllabus. The Boston Tea Party, from which today’s Tea Party takes its’ name, was actually a revolt against the dominance of the largest Multi-national Corporation of its’ time and its’ monopoly of the ubiquitous tea trade. The power of this entity came through its political dominance of the British Monarchy and with its’ compliance and enforcement of this Corporation’s needs. Contrast the actual positions of today’s “Tea Partier’s” with those whose names they usurp. I think you will find this a fascinating video and I will comment after the fold.

Even if you didn’t watch this whole video, I’m sure you got enough information to understand that the Boston Tea Party was about fighting the bestowal of government privileges, including tax cuts, to a large, influential corporation. Today’s “Tea Party” is a movement created by wealthy corporate interests, guided by a powerful lobbyist, Dick Armey, and is committed to ensuring that corporations have no regulations whatsoever. I had previously documented that here:

 http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/

 This is a fact that it seems none dare mention in the Mainstream Broadcast Media, excepting MSNBC. The average viewer is led to believe, by the bloviating pundits, that this is a “grass roots” movement of average folk, fed up by too much government involvement in their lives. The “Tea Party” has been invested by the same punditry, with the mantle of being a “populist” movement. In fact, the only resemblance to them and certain “populists” of the past is that there is a racialist percentage among them.

Today’s TP’ers are essentially anti-constitutionalists, in league with those who would be theocrats, working in the service of corporate interests. They bandy about epithets for the rest of American’s, the majority of Americans I must say, that call their opponents socialists, communists and fascists. Although all of these epithets could hardly characterize either the Democratic Party, or the President they revile, they gain currency through the repetition of the corporate “Big Lie” and are given equal treatment by the media.

The only way for real American’s to battle these anti-constitutionalists is by constantly exposing the lies and the memes they use to give themselves legitimacy, such as taking on the mantle of an historic American move towards independence. Admittedly, these are harsh words and do not necessarily represent the views of this blog or its proprietor.

Enough, however, is enough. I cannot abide the hypocrisy being displayed here, nor can I abide watching a field of Republican candidates, kowtowing to this movement, who are themselves made up of clowns, knaves and even much worse. Oh, do I long for the days of Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower before him. The current crop of Presidential hopefuls in the GOP isn’t fit to step into the shoes of their Republican forebears, who were demonstrable realists with no small intelligence.

The worst part of it is that although the whole contingent of Republican Presidential hopefuls pretend to represent themselves as the people’s protectors, their history strongly suggests quite the opposite. Their greatest weapon thus far has been to seize the political initiative and attain power through erecting a Potemkin Wall of popular support. They have done this by redefining American History, the Constitution and given new meanings to words. The TP’ers have successfully infiltrated our Congress  with preachers of cant and no-nothingness and because of this, we must perforce expose and oppose them, or watch the very heart of our government, our Constitution, shredded by the hypocrisy by which they justify their actions.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had a bad month. I’m not talking about personal issues in my life because those are fine. I’m talking about the awful political and economic situations in this country, and I’m talking about the pain and misery felt by so many in the rest of our world. Each day it seems the news gets more depressing and I glean few hopeful signs from the news indicating that things will soon start to improve. As many here know, I am talking from the perspective of someone saved from the brink of death last year, so in a personal sense I have little complaint.

 Taking it away from the deeply personal though, I see a country and a world in apocalyptic turmoil. Not only are we overwhelmed with seeming insoluble problems, but also from my perspective, we are beset with a host of irrational political leaders and those who follow them blindly. Added to the cacophony of these politicians, of all sides may I say, we have religious leaders who have twisted their religion to fit their own emotional needs. We also have CEO’s who will put profit above all other considerations. Finally, we have a general population so absorbed in a cult of celebrity, that civic understanding and action are mere afterthoughts. Is there no hope?

Actually, I believe there is hope for humanity and for Americans. I came to this conclusion while having my bad month, as I asked myself the question: When has it ever been better? I began exploring In my mind what I knew of various historical periods to see if ever in humanity’s civilized history there has been a more congenial time for our species. My conclusion is that there have been no periods in the seven thousand year old history of civilization where people’s lives were better than our lives are today. Before civilization was a long period where the strong prevailed and where death came young. Below is a brief sampling of various well-known historical eras and  their “livability”. Since we have such an erudite readership, it is possible that some may disagree with my characterizations and I would appreciate their input in correcting my opinions.

Most archaeologists consider the Sumerian Civilization, circa 5,300 BCE, the first human organization of a large society. It was a collection of City States, who had writing and left fragments. They built some magnificent structures, had a state religion, kings, and nobility ruled them. The Sumerians had pyramids of a sort that served as temples. Most of the people lived in enforced poverty. Unless you were a noble, or among the few merchant princes, life was hard, dirty and short.  

Egypt, circa 3,150 BCE is much better known than Sumer. Their pyramids were very big and they remain among the great structures extant. The Egyptians were more unified under their Pharaoh and had a distinctive State religion headed by the Pharoah. In essence though the political and economic structure was similar and most people’s lives differed little from those of Sumer. The overwhelming majority lived short, poverty-stricken lives.

 Babylon, circa 1,790 BCE had as its’ sixth king Hammurabi. He developed a famous code of laws, which for their time were innovative. Nevertheless, the same human story of pyramidal power and wealth existed, lawfully or not. China developed writing around 1,600 BCE, but was not unified until many centuries later. The Chinese existed with 1,200 years of internecine warfare before reaching an early stage of unification. The life of Confucius 600 BCE was one led trying to bring harmony and end the horrors of war. Even with writing and many innovative inventions, their politics favored the powerful and plundered the rest.

Need I continue from the “Golden Age of Greece, through Rome, Carthage, the Rise of Islam, Inquisition, Black Plague, Renaissance, Reformation, etc? Despite great advances, the lives of probably 98% of humanity were short, brutal and beset by tragedy. This doesn’t even take into account the horrible lack of sanitary conditions and the absence of viable housing and medical care. As much as we may romanticize the flourishing of art and culture, by our standards even those atop their society’s pyramid lived lives below the standard of the average American and/or European.

In Woody Allen’s recent movie “Midnight in Paris” the theme is people’s longing for their romantic ideal of eras passed. The hero, a successful Hollywood hack screenwriter longs to be in the Paris of the 20’s and write “The Great American Novel”. He goes to Paris with his bland fiancé and her rich parents. As he wanders the Parisian streets, he longs to mingle with Hemingway, The Fitzgerald’s, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein. His wish fulfilled magically at midnight on a certain street in Paris, he returns to that era and meets his idols. He also meets a bohemian from that era. She is a poet of some talent and they fall in love, but she longs for and goes back in time to the era of the “Fin de siècle” which to her represents a “better” time. In the end, what motivates people in their romantic desire to flee the present, is a romantic dream of a better “past” and a present that they can’t tolerate. Allen’s salient point is that for some the past always seems preferable to the now and that is merely a human illusion.

I lived the counter-culture life through the Sixties and Seventies and while I have many memories to cherish, having been a part of it all, I would be loath to return. Been there, done that. Living in New York in the Twenties would also appeal to my romantic juices, but as in Woody’s movie, the reality would never live up to the romantic vision. I am a creature of air conditioning, computers, TV, modern toilets, toilet paper, and large rooms. I don’t like wearing socks, much less suits, ties, and starched collars. The truth is that the experience would make me uncomfortable physically.

Forgetting the creature comforts though, the politics of the Twenties would have made me unhappy. The succession of Presidents from Harding to Hoover helped lead this country to the disaster of the Great Depression via their comfort with the Upper Crust and their need to pamper them. Labor was downtrodden, immigration and immigrants issues, wide swaths of tenement slums, pollution, and other ills of a coal burning era.

The Western movie has always tickled my romantic fancy, but life on the frontier in truth was also far less than the romantic ideal portrayed. The pioneer heroism mixed with the fact that perhaps seventy percent of the frontier population were alcoholics and don’t let me get started on the treatment of the Native Americans. This doesn’t take into account the various odors of animals prevalent everywhere. Nor were legalities and fair justice a highlight of the lifestyle and politics were considerably more rancorous and physical than we see today.

Disagree with me if you will, but to my mind, there is no point in history that represented a time better than our own. There were never better governmental systems worldwide, than exist today. The life of the average human today is as good as it has ever been and that is true for even those living in the various horrible areas of the world, in unspeakable positions.

However, with my stating life has never been better for humanity, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. I can envision a world where most people’s lives are not hard, short, and miserable; where legal systems treat all equally; where starvation and poverty doesn’t exist, you know the rest of this particular bleeding hearts’ drill.

This is the dichotomy for me, since the world has never been better, but remains for much of humanity a horrid place. Our own American society seems on the brink of cataclysm, yet things are better now than in the Jim Crow Fifties. I know many of conservative stripe look back fondly on the Fifties, but I lived through them. I remember the Southern lynchings, I remember the teen gangs in the Cities, I remember the McCarthy Era, heroin addicts, the banning of great books and the stultifying cultural conformity. We were more prosperous then, but we paid a stiff price for that prosperity. That price was for an empty lifestyle and the pretense of living a lifestyle of integrity and morality.

Therefore, while I believe this is not the best of all possible worlds, I’m convinced we live in the best of times for humanity, mainly because all past times have been worse. Who knows what the future might hold, but I do think we have a responsibility towards ensuring that things don’t get any worse. What do you think?

Well the exodus from Texas and its drought can proceed a little faster and Indianapolis may be a few miles closer now that the rural speed limit in the Lone Star state has been raised to 85 from the pokey 80. In a state where everything is bigger — and now faster — the good ladies and gentlemen of the legislature have seen fit to ignore the high price of gas and the need for highway safety for sake of  moving Texans around quicker.

State officials say the roads can accommodate the higher speeds. “We studied it,” said Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson. “These are parts of the state where higher speeds is a safe decision.” Some studies show drivers already are cruising at about 79 miles per hour on these vast expanses of Texas countryside mostly in the western part of the state.

 Tom “Smitty” Smith, Texas director of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen offered this cautionary note,”You can repeal the speed limit law, but you can’t repeal the law of physics. People don’t survive crashes at these excessive speeds.”  

But as the folks down in Texas say, “A Cowboy is a man with guts and a Horse — and now a really fast car.”

Source: Business Insider

Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

 In the years, I’ve spent commenting here at Professor Turley’s blog, I have presented myself as an honest person, sensible and with humane beliefs. Many regulars think of me as sort of a blog “elder statesman” and one who has a rational view of the world. There are of course others, fewer in number I assert, who think me a fool and a knave, which shows you can’t please everyone. Professor Turley himself has expressed fondness related to my tendency to be honest and open about myself personally.

 Yet through all of these years here, I have harbored a secret belief that I’ve avoided mentioning for fear that the esteem in which I’m held, will disappear in an avalanche of ridicule and disappointment. I have to admit that to a retired old guy on the wrong side of sixty years, my place here has provided comfort to my self-esteem and certainly the feeling that I can still find things in life to accomplish. To those who haven’t realized the obvious yet from my writings, I have my vanities and indeed my insecurities, so being a guest blogger has stroked those needy aspects of my ego. Since I’ve received much gratification from this, I have been loath to be completely honest about one of my more deeply held beliefs. I came across an article that impels me to break my silence and reveal this belief here and now. While in the eyes of some reading this blog, it might lower their opinion of me and expose me to ridicule, I must finally admit to you my dirty little secret.

Ever since the first nationwide “Flying Saucer” sensation began with the first “official” UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 by pilot Kenneth Arnold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting#Skeptical_explanations  Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s) have been a phenomenon lasting for the past 64 years, with most governments ridiculing the people making the reports and dismissing the entire idea. This is despite the fact that many pilots have made sightings and indeed many people in large communities, such as WashingtonD.C., have seen UFO’s in their skies over a period of nights. I personally believe that UFO’s are indeed alien spacecraft and that the possibility of this being the case is narrowed by the unfathomable size of the Universe, its age and the trillions of stars that exist. I further believe that the governments have covered this up to prevent what in their minds is public panic and to deny the truth that if UFO’s do indeed exist; our technological capacity could not deal with them if necessary.

 This article in Huffpost on 6/17/11confirms my belief in governments covering up the details of these sightings and ridiculing anyone claiming to have made a sighting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/uk-releases-ufo-files_n_927351.html  “The former Ministry of Defense (MoD) UFO Project chief [Nick Pope] is openly admitting to being part of what he claims was a U.K. policy of ridiculing UFO reports and the people who reported them.

 ”What’s abundantly clear from these files is that, while in public we were desperately pushing the line that this was of no defense interest,” Pope told The Huffington Post. “We couldn’t say ‘There’s something in our air space; pilots see them; they’re tracked on radar; sometimes we scramble jets to chase these things, but we can’t catch them.’ This would be an admission that we’d lost control of our own air space, and such a position would be untenable.”

 My interest began in 1953, reading a book by Major Donald Keyhoe, USMC Pilot, Retired. In it he described the various documented incidents and the explanations given for them by the Department Of Defenses “Project Blue Book”, that was established seemingly to investigate the phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Keyhoe . Among others, Keyhoe had interviewed Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt, who had been head of the Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_J._Ruppelt

 What I found so compelling was that perhaps 20% of the incidents could not be adequately explained and that distinguished observers, such as veteran pilots, were supposed to have mistaken everyday phenomenon, like weather balloons and Venus, for UFO’s. As my interest grew, it became obvious that our government would respond to any new sighting by first ridicule of the person(s) making the report of the sighting and then responding with explanations that were not credible. In the D.C., sightings in 1953 a mass of objects were not only detected by eye, but by airport radar and yet dismissed without adequate explanation.

 What added to the government’s ability to ridicule were the so-called direct contact cases, first made famous by George Adamski: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski and later by Betty and Barney Hill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Hill . Since the “contactees” in these cases seemed mainly to be self-serving individuals, they muddied the waters by being conflated with people who were seriously looking for explanations, or who had made direct sightings. Considering what the Huffpost article cited as details about the British Government’s policies, ridicule replaced research as a tool of institutional government investigation.

 In further revealing my dirty little secret, I was for a time, in my teens, a dues paying member of The “National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (or NICAP). It was a civilian unidentified flying object research group active in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAP

 While I never lost interest in UFO’s, my interest waned as my puberty began to assert itself and other things in life became more important. However, I have read enough about the topic to be certain in my own mind that there is much more to it than merely misidentification of known objects, moneymaking schemes, and public hysteria. In fact, an article in yesterdays Huffpost shows that the amount of UFO sightings has increased in recent years: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/ufos-pilots-history-channel_n_935847.html

 As someone interested in ancient history some of the writings of Sitchin, Velikovsy and Von Danniken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitchin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken

also, attract my interest and tie in with my feeling about UFO’s. I am keen on the possibility of Alien visits throughout human history and the possibility that they have affected our history and progress.

 So there you have it. I’ve exposed one of the final embarrassing secrets about myself and opened up to your possible ridicule and/or opprobrium. Since we have so many people here who are qualified to comment, given their knowledge of science and other erudition, I would enjoy your comments. In any event, I feel much better having gotten this off my chest and while I’ve exposed myself further as someone with quirky sensibilities, I feel a certain lightness and freedom in making my confession.

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

A recent development in Congress is the creation of the so-called “Super Congress”; a bi-partisan committee tasked with recommending steps to reduce federal budget deficits by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Like most committees, the Super Congress has to submit its recommendations to the rest of Congress for consideration. Unlike most committees, the Super Congress has a loaded back-end provision that will institute automatic military and domestic (read Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid) spending cuts in 2013 that neither side wants will be triggered. This would seem to give the committee some incentives to find viable solutions. But does it really?

None of the Senators and Representatives on the committee are the usual deficit hawks from Congress, for example, no senators from the current Gang of Six. Indeed, the committee is stacked with Senators and Representatives seen as party loyalists unlikely to do anything without express party leadership approval. This also indicates that the long term deficit power players sense a “stink” from this committee that they don’t want to be associated with moving forward. As a matter of pure political maneuvering, this is an interesting sign that viable solutions from this committee are not generally expected to come about by the Washington hoi polloi. Each “side” – again showing the ridiculous nature of a two party dominated system – seems to be holding their breath and hedging their bets on “their side” winning at the polls next election cycle.

It is important to remember as well that this committee is appointed by partisan leadership and not elected to this serious task by the majority of Americans. The creation of this committee has received lukewarm support from both parties and criticism all around. Also consider that given our lax and easily circumvent lobbying reporting requirements, this committee is effectively chum of lobbyist sharks. They haven’t even met yet and the Chamber of Commerce has already sent all twelve members letters last week outlining its priorities.

The back loaded automatic cuts provision is a sword that cuts both ways. Republicans want to cut critical social programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and preserve defense spending while Democrats want to preserve domestic spending and cut military spending. While the analogy of a sword works to describe this situation, there is one that works better: a gun loaded to play Russian Roulette. There is very little transparency required of this committee. Standing committees of Congress may send suggestions to the “Super Congress”, but there are no provisions to make these suggestions public. Some of those standing committees already operate in closed sessions such as the Senate Armed Services subcommittees. The final recommendations of the “Super Congress”, while to be published, have no specific details as to how they are to be published. The way the committee is structured, they will present a final bill with no chance of amendment or public input. They will be presenting bills to Congress that are little more than a take it or leave it demand. A hostage ransom demand. They have no incentive to reach accord politically. They have no incentive to reach accord structurally. They have no incentive to reach accord outside the eyes of public scrutiny. They have no incentive to reach accord.

Consider the outcomes if this committee does not find adequate budget cuts before the deadline. If the Republicans win at the polls, they get to cut Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and deny any responsibility. If the Democrats win at the polls, they get to cut military spending without appearing to be soft on defense. There is no real incentive to find a solution with the automatic spending cuts provision. There is only the incentive for more political gamesmanship at the expense of the economy and people’s lives that play to the special interests in the weapons/military logistics industry and the health care insurance industry. This committee is playing political Russian Roulette, but the gun is pointed squarely at the heads of the American people they are supposed to be representing.

The Declaration of Independence says, in part and addressing the specific grievances with King George’s government;

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
[. . . ]
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
[. . . ]
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”

Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, a minister at Old West Church in Boston, Massachusetts, is credited with creating the Revolutionary War slogan “No Taxation Without Representation!” in a sermon given in 1750. This rallying cry was important not only in our own revolutionary war against a tyrannical government past, but in the current context as well. The only modernization of the slogan might be “No Taxation Or Spending Without Representation!”

If you’d like to see details of the members of this unelected “Super Congress”, the Center for Public Integrity has put together excellent summaries of each member, including their top campaign contributors, relationships with revolving door lobbyists and any statements each politician may have issued concerning this committee. The following links will take you to the summaries:

Democratic Senators:

Patty Murray of Washington
John Kerry of Massachusetts
Max Baucus of Montana

Republican Senators:

Jon Kyl of Arizona
Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Rob Portman of Ohio

Republican House members:

Jeb Hensarling of Texas
Dave Camp of Michigan
Fred Upton of Michigan

Democratic House members:

James Clyburn of South Carolina
Xavier Becerra of California
Chris Van Hollen of Maryland

Do you think this “Super Congress” is likely to accomplish anything of substance or are they simply engaged in more self-aggrandizing political gamesmanship at the expense of the American people?

Sources:

The Center for Public Integrity iWatch News, Huffington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times (1) (2)

~Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to allegations made by a whistleblower that the agency had destroyed files from preliminary investigations of financial firms—including Goldman Sachs, SAC Capital Advisors, Deutsche Bank, AIG, and Bernie Madoff Investment Securities.

A Bloomberg article reported that Grassley’s request was prompted by a letter that he received from SEC attorney Darcy Flynn claiming that the SEC had “destroyed documents including materials related to Goldman Sachs’ trades of American International Group Inc. (AIG) credit- default swaps in 2009, insider-trading probes of Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) and SAC Capital Advisors LP, and investigations of possible financial fraud at Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) in 2007 and 2008.”

Flynn, who has worked for the SEC for thirteen years, has had responsibility for helping to manage the commission’s records. He told Congress in July that since 1993 the agency has been systematically destroying files of preliminary investigations known as “Matters Under Inquiry” (MUIs). According to journalist Matt Taibbi, after Flynn alerted the National Archives and Records Administration about the document destruction, he reported that “senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission’s improprieties.”

Matt Taibbi reported the following in a recent Rolling Stone article Shredded Justice:
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.

Also from the Taibbi article:
Much has been made in recent months of the government’s glaring failure to police Wall Street; to date, federal and state prosecutors have yet to put a single senior Wall Street executive behind bars for any of the many well-documented crimes related to the financial crisis. Indeed, Flynn’s accusations dovetail with a recent series of damaging critiques of the SEC made by reporters, watchdog groups and members of Congress, all of which seem to indicate that top federal regulators spend more time lunching, schmoozing and job-interviewing with Wall Street crooks than they do catching them. As one former SEC staffer describes it, the agency is now filled with so many Wall Street hotshots from oft-investigated banks that it has been “infected with the Goldman mindset from within.”

The destruction of records by the SEC, as outlined by Flynn, is something far more than an administrative accident or bureaucratic fuck-up. It’s a symptom of the agency’s terminal brain damage. Somewhere along the line, those at the SEC responsible for policing America’s banks fell and hit their head on a big pile of Wall Street’s money – a blow from which the agency has never recovered. “From what I’ve seen, it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction,” says Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose staff has interviewed Flynn. “It doesn’t make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what time frame and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law.”

 
Matt Taibbi talking with Keith Olbermann about his SEC story on Countdown last week:

There’s a lot more to this story. I recommend reading the full text of Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article:
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

Edited to Add: Thom Hartman and Matt Taibbi – Is the SEC covering up Wall Street crimes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPP7C3XkDc

Sources
Document Shredding: Why SEC’s Defense Won’t Fly (Rolling Stone)

S.E.C. Files Were Illegally Destroyed, Lawyer Says (New York Times)

Senate Investigators Met With SEC Lawyer On Document Destruction (NASDAQ)

Grassley Questions SEC Over Claims That Records Were Purged (Bloomberg)

Whistleblower: SEC improperly destroyed thousands of documents (CBS News)

The letter to more than 600 funeral directors says that the state will no longer foot the $13 million bill to pay for an estimated 12,000 funerals for individuals who relied on public aid. One funeral owner is quoted as saying “Now the only viable option — I don’t mean to make light of it — is to leave the body at the medical examiner office.”

Hundreds of billions have been expended abroad as our citizens can no longer be buried for lack of funds. This would be a poor joke if it were at all funny.

Source:

A star danced,

And under that

was I born.

~ William Shakespeare

Before Jonathan left for France, I gave him the exciting news that my daughter Sara was expecting her first child in late July. I told him that I might not be able to post much as a guest blogger at the end of July and in early August while he was away on his trip with his family. Jonathan told me he wanted to see some pictures of the momentous event on the blog.

Well, Julia Anna, my first grandchild, was born this morning at 1:22 am. She weighed in at 7lbs. 11 oz. I was so happy that my daughter Sara wanted me there with her when she had her first child. It was a truly amazing experience for me to see Julia being born…to be there to help and to give words of encouragement…to share this very special moment with my only child. I’m floating on cloud nine at the moment. But I’m also exhausted. I didn’t arrive home until three this morning.

Here are some of the pictures I’d like to share with you:

Here I am with my daughter Sara on Mother’s Day:

Next May, we’ll be celebrating her motherhood too!

I’ve been gathering information for a couple of weeks for a post about ALEC—the American Legislative Exchange Council—an organization that I had never heard of until earlier this year when I was doing research for some of my previous Turley Blawg posts. I wanted to write up an extensive and cohesive post for you—but I’ll be on my way to the hospital shortly. My daughter is due to deliver my first grandchild—and she wants me with her for the momentous event. I thought I’d provide you with excerpts from a few articles, videos, and links to a number of other articles about ALEC, a behind the scenes organization that helps corporations provide state legislators with model legislation at meetings and conferences that the  legislators take back to their states.

Recently, The Nation—in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy—did a series of investigative reports and developed a website called ALEC Exposed, which has a wealth of information about ALEC.

From John Nichols’s introduction to the ALEC Exposed reports in The Nation:

Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.

 
From NPR Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny byLaura Sullivan 

Only 28 people work in ALEC’s dark, quiet headquarters in Washington, D.C. Michael Bowman, senior director of policy, explains that the little-known organization’s staff isn’t writing the bills. The real authors are the group’s members — a mix of state legislators and some of the biggest corporations in the country.

“Most of the bills are written by outside sources and companies, attorneys, [and legislative] counsels,” Bowman says.

Here’s how it works: ALEC is a membership organization. State legislators pay $50 a year to belong. Private corporations can join, too. The tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and drug-maker Pfizer Inc. are among the members. They pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Tax records show that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year.

With that money, the 28 people in the ALEC offices throw three annual conferences. The companies get to sit around a table and write “model bills” with the state legislators, who then take them home to their states.

Lisa Graves Comments on Legislation Drafted by Secretive Corporate-Lawmaker Coalition, ALEC (Democracy Now)

Links to all of the ALEC Exposed articles in The Nation:

ALEC Exposed Introduction by John Nichols

ALEC Exposed: Business Domination Inc. by Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser 

ALEC Exposed: Sabotaging Healthcare by Wendell Potter (The Nation/Wendell Potter)

ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection by Lisa Graves 

ALEC Exposed: Starving Public Schools byJulie Underwood (The Nation/Common Dreams)

ALEC Exposed: Rigging Elections by John Nichols

**********
From ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures (People for the American Way)

Who Founded and Funds ALEC?
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who helped build a nationwide right-wing political infrastructure following the reelection of Richard Nixon. In the same year, he helped establish the Heritage Foundation, now one of the most prominent right-wing policy institutes in the country. One year later, Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the predecessor of the Free Congress Foundation. In 1979, he co-founded and coined the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, and in 1981 he helped establish the ultraconservative Council on National Policy.

ALEC’s major funders include Exxon Mobil, the Scaife family (Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation), the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation), Charles Koch (Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation), the Bradley family (The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and the Olin family (John M. Olin Foundation). These organizations consistently finance right-wing think tanks and political groups.

**********

From ALEC Bills Expose Corporate Drive to Advance Business Over Public Interest (Common Cause)

“The ALEC documents reveal an organization in which corporate executives sit side-by-side with elected representatives behind closed doors, drafting and then voting as equals on `model’ bills that once approved by ALEC are introduced in legislatures around the country,” Edgar said. “I’m sure millions of voters will be interested to learn that their state senators and representatives are working to enhance the bottom lines of ALEC-connected companies and trade groups, all of which spend millions of dollars annually to bankroll legislative campaigns. Our preliminary analysis indicates companies in ALEC’s leadership put about $330 million into state politics from 2001-10.”

Edgar said ALEC allows firms to play a direct role in writing and advancing legislation that enhances their bottom lines. For example, one member, the Corrections Corporation of America, was part of the drafting process for a “model” immigration law that makes it easier for state and local authorities to lock up suspected illegal immigrants; CCA would house many of those detainees at prisons it runs under contract with state governments.

In other cases, ALEC’s corporate members are lending their support to legislation far removed from their legitimate business interests.

“Consumers, and stockholders, may wonder why part of the money they put into Coca-Cola and its products is being used to push legislation that would give tax subsidies to private schools, or why the proceeds of their purchases from Intuit, a software company, are helping to advance legislation that would block local governments from regulating pesticides, “ Edgar asserted.

**********

From Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws by Alison Fitzgerald (Bloomberg):

Koch Industries Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) are among companies that would benefit from almost identical energy legislation introduced in state capitals from Oregon to New Mexico to New Hampshire — and that’s by design.

The energy companies helped write the legislation at a meeting organized by a group they finance, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington-based policy institute known as ALEC.

The corporations, both ALEC members, took a seat at the legislative drafting table beside elected officials and policy analysts by paying a fee between $3,000 and $10,000, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News.

The opportunity for corporations to become co-authors of state laws legally through ALEC covers a wide range of issues from energy to taxes to agriculture. The price for participation is an ALEC membership fee of as much as $25,000 — and the few extra thousands to join one of the group’s legislative-writing task forces. Once the “model legislation” is complete, it’s up to ALEC’s legislator members to shepherd it into law.

“This is just another hidden way for corporations to buy their way into the legislative process,” said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, a Washington-based group that advocates for limits on money in politics.

 **********

Who’s Really Writing States’ Legislation? (NPR)

National Chairman Of ALEC Responds To Report (NPR)

Fiercely Pro-Business Group’s Influence On Statehouses Draws Scrutiny (NPR)

*********

ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council

Lawrence O’Donnell on the buying of democracy by major corporations – The Last Word (May 17th, 2011)

 Countdown with Keith Olbermann ALEC & Corporate Influence with John Nichols

Nation Magazine Writer John Nichols Discusses the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Secretive organization behind pro-corporate legislation [NBC 7-15-2011]

Paul Weyrich, a fonuder of ALEC on the Goo-Goo Syndrome (proper audio/video synchronization)

**********

ALEC Exposed Website (The Center for Media and Democracy)

About Alec Exposed (The Center for Media and Democracy)

**********

NOTE: I apologize if there is some duplication of information.

My wife sent this video to me. It brought me tears and inspiration of hope for life and for humanity.I hope that it moves you as well.

Back in February, Professor Turley wrote a blog post titled Teacher Suspended for Writing Critical Comments on Her Personal Blog. Many people who commented on the post sided with Natalie Munroe, the teacher who had been suspended. I did not. I thought the school administration did the right thing after I read some of the critical comments Munroe made about her students and comments she said she’d like to be able to note on her students’ report cards.

Munroe’s blog comments about her students include the following:

• “I hear the trash company is hiring.”
• “I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son.”
• “Rude, beligerent [sic], argumentative f**k.”
• “Just as bad as his sibling. Don’t you know how to raise kids?”
• “Asked too many questions and took too long to ask them. The bell means it’s time to leave!”

• A complete and utter jerk in all ways. Although academically ok, your child has no other redeeming qualities.
• Lazy asshole.
• Two words come to mind: brown AND nose.
• Weirdest kid I’ve ever met.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: In one sketch posted on the blog, an image of a bus tagged “Short Bus” appears under the slogan, “I don’t care if you lick windows, take the special bus or occasionally pee on yourself, you hang in there Sunshine, you’re … special.”

People who felt Munroe had done nothing wrong may be happy to find out that she has been reinstated to her old job. According to her attorney Steven L. Rover, she will be allowed to return to her Central Bucks East High School classroom this fall. She would teach the same classes at the same school. Rovner said, “I personally believe that her talents as a teacher would best be utilized in a different school within the district, however, this is not an option. She is taking a few days to digest this development in what has become an important national first amendment, employment, and education case.”

Having worked as a public school educator for more than thirty years, I can’t imagine that many students would want to have Munroe for a teacher. I would doubt that many parents would want their children in any of her classes. I know that I wouldn’t want my child to have her for a teacher.

I guess we’ll have to wait to see whether Ms. Munroe decides to return to her teaching position at Central Bucks east High School when classes resume in a few weeks.

I welcome comments on this story. I’d like to know what people think.

FYI

From the ACLU: Free Speech Rights of Public School Teachers

Where are we going & why are we in this handbasket  (Natalie Munroe’s new blog)

SOURCES

Teacher Suspended for Blog Posts About Students (NBC Philadelphia)

CB East Teacher Removed After Blogging About Students (Doylestown Patch)

Natalie Munroe Suspended: Worst Insults the Teacher Made About Her Students (AOL News)

Central Bucks East teacher returning after blog dispute (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Natalie Munroe, Pennsylvania Teacher, Reinstated After Disparaging Students On Blog (Huffington Post)

Bucks teacher: Students are ‘rude, disengaged, lazy whiners’ (Philadelphia Inquirer)

While Jonathan is off gallivanting around in France for a few weeks, he’s left us guest bloggers to do the majority of postings here at the Turley blog. While I’ve remained stateside, I did have an opportunity earlier today to travel to a beautiful otherworld–one created in the imagination of glass artist Dale Chihuly. Chihuly’s ”Through the Looking Glass” exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is breathtaking! Fortunately, I was able to take pictures without a flash. Maybe you’d like to come along on a tour of his glass art exhibit.

Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass

Dale Chihuly @ MFA

CBS Early Show: Erica Hill Takes a Lesson in Glass Blowing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TolHuumh7w

Dale Chihuly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETJhw9_B_X4&feature=fvst