FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
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WORD
The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the liberties of a great proportion of the population has been laid at the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin.-- Joseph Chamberlain
POLITICS
MORE SIGNS YOUNG MOVING TO RIGHT
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/02/the_kids_arent_.html
DOUG IRELAND, DIRELAND - Hard on the heels of the survey of U.S. teens showing their disdain for the niceties of the First Amendment, comes now a survey of the attitudes of first-year college students with some more bad news. Sponsored by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California/Los Angeles, the survey shows, among other things, that:
- a solid majority (58.6%) of freshmen think colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus, which shows little understanding of what the First Amendment really means--as does the finding that 43.7% believe that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers
- making marriage equality for same-sex couples legal is supported by only a minority (48.3%) of first-year college males--which strongly suggests this could still be a hot-button electoral issue for years to come--while 38% of male freshmen believe it is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships, a disturbingly large number.
- a slim majority (50.4%) believe that affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished (the number is higher among males at 56.1%)
- only a slim majority (53.9%) believe that abortion should be legal
- A significant majority believes there is too much concern in the courts for the rights of criminals (58.1% --but among males the number jumps to 61.0%), which indicates that demagogic law-and-order themes will still bring electoral profit with the coming generation.
Moreover, as the Chronicle of Higher Education noted in its report on the survey, "A growing number of students appeared unlikely to have a diverse set of friends in college. Only 63.1 percent reported that they expected to socialize with people outside their own racial or ethnic group, the lowest level since the question was first added to the survey in 2000. . .
"Students said they cared less than ever before about those issues. Only 29.7 % cited 'helping to promote racial understanding' as an 'essential' or 'very important' goal for them, compared with 46.4 percent in 1992."
SOCIAL SECURITY
LEAVE ALL YOUR CHILDREN BEHIND ACT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2113055/
CHRIS SUELLENTROP, SLATE - In his State of the Union address, President Bush claimed, for the first time during his presidency, to be asking Americans to sacrifice. The man who told the country, and the government, that the patriotic way to respond to 9/11 was to spend lots of money now says he wants the nation to be more penurious. Think of the children, Bush said, "on issue after issue," but especially with regard to Social Security. The president painted his plan to alter the Social Security system as a grand bargain in which the current generation of older Americans, like parents saving for their children's college tuition, would forgo some small benefit so that the next generation could reap huge rewards.
Sounds terrific. Except what Bush proposed is actually the exact opposite: His plan would allow the current generation of retirees and near-retirees to keep the current system, the one where they receive far more money than they put in during their lifetimes, while requiring the next generation to subsist on their own earnings for retirement. This isn't the equivalent of parents saving for Johnny's 529 plan. This is Mom and Dad asking Johnny to invest part of his allowance so that they won't have to bother with paying for college. You could call Bush's idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
IRAN-CONTRA CONNIVER NAMED TOP AIDE TO BUSH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59235-2005Feb2
WASHINGTON POST - Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, was promoted to deputy national security adviser to President Bush. Abrams, who previously was in charge of Middle East affairs, will be responsible for pushing Bush's strategy for advancing democracy. . . On Oct. 10, 1986, Abrams, then a State Department employee, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he did not know that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North was directing illegal arms sales to Iran and diverting the proceeds to assist the Nicaraguan contras.
DRUG BUSTS
RECLASSIFICATION OF POT IN BRITAIN BRINGS FEWER ARRESTS
http://norml.org
NORML - Marijuana possession arrests declined sharply in 2004 following the enactment of national legal reforms downgrading marijuana from a Class B to a Class C "soft" drug. According to data released this week by the British Home Office, police made 24,875 fewer pot possession arrests in 2004 than in 2003, a decrease of 36 percent from last year's total of 68,625 arrests. The Office estimated that the reduction in arrests saved an estimated 199,000 hours of police work.
Under Britain's reclassification scheme, which took effect last January, individuals found possessing minor amounts of marijuana are verbally cautioned by police, but no longer arrested. (Police do retain the discretion to make an arrest under special "aggravated" circumstances, such as if marijuana is smoked on school grounds or if the marijuana possessed is deemed to be for purposes other than personal use.) In the United States, 12 states have enacted laws decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Under those laws, offenders are cited and fined for possessing marijuana in lieu of a criminal arrest and prosecution.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
STUPID COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR TRICKS
http://tinyurl.com/6qdfp
[As Walt Kelly said, we must defends all Americans' rights to make damn fools of themselves. The firing of Churchill for constitutionally protected speech would be fare worse than anything he said.]
CATHERINE TSAI, ASSOCIATED PRESS - University of Colorado administrators Thursday took the first steps toward a possible dismissal of a professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi. Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano ordered a 30-day review of Ward Churchill's speeches and writings to determine if the professor overstepped his boundaries of academic freedom and whether that should be grounds for dismissal.
[A reader sends us these quotes that are timely]
JUSTICE WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
ALBERT EINSTEIN - By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction of academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people, and thereby impedes national judgment and action.
EDIBLE RECORDS
http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/music/food/
A 1905 ad promotes a toy turntable that played records made of sugar and chocolate. The price of six records was 1,90 francs while the turntable was 3.90. The thing was produced by a well known German candy manufacturer 'Stollwerk' in 1905
FIELD NOTES
GREAT MUSEUMS OF AMERICA
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/nerdwatch/
"Our collection spans hundreds of models, dozens of manufacturers and infinite gadgetry. Since your hosts are of the LCD generation, rather than LED, liquid crystal display models have been the focus of our collecting. Many LCD timepieces played an important role in the evolution of digital wristwear, and we are striving to present as many as possible in our virtual museum.
THE PARIAH ECONOMY AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL BIGOTRY
Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. - Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, writing in 1957 to the NY Times about a critical review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
SAM SMITH - The economies of developed countries no longer demand the amount of work by most of their citizens that helped to create the myth of capitalism. Changes in technology, outsourcing, and labor intensiveness have made and will continue to make a growing percentage of the American population superfluous to the needs of the country's capitalists, a phenomenon that is being dramatically reflected in our politics but not in our understanding of it.
You have to read between the lines to see it. For example, a remarkable article published by the Washington Post just in time for the State of the Union borrowed heavily from right wing analyses of the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic & International Studies to paint a picture of older Americans as a looming crisis just this side of terrorism:
Wrote Jonathan Weissman:
"From untamed health care programs to military pensions, housing and heating assistance to coal-miners' benefits, programs for the elderly have proliferated and grown more generous, even in the face of an aging trend that demographers have long seen coming. In that light, the fight over Social Security marks only the beginning of a national debate over the cost of a graying society -- and the inevitable reallocation of resources that is sure to produce winners and losers, in the United States and around the world. "The question is whether we can support the elderly with a decent standard of living without imposing a crushing burden on the young," said Richard Jackson, director of the global aging initiative at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "Whether we can is a real concern."
In short can we afford to have old people or should they, in Greenspan's phrase, be considered "parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason [who must] perish as they should?"
The Weissman article, far more than most of the debate over Social Security, reveals the rotten core of such arguments: a growing social bigotry, reminiscent in many ways of ethnic prejudice, by the successful and comfortable against those considered parasitical and useless.
To be sure, Weissman, well down in his piece, gets around to interviewing a progressive economist writing that "technological progress will continue to make workers more productive, even as their numbers diminish relative to retirees, said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. 'Previous generations had sacrificed to build our infrastructure, to invest in technologies' that help current and future workers, Baker said. 'If they're paying a larger amount of taxes to help their parents, I don't see where the harm has been done.' But such arguments are held by a minority."
Weissman provides no polling data for the claim that Baker is in the minority, or of what, but he immediately quotes what he falsely describes as the "liberal" Brookings Institution which is like calling Ohio a west coast state because it doesn't border the Atlantic.
Weissman's piece is badly misleading in other ways. A large chart shows expenses for elders soaring between now and 2015 but defense spending barely rising. It uses only federal figures to compare senior and child spending, ignoring the huge local costs of the latter.
But worst of all, as with much discussion of the cost of older Americans, is the implicit assumption that the country owes them little for their part in making the economy and that they serve no useful purpose at present, ignoring completely, for example, the huge non-quantified economies of child-care and volunteer work.
The standard used is that of the social bigot Greenspan: they are no longer "creative individuals" with "undeviating purpose and rationality" and thus deserve to fail. Send them to the ice flow and let them freeze to death.
The attitudes that propel such bigotry are not limited to the Republican right or to the Bush regime. They infect our media, including public radio which only this morning featured a piece about Arthur Laffer, the godfather of modern economic selfishness, who has discovered that socially responsible corporations don't do quite as well as greedy ones. The fact that corporations might, as they once did under law, have social responsibilities beyond profit was never even considered by the news broadcast. Even the liberal media has accepted the lie that all we need in life anymore is money and profits.
This is a pathologically dangerous assumption because it not only rewrites American history but human history: it denies the significance of community, cooperation, decency, fairness, and commonwealth. One ends up sharing the sick myth of Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."
But beyond this, it also creates the justification for massive social bigotry because once one has defined the only good as that one provides the economy everyone who fails the test becomes an economic nigger.
This bigotry has been growing unnoticed for some time. We would never have had large scale urban ghettos if we had adequate employment for black men. We would not have had "welfare reform" whose major purpose has been to place blame on the poor for the effect on them of the economy. We would not be obsessed with the presumed dangers of immigration in a country that owes its very existence to immigration. We would not be sending young non-college educated males to prison in large numbers for smoking marijuana instead of using the drugs of choice of "creative individuals." We would not be starting on a similar isolation of persons considered too heavy and the drugging of children considered too noncompliant in class.
The war now declared against seniors fits a pattern in which we find a socially acceptable reason for prejudice against segments of the American public for the sole reason that they not considered employable or reliable once employed. There is no more justification for this than there was to exclude people on the basis of their skin color or religion. It is plain bigotry that we refuse to see plainly.
POLITICS
KINKY FRIEDMAN RUNS FOR TEXAS GOVERNOR
REUTERS - [Kinky Friedman] front man for the group "The Texas Jewboys," is known for songs such as "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" and writing books including "Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned." The humorist however, is deadly serious about his campaign to unseat current Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who succeeded President Bush.
Friedman said the main priorities in his campaign will be reforming the Texas education system, adding safeguards in the judicial process where Texas ranks as the nation's leader in capital punishment and establishing a peace corps for the state.
Plus, he wants "to fight the wussification of Texas."
"I am determined to get back to a time when the cowboys all sang and their horses were smart," Friedman said. . .
"We hope the people of Texas are going to reject the choice of paper or plastic," he said.
http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/news/news.html
KINKY FRIEDMAN - The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.
LOUISE LEAHY, DAILY TIMES - Friedman, who will be running as an independent, denied that his decision to make an official announcement had anything to do with the recent election. "That was just one more example of the politics of a two-party system," he said. "The best example of that was Perry running against Sanchez. They spent $100 million to destroy each other and delivered nothing. . . Who would spend $25 million for a job that pays $115,000 a year?"
Friedman paused as he got his cigar going again. "Meanwhile, Guam is passing us in funding public schools and our governor is building golf courses instead of schools. . .
When he was asked about his campaign staff, Friedman gestured to his friend Jon Wolfmueller, who with his wife, Sandy, owns Wolfmueller's Books and Records on Earl Garrett Street in Kerrville. "Jon's my trusty Indian sidekick," he said. "I say 'Indian' because political correctness is part of wussification. I don't have any political experience, but trust me. I'm a Jew; I'll hire good people."
BUD KENNEDY, STAR TELEGRAM - "Texas is the second wealthiest state in America, but 25 percent of our children live below the poverty line. We're what, 48th or 49th in funding for education?"
Actually, we're about 35th to 38th in most rankings. But he has the idea. We're next-to-worst among larger states.
"The only ranking where Texas is No. 1," he said, "is executions."
HEALTH & SCIENCE
EVOLUTION BEING SCARED OUT OF CLASSES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01evo.html?oref=login
CORNELIA DEAN, NY TIMES - In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue. Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from fundamentalists in their communities.
"The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually no discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum review board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers are afraid to raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public.
Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee on science and public policy of the Alabama Academy of Science, said in an interview that this fear made it impossible to say precisely how many teachers avoid the topic. "You're not going to hear about it," he said. "And for political reasons nobody will do a survey among randomly selected public school children and parents to ask just what is being taught in science classes."
But he said he believed the practice of avoiding the topic was widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths. . .
Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said she heard "all the time" from teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much trouble."
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
PRINCIPAL FINDS PEACE TOO RISKY A TOPIC FOR STUDENTS, EISENHOWER QUOTE TOO DANGEROUS
http://tennessean.com/education/archives/05/01/65061319.shtml?
CHRIS JONES ASSOCIATED PRESS - A Cookeville (Tenn.) High School administrator said Veterans for Peace and a Quaker group can't come back into his school with materials considered "anti-American" and "anti-military." The groups plan to go before the Putnam County school board tomorrow with claims that they're being denied privileges afforded to other organizations, including military recruiters.
The war veterans, some who also belong to the Quaker group, were allowed into the school during a September fair for organizations. They set up a table with books about U.S. wars and offered photocopied fliers and pamphlets from both organizations about the war in Iraq and military careers and alternatives.
Quaker and veteran Hector Black said several students stopped by the table and asked questions, and a couple of teachers even thanked them for coming. . .
Shank told Black that some of the groups' materials may be proper for adults, but he thought they were inappropriate for the students."The information was brought to the attention of administrators because of the influence it may have had," said Shank, who restricted future visits by the groups. "I felt, from a principal's viewpoint, that the students were being put into a position that they shouldn't."
Black said Shank specified some quotes in the literature that he objected to, including one from a 1953 speech by President Eisenhower that said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold and are not clothed."
County School Director Michael Martin said, "Parents found the materials to be anti-American, anti-military. That didn't come from us. That came from the parents who saw the materials when their kids brought it home."
INDICATORS
STATE OF THE UNION 2005 BY THE NUMBERS
ON UNEMPLOYMENT:--5,630,000: American workers unemployed in December 2000 --8,050,000: American workers unemployed in December 2004
ON PERSONAL DEBT:--1,226,037: number of personal bankruptcies filed in 2000 --1,584,170: number of personal bankruptcies filed in 2004
ON HEALTH CARE:--39,800,000: number of Americans without health insurance in 2000 --45,000,000: number of Americans without health insurance as of January 2004
ON RISING GAS PRICES:--$1.51: average price of a gallon of gasoline in 2000 --$1.88: average price of a gallon of gasoline through November 2004
COLLEGE COST --$7,750: average cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public university in 2000 when Bush promised to increase Pell grants to $5,100 --$11,354 :average cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public university in 2004 when Pell grants remain at $4,050 for 3rd straight year
FUNDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS--$121.97 billion: promised since 2001 to make No Child Left Behind act work --$95.01 billion: actually provided since 2001 for NCLB due to Bush administration cuts
FALLING WAGES--$13.00: hourly wage of the bulk of jobs eliminated since Nov 2001 --$9.00: hourly wage of the bulk of jobs created since Nov 2001
RISING HOUSING COSTS--$14.00: U.S. median hourly wage in 2004 --$15.37: U.S. hourly wage needed to afford the average two-bedroom apartment in 2004
WORKPLACE INEQUITY--$517: weekly take home of average US worker in 2004 --$155,769: weekly take home of average US CEO in 2001[Campaign for America' Future]
http://ourfuture.org
WORDS
SY HERSH, COUNTERPUNCH -Let's all forget this word 'insurgency.' It's one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba'athists plus nationalists. We are fighting the very people that started - they only choose to fight in different time spans than we want them to, in different places.. . .
There's a lot of anxiety inside the - you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do - there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people. One of the ways - one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease.
www.counterpunch.com
GREAT MUSEUMS OF AMERICA
http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/index.html
THE INTERNET MUSEUM OF FLEXI, CARDBOARD AND ODDITY RECORDS: Once bound by cereal boxes, held in the pages of a magazine, wrapped up in envelopes sent through our postal system or given away casually with some product, these bits of paper and plastic yearned to be set free to fulfill their destiny as... playable records. Take an aural and visual journey through a partial history of these strange but true recorded anomalies.
STATISTICIANS QUESTION WHETHER EXIT POLLS WERE TO BLAME FOR ANOMALIES
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/1/emw203331.htm
US COUNT VOTES - President Bush won November's election by 2.5% yet exit polls showed Kerry leading by 3%. Which was correct? "There are statistical indications that a systematic, nationwide shift of 5.5% of the vote may have occurred, and that we'll never get to the bottom of this, unless we gather the data we need for mathematical analysis and open, robust scientific debate," says Bruce O'Dell, US Count Votes' Vice President.
The study was co-authored by a diverse group of academicians specializing in statistics and mathematics affiliated with University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University and Temple University. Their study does not support claims made by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International that exit poll errors were to blame for the unprecedented 5.5% discrepancy between exit polls and official 2004 election results.
According to analysis by the group of senior statisticians, the new data just released by the exit-pollsters shows that the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously.
Their paper notes that the Edison-Mitofsky report offers no evidence to support their conclusion that Kerry voters "participated in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." In fact, the data provided in the Edison-Mitofsky report suggests that the opposite may have been true: Bush strongholds had slightly higher response rates than Kerry strongholds.
The statisticians go on to note that precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls' margin of error. The pollsters at Edison-Mitofsky agreed that their 2004 exit polls, for whatever reason, had the poorest accuracy in at least twenty years.
STUDY
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf
SMACKDOWN WITH BILL O'REILLY
TRANSCRIPT
http://prorev.com/oreillysam.htm
SAM SMITH- Reader Chas Edwards used the right word when he described your editor's appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show as a "smackdown," for television of this variety has far more in common with professional wrestling than with professional journalism. And like a professional wrestler I went on the show knowing full well that I was the designated loser. Bad Bubba O'Reilly was to show his infinite skills against Ultimo A-Train Sam with the latter left humiliated on the mat.
Some have inquired, and not too gently, why I would submit to such nonsense. Reader Weld in Brunswick Maine, for example, writes, "In exchange for a diatribe against the Clintons, O'Reilly agrees to let you air three common sense ideas. Take a shower and don't forget to scrub. You could at least have asked about his fake Peabody Awards."
Leading aside the shameful truth that I enjoy nonsense immensely, things like the O'Reilly show are merely the outward and most visible sign of an artificiality that pervades television. I learned this early when I was seriously considering television at a career. In January 1961, I made my only foray into the real world of network television. I was hired for Kennedy's inauguration by CBS News as a news editor. Along with fellow WWDC newsman Ed Taishoff, I sat all day capped with a headset in a ballroom of the Washington Hotel, turning phone calls from CBS correspondents into stories placed on Walter Cronkite's personal news ticker. If there was one thing Ed and I knew, it was how to take news from callers, turn it into copy and get it on the air fast.
But when the calls weren't coming in, I looked around the room and tried to figure out what the scores of CBS minions and executives were doing. As far as I could tell, Ed and I and a few people in front of dials and screens were doing most of the work. Yet we were badly out-numbered and under-paid by men in suits who tore around yelling and looking concerned or angry or wanting to know where something was. It all didn't look like much fun and I think it was when I decided I didn't want to be a network anchorman after all.
I would also cover events with my little battery operated tape recorder and felt blessed with the speed I could set up and depart compared to those in television. It seemed like every time they wanted to do something, a giant Leggo set would appear between them and the something and nothing could happen until they had assembled it.
The result is that everything that television does becomes television rather than what it starts out to be. For example my few minutes on Fox required numerous phone calls, including a "pre-interview," follow-ups and useful advice on how to facilitate the O'Reilly experience. Upon arrival I was layered with powder to make me look as much unlike myself as possible although, as I pointed out to the duster, making me up is a bit like George Bush trying to balance a budget. And then I sat for 45 minutes as people rushed back and forth on unknown but important missions including Britt Hume who sincerely wished me luck tackling O'Reilly and Bill Kristol who said hello and then quickly turned and left when he realized that it hadn't been necessary.
And to what end? To spend a few minutes talking to a wall that for the purposes of television I was to imagine as Bill O'Reilly. How an industry that spends so much money on everything else can only give you a wall to talk to leaves is puzzling and I know of no one who has experienced one of these remote interviews who finds it comfortable.
I comforted myself by recalling the time I was interviewed in my office and placed in a chair in front of the camera. A bored young intern sat in a chair under the camera and I was told to direct my answers to him, answers to questions being provided over a speakerphone 160 degrees off my starboard bow by an interviewer in New York. Three minutes into the interview the intern fell asleep, a development unnoticed by the crew on the other side of the camera. So for the next ten or fifteen minutes I had to inform a dormant slacker on some matter of great concern without totally breaking up. On the whole, I prefer walls. Besides, on the other side of that wall was not just a TV host but his audience, real people, decent people, un-pre-interviewed, without mikes, cameras or makeup.
Educated by good Quakers, I learned early not to shun the present but to follow the instructions of George Fox and "walk cheerfully over the face of the earth answering that of God in every one," in which he would presumably include Bill O'Reilly. The Brazilian Archbishop Helder Pessoa Camara once declared: "Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must open to everyone, absolutely everyone."
Unfortunately, the tradition of personal witness regardless of context is far stronger among the religious and the right than among liberals and progressives. Especially in recent years, liberals have taken to shunning, often proudly or pompously, those not of their ilk, which is, among other things, a hard way to win votes. One needn't be a proselytizer, only a witness or, in the Hubert Humphrey tradition, a happy warrior moving through alien ground with a smile and a dream.
Besides, I got to talk with the Bosnian driver of the car Fox News had sent for me. And by the time we had reached the UAW headquarters where my next meeting was, he had indicated that he would switch from his current political apathy to voting Green in the next election. So you see, it was worth it, after all.
IRAQ
WELL OILED ELECTION
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
ANTONIA JUHASZ, FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS - On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company to private foreign investment. . . In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into American corporate hands.
According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to "downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground - the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place. As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.". . .
SOCIAL SECURITY
DWIGHT Eisenhower wrote his brother Edgar on May 2, l956: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again.... There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt...a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
LABOR
LABOR'S NEW BOSS, ANDY STERN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30STERN.html
MATT BAI, NY TIMES MAGAZINE - The S.E.I.U. is a different kind of union, rooted in the new service economy. Its members aren't truck drivers or assembly-line workers but janitors and nurses and home health care aides, roughly a third of whom are black, Asian or Latino. While the old-line industrial unions have been shrinking every year, Stern's union has been organizing low-wage workers, many of whom have never belonged to a union, at a torrid pace, to the point where the S.E.I.U. is now the largest and fastest-growing trade union in North America. . .
All of this makes Andy Stern -- a charismatic 54-year- old former social-service worker -- a very powerful man in labor, and also in Democratic politics. The job of running a union in America, even the biggest union around, isn't what it once was. The age of automation and globalization, with its ''race to the bottom'' among companies searching for lower wages overseas, has savaged organized labor. Fifty years ago, a third of workers in the United States carried union cards in their wallets; now it's barely one in 10. An estimated 21 million service-industry workers have never belonged to a union, and between most employers' antipathy to unions and federal laws that discourage workers from demanding one, chances are that the vast majority of them never will.
Over the years, union bosses have grown comfortable blaming everyone else -- timid politicians, corrupt C.E.O.'s, greedy shareholders -- for their inexorable decline. But last year, Andy Stern did something heretical: he started pointing the finger back at his fellow union leaders. Of course workers had been punished by forces outside their control, Stern said. But what had big labor done to adapt? Union bosses, Stern scolded, had been too busy flying around with senators and riding around in chauffeur-driven cars to figure out how to counter the effects of globalization, which have cost millions of Americans their jobs and their pensions. Faced with declining union rolls, the bosses made things worse by raiding one another's industries, which only diluted the power of their workers. The nation's flight attendants, for instance, are now divided among several different unions, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to wield any leverage over an entire industry.
Stern put the union movement's eroding stature in business terms: if any other $6.5 billion corporation had insisted on clinging to the same decades-old business plan despite losing customers every year, its executives would have been fired long ago.
''Our movement is going out of existence, and yet too many labor leaders go and shake their heads and say they'll do something, and then they go back and do the same thing the next day,'' Stern told me recently.
DRUG BUSTS
Local heroes
JUDGE RULES DRUG TEST FAILURE NOT ENOUGH FOR TERMINATION
http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=406597
AP - The [Maryland] Court of Special Appeals says a state employee's positive drug test isn't grounds for her automatic termination. The appellate court ruled that the test results didn't prove the woman actually took drugs on the job, an offense punishable by immediate firing under state regulations. The ruling reverses a decision in Baltimore City Circuit Court, and sends the case back to an administrative law judge for further proceedings.
ON CAMPUS
STUDENTS DON'T WANT WORDS WITHOUT GRAPHICS
http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0501/30/B01-73841.htm
LAURA BERMAN, DETROIT NEWS - The scene: A college classroom at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The subject: Writing the newspaper column. The question: "Can any of you name a columnist you read -- in a newspaper or magazine or online -- on a regular basis?" In response: Dead silence.
Slowly, one hand rises. A sports columnist is mentioned. . . "My generation is very visually oriented," explains Ryan Schreiber, a U-M Dearborn junior from Dearborn who -- like most in the class -- is majoring in journalism but doesn't read much of it. "My generation grew up watching MTV. We are used to short spurts of words, lots of images...We're used to immediate gratification.". . .
In another journalism class down the hall, the instructor annoyed his students. After asking how many read a newspaper regularly -- four or five out of 35 said they did -- he required them to bring a newspaper to class twice a week. "The students don't like it," says Laura Hipshire, one of the journalism students. . .
I envision a 12-Step Program for the Non-Reading Generation, as its members fight to recover from an addiction to color graphics and quick bursts of information. But no one in this class -- or in others I've faced in recent months -- seems to disagree: Words on a page are, like, kind of hard to read when you have "a fast-paced lifestyle," as [one student] put it. Or when you have "four kids and you're going to college," as Hipshire says. . . What's intriguing is that these kids say they plan to write for newspapers and magazines. They're planning journalism careers. They're dreaming of careers creating products nobody they know uses much.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
ONE IN THREE STUDENTS SAY PRESS SHOULD BE RESTRICTED
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&u=/usatoday/20050131/ts_usatoday/usstudentssaypressfreedomsgotoofar&printer=1
GREG TOPPO, USA TODAY - One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
STUDY: ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
AP - Abstinence-only programs like those promoted by the Bush administration don't seem to be working on teenagers in the president's home state, according to a state-sponsored study by Texas A&M University researchers. The study, the first evaluation of the abstinence programs across the state, found that students in almost all high school grades were more sexually active after undergoing abstinence education.
Researchers don't believe the programs encouraged teenagers to have sex, only that the abstinence messages did not interfere with customary trends among adolescents. "We didn't find what many would like for us to find," said A&M researcher Buzz Pruitt, who met with state health authorities last week to discuss the data.
INDICATORS
Average total cost for an 80-year-old American to live out the rest of his or her days on a luxury cruise ship: $230,497
Average cost to live them out in an assisted-living facility: $228,075
[Harper's Index]
BOOKSHELF
Bookshelf
IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING
Chris Verrill
California author and global humanitarian Chris Verrill travels from Afghanistan to Albania, Kuwait to Kathmandu, through five continents and 29 countries, to learn why September 11 happened and discover first hand what the world thinks of American foreign policy since September 11 - and maybe make a little bit of difference in the world at the same time. The 427 pages of Is For Good Men To Do Nothing chronicle the true story of a Rotarian who is so moved by the events of September 11 and President Bush's missteps afterwards that, after taking up a collection at his Rotary Club that morning, he sets off for the Afghan refugee camps of the frontier province of Pakistan to see how he can personally make a difference in the world.
Along the way he is interrogated by Israeli security, enjoys the breathtaking views of Liechtenstein, stomachs the poverty of Ethiopia, gets abducted by an angry bus driver in Greece, meets with United Nations officials in New York and Geneva, gets his pocket picked in Rome, says goodbye to his aging grandfather on Maui, is refused passage from Kuwait to Iraq, visits the last of the white rhinos in Tanzania, crosses from Pakistan into India in a motorcade under full military escort, and finally interviews former Mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan. All the while trying to make a small difference in the world by creating a vocational education program to aid Afghan refugees.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
OHIO BILL WOULD SUPPRESS PROFESSORS' SPEECH IN CLASSROOM
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0201rights.html
MARK FISHER, DAYTON DAILY NEWS - Concerned that Ohio college students' young minds are being indoctrinated by left-leaning college faculty, four Republican state senators have introduced an "academic bill of rights for higher education" that would limit what professors could say in their classrooms. It also would give students and faculty a formal grievance procedure if they feel they've been discriminated against. . . The bill - spearheaded by state Sen. Larry Mumper, R-Marion, and co-sponsored by Jordan, Cates and State Sen. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon - would require every state-supported college and university in Ohio to:
- Prohibit faculty members and instructors from "persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or course work that has no relation to their subject of study" and that serves no educational purpose related to the academic subject;
- Hire, fire and promote faculty based on their "competence and appropriate knowledge in their field of expertise" rather than on their "political, ideological or religious beliefs;" and
- Adopt a grievance procedure by which students or faculty could "seek redress" if they feel they've been discriminated against based on their beliefs and to disclose the grievance procedure in course catalogs, student handbooks and Web sites.
OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE POLITICS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46409-2005Jan29.html
PAUL FARHI, WASHINGTON POST - Now the art of press handling has evolved into actual manhandling. The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event.
It's not an entirely new phenomenon -- the Clinton administration baby-sat reporters from time to time -- but the president's inaugural committee took it to new levels of silliness during the various presidential balls. Several reporters covering the balls were surprised to find themselves being monitored by young "escorts," who followed them from hors d'oeuvres table to dance floor and even to the bathroom. . .
I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"
Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.
I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.
As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"
With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.
Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen. . .
But this isn't really about me. It's about . . . you. Consider that the escorts weren't there to provide security; all of us had already been through two checkpoints and one metal detector. They weren't there to keep me away from, Heaven forbid, a Democrat or a protester; those folks were kept safely behind rings of fences and concrete barriers. Nor were the escorts there to admonish me for asking a rude question of the partying faithful, or to protect the paying customers from the prying media. . .
No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.
NJ COURT: WEBSITES NOT LIABLE FOR READER COMMENTS
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14780
AP - Web site operators are not liable for electronic messages posted by anonymous visitors, even if the content of the postings is intentionally malicious or potentially libelous, a New Jersey appeals court has ruled. The Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court ruled on Jan. 31 that Stephen Moldow, whose "Eye on Emerson" Web site contained information on local government activities and included a discussion forum, was immune from liability under a provision of federal communications law. The three-judge panel's decision affirmed a ruling by a lower court.
"We accomplished what we needed to accomplish - to purge the town of this Web site," said Gina Calogero, one of two Emerson council members who sued Moldow, the site's publisher, for damages. Calogero and Vincent Donato, who both resigned from council in 2002, claimed the site's electronic bulletin board contained negative messages from third parties, which attacked them professionally and personally.
It was not immediately clear when the Web site was dismantled. A call to Richard Mahoney, the lawyer representing Moldow, was not returned for this article.
YALE TOLD IT CAN BAN MILITARY RECRUITERS
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14781
AP - A federal judge has ruled in favor of Yale Law School faculty members who sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in an effort to block military recruiters from campus. U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall, in her Jan. 31 ruling, found the government unconstitutionally applied the Solomon Amendment, a federal law which allows the secretary of defense to deny federal funding to colleges if they prohibit or prevent military recruitment on campus. . . Hall's ruling follows one by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which found that universities have a First Amendment right to keep the recruiters away because of their biases. It also said higher educational institutions could do this without fear of losing federal money.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
CIA REFUSES TO REVEAL TIES WITH NAZI WAR CRIMINALS
http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=National&storyid=106412 refuses to disclose Nazi papers BY
DOUGLAS JEHL, NEW YORK TIMES - The CIA is refusing to provide hundreds of thousands of pages of documents sought by a government working group under a 1998 law that requires full disclosure of classified records related to Nazi war criminals, according to members of the working group. Under the law, the CIA already has provided more than 1.2 million pages of documents, most of them from the archives of its World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. Many documents have been declassified, and some made public last year showed a closer relationship between the U.S. government and Nazi war criminals than had previously been understood, including the CIA’s recruitment of war criminal suspects or Nazi collaborators.
For nearly three years, the CIA has interpreted the 1998 law narrowly and rebuffed requests for additional records, say congressional officials and some members of the working group. The officials say the agency sometimes has agreed to provide information about former Nazis but not about the extent of the agency’s dealings with them after World War II. In other cases, it has refused to provide information about individuals and their conduct during the war unless the working group could first provide evidence that they were complicit in war crimes. "I think that the CIA has defied the law," said Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Congress member from New York and a member of the group. "We have bent over backward; we have given them every opportunity to comply."
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE BUREAUCRACY://www.smh.com.au/news/World/No-job-no-excuse-for-turning-down-sex-work/ 2005/01/30/1107020262141.html?oneclick=true
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Australians are used to the idea of working for the dole, but the Germans have taken it a step further. A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany two years ago and brothel owners - who must pay tax and employee health insurance - were granted access to official databases of job seekers.
The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did she realize she was calling a brothel.
Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her unemployment benefit.
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779
WORD
The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the liberties of a great proportion of the population has been laid at the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin.-- Joseph Chamberlain
POLITICS
MORE SIGNS YOUNG MOVING TO RIGHT
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/02/the_kids_arent_.html
DOUG IRELAND, DIRELAND - Hard on the heels of the survey of U.S. teens showing their disdain for the niceties of the First Amendment, comes now a survey of the attitudes of first-year college students with some more bad news. Sponsored by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California/Los Angeles, the survey shows, among other things, that:
- a solid majority (58.6%) of freshmen think colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus, which shows little understanding of what the First Amendment really means--as does the finding that 43.7% believe that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers
- making marriage equality for same-sex couples legal is supported by only a minority (48.3%) of first-year college males--which strongly suggests this could still be a hot-button electoral issue for years to come--while 38% of male freshmen believe it is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships, a disturbingly large number.
- a slim majority (50.4%) believe that affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished (the number is higher among males at 56.1%)
- only a slim majority (53.9%) believe that abortion should be legal
- A significant majority believes there is too much concern in the courts for the rights of criminals (58.1% --but among males the number jumps to 61.0%), which indicates that demagogic law-and-order themes will still bring electoral profit with the coming generation.
Moreover, as the Chronicle of Higher Education noted in its report on the survey, "A growing number of students appeared unlikely to have a diverse set of friends in college. Only 63.1 percent reported that they expected to socialize with people outside their own racial or ethnic group, the lowest level since the question was first added to the survey in 2000. . .
"Students said they cared less than ever before about those issues. Only 29.7 % cited 'helping to promote racial understanding' as an 'essential' or 'very important' goal for them, compared with 46.4 percent in 1992."
SOCIAL SECURITY
LEAVE ALL YOUR CHILDREN BEHIND ACT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2113055/
CHRIS SUELLENTROP, SLATE - In his State of the Union address, President Bush claimed, for the first time during his presidency, to be asking Americans to sacrifice. The man who told the country, and the government, that the patriotic way to respond to 9/11 was to spend lots of money now says he wants the nation to be more penurious. Think of the children, Bush said, "on issue after issue," but especially with regard to Social Security. The president painted his plan to alter the Social Security system as a grand bargain in which the current generation of older Americans, like parents saving for their children's college tuition, would forgo some small benefit so that the next generation could reap huge rewards.
Sounds terrific. Except what Bush proposed is actually the exact opposite: His plan would allow the current generation of retirees and near-retirees to keep the current system, the one where they receive far more money than they put in during their lifetimes, while requiring the next generation to subsist on their own earnings for retirement. This isn't the equivalent of parents saving for Johnny's 529 plan. This is Mom and Dad asking Johnny to invest part of his allowance so that they won't have to bother with paying for college. You could call Bush's idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
IRAN-CONTRA CONNIVER NAMED TOP AIDE TO BUSH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59235-2005Feb2
WASHINGTON POST - Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, was promoted to deputy national security adviser to President Bush. Abrams, who previously was in charge of Middle East affairs, will be responsible for pushing Bush's strategy for advancing democracy. . . On Oct. 10, 1986, Abrams, then a State Department employee, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he did not know that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North was directing illegal arms sales to Iran and diverting the proceeds to assist the Nicaraguan contras.
DRUG BUSTS
RECLASSIFICATION OF POT IN BRITAIN BRINGS FEWER ARRESTS
http://norml.org
NORML - Marijuana possession arrests declined sharply in 2004 following the enactment of national legal reforms downgrading marijuana from a Class B to a Class C "soft" drug. According to data released this week by the British Home Office, police made 24,875 fewer pot possession arrests in 2004 than in 2003, a decrease of 36 percent from last year's total of 68,625 arrests. The Office estimated that the reduction in arrests saved an estimated 199,000 hours of police work.
Under Britain's reclassification scheme, which took effect last January, individuals found possessing minor amounts of marijuana are verbally cautioned by police, but no longer arrested. (Police do retain the discretion to make an arrest under special "aggravated" circumstances, such as if marijuana is smoked on school grounds or if the marijuana possessed is deemed to be for purposes other than personal use.) In the United States, 12 states have enacted laws decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Under those laws, offenders are cited and fined for possessing marijuana in lieu of a criminal arrest and prosecution.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
STUPID COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR TRICKS
http://tinyurl.com/6qdfp
[As Walt Kelly said, we must defends all Americans' rights to make damn fools of themselves. The firing of Churchill for constitutionally protected speech would be fare worse than anything he said.]
CATHERINE TSAI, ASSOCIATED PRESS - University of Colorado administrators Thursday took the first steps toward a possible dismissal of a professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi. Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano ordered a 30-day review of Ward Churchill's speeches and writings to determine if the professor overstepped his boundaries of academic freedom and whether that should be grounds for dismissal.
[A reader sends us these quotes that are timely]
JUSTICE WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
ALBERT EINSTEIN - By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction of academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people, and thereby impedes national judgment and action.
EDIBLE RECORDS
http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/music/food/
A 1905 ad promotes a toy turntable that played records made of sugar and chocolate. The price of six records was 1,90 francs while the turntable was 3.90. The thing was produced by a well known German candy manufacturer 'Stollwerk' in 1905
FIELD NOTES
GREAT MUSEUMS OF AMERICA
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/nerdwatch/
"Our collection spans hundreds of models, dozens of manufacturers and infinite gadgetry. Since your hosts are of the LCD generation, rather than LED, liquid crystal display models have been the focus of our collecting. Many LCD timepieces played an important role in the evolution of digital wristwear, and we are striving to present as many as possible in our virtual museum.
THE PARIAH ECONOMY AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL BIGOTRY
Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. - Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, writing in 1957 to the NY Times about a critical review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
SAM SMITH - The economies of developed countries no longer demand the amount of work by most of their citizens that helped to create the myth of capitalism. Changes in technology, outsourcing, and labor intensiveness have made and will continue to make a growing percentage of the American population superfluous to the needs of the country's capitalists, a phenomenon that is being dramatically reflected in our politics but not in our understanding of it.
You have to read between the lines to see it. For example, a remarkable article published by the Washington Post just in time for the State of the Union borrowed heavily from right wing analyses of the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic & International Studies to paint a picture of older Americans as a looming crisis just this side of terrorism:
Wrote Jonathan Weissman:
"From untamed health care programs to military pensions, housing and heating assistance to coal-miners' benefits, programs for the elderly have proliferated and grown more generous, even in the face of an aging trend that demographers have long seen coming. In that light, the fight over Social Security marks only the beginning of a national debate over the cost of a graying society -- and the inevitable reallocation of resources that is sure to produce winners and losers, in the United States and around the world. "The question is whether we can support the elderly with a decent standard of living without imposing a crushing burden on the young," said Richard Jackson, director of the global aging initiative at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "Whether we can is a real concern."
In short can we afford to have old people or should they, in Greenspan's phrase, be considered "parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason [who must] perish as they should?"
The Weissman article, far more than most of the debate over Social Security, reveals the rotten core of such arguments: a growing social bigotry, reminiscent in many ways of ethnic prejudice, by the successful and comfortable against those considered parasitical and useless.
To be sure, Weissman, well down in his piece, gets around to interviewing a progressive economist writing that "technological progress will continue to make workers more productive, even as their numbers diminish relative to retirees, said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. 'Previous generations had sacrificed to build our infrastructure, to invest in technologies' that help current and future workers, Baker said. 'If they're paying a larger amount of taxes to help their parents, I don't see where the harm has been done.' But such arguments are held by a minority."
Weissman provides no polling data for the claim that Baker is in the minority, or of what, but he immediately quotes what he falsely describes as the "liberal" Brookings Institution which is like calling Ohio a west coast state because it doesn't border the Atlantic.
Weissman's piece is badly misleading in other ways. A large chart shows expenses for elders soaring between now and 2015 but defense spending barely rising. It uses only federal figures to compare senior and child spending, ignoring the huge local costs of the latter.
But worst of all, as with much discussion of the cost of older Americans, is the implicit assumption that the country owes them little for their part in making the economy and that they serve no useful purpose at present, ignoring completely, for example, the huge non-quantified economies of child-care and volunteer work.
The standard used is that of the social bigot Greenspan: they are no longer "creative individuals" with "undeviating purpose and rationality" and thus deserve to fail. Send them to the ice flow and let them freeze to death.
The attitudes that propel such bigotry are not limited to the Republican right or to the Bush regime. They infect our media, including public radio which only this morning featured a piece about Arthur Laffer, the godfather of modern economic selfishness, who has discovered that socially responsible corporations don't do quite as well as greedy ones. The fact that corporations might, as they once did under law, have social responsibilities beyond profit was never even considered by the news broadcast. Even the liberal media has accepted the lie that all we need in life anymore is money and profits.
This is a pathologically dangerous assumption because it not only rewrites American history but human history: it denies the significance of community, cooperation, decency, fairness, and commonwealth. One ends up sharing the sick myth of Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."
But beyond this, it also creates the justification for massive social bigotry because once one has defined the only good as that one provides the economy everyone who fails the test becomes an economic nigger.
This bigotry has been growing unnoticed for some time. We would never have had large scale urban ghettos if we had adequate employment for black men. We would not have had "welfare reform" whose major purpose has been to place blame on the poor for the effect on them of the economy. We would not be obsessed with the presumed dangers of immigration in a country that owes its very existence to immigration. We would not be sending young non-college educated males to prison in large numbers for smoking marijuana instead of using the drugs of choice of "creative individuals." We would not be starting on a similar isolation of persons considered too heavy and the drugging of children considered too noncompliant in class.
The war now declared against seniors fits a pattern in which we find a socially acceptable reason for prejudice against segments of the American public for the sole reason that they not considered employable or reliable once employed. There is no more justification for this than there was to exclude people on the basis of their skin color or religion. It is plain bigotry that we refuse to see plainly.
POLITICS
KINKY FRIEDMAN RUNS FOR TEXAS GOVERNOR
REUTERS - [Kinky Friedman] front man for the group "The Texas Jewboys," is known for songs such as "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" and writing books including "Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned." The humorist however, is deadly serious about his campaign to unseat current Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who succeeded President Bush.
Friedman said the main priorities in his campaign will be reforming the Texas education system, adding safeguards in the judicial process where Texas ranks as the nation's leader in capital punishment and establishing a peace corps for the state.
Plus, he wants "to fight the wussification of Texas."
"I am determined to get back to a time when the cowboys all sang and their horses were smart," Friedman said. . .
"We hope the people of Texas are going to reject the choice of paper or plastic," he said.
http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/news/news.html
KINKY FRIEDMAN - The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.
LOUISE LEAHY, DAILY TIMES - Friedman, who will be running as an independent, denied that his decision to make an official announcement had anything to do with the recent election. "That was just one more example of the politics of a two-party system," he said. "The best example of that was Perry running against Sanchez. They spent $100 million to destroy each other and delivered nothing. . . Who would spend $25 million for a job that pays $115,000 a year?"
Friedman paused as he got his cigar going again. "Meanwhile, Guam is passing us in funding public schools and our governor is building golf courses instead of schools. . .
When he was asked about his campaign staff, Friedman gestured to his friend Jon Wolfmueller, who with his wife, Sandy, owns Wolfmueller's Books and Records on Earl Garrett Street in Kerrville. "Jon's my trusty Indian sidekick," he said. "I say 'Indian' because political correctness is part of wussification. I don't have any political experience, but trust me. I'm a Jew; I'll hire good people."
BUD KENNEDY, STAR TELEGRAM - "Texas is the second wealthiest state in America, but 25 percent of our children live below the poverty line. We're what, 48th or 49th in funding for education?"
Actually, we're about 35th to 38th in most rankings. But he has the idea. We're next-to-worst among larger states.
"The only ranking where Texas is No. 1," he said, "is executions."
HEALTH & SCIENCE
EVOLUTION BEING SCARED OUT OF CLASSES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01evo.html?oref=login
CORNELIA DEAN, NY TIMES - In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue. Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from fundamentalists in their communities.
"The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually no discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum review board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers are afraid to raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public.
Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee on science and public policy of the Alabama Academy of Science, said in an interview that this fear made it impossible to say precisely how many teachers avoid the topic. "You're not going to hear about it," he said. "And for political reasons nobody will do a survey among randomly selected public school children and parents to ask just what is being taught in science classes."
But he said he believed the practice of avoiding the topic was widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths. . .
Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said she heard "all the time" from teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much trouble."
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
PRINCIPAL FINDS PEACE TOO RISKY A TOPIC FOR STUDENTS, EISENHOWER QUOTE TOO DANGEROUS
http://tennessean.com/education/archives/05/01/65061319.shtml?
CHRIS JONES ASSOCIATED PRESS - A Cookeville (Tenn.) High School administrator said Veterans for Peace and a Quaker group can't come back into his school with materials considered "anti-American" and "anti-military." The groups plan to go before the Putnam County school board tomorrow with claims that they're being denied privileges afforded to other organizations, including military recruiters.
The war veterans, some who also belong to the Quaker group, were allowed into the school during a September fair for organizations. They set up a table with books about U.S. wars and offered photocopied fliers and pamphlets from both organizations about the war in Iraq and military careers and alternatives.
Quaker and veteran Hector Black said several students stopped by the table and asked questions, and a couple of teachers even thanked them for coming. . .
Shank told Black that some of the groups' materials may be proper for adults, but he thought they were inappropriate for the students."The information was brought to the attention of administrators because of the influence it may have had," said Shank, who restricted future visits by the groups. "I felt, from a principal's viewpoint, that the students were being put into a position that they shouldn't."
Black said Shank specified some quotes in the literature that he objected to, including one from a 1953 speech by President Eisenhower that said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold and are not clothed."
County School Director Michael Martin said, "Parents found the materials to be anti-American, anti-military. That didn't come from us. That came from the parents who saw the materials when their kids brought it home."
INDICATORS
STATE OF THE UNION 2005 BY THE NUMBERS
ON UNEMPLOYMENT:--5,630,000: American workers unemployed in December 2000 --8,050,000: American workers unemployed in December 2004
ON PERSONAL DEBT:--1,226,037: number of personal bankruptcies filed in 2000 --1,584,170: number of personal bankruptcies filed in 2004
ON HEALTH CARE:--39,800,000: number of Americans without health insurance in 2000 --45,000,000: number of Americans without health insurance as of January 2004
ON RISING GAS PRICES:--$1.51: average price of a gallon of gasoline in 2000 --$1.88: average price of a gallon of gasoline through November 2004
COLLEGE COST --$7,750: average cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public university in 2000 when Bush promised to increase Pell grants to $5,100 --$11,354 :average cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public university in 2004 when Pell grants remain at $4,050 for 3rd straight year
FUNDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS--$121.97 billion: promised since 2001 to make No Child Left Behind act work --$95.01 billion: actually provided since 2001 for NCLB due to Bush administration cuts
FALLING WAGES--$13.00: hourly wage of the bulk of jobs eliminated since Nov 2001 --$9.00: hourly wage of the bulk of jobs created since Nov 2001
RISING HOUSING COSTS--$14.00: U.S. median hourly wage in 2004 --$15.37: U.S. hourly wage needed to afford the average two-bedroom apartment in 2004
WORKPLACE INEQUITY--$517: weekly take home of average US worker in 2004 --$155,769: weekly take home of average US CEO in 2001[Campaign for America' Future]
http://ourfuture.org
WORDS
SY HERSH, COUNTERPUNCH -Let's all forget this word 'insurgency.' It's one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba'athists plus nationalists. We are fighting the very people that started - they only choose to fight in different time spans than we want them to, in different places.. . .
There's a lot of anxiety inside the - you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do - there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people. One of the ways - one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease.
www.counterpunch.com
GREAT MUSEUMS OF AMERICA
http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/index.html
THE INTERNET MUSEUM OF FLEXI, CARDBOARD AND ODDITY RECORDS: Once bound by cereal boxes, held in the pages of a magazine, wrapped up in envelopes sent through our postal system or given away casually with some product, these bits of paper and plastic yearned to be set free to fulfill their destiny as... playable records. Take an aural and visual journey through a partial history of these strange but true recorded anomalies.
STATISTICIANS QUESTION WHETHER EXIT POLLS WERE TO BLAME FOR ANOMALIES
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/1/emw203331.htm
US COUNT VOTES - President Bush won November's election by 2.5% yet exit polls showed Kerry leading by 3%. Which was correct? "There are statistical indications that a systematic, nationwide shift of 5.5% of the vote may have occurred, and that we'll never get to the bottom of this, unless we gather the data we need for mathematical analysis and open, robust scientific debate," says Bruce O'Dell, US Count Votes' Vice President.
The study was co-authored by a diverse group of academicians specializing in statistics and mathematics affiliated with University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University and Temple University. Their study does not support claims made by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International that exit poll errors were to blame for the unprecedented 5.5% discrepancy between exit polls and official 2004 election results.
According to analysis by the group of senior statisticians, the new data just released by the exit-pollsters shows that the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously.
Their paper notes that the Edison-Mitofsky report offers no evidence to support their conclusion that Kerry voters "participated in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." In fact, the data provided in the Edison-Mitofsky report suggests that the opposite may have been true: Bush strongholds had slightly higher response rates than Kerry strongholds.
The statisticians go on to note that precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls' margin of error. The pollsters at Edison-Mitofsky agreed that their 2004 exit polls, for whatever reason, had the poorest accuracy in at least twenty years.
STUDY
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf
SMACKDOWN WITH BILL O'REILLY
TRANSCRIPT
http://prorev.com/oreillysam.htm
SAM SMITH- Reader Chas Edwards used the right word when he described your editor's appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show as a "smackdown," for television of this variety has far more in common with professional wrestling than with professional journalism. And like a professional wrestler I went on the show knowing full well that I was the designated loser. Bad Bubba O'Reilly was to show his infinite skills against Ultimo A-Train Sam with the latter left humiliated on the mat.
Some have inquired, and not too gently, why I would submit to such nonsense. Reader Weld in Brunswick Maine, for example, writes, "In exchange for a diatribe against the Clintons, O'Reilly agrees to let you air three common sense ideas. Take a shower and don't forget to scrub. You could at least have asked about his fake Peabody Awards."
Leading aside the shameful truth that I enjoy nonsense immensely, things like the O'Reilly show are merely the outward and most visible sign of an artificiality that pervades television. I learned this early when I was seriously considering television at a career. In January 1961, I made my only foray into the real world of network television. I was hired for Kennedy's inauguration by CBS News as a news editor. Along with fellow WWDC newsman Ed Taishoff, I sat all day capped with a headset in a ballroom of the Washington Hotel, turning phone calls from CBS correspondents into stories placed on Walter Cronkite's personal news ticker. If there was one thing Ed and I knew, it was how to take news from callers, turn it into copy and get it on the air fast.
But when the calls weren't coming in, I looked around the room and tried to figure out what the scores of CBS minions and executives were doing. As far as I could tell, Ed and I and a few people in front of dials and screens were doing most of the work. Yet we were badly out-numbered and under-paid by men in suits who tore around yelling and looking concerned or angry or wanting to know where something was. It all didn't look like much fun and I think it was when I decided I didn't want to be a network anchorman after all.
I would also cover events with my little battery operated tape recorder and felt blessed with the speed I could set up and depart compared to those in television. It seemed like every time they wanted to do something, a giant Leggo set would appear between them and the something and nothing could happen until they had assembled it.
The result is that everything that television does becomes television rather than what it starts out to be. For example my few minutes on Fox required numerous phone calls, including a "pre-interview," follow-ups and useful advice on how to facilitate the O'Reilly experience. Upon arrival I was layered with powder to make me look as much unlike myself as possible although, as I pointed out to the duster, making me up is a bit like George Bush trying to balance a budget. And then I sat for 45 minutes as people rushed back and forth on unknown but important missions including Britt Hume who sincerely wished me luck tackling O'Reilly and Bill Kristol who said hello and then quickly turned and left when he realized that it hadn't been necessary.
And to what end? To spend a few minutes talking to a wall that for the purposes of television I was to imagine as Bill O'Reilly. How an industry that spends so much money on everything else can only give you a wall to talk to leaves is puzzling and I know of no one who has experienced one of these remote interviews who finds it comfortable.
I comforted myself by recalling the time I was interviewed in my office and placed in a chair in front of the camera. A bored young intern sat in a chair under the camera and I was told to direct my answers to him, answers to questions being provided over a speakerphone 160 degrees off my starboard bow by an interviewer in New York. Three minutes into the interview the intern fell asleep, a development unnoticed by the crew on the other side of the camera. So for the next ten or fifteen minutes I had to inform a dormant slacker on some matter of great concern without totally breaking up. On the whole, I prefer walls. Besides, on the other side of that wall was not just a TV host but his audience, real people, decent people, un-pre-interviewed, without mikes, cameras or makeup.
Educated by good Quakers, I learned early not to shun the present but to follow the instructions of George Fox and "walk cheerfully over the face of the earth answering that of God in every one," in which he would presumably include Bill O'Reilly. The Brazilian Archbishop Helder Pessoa Camara once declared: "Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must open to everyone, absolutely everyone."
Unfortunately, the tradition of personal witness regardless of context is far stronger among the religious and the right than among liberals and progressives. Especially in recent years, liberals have taken to shunning, often proudly or pompously, those not of their ilk, which is, among other things, a hard way to win votes. One needn't be a proselytizer, only a witness or, in the Hubert Humphrey tradition, a happy warrior moving through alien ground with a smile and a dream.
Besides, I got to talk with the Bosnian driver of the car Fox News had sent for me. And by the time we had reached the UAW headquarters where my next meeting was, he had indicated that he would switch from his current political apathy to voting Green in the next election. So you see, it was worth it, after all.
IRAQ
WELL OILED ELECTION
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
ANTONIA JUHASZ, FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS - On Dec. 22, 2004, Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company to private foreign investment. . . In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into American corporate hands.
According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to "downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground - the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place. As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil.". . .
SOCIAL SECURITY
DWIGHT Eisenhower wrote his brother Edgar on May 2, l956: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again.... There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt...a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
LABOR
LABOR'S NEW BOSS, ANDY STERN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30STERN.html
MATT BAI, NY TIMES MAGAZINE - The S.E.I.U. is a different kind of union, rooted in the new service economy. Its members aren't truck drivers or assembly-line workers but janitors and nurses and home health care aides, roughly a third of whom are black, Asian or Latino. While the old-line industrial unions have been shrinking every year, Stern's union has been organizing low-wage workers, many of whom have never belonged to a union, at a torrid pace, to the point where the S.E.I.U. is now the largest and fastest-growing trade union in North America. . .
All of this makes Andy Stern -- a charismatic 54-year- old former social-service worker -- a very powerful man in labor, and also in Democratic politics. The job of running a union in America, even the biggest union around, isn't what it once was. The age of automation and globalization, with its ''race to the bottom'' among companies searching for lower wages overseas, has savaged organized labor. Fifty years ago, a third of workers in the United States carried union cards in their wallets; now it's barely one in 10. An estimated 21 million service-industry workers have never belonged to a union, and between most employers' antipathy to unions and federal laws that discourage workers from demanding one, chances are that the vast majority of them never will.
Over the years, union bosses have grown comfortable blaming everyone else -- timid politicians, corrupt C.E.O.'s, greedy shareholders -- for their inexorable decline. But last year, Andy Stern did something heretical: he started pointing the finger back at his fellow union leaders. Of course workers had been punished by forces outside their control, Stern said. But what had big labor done to adapt? Union bosses, Stern scolded, had been too busy flying around with senators and riding around in chauffeur-driven cars to figure out how to counter the effects of globalization, which have cost millions of Americans their jobs and their pensions. Faced with declining union rolls, the bosses made things worse by raiding one another's industries, which only diluted the power of their workers. The nation's flight attendants, for instance, are now divided among several different unions, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to wield any leverage over an entire industry.
Stern put the union movement's eroding stature in business terms: if any other $6.5 billion corporation had insisted on clinging to the same decades-old business plan despite losing customers every year, its executives would have been fired long ago.
''Our movement is going out of existence, and yet too many labor leaders go and shake their heads and say they'll do something, and then they go back and do the same thing the next day,'' Stern told me recently.
DRUG BUSTS
Local heroes
JUDGE RULES DRUG TEST FAILURE NOT ENOUGH FOR TERMINATION
http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=406597
AP - The [Maryland] Court of Special Appeals says a state employee's positive drug test isn't grounds for her automatic termination. The appellate court ruled that the test results didn't prove the woman actually took drugs on the job, an offense punishable by immediate firing under state regulations. The ruling reverses a decision in Baltimore City Circuit Court, and sends the case back to an administrative law judge for further proceedings.
ON CAMPUS
STUDENTS DON'T WANT WORDS WITHOUT GRAPHICS
http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0501/30/B01-73841.htm
LAURA BERMAN, DETROIT NEWS - The scene: A college classroom at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The subject: Writing the newspaper column. The question: "Can any of you name a columnist you read -- in a newspaper or magazine or online -- on a regular basis?" In response: Dead silence.
Slowly, one hand rises. A sports columnist is mentioned. . . "My generation is very visually oriented," explains Ryan Schreiber, a U-M Dearborn junior from Dearborn who -- like most in the class -- is majoring in journalism but doesn't read much of it. "My generation grew up watching MTV. We are used to short spurts of words, lots of images...We're used to immediate gratification.". . .
In another journalism class down the hall, the instructor annoyed his students. After asking how many read a newspaper regularly -- four or five out of 35 said they did -- he required them to bring a newspaper to class twice a week. "The students don't like it," says Laura Hipshire, one of the journalism students. . .
I envision a 12-Step Program for the Non-Reading Generation, as its members fight to recover from an addiction to color graphics and quick bursts of information. But no one in this class -- or in others I've faced in recent months -- seems to disagree: Words on a page are, like, kind of hard to read when you have "a fast-paced lifestyle," as [one student] put it. Or when you have "four kids and you're going to college," as Hipshire says. . . What's intriguing is that these kids say they plan to write for newspapers and magazines. They're planning journalism careers. They're dreaming of careers creating products nobody they know uses much.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
ONE IN THREE STUDENTS SAY PRESS SHOULD BE RESTRICTED
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&u=/usatoday/20050131/ts_usatoday/usstudentssaypressfreedomsgotoofar&printer=1
GREG TOPPO, USA TODAY - One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
STUDY: ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
AP - Abstinence-only programs like those promoted by the Bush administration don't seem to be working on teenagers in the president's home state, according to a state-sponsored study by Texas A&M University researchers. The study, the first evaluation of the abstinence programs across the state, found that students in almost all high school grades were more sexually active after undergoing abstinence education.
Researchers don't believe the programs encouraged teenagers to have sex, only that the abstinence messages did not interfere with customary trends among adolescents. "We didn't find what many would like for us to find," said A&M researcher Buzz Pruitt, who met with state health authorities last week to discuss the data.
INDICATORS
Average total cost for an 80-year-old American to live out the rest of his or her days on a luxury cruise ship: $230,497
Average cost to live them out in an assisted-living facility: $228,075
[Harper's Index]
BOOKSHELF
Bookshelf
IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING
Chris Verrill
California author and global humanitarian Chris Verrill travels from Afghanistan to Albania, Kuwait to Kathmandu, through five continents and 29 countries, to learn why September 11 happened and discover first hand what the world thinks of American foreign policy since September 11 - and maybe make a little bit of difference in the world at the same time. The 427 pages of Is For Good Men To Do Nothing chronicle the true story of a Rotarian who is so moved by the events of September 11 and President Bush's missteps afterwards that, after taking up a collection at his Rotary Club that morning, he sets off for the Afghan refugee camps of the frontier province of Pakistan to see how he can personally make a difference in the world.
Along the way he is interrogated by Israeli security, enjoys the breathtaking views of Liechtenstein, stomachs the poverty of Ethiopia, gets abducted by an angry bus driver in Greece, meets with United Nations officials in New York and Geneva, gets his pocket picked in Rome, says goodbye to his aging grandfather on Maui, is refused passage from Kuwait to Iraq, visits the last of the white rhinos in Tanzania, crosses from Pakistan into India in a motorcade under full military escort, and finally interviews former Mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan. All the while trying to make a small difference in the world by creating a vocational education program to aid Afghan refugees.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
OHIO BILL WOULD SUPPRESS PROFESSORS' SPEECH IN CLASSROOM
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0201rights.html
MARK FISHER, DAYTON DAILY NEWS - Concerned that Ohio college students' young minds are being indoctrinated by left-leaning college faculty, four Republican state senators have introduced an "academic bill of rights for higher education" that would limit what professors could say in their classrooms. It also would give students and faculty a formal grievance procedure if they feel they've been discriminated against. . . The bill - spearheaded by state Sen. Larry Mumper, R-Marion, and co-sponsored by Jordan, Cates and State Sen. Lynn Wachtmann, R-Napoleon - would require every state-supported college and university in Ohio to:
- Prohibit faculty members and instructors from "persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or course work that has no relation to their subject of study" and that serves no educational purpose related to the academic subject;
- Hire, fire and promote faculty based on their "competence and appropriate knowledge in their field of expertise" rather than on their "political, ideological or religious beliefs;" and
- Adopt a grievance procedure by which students or faculty could "seek redress" if they feel they've been discriminated against based on their beliefs and to disclose the grievance procedure in course catalogs, student handbooks and Web sites.
OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE POLITICS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46409-2005Jan29.html
PAUL FARHI, WASHINGTON POST - Now the art of press handling has evolved into actual manhandling. The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event.
It's not an entirely new phenomenon -- the Clinton administration baby-sat reporters from time to time -- but the president's inaugural committee took it to new levels of silliness during the various presidential balls. Several reporters covering the balls were surprised to find themselves being monitored by young "escorts," who followed them from hors d'oeuvres table to dance floor and even to the bathroom. . .
I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"
Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.
I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.
As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"
With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.
Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen. . .
But this isn't really about me. It's about . . . you. Consider that the escorts weren't there to provide security; all of us had already been through two checkpoints and one metal detector. They weren't there to keep me away from, Heaven forbid, a Democrat or a protester; those folks were kept safely behind rings of fences and concrete barriers. Nor were the escorts there to admonish me for asking a rude question of the partying faithful, or to protect the paying customers from the prying media. . .
No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.
NJ COURT: WEBSITES NOT LIABLE FOR READER COMMENTS
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14780
AP - Web site operators are not liable for electronic messages posted by anonymous visitors, even if the content of the postings is intentionally malicious or potentially libelous, a New Jersey appeals court has ruled. The Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court ruled on Jan. 31 that Stephen Moldow, whose "Eye on Emerson" Web site contained information on local government activities and included a discussion forum, was immune from liability under a provision of federal communications law. The three-judge panel's decision affirmed a ruling by a lower court.
"We accomplished what we needed to accomplish - to purge the town of this Web site," said Gina Calogero, one of two Emerson council members who sued Moldow, the site's publisher, for damages. Calogero and Vincent Donato, who both resigned from council in 2002, claimed the site's electronic bulletin board contained negative messages from third parties, which attacked them professionally and personally.
It was not immediately clear when the Web site was dismantled. A call to Richard Mahoney, the lawyer representing Moldow, was not returned for this article.
YALE TOLD IT CAN BAN MILITARY RECRUITERS
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14781
AP - A federal judge has ruled in favor of Yale Law School faculty members who sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in an effort to block military recruiters from campus. U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall, in her Jan. 31 ruling, found the government unconstitutionally applied the Solomon Amendment, a federal law which allows the secretary of defense to deny federal funding to colleges if they prohibit or prevent military recruitment on campus. . . Hall's ruling follows one by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which found that universities have a First Amendment right to keep the recruiters away because of their biases. It also said higher educational institutions could do this without fear of losing federal money.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
CIA REFUSES TO REVEAL TIES WITH NAZI WAR CRIMINALS
http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=National&storyid=106412 refuses to disclose Nazi papers BY
DOUGLAS JEHL, NEW YORK TIMES - The CIA is refusing to provide hundreds of thousands of pages of documents sought by a government working group under a 1998 law that requires full disclosure of classified records related to Nazi war criminals, according to members of the working group. Under the law, the CIA already has provided more than 1.2 million pages of documents, most of them from the archives of its World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services. Many documents have been declassified, and some made public last year showed a closer relationship between the U.S. government and Nazi war criminals than had previously been understood, including the CIA’s recruitment of war criminal suspects or Nazi collaborators.
For nearly three years, the CIA has interpreted the 1998 law narrowly and rebuffed requests for additional records, say congressional officials and some members of the working group. The officials say the agency sometimes has agreed to provide information about former Nazis but not about the extent of the agency’s dealings with them after World War II. In other cases, it has refused to provide information about individuals and their conduct during the war unless the working group could first provide evidence that they were complicit in war crimes. "I think that the CIA has defied the law," said Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Congress member from New York and a member of the group. "We have bent over backward; we have given them every opportunity to comply."
GREAT MOMENTS IN THE BUREAUCRACY://www.smh.com.au/news/World/No-job-no-excuse-for-turning-down-sex-work/ 2005/01/30/1107020262141.html?oneclick=true
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Australians are used to the idea of working for the dole, but the Germans have taken it a step further. A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany two years ago and brothel owners - who must pay tax and employee health insurance - were granted access to official databases of job seekers.
The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did she realize she was calling a brothel.
Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her unemployment benefit.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 4:46 AM
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