FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
NASA CONFIRMS GLOBAL WARMING
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126207
REDNOVA - Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists. To determine if the Earth is warming or cooling, scientists look at average temperatures. To get an "average" temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the temperature that is exactly in the middle of those high and low values. This provides an average temperature for a day. These average temperatures are then calculated for spots all over the Earth, over an entire year.
Scientists use temperatures taken on land and on surfaces of the oceans. Weather stations provide land measurements, and satellites provide sea surface temperature measurements over the ocean. These data are computed by NASA. . .
Globally, 1998 has proven to be the warmest year on record, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively. "There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Hansen said.
THE MOST DISHONEST BUDGET EVER
http://207.44.245.159/article8012.htm
NORIEL ROUBINI, INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE - The dishonesty of the administration about budget deficits has reached levels unheard of. . . The reality is, that based on realistic scenarios outlined last week by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the deficit by 2009 will be close to $600b (or 4.0% of GDP) rather than falling to $233b; and the deficit will reach over $1,100b (or 5.5% of GDP) by 2015.
How do they create the false $233b deficit by 2009.
1. They assume spending cuts that are, by any historical and political standard, impossible to achieve.
2. They assume revenue growth that is altogether wishful thinking and false based on current trends. And they do not consider the long-run costs of making all the Bush tax cuts permanent.
3. They do not count the ongoing costs of the continued defense and homeland security spending and of future military and homeland security build-ups.
4. They phase in a budget busting social security privatization (that will cost alone $4.5 trillion in the next 20 years) only starting in 2009.
This is worse than dishonesty; it is the most squalid manipulation of budgets ever seen aimed at pretending to achieve a budget figure that is utterly unrealistic and false in every possible dimension.
[Noriel Roubini is an associate professor of economics at NYU]
PENTAGON AGITPROP TO BE SENT TO MILLIONS OF AMERICAN HOMES
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=4272a7ec26944f6c
[This is precisely what the USIA has long been forbidden to do on the now apparently discarded grounds that taxpayer funds should not be used to propagandize taxpayers]
BIG NEWS NETWORK - The U.S. military is to beam its own news coverage to millions of Americans. Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and controlling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. . . The government-run TV service will be channeled to the public through EchoStar Communication's Dish Network which will offer the Pentagon Channel to its more than 11 million viewers on a no-cost basis. Programming will appear on the network's public interest channels and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Dish viewers will be kept up to date with current military news and information including Department of Defense news briefings, military news, interviews with top defense officials, and short stories about the work of military people.
'We appreciate Dish Network's decision to carry the new Pentagon Channel on their satellite TV system,' said Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita. 'Their support helps us fulfill our mission of providing timely military news and information.'
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Gerald W. Bracey, Portside
http://www.portside.org
1. The No Child Left Behind law uses the phrase 'scientifically based research' 111 times and demands such research from educational researchers, but no scientifically based research-or any research--supports the law's mandates. There is no research that supports NCLB's contention that the way to improve schools is to test every child every year and to fail schools and districts that do no make the required Adequate Yearly Progress. In fact, research argues against the use of high-stakes testing as an instrument of school reform.
2. NCLB lacks research support because NCLB depends solely on punishment. As schools fail to make arbitrary AYP the law imposes punitive, increasingly harsh sanctions. The law is in the tradition of 'the beatings will continue until morale improves.'
3. Even those who think punishment can motivate people would never use it as NCLB does. It punishes the entire school for the failures of the few, often the very few. If a school's special education students fail to make AYP, the whole school fails. If a school's English language learners fail to make AYP the whole school fails. If 95% of any group fails to show up on test day, the whole school fails. . . Schools have 37 opportunities to fail, only one way to succeed.
4. All students must be proficient in reading, math, and science by 2014. In his 2003 presidential address to the American Educational Research Association, Robert Linn, projected it would take 61 years, 66 years, and 166 years, respectively, to get fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders to the proficient level in math. Alas, Linn's projections are wildly optimistic because he reported national data, not data disaggregated by ethnicity. In the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 5 percent of African-American eighth graders and 7 percent of Hispanics were proficient in math. Only 37 percent of whites, 43 percent of Asians, and 15 percent of Native Americans reached this plateau. At least one author has written that the 100% proficient requirement is so irrational that it might be unconstitutional.
5. As a consequence of 3 and 4 above, California projects that by the deadline year of 2014, NCLB will label 99 percent of its schools 'failing.' California students don't do all that well on tests, but Minnesota is one of the nation's highest scoring states. In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, only 6 of the 41 participating countries outscored it in mathematics and only one of 41 attained a higher science score. Yet Minnesota projects that 2014 will find 80 percent of its schools wanting. Most states have been afraid to see what their projections look like.
6. Any school that fails to make AYP for two consecutive years must offer all students the option to transfer to a 'successful' school. Thus, if a school's special education students fail to make AYP one year and its English language learners fail the next year, the school must offer all students the 'choice option' in spite of the fact that the school worked for the other 36 student categories. In cities, the choice option is a farce. This year, Chicago had 200,000 students eligible, but only 500 spaces for them.In 2003-2004, 8,000 New York City students chose to transfer. After taking flak from principals whose schools received these students, the city deliberately flouted the law, permitting only 1,000 transfers. . . It has also happened that children leaving a 'failing' school were actually enrolling in a lower scoring 'successful' school. If a school's special education students or English Language Learner students fail to make AYP, the school fails even if it is doing a wonderful job with all remaining categories.
7. Schools alone cannot accomplish what NCLB requires. This seventh absurdity is the big one. Many observers have noted that American schools are always failing because so much is expected of them. NCLB expects even more - it expects schools, all by themselves, to close the achievement gap between affluent and poor, majority and minority. This is ridiculous. The gap appears before school - one study found that the three-year-olds of professional mothers used more words when interacting with their mothers than mothers on welfare used in interacting with their three-year-olds. That's right, three year old kids in one group used more words than adults in another group. After all, if one assumes a six hour school day and a 180 day school years, then between birth and age 18 children spend only 9 percent of their lives in schools. Family and community factors such as poverty affect achievement. Poor children enter school well behind their middle class peers, and while research finds they learn the same amount during the school year, they lose that learning over the summer and they fall farther and farther behind. Critics, of course, blame the schools for what happens in the months the schools are closed. . .
Some of us have always seen NCLB as yet another Bush administration Orwellian Double Speak program, right up there with Clear Skies, Clean Waters, and Healthy Forests. It aims to increase the use of vouchers, increase the privatization of public schools, transfer large sums of public funds to the private section, reduce the size of the public sector, and weaken or destroy the teachers unions (two Democratic power bases).
It is certainly true that the primary beneficiaries of the law to date are the testing companies, the test preparation companies, and companies that provide tutoring. . .
Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan. His most recent book is Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U. S.
ORDER SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=032500594X/progressiverevieA/
POCKET PARADIGMS
IN HER FEW short days in office, State Secretary Rice has publicly chastised Palestine, Israel, Iran, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. For a purported diplomat this may be a record outside of North Korea or the late Roman Empire. While Rice's intent is that of an imperialist, her manner is that of an pirssy third grade teacher apparently unaware that not only are most whom she scolds not in the third grade, they’re not even in her school district.
IF THE theorists of corrupt capitalism are correct and the market tells all, they may be hard pressed to explain why Carl Fiorina is getting a $21 million severance package from Hewlett Packard. After all, the all-knowing market went up 7% on her departure. - Sam Smith
POLITICS
THE HACKS GET USED TO DEAN
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0506,mondo1,60887,6.html#
JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE - Democratic pols are trying to get it up for Howard Dean, but they are very confused when the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate says he "admires" Newt Gingrich more than Bill Clinton, and that Christian-right big Ralph Reed "created a real success" with the right, and how "Clinton led the Dems into complacency and defeat." The pros are mostly cautious. Asked about her worries, soccer mom surrogate Nancy Pelosi said, "No more worries . . . I know he will work very well with Senator Reid and with me. And we look forward to whoever the members of the DNC choose."
"He wasn't my first choice," said Joe Lieberman, somewhat resuscitated after receiving the Bush kiss. "I felt we needed a bridge builder at this point. But I will respect whatever decision the DNC makes. And if it's Howard, I'll go along."
John Kerry, with his usual dismissive diffidence, said, "He's going to be a spokesman in certain ways. Obviously the chairman has to go to the Jefferson-Jackson dinners and other things. Howard is going to be very good for the party. A lot of people are worried about it, I'm not. I think he's been out there in the country. He's listened to people. . . . He's a person who believes in grassroots."
For the right-wing media, Dean is a wet dream come true. "All I can say is, the Democratic Party is clearly endorsing doctor-assisted suicide!" snipped Kate O'Beirne on Capital Gang, adding, "If Howard Dean is the answer, what is the question? I guess the question is, How can we do more of the same? How can we look even weaker on national security, more out of touch and liberal on social issues? How can we express the depth of our anger and contempt at Republicans? Those must be the questions, if Howard Dean's the answer."
On Beltway Boys, Fred Barnes said, "Howard Dean couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag." Bob Novak added, on the Gang: "This is suicidal and lunatic by the Democratic Party, and that is an opinion shared by a lot of Democrats that I talk to. This man can't control what he says."
Margaret Carlson, however, called Dean a "lifelong centrist," and added, "He was head of the National Governors Association. He was a fiscal conservative. He was against the war, and he was portrayed as being left-wing, which he just is not. Then the right-wing media kind of portrayed him as an extremist, and then the mainstream media took the scream tape and turned him into kind of a nut. But I think he's transcended that since he's begun this. And even during the rest of the campaign, he was helpful, shrewd. He's been cheerful. He's not as down as the rest of the Democrats. And he can give a speech. He can talk. I think he is a great choice."
THINGS TO DO IN THE BAD TIMES
DON'T BE AFRAID OF POPULAR ISSUES:
One of the striking differences between old-style liberals and their descendants is that the former had a knack for finding popular issues such as social security, the minimum wage, and day care funding. Too many contemporary progressives feel almost guilty if they get involved in anything that will take less than years of activism to win general support. This is not to say that unpopular causes should be avoided, but simply to suggest that it is okay to leaven the difficult and the controversial with things people already want.
MORE THINGS TO DO
http://prorev.com/thingstodo.htm
SOCIAL SECURITY
TWO INTERESTING results from a Washington Post poll on Social Security. 49% of Americans think we spend more on foreign aid than on Social Security. And 81% favor raising the Social Security cap so that workers earning more than $90,000 have to pay on that extra income. As the Review pointed out as far back as 1998, "One reason this is never mentioned: it would hit the pocketbooks of those who are having the most to say on the subject." Now, finally, the matter is under discussion.
PROGRESS REPORT - African-Americans depend heavily on Social Security benefits, which would be cut under President Bush's plan. The AARP found African-Americans rely on Social Security benefits for about 44 percent of their income in retirement. That number is even higher for African-American women, who are likely to rely on Social Security for 56.8 percent of their income in retirement. On top of that, African-Americans are less likely to have income from private assets; thus "Social Security is the only source of income for one in three African Americans over age 65." According to Hillary Shelton of the NAACP, "African-American children are almost four times as likely to be lifted out of poverty by Social Security benefits than our white counterparts." A full "22 percent of Black Americans" today rely on Medicaid for their health care. President Bush's new budget would slash Medicaid by $45 billion over the next decade, cutting crucial services and benefits.
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=124597
THE IDEA MILL
ORWELL AND HUXLEY NEIL POSTMAN, 'AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH' -
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
LABOR
THE CASE FOR A LABOR DAILY
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082005.html
[As we have pointed out, there have been some 2,000 labor newspapers published in America in the past and Lindorff joins us in urging a revival of the tradition that helped to build the labor movement]
DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH - The union leadership continues to squander untold millions of dollars on publicity campaigns and publicity departments, trying to get its story told in [a] biased and uninterested media.
It's time to take at least some of that money and put it to much better use, by subsidizing the creation of an independent but pro-labor daily newspaper - a publication that would have its own reporters in Washington, D.C., New York, and key labor areas like Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that would cover all the news in the country and the world from a perspective that takes working people and their viewpoints into account.
I propose that such a paper be published on-line, not on paper. Why? The cost of printing a newspaper, and of getting it delivered to millions of homes across the country, would be prohibitive, and the money would be better spend on having a crack staff of reporters and editors. These days, working families for the most part have computers and online access, so there's really no need for paper. An added advantage is that if the publication obtained a mass list of union members' email addresses, members could receive a brief news summary of the day's headlines each morning as an alert message, with a link to the publication.
Having the seed money for such a daily news journal come from the labor movement would free the publication from the constraints that have sapped the will and integrity of the corporate press. A few million dollars might seem like a lot of money to the unions, but since the many millions more spent on publicity for the most part just go into media office wastebaskets, it's really not a big new expense-just a shifting of funds to a much more productive use.
The key to the success of such a publication would be its independence. It would have to move way beyond the traditional captive labor media, and even be ready and able to write critically about the labor movement when necessary. If there were not this independence, the venture would be doomed from the start.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
MANDATORY ADDRESS REGISTRATION PLANNED
BOB ELLIS - Not only are the feds creating a national ID card; they are introducing nationwide mandatory residential address registration. These developments do not bode will for our country. Residential address registries are used by many governments to restrict and control where people can live and travel. In many countries, the police can stop anyone without cause and demand their papers.
(Mandatory residential registration, combined with the requirement to carry one's ID -- "papers" back then -- is what enabled the Nazis to round up Jews and others so efficiently.)
Such practices as residential registrations and "papers,"so I thought, are totally at odds with everything America stands for. That appears to be changing now. The Supreme Court has recently ruled (in the Hiibel case) that the police can demand ID for no reason. And now this.
Mandatory verification of residential addresses will do absolutely nothing to increase security: The law will be evaded by those who desire to do so, and in any event there is nothing (as yet) to stop a person from moving to a different address the day after the license is issued. The requirement is just more mindless collection of data, one more mindless invasion of privacy, and one more way that this administration is reducing "freedom" to an Orwellian slogan.
http://www.internet-attorneys.com
BUSHWHACKS
PROGRESS REPORT - If this administration has its way, scientists themselves will soon be in danger of becoming an endangered species. According to survey findings released by the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, "political intervention to alter scientific results has become pervasive within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services." In fact, 71 percent of the USFWS scientists who responded to the survey "said the agency cannot be trusted to save endangered species." The survey also found that over half of respondents could cite an incident in which "businesses used political influence to have science findings reversed or withdrawn."
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=124597
OTHER NEWS
NEW STUFF
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524865.900
NEW SCIENTIST - A revolutionary night-vision system developed for the Dutch military makes night-time video images look as clear and colorful as those shot in broad daylight. The idea was to improve on the fuzzy grey or green pictures that are the hallmark of today's night-vision systems. Although these monochrome images are an improvement on unaided night vision, their lack of color can make them hard to interpret. . .
The system selects random pixels from the daytime image to obtain a sample of the range of colours in a typical environment. So a pastoral scene would have browns from the trees, greens from the grass, vegetation and tree canopies, and blues for the sky.
In conventional night-vision equipment these colors appear in monochrome shades. The new system maps these shades onto their color equivalents, assigning say a light grey to the blue of the sky, or a deep, dark grey to the brown of tree trunks. When the system is later used to view a target scene at night, the mapping is reversed, replacing monochrome pixels in the night image with the closest matching color from the sample image.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Recovered historySOCIAL SECURITY SEVEN YEARS AGO
[The Review started covering the Social Security story in 1998. Here are several of our first postings - all from 1998]
[Excerpts from a statement by Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute to the White House Conference on Social Security]
- The increased cost of Social Security over the next 75 years will amount to about 2.5 percent of GDP. This is not an extraordinary economic burden. In comparison, increased education spending between 1946 and 1966 cost almost 3 percent of GDP. And increases in Social Security taxes between 1960 and 1995 amounted to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP. Throughout this period, economic growth continued, living standards rose, and we were able to finance the Cold War.
- One hundred percent of the shortfall can be covered as follows:
-- Applying to the Social Security projections technical improvements in the forecasting of prices that have already been made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but that have not yet been incorporated into the projections. (13 percent)
-- Raising the "cap" on taxable wages back to the level, relative to all wages, at which it stood in the early 1980s - $97,000 in today's dollars. This would also entail raising the cap on benefit payments. (25 percent)
-- A small increase in the payroll tax, indexed to the increase in longevity. The increase needed would be 0.02 percent annually for both the employer and employee contribution. (64 percent)
- That Americans will be living longer is good news. But it will mean spending more years on Social Security, which will cost more. The choice is cutting benefits or paying a little more in taxes. Cutting benefits would mean living longer at a lower living standard, and would be particularly hard for the 42 percent of the elderly whom Social Security lifts out of poverty. Even in the trustees' pessimistic projections, real wages will rise 1.1 percent per year, making a tax increase of 0.02 percent a tiny price to pay to assure workers full benefits while they are living longer.
- Citing annual stock market gains of 7 percent over the last 75 years, many claim that workers could get much higher returns than the system now provides by investing their Social Security contributions themselves. This is wrong, for the following reasons:
-- If the projected growth rate of the economy declines by half, as the Social Security trustees assume, the projected returns from the stock market must also decline. A stock market consistent with the Social Security projections would generate a return of about 3.5 percent. The management fees for administering private accounts are estimated by the President's Advisory Council on Social Security to come to 1 percent of the accounts' value, bringing us to a typical return for a privatized account of about 2.5 percent.
-- Current contributions support current retirees. If contributions are diverted to private investment accounts, taxes will have to be raised or other government benefits cut in order to pay for current benefits.
-- Investing in the stock market is risky, and many workers would not see average returns. In addition, there is a potential for fraud and abuse, as well as the added costs of a new bureaucracy to administer a system, involving tens of millions of small accounts.
THE REVIEW LIST
Top Things the MediaWon't Tell You About Social Security
-- The projection of bankruptcy is based on the assumption of recession-level growth rates - less than half the average for the past 75 years.
-- If this projection is correct, calculates Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, and if the projection of privatized returns in the stock market is also correct, then stock P/Es in the year 2075 would be at least 178 as opposed to 26 today and half that in the past. In other words, the Social Security hustlers are predicting economic gloom for the trust fund but a boom for the market.
-- The SS trustees have steadily lowered their projections of growth. Henwood points out that the trustee's most optimistic projection in 1998 matches their most pessimistic one in 1981. If you use the middle projection for 1986, for example, you actually end up with the trust fund being comfortably in the black.
-- One way to shore up the trust fund is to raise the salary ceiling for SS taxes. One reason this is never mentioned: it would hit the pocketbooks of those who are having the most to say on the subject.
-- Some of the fear concerning SS is based on the presumed burden of a growing older population. But the non-working population not only includes the old but children as well. When you look at the total projected dependent population, the burden becomes roughly equivalent to that of Kennedy's time.
-- The SS trust fund is an accounting creation, the artificial nature of which contributes to the current hysteria. If SS were being funded out of general revenues (like the Pentagon or the war on drugs) you would not be hearing talk of it "going broke" but simply about how much more it was going to cost.
-- If the system is privatized not only do you face the interesting problem (as James Glassman has pointed out) of the government being one of the owners of Microsoft, NBC and Philip Morris, you also have the potential of the government using its stake to directly manipulate the markets. There are reports of this having already occurred, but the large sums of money available under privatization would make the temptation even more appealing.
-- If you want an example of the hazards of government investment in the market you need look no further than WJ Clinton himself. As governor in the mid-80s, Clinton and his banker, Jackson Stephens, put a big chunk of the state pension fund into high risk investments. The brokerage firm involved suddenly went belly-up and the state pension fund dropped 15% overnight. Facing a $52 million loss, Clinton was saved by his ubiquitous buddy, Mochtar Riady, who stepped in and bought 40% of Stephens' Worthen Bank in the months immediately after the disaster. The national media never covered this revealing story.
LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER
http://panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
NEW YORK TIMES HUSTLES RIGHT-WING SOCIAL SECURITY SCHEME
In a particularly seamy example of the disinformation now rife in the major media, a front-page story in the New York Times pawned off as "bipartisan" a plan to partially dismantle Social Security that is, in fact, the product of a right-wing think tank. Although the Center for Strategic and International Studies put some token conservative Democrats on its National Commission on Retirement Policy, the commission is deeply biased towards corporatist and conservative viewpoints.
[This is also one of the groups that the Washington Post used in 2005 to come up with a front page scare story about Social Security]
The story headlined "Bipartisan group urges big changes in Social Security" spoke of "powerful interest groups including the American Association of Retired Persons" that oppose the commission's plan to create private investment accounts for retirees. The commission also proposed raising retirement age to 70. The commission claims its scheme would keep Social Security solvent for about 75 years -- ironically the same lifetime Robert Reich estimates for the trust fund simply using by realistic economic growth rates rather than the depression-level ones being cited to encourage the current panic.
The true nature of CSIS should be no secret to the Times. Not only has it covered its hyper-hawkish and spook-friendly projects since it was launched in the 1960s, but the paper has been one of the center's donors.
CSIS gained notoriety in the Cold War years thanks to its intimate ties with the military and intelligence establishments as well as its seeming preference for media attention over scholarship. In 1985, for example, CSIS claimed 4,100 media contacts. A year later the Washington Post referred to it as a "conservative propaganda machine."
Its associates included the likes of Henry Kissinger, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former deputy CIA chief Ray Clines, and other macho geo-politicists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, and Arnaud de Borchgrave.
The controversial center apparently even became a little too much for its host, Georgetown University and CSIS moved to its own quarters in downtown Washington. But one thing remained constant: its status as a conservative advocate. Ronald Reagan, for example, would use it, noted Alison Muscatine in the Washington Post, "as a favorite site for speeches attacking liberals who oppose US aid for the contras."
Although CSIS has acted in a more discreet manner in the post-cold war era, there is little doubt of its loyalty to corporatist conversion projects such as the downsizing of Social Security and the use of its funds by Wall Street. De Borchgrave is still listed as a scholar as are those of the ilk of Edward Lutwak. There is even a scholar's chair for an "Army National Guard Fellow."
On the other hand, CSIS' affirmative action program leaves something to be desired. One of its rare black scholars, so to speak, is General Julius Becton, a buddy of Clarence Thomas who has just departed as head of the DC public schools after a short but disastrous tenure.
There is one more irony to all this: CSIS was kept afloat for many years by not only the NYT, by not only a dozen or so defense contractors, by not only an Arab sheik or two, but by none other than the man the pro-Clinton establishment loves to hate: Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife has given millions to support this organization that the Times now implies is a reliable source of wisdom on how Americans should plan for their retirement.
THE GREAT SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY
Thanks to amazingly successful propaganda about the state of the Social Security trust fund, members of the media, politicians and millions of Americans have become convinced that the fund is soon to go broke. As we have tried to point out from time to time, according to the actuarial figures, this just isn't so -- unless we have depression level economic growth in coming decades.
So you don't believe us? Okay, but will you take a former trustee of the fund and ex-labor secretary? In the recent issue of American Prospect Robert Reich states flatly, "Social Security is not endangered." Says Reich the actuarial prediction is "based on the wildly pessimistic assumption that the economy will grow only 1.8 % annually over the next three decades. Crank the economy up just a bit, to a more realistic 2.4% a year (what the actuary gloomily termed the "high option: projection) and the fund is flush for the next 75 years." Incidentally, 2.4% growth is exactly what the White House budget predicts for the next five years.
Here are some other healthy, handy things to do to take your mind off the Great Social Security Scam:
- Switch from a wage based tax to an income based tax. And make it progressive while you're at it. That way Tim Russert and Cokie Roberts and Pete Peterson will be contributing more to social security and talking less about it. Social Security was a radical idea in New Deal days and a regressive wage tax was one way to make it more palatable to the high rollers of the time.
- Hire the head of a health insurance company to run the Social Security program. The New York Times reports that health insurance companies are planning to increase premiums up to five times the rate of inflation. Maybe they could show the Social Security how to find a little more money as well.
- Put the defense budget in a trust fund and let the Pentagon go bust, too. No one but a bunch of politicians said you had to fund Social Security out of a trust fund. And you can tell them that they're wrong.
- Worry about things that we really can't replace -- like oil -- or that we can't abuse indefinitely -- like the environment.
In the end, whether there is enough money for Americans in their old age is a matter of political choice, not economic destiny. If we demand that the money be there (rather than spent on missiles or corporate welfare) it can be there; if we allow ourselves to be scared by those who want us to accept a lower standard of living, it won't be.
Ask your favorite media why they never tell you things like this.
LABOR
HALF MILLION FRENCH PROTEST PROPOSED INCREASE IN WORK WEEK
http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050205225155.ij9iyn0t.xml
JOEL ROBINE, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - Hundreds of thousands of French people took part in demonstrations across the country to protest against government plans to reform the 35-hour work week. Organized by an alliance of trade-unions and backed by the opposition Socialist party, more than half a million people took part in marches in 100 towns and cities -- with 90,000 joining the largest demonstration in Paris. Police put the overall figure at slightly more than 250,000.
The protests came as a bill to enable private sector employees to opt for longer hours makes its way through parliament. The bill is expected to pass its first reading in the National Assembly on Monday. . .
Polls showed that nearly 70 percent of the public support or have sympathy with the protests, which come after three days of strikes in the public sector late last month.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
DUBYA AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
[This is funny, but it also raises a serious question whether the president is functioning on all cylinders. The event took place in Tampa on Feb 4]
WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don't really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem?
DUBYA: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
WORKING THE AMERICAN WAY
[With the President in Nebraska]
MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?
MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)
ALAN C. MILLER, JUDY PASTERNAK, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2000 -
The Times obtained the governor's schedules through the Texas Open Records Act. Revealing patterns emerge from 3,125 pages of appointments covering 1995 through 1998--along with interviews with Bush, top aides and others who saw him. . .
He focused on a few issues, preferred short meetings and insisted on a two-hour midday break centered on a rejuvenating run. . .
The governor's typical work schedule during his first term consisted of "two hard half days," in chief of staff Clay Johnson's words. . .
A two-hour midday break for exercise Bush's daily schedule often allows for a two-hour break around noon. "Gov time" or "private time" on the calendar usually meant a three-mile jog at a 7 1/2-minute pace. He often ran along a dammed-up section of the Colorado River.
Or Bush ventured to a University of Texas stadium, where world-class sprinters, distance runners and pole vaulters train for the upcoming Olympic Games. The governor was always welcome there. "He writes the checks," joked Dan Pfaff, a track coach.
Afterward, Bush sometimes hit the football weight room--he once made the mistake of getting caught at Earl Campbell's usual machine when the legendary Longhorn running back wanted to use it. And he liked to hop on the physical therapy table for soft tissue massage. The workouts provide time for reflection and a chance to renew his energy, Bush said.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/08/02/latimes.bush.detail/
VIA WONKETTE
http://wonkette.com
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
CONSTITUTION REJECTED IN TSA SCREENING
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9089-2005Feb8.html
SARA KEHAULANI GOO WASHINGTON POST -
The Bush budget calls for the Department of Homeland Security to create an office called Screening Coordination and Operations that would absorb some programs of TSA and other divisions. The office would oversee records on millions of Americans and foreigners in vast databases that contain digital fingerprints and photographs, eye scans and personal information from travelers and transportation workers. . .
If approved, the Screening Coordination and Operations office would include:
- Secure Flight, a proposed TSA program that would probe the backgrounds of each traveler who books an airline ticket and determine whether they should receive additional screening.
- Registered Traveler, TSA's program now being tested at Reagan National Airport and four others that allows frequent travelers to submit digital fingerprints and undergo a background check in exchange for receiving a fast pass through the airport checkpoint. . .
- International Registered Traveler, a newly announced program that would speed customs and immigration processing for some frequent international travelers who submit to a background check. It is now being tested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The consolidation of programs worries privacy activists who fear the government is seeking to create a national surveillance system. "This confirms our worst fears that DHS will become a one-stop shop for background checks on a wide variety of Americans, ranging from airline passengers to train travelers to workers in a variety of industries," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Steinhardt said the new office would allow the government to maintain records on tens of millions of Americans each year.
BUSHWHACKS
KEITH REED, BOSTON GLOBE - President Bush's 2006 budget would force Amtrak into bankruptcy, jeopardizing the future of long distance passenger train service including the popular Acela Express that moves millions of people between Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., every year. Bush's proposal would end federal operating subsidies for Amtrak, whose executives have already said the national railroad needs more money than the $1.2 billion it got from the government for fiscal year 2005 to keep trains running. A Transportation Department spokesman said yesterday the idea is to force Amtrak to restructure itself to become a profitable company. . . .
Rail advocates said yesterday it was unlikely that Congress would pass a budget that did not include Amtrak funding, but Bush's proposal furthers his push for a major overhaul of the nation's passenger rail system. In 2003, the president proposed splitting Amtrak into two companies, leasing its Northeast tracks to states to operate, and letting private companies run the other routes.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/02/09/bushs_budget_threatens_amtrak_service_in_region/
OTHER NEWS
THE LIST
Best and worst run government agencies
[According to the OMB which rated them on five criteria]
BEST
Energy
Labor
State
Social Security Administration
WORST
Smithsonian
Housing and Urban Development
Army Corps of Engineers
OMB
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9070-2005Feb8.html
TODAY IN HISTORY
1971 Satchel Paige becomes first Negro-league player elected to baseball Hall of Fame.
Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go forever
Till one fine morning I'll reach up and grab me a handful of stars
And swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burning down the heavens
And look over at God
And say How about that!
— Samuel Allen, "To Satch"
http://www.negroleaguebaseball.com/
BOOKSHELF
ON THE RAMPAGE Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman
RAMPANT CORPORATE CRIME. Pollution. Cancer. Sweatshops. Dangerous working conditions. Wealth disparities. Corrupted politics. In a compilation of snapshots from two of the leading reporters on business power, On the Rampage documents the price we pay for living in a corporate-dominated society - and provides accounts of individuals and movements resisting, and triumphing over, concentrated corporate power.
ORDER
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1567512143/progressiverevieA/
WORDS
JAY LENO ON A ROLL:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales started his first week on the job. Remember those two naked statues that John Ashcroft had covered up when he took the job? Well they're naked again but now they just have leashes around their necks.
I don't know if you noticed this but when President Bush gave his State of the Union speech, he announced the person heading up the offensive on gangs and gang violence would be First Lady Laura Bush. Today the first lady announced the name of her anti-gang program 'Just Say Yo!'
Today they announced the big winner of the Iraqi election -- Halliburton.
Collateral damage
IRAQ'S CLOSED, LOOTED, AND DAMAGED MUSEUMS
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11712
JASON EDWARD KAUFMAN, ART NEWSPAPER - Violence and instability continue to threaten Iraq’s cultural heritage, report officials of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. All museums remain closed, and looting of archaeological sites continues. The Iraqis lack the funds, equipment, and personnel to cope with the restoration and maintenance of museums and monuments and the protection of archaeological sites. "None of the planned international initiatives can now be carried out inside Iraq", says Elizabeth Simpson, a professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York who organized an Iraq session at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting in Boston last month. . .
The latest estimates of objects looted [from the National Museum] are 15,000 taken from storerooms of which 10,000 have been documented and 3,323 returned. Another 1,450 pieces from other sites have been brought to the museum by Iraqis, police, customs, and the Coalition Provisional Authority. An in-house report on the thefts based on interviews with more than 90 people has been delivered to the Minister of Culture. Abdul Aziz Hameed, director of the SBAH, says that it is apparent that the perpetrators had inside knowledge of the location of items in the storerooms. . .
Other museums in Iraq remain damaged and closed: the Basra Museum is occupied by squatters, the Nasiriya Museum was burned, the Amara Museum was damaged but has been refurbished, the museums at Kufa and Nejef are occupied by the Islamist party, the new Tikrit Museum was destroyed by cruise missiles at the outset of the war (it was empty at the time), and the Mosul Museum, hit by a shell that damaged the Hatrian gallery roof. According to Dr Hameed the museum was looted with 30 bronze panels from the 9th-century BC Assyrian city of Balawat among the losses.
THE MEDIACRACY
MEDIA MYTHS ABOUT FDR AND SOCIAL SECURITY
http://mediamatters.org/items/200502040010
MEDIA MATTERS - Nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett and FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts. In fact, while Roosevelt advocated "voluntary contributory annuities" to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits, he never proposed replacing those benefits with private accounts.
Roosevelt was not advocating that the present system of guaranteed Social Security benefits "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Rather, he was proposing that both guaranteed Social Security retirement benefits and voluntary annuities would eventually eliminate the need for a different fund which was established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to the Social Security system.
Former Social Security associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr., Roosevelt's grandson, noted in a January 31 Boston Globe op-ed piece: "The implication that FDR would support privatization of America's greatest national program is an attempt to deceive the American people and an outrage."
SCHOOLS
FLORIDA STATE SPENT PUBLIC FUNDS TO SPIN BUSH POLITICS
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/02/02/m1a_FSUCENTER_0202.html
KIMBERLY MILLER, PALM BEACH POST - A Florida State University center has used more than a half-million in education tax dollars to put a positive spin on President Bush's key school policies, including hiring a public relations firm to teach charter schools to be more media-savvy. . .
In recent weeks, federal agencies have acknowledged using tax dollars to pay columnists to push Bush policies, including the No Child Left Behind Act. Critics argue that using public money for media campaigns could be considered illegal. . .
The center's mission is to make parents aware of all choice programs, including traditional magnet schools, expand the number of choice schools in the state, and help them "work the media" — as was written in one of the PR firm's pamphlets.
But links on the center's Web site are almost entirely to studies and articles from conservative groups and strong school-choice proponents such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Education Reform and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. . .
For example, a link to private-school voucher articles includes nine entries that provide positive news on the voucher movement, but no mention of the problems in Florida's three programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to be misused or stolen.
The center also hired a Tallahassee public relations firm, Moore Consulting Group Inc., to help charter schools and private schools sell their product. The group was given $45,000 to create template advertisements for choice programs, hold workshops, and offer tips such as "Never lie" to editorial boards and "Never screw up on a slow news day."
BUSH REGIME CONCEALS GOOD NEWS ABOUT HEAD START
http://www.educationnews.org/nhsa.htm
EDUCATION NEWS - The first full-year of test scores from the National Reporting System assessment of the progress of America’s poorest children served by the Head Start program provide convincing proof that the program works as intended to get America’s most at-risk four and five-year olds ready to learn in school. The National Head Start Association took the unusual step of releasing the NRS test scores to the public, since the Health and Human Services administrators in charge of advancing the Bush Administration proposal to dismantle the Head Start program have disseminated the information to date only in behind-the-scenes briefings for lawmakers, academics and grantees.
NHSA also pointed out that HHS has declined to release to the general public a separate report that provides additional confirmation that Head Start is succeeding. That study -- Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, looked at 2,500 Head Start children in its 2000 cohort and concluded that "graduates" of the program, despite their severe socioeconomic handicaps that put them well behind the starting line from which more affluent U.S. children start, were by the spring of their kindergarten year essentially at national norms in early reading and early writing and close to catching up to the national norms in early math and vocabulary knowledge.
BUSH REGIME HIDES FAILURES OF DC'S VOUCHER PROGRAM
http://www.educationnews.org/dc-vouchers-firs-year-flaws-and.htm
EDUCATION NEWS - Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Education through a Freedom of Information Act request and other publicly available information indicate that the first year of the federally-mandated school voucher program in the District of Columbia has been marked by a failure to achieve legislatively determined priorities, an inability to evaluate the program in the manner required by Congress, and efforts by administrators to obscure information that might reflect poorly on the program, according to a report released today by People For the American Way Foundation.
The report, Flaws & Failings: A Preliminary Look at the Problems Already Encountered in the Implementation of D.C.’s New Federally Mandated School Voucher Program, demonstrates that concerns raised by opponents of the multimillion dollar voucher program were and continue to be valid. As the report discusses:
- Although the voucher law passed by Congress requires that priority be given to low-income students attending D.C. public schools labeled most in need of improvement, it appears that fewer than 75 of the more than 1,300 students who were awarded vouchers came from those schools.
- Although the voucher law requires a comparison between the performance of students using vouchers and those students who sought vouchers but did not receive them, so few students applied for vouchers that the program cannot be evaluated in this manner for the first year of the program.
"It is clear that in its first year the D.C. voucher program is not meeting the priorities claimed by its proponents and set out in legislation," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation. "And it seems that program administrators were intent on making the program look good by diverting attention from inconvenient facts."
REPORT
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=17828
WAR DEPARTMENT
RECRUITERS ON CAMPUS FACING HOSTILE STUDENTS
www.militaryproject.org
JAKE ELLISON, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER -[Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due] and Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were manning a table at Seattle Central Community College when they faced hostilities similar to what recruiters have reported at college campuses across the country in recent months. Hundreds of students at the Seattle campus stormed out of classes at midday to protest President Bush's inauguration. They marched through the campus, pounding on doors and encouraging others to leave. Then they came upon the recruiters.
One of the recruiters involved in the confrontation, Sgt. Jeffrey Due, said he was stunned how quickly things got out of hand. "I was in outright shock that they were protesting me," he said. Due had been warned about the student walk-out demonstration, but said he didn't expect that kind of trouble. "They were all going by making off-hand comments and saying 'no war.' We just waved at them," Due said. "Five minutes later, there was just a mob of 500 people surrounding the table."
Due said he was hit in the head with newspapers, and water bottles whizzed by, pounding the vending machine and wall behind him. They swarmed us, grabbing our stuff and ripping it apart, Due told Army Times. They yelled at us to leave, but I told them we were staying. We belonged there.
That's when protesters began pelting the soldiers with whatever they could grab, including the recruiting materials they had snatched from the table. . .
The crowd wouldn't relent, and the two sides were locked in a standoff for 10 tense minutes before city police and college security arrived. Due said the police asked the soldiers to help end the situation by leaving. They agreed and were escorted off campus. . .
Staff Sgt. Amedeo Trotta, who has been on recruiting duty for more than five years, said he has seen anti-military actions increase since the beginnings of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He works in college towns throughout upstate New York. Although his campus visits have generally gone well, he has still endured attacks when dealing with students.
Once, when he was walking in uniform with two students near Ithaca College in New York, a man wielding a 2-by-4 confronted him. Ithaca is home to several universities. The man began yelling at the students, Trotta said, threatening them. The man asked the students why they were consorting with a soldier when there were others overseas killing for oil. . .
Recruiting on college campuses may get even more difficult now that an appellate court recently overturned the Solomon Amendment, which required educational institutions receiving federal aid to grant access to military recruiters. After the ruling was issued, Harvard Law School was quick to change its policy to one that bars military recruiters from campus.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126207
REDNOVA - Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late 1800s, according to NASA scientists. To determine if the Earth is warming or cooling, scientists look at average temperatures. To get an "average" temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the temperature that is exactly in the middle of those high and low values. This provides an average temperature for a day. These average temperatures are then calculated for spots all over the Earth, over an entire year.
Scientists use temperatures taken on land and on surfaces of the oceans. Weather stations provide land measurements, and satellites provide sea surface temperature measurements over the ocean. These data are computed by NASA. . .
Globally, 1998 has proven to be the warmest year on record, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively. "There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Hansen said.
THE MOST DISHONEST BUDGET EVER
http://207.44.245.159/article8012.htm
NORIEL ROUBINI, INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE - The dishonesty of the administration about budget deficits has reached levels unheard of. . . The reality is, that based on realistic scenarios outlined last week by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the deficit by 2009 will be close to $600b (or 4.0% of GDP) rather than falling to $233b; and the deficit will reach over $1,100b (or 5.5% of GDP) by 2015.
How do they create the false $233b deficit by 2009.
1. They assume spending cuts that are, by any historical and political standard, impossible to achieve.
2. They assume revenue growth that is altogether wishful thinking and false based on current trends. And they do not consider the long-run costs of making all the Bush tax cuts permanent.
3. They do not count the ongoing costs of the continued defense and homeland security spending and of future military and homeland security build-ups.
4. They phase in a budget busting social security privatization (that will cost alone $4.5 trillion in the next 20 years) only starting in 2009.
This is worse than dishonesty; it is the most squalid manipulation of budgets ever seen aimed at pretending to achieve a budget figure that is utterly unrealistic and false in every possible dimension.
[Noriel Roubini is an associate professor of economics at NYU]
PENTAGON AGITPROP TO BE SENT TO MILLIONS OF AMERICAN HOMES
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=4272a7ec26944f6c
[This is precisely what the USIA has long been forbidden to do on the now apparently discarded grounds that taxpayer funds should not be used to propagandize taxpayers]
BIG NEWS NETWORK - The U.S. military is to beam its own news coverage to millions of Americans. Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and controlling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. . . The government-run TV service will be channeled to the public through EchoStar Communication's Dish Network which will offer the Pentagon Channel to its more than 11 million viewers on a no-cost basis. Programming will appear on the network's public interest channels and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Dish viewers will be kept up to date with current military news and information including Department of Defense news briefings, military news, interviews with top defense officials, and short stories about the work of military people.
'We appreciate Dish Network's decision to carry the new Pentagon Channel on their satellite TV system,' said Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita. 'Their support helps us fulfill our mission of providing timely military news and information.'
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Gerald W. Bracey, Portside
http://www.portside.org
1. The No Child Left Behind law uses the phrase 'scientifically based research' 111 times and demands such research from educational researchers, but no scientifically based research-or any research--supports the law's mandates. There is no research that supports NCLB's contention that the way to improve schools is to test every child every year and to fail schools and districts that do no make the required Adequate Yearly Progress. In fact, research argues against the use of high-stakes testing as an instrument of school reform.
2. NCLB lacks research support because NCLB depends solely on punishment. As schools fail to make arbitrary AYP the law imposes punitive, increasingly harsh sanctions. The law is in the tradition of 'the beatings will continue until morale improves.'
3. Even those who think punishment can motivate people would never use it as NCLB does. It punishes the entire school for the failures of the few, often the very few. If a school's special education students fail to make AYP, the whole school fails. If a school's English language learners fail to make AYP the whole school fails. If 95% of any group fails to show up on test day, the whole school fails. . . Schools have 37 opportunities to fail, only one way to succeed.
4. All students must be proficient in reading, math, and science by 2014. In his 2003 presidential address to the American Educational Research Association, Robert Linn, projected it would take 61 years, 66 years, and 166 years, respectively, to get fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders to the proficient level in math. Alas, Linn's projections are wildly optimistic because he reported national data, not data disaggregated by ethnicity. In the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 5 percent of African-American eighth graders and 7 percent of Hispanics were proficient in math. Only 37 percent of whites, 43 percent of Asians, and 15 percent of Native Americans reached this plateau. At least one author has written that the 100% proficient requirement is so irrational that it might be unconstitutional.
5. As a consequence of 3 and 4 above, California projects that by the deadline year of 2014, NCLB will label 99 percent of its schools 'failing.' California students don't do all that well on tests, but Minnesota is one of the nation's highest scoring states. In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, only 6 of the 41 participating countries outscored it in mathematics and only one of 41 attained a higher science score. Yet Minnesota projects that 2014 will find 80 percent of its schools wanting. Most states have been afraid to see what their projections look like.
6. Any school that fails to make AYP for two consecutive years must offer all students the option to transfer to a 'successful' school. Thus, if a school's special education students fail to make AYP one year and its English language learners fail the next year, the school must offer all students the 'choice option' in spite of the fact that the school worked for the other 36 student categories. In cities, the choice option is a farce. This year, Chicago had 200,000 students eligible, but only 500 spaces for them.In 2003-2004, 8,000 New York City students chose to transfer. After taking flak from principals whose schools received these students, the city deliberately flouted the law, permitting only 1,000 transfers. . . It has also happened that children leaving a 'failing' school were actually enrolling in a lower scoring 'successful' school. If a school's special education students or English Language Learner students fail to make AYP, the school fails even if it is doing a wonderful job with all remaining categories.
7. Schools alone cannot accomplish what NCLB requires. This seventh absurdity is the big one. Many observers have noted that American schools are always failing because so much is expected of them. NCLB expects even more - it expects schools, all by themselves, to close the achievement gap between affluent and poor, majority and minority. This is ridiculous. The gap appears before school - one study found that the three-year-olds of professional mothers used more words when interacting with their mothers than mothers on welfare used in interacting with their three-year-olds. That's right, three year old kids in one group used more words than adults in another group. After all, if one assumes a six hour school day and a 180 day school years, then between birth and age 18 children spend only 9 percent of their lives in schools. Family and community factors such as poverty affect achievement. Poor children enter school well behind their middle class peers, and while research finds they learn the same amount during the school year, they lose that learning over the summer and they fall farther and farther behind. Critics, of course, blame the schools for what happens in the months the schools are closed. . .
Some of us have always seen NCLB as yet another Bush administration Orwellian Double Speak program, right up there with Clear Skies, Clean Waters, and Healthy Forests. It aims to increase the use of vouchers, increase the privatization of public schools, transfer large sums of public funds to the private section, reduce the size of the public sector, and weaken or destroy the teachers unions (two Democratic power bases).
It is certainly true that the primary beneficiaries of the law to date are the testing companies, the test preparation companies, and companies that provide tutoring. . .
Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan. His most recent book is Setting the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U. S.
ORDER SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=032500594X/progressiverevieA/
POCKET PARADIGMS
IN HER FEW short days in office, State Secretary Rice has publicly chastised Palestine, Israel, Iran, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. For a purported diplomat this may be a record outside of North Korea or the late Roman Empire. While Rice's intent is that of an imperialist, her manner is that of an pirssy third grade teacher apparently unaware that not only are most whom she scolds not in the third grade, they’re not even in her school district.
IF THE theorists of corrupt capitalism are correct and the market tells all, they may be hard pressed to explain why Carl Fiorina is getting a $21 million severance package from Hewlett Packard. After all, the all-knowing market went up 7% on her departure. - Sam Smith
POLITICS
THE HACKS GET USED TO DEAN
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0506,mondo1,60887,6.html#
JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE - Democratic pols are trying to get it up for Howard Dean, but they are very confused when the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate says he "admires" Newt Gingrich more than Bill Clinton, and that Christian-right big Ralph Reed "created a real success" with the right, and how "Clinton led the Dems into complacency and defeat." The pros are mostly cautious. Asked about her worries, soccer mom surrogate Nancy Pelosi said, "No more worries . . . I know he will work very well with Senator Reid and with me. And we look forward to whoever the members of the DNC choose."
"He wasn't my first choice," said Joe Lieberman, somewhat resuscitated after receiving the Bush kiss. "I felt we needed a bridge builder at this point. But I will respect whatever decision the DNC makes. And if it's Howard, I'll go along."
John Kerry, with his usual dismissive diffidence, said, "He's going to be a spokesman in certain ways. Obviously the chairman has to go to the Jefferson-Jackson dinners and other things. Howard is going to be very good for the party. A lot of people are worried about it, I'm not. I think he's been out there in the country. He's listened to people. . . . He's a person who believes in grassroots."
For the right-wing media, Dean is a wet dream come true. "All I can say is, the Democratic Party is clearly endorsing doctor-assisted suicide!" snipped Kate O'Beirne on Capital Gang, adding, "If Howard Dean is the answer, what is the question? I guess the question is, How can we do more of the same? How can we look even weaker on national security, more out of touch and liberal on social issues? How can we express the depth of our anger and contempt at Republicans? Those must be the questions, if Howard Dean's the answer."
On Beltway Boys, Fred Barnes said, "Howard Dean couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag." Bob Novak added, on the Gang: "This is suicidal and lunatic by the Democratic Party, and that is an opinion shared by a lot of Democrats that I talk to. This man can't control what he says."
Margaret Carlson, however, called Dean a "lifelong centrist," and added, "He was head of the National Governors Association. He was a fiscal conservative. He was against the war, and he was portrayed as being left-wing, which he just is not. Then the right-wing media kind of portrayed him as an extremist, and then the mainstream media took the scream tape and turned him into kind of a nut. But I think he's transcended that since he's begun this. And even during the rest of the campaign, he was helpful, shrewd. He's been cheerful. He's not as down as the rest of the Democrats. And he can give a speech. He can talk. I think he is a great choice."
THINGS TO DO IN THE BAD TIMES
DON'T BE AFRAID OF POPULAR ISSUES:
One of the striking differences between old-style liberals and their descendants is that the former had a knack for finding popular issues such as social security, the minimum wage, and day care funding. Too many contemporary progressives feel almost guilty if they get involved in anything that will take less than years of activism to win general support. This is not to say that unpopular causes should be avoided, but simply to suggest that it is okay to leaven the difficult and the controversial with things people already want.
MORE THINGS TO DO
http://prorev.com/thingstodo.htm
SOCIAL SECURITY
TWO INTERESTING results from a Washington Post poll on Social Security. 49% of Americans think we spend more on foreign aid than on Social Security. And 81% favor raising the Social Security cap so that workers earning more than $90,000 have to pay on that extra income. As the Review pointed out as far back as 1998, "One reason this is never mentioned: it would hit the pocketbooks of those who are having the most to say on the subject." Now, finally, the matter is under discussion.
PROGRESS REPORT - African-Americans depend heavily on Social Security benefits, which would be cut under President Bush's plan. The AARP found African-Americans rely on Social Security benefits for about 44 percent of their income in retirement. That number is even higher for African-American women, who are likely to rely on Social Security for 56.8 percent of their income in retirement. On top of that, African-Americans are less likely to have income from private assets; thus "Social Security is the only source of income for one in three African Americans over age 65." According to Hillary Shelton of the NAACP, "African-American children are almost four times as likely to be lifted out of poverty by Social Security benefits than our white counterparts." A full "22 percent of Black Americans" today rely on Medicaid for their health care. President Bush's new budget would slash Medicaid by $45 billion over the next decade, cutting crucial services and benefits.
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=124597
THE IDEA MILL
ORWELL AND HUXLEY NEIL POSTMAN, 'AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH' -
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
LABOR
THE CASE FOR A LABOR DAILY
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082005.html
[As we have pointed out, there have been some 2,000 labor newspapers published in America in the past and Lindorff joins us in urging a revival of the tradition that helped to build the labor movement]
DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH - The union leadership continues to squander untold millions of dollars on publicity campaigns and publicity departments, trying to get its story told in [a] biased and uninterested media.
It's time to take at least some of that money and put it to much better use, by subsidizing the creation of an independent but pro-labor daily newspaper - a publication that would have its own reporters in Washington, D.C., New York, and key labor areas like Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that would cover all the news in the country and the world from a perspective that takes working people and their viewpoints into account.
I propose that such a paper be published on-line, not on paper. Why? The cost of printing a newspaper, and of getting it delivered to millions of homes across the country, would be prohibitive, and the money would be better spend on having a crack staff of reporters and editors. These days, working families for the most part have computers and online access, so there's really no need for paper. An added advantage is that if the publication obtained a mass list of union members' email addresses, members could receive a brief news summary of the day's headlines each morning as an alert message, with a link to the publication.
Having the seed money for such a daily news journal come from the labor movement would free the publication from the constraints that have sapped the will and integrity of the corporate press. A few million dollars might seem like a lot of money to the unions, but since the many millions more spent on publicity for the most part just go into media office wastebaskets, it's really not a big new expense-just a shifting of funds to a much more productive use.
The key to the success of such a publication would be its independence. It would have to move way beyond the traditional captive labor media, and even be ready and able to write critically about the labor movement when necessary. If there were not this independence, the venture would be doomed from the start.
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
MANDATORY ADDRESS REGISTRATION PLANNED
BOB ELLIS - Not only are the feds creating a national ID card; they are introducing nationwide mandatory residential address registration. These developments do not bode will for our country. Residential address registries are used by many governments to restrict and control where people can live and travel. In many countries, the police can stop anyone without cause and demand their papers.
(Mandatory residential registration, combined with the requirement to carry one's ID -- "papers" back then -- is what enabled the Nazis to round up Jews and others so efficiently.)
Such practices as residential registrations and "papers,"so I thought, are totally at odds with everything America stands for. That appears to be changing now. The Supreme Court has recently ruled (in the Hiibel case) that the police can demand ID for no reason. And now this.
Mandatory verification of residential addresses will do absolutely nothing to increase security: The law will be evaded by those who desire to do so, and in any event there is nothing (as yet) to stop a person from moving to a different address the day after the license is issued. The requirement is just more mindless collection of data, one more mindless invasion of privacy, and one more way that this administration is reducing "freedom" to an Orwellian slogan.
http://www.internet-attorneys.com
BUSHWHACKS
PROGRESS REPORT - If this administration has its way, scientists themselves will soon be in danger of becoming an endangered species. According to survey findings released by the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, "political intervention to alter scientific results has become pervasive within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services." In fact, 71 percent of the USFWS scientists who responded to the survey "said the agency cannot be trusted to save endangered species." The survey also found that over half of respondents could cite an incident in which "businesses used political influence to have science findings reversed or withdrawn."
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=124597
OTHER NEWS
NEW STUFF
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524865.900
NEW SCIENTIST - A revolutionary night-vision system developed for the Dutch military makes night-time video images look as clear and colorful as those shot in broad daylight. The idea was to improve on the fuzzy grey or green pictures that are the hallmark of today's night-vision systems. Although these monochrome images are an improvement on unaided night vision, their lack of color can make them hard to interpret. . .
The system selects random pixels from the daytime image to obtain a sample of the range of colours in a typical environment. So a pastoral scene would have browns from the trees, greens from the grass, vegetation and tree canopies, and blues for the sky.
In conventional night-vision equipment these colors appear in monochrome shades. The new system maps these shades onto their color equivalents, assigning say a light grey to the blue of the sky, or a deep, dark grey to the brown of tree trunks. When the system is later used to view a target scene at night, the mapping is reversed, replacing monochrome pixels in the night image with the closest matching color from the sample image.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Recovered historySOCIAL SECURITY SEVEN YEARS AGO
[The Review started covering the Social Security story in 1998. Here are several of our first postings - all from 1998]
[Excerpts from a statement by Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute to the White House Conference on Social Security]
- The increased cost of Social Security over the next 75 years will amount to about 2.5 percent of GDP. This is not an extraordinary economic burden. In comparison, increased education spending between 1946 and 1966 cost almost 3 percent of GDP. And increases in Social Security taxes between 1960 and 1995 amounted to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP. Throughout this period, economic growth continued, living standards rose, and we were able to finance the Cold War.
- One hundred percent of the shortfall can be covered as follows:
-- Applying to the Social Security projections technical improvements in the forecasting of prices that have already been made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but that have not yet been incorporated into the projections. (13 percent)
-- Raising the "cap" on taxable wages back to the level, relative to all wages, at which it stood in the early 1980s - $97,000 in today's dollars. This would also entail raising the cap on benefit payments. (25 percent)
-- A small increase in the payroll tax, indexed to the increase in longevity. The increase needed would be 0.02 percent annually for both the employer and employee contribution. (64 percent)
- That Americans will be living longer is good news. But it will mean spending more years on Social Security, which will cost more. The choice is cutting benefits or paying a little more in taxes. Cutting benefits would mean living longer at a lower living standard, and would be particularly hard for the 42 percent of the elderly whom Social Security lifts out of poverty. Even in the trustees' pessimistic projections, real wages will rise 1.1 percent per year, making a tax increase of 0.02 percent a tiny price to pay to assure workers full benefits while they are living longer.
- Citing annual stock market gains of 7 percent over the last 75 years, many claim that workers could get much higher returns than the system now provides by investing their Social Security contributions themselves. This is wrong, for the following reasons:
-- If the projected growth rate of the economy declines by half, as the Social Security trustees assume, the projected returns from the stock market must also decline. A stock market consistent with the Social Security projections would generate a return of about 3.5 percent. The management fees for administering private accounts are estimated by the President's Advisory Council on Social Security to come to 1 percent of the accounts' value, bringing us to a typical return for a privatized account of about 2.5 percent.
-- Current contributions support current retirees. If contributions are diverted to private investment accounts, taxes will have to be raised or other government benefits cut in order to pay for current benefits.
-- Investing in the stock market is risky, and many workers would not see average returns. In addition, there is a potential for fraud and abuse, as well as the added costs of a new bureaucracy to administer a system, involving tens of millions of small accounts.
THE REVIEW LIST
Top Things the MediaWon't Tell You About Social Security
-- The projection of bankruptcy is based on the assumption of recession-level growth rates - less than half the average for the past 75 years.
-- If this projection is correct, calculates Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, and if the projection of privatized returns in the stock market is also correct, then stock P/Es in the year 2075 would be at least 178 as opposed to 26 today and half that in the past. In other words, the Social Security hustlers are predicting economic gloom for the trust fund but a boom for the market.
-- The SS trustees have steadily lowered their projections of growth. Henwood points out that the trustee's most optimistic projection in 1998 matches their most pessimistic one in 1981. If you use the middle projection for 1986, for example, you actually end up with the trust fund being comfortably in the black.
-- One way to shore up the trust fund is to raise the salary ceiling for SS taxes. One reason this is never mentioned: it would hit the pocketbooks of those who are having the most to say on the subject.
-- Some of the fear concerning SS is based on the presumed burden of a growing older population. But the non-working population not only includes the old but children as well. When you look at the total projected dependent population, the burden becomes roughly equivalent to that of Kennedy's time.
-- The SS trust fund is an accounting creation, the artificial nature of which contributes to the current hysteria. If SS were being funded out of general revenues (like the Pentagon or the war on drugs) you would not be hearing talk of it "going broke" but simply about how much more it was going to cost.
-- If the system is privatized not only do you face the interesting problem (as James Glassman has pointed out) of the government being one of the owners of Microsoft, NBC and Philip Morris, you also have the potential of the government using its stake to directly manipulate the markets. There are reports of this having already occurred, but the large sums of money available under privatization would make the temptation even more appealing.
-- If you want an example of the hazards of government investment in the market you need look no further than WJ Clinton himself. As governor in the mid-80s, Clinton and his banker, Jackson Stephens, put a big chunk of the state pension fund into high risk investments. The brokerage firm involved suddenly went belly-up and the state pension fund dropped 15% overnight. Facing a $52 million loss, Clinton was saved by his ubiquitous buddy, Mochtar Riady, who stepped in and bought 40% of Stephens' Worthen Bank in the months immediately after the disaster. The national media never covered this revealing story.
LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER
http://panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
NEW YORK TIMES HUSTLES RIGHT-WING SOCIAL SECURITY SCHEME
In a particularly seamy example of the disinformation now rife in the major media, a front-page story in the New York Times pawned off as "bipartisan" a plan to partially dismantle Social Security that is, in fact, the product of a right-wing think tank. Although the Center for Strategic and International Studies put some token conservative Democrats on its National Commission on Retirement Policy, the commission is deeply biased towards corporatist and conservative viewpoints.
[This is also one of the groups that the Washington Post used in 2005 to come up with a front page scare story about Social Security]
The story headlined "Bipartisan group urges big changes in Social Security" spoke of "powerful interest groups including the American Association of Retired Persons" that oppose the commission's plan to create private investment accounts for retirees. The commission also proposed raising retirement age to 70. The commission claims its scheme would keep Social Security solvent for about 75 years -- ironically the same lifetime Robert Reich estimates for the trust fund simply using by realistic economic growth rates rather than the depression-level ones being cited to encourage the current panic.
The true nature of CSIS should be no secret to the Times. Not only has it covered its hyper-hawkish and spook-friendly projects since it was launched in the 1960s, but the paper has been one of the center's donors.
CSIS gained notoriety in the Cold War years thanks to its intimate ties with the military and intelligence establishments as well as its seeming preference for media attention over scholarship. In 1985, for example, CSIS claimed 4,100 media contacts. A year later the Washington Post referred to it as a "conservative propaganda machine."
Its associates included the likes of Henry Kissinger, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former deputy CIA chief Ray Clines, and other macho geo-politicists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, and Arnaud de Borchgrave.
The controversial center apparently even became a little too much for its host, Georgetown University and CSIS moved to its own quarters in downtown Washington. But one thing remained constant: its status as a conservative advocate. Ronald Reagan, for example, would use it, noted Alison Muscatine in the Washington Post, "as a favorite site for speeches attacking liberals who oppose US aid for the contras."
Although CSIS has acted in a more discreet manner in the post-cold war era, there is little doubt of its loyalty to corporatist conversion projects such as the downsizing of Social Security and the use of its funds by Wall Street. De Borchgrave is still listed as a scholar as are those of the ilk of Edward Lutwak. There is even a scholar's chair for an "Army National Guard Fellow."
On the other hand, CSIS' affirmative action program leaves something to be desired. One of its rare black scholars, so to speak, is General Julius Becton, a buddy of Clarence Thomas who has just departed as head of the DC public schools after a short but disastrous tenure.
There is one more irony to all this: CSIS was kept afloat for many years by not only the NYT, by not only a dozen or so defense contractors, by not only an Arab sheik or two, but by none other than the man the pro-Clinton establishment loves to hate: Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife has given millions to support this organization that the Times now implies is a reliable source of wisdom on how Americans should plan for their retirement.
THE GREAT SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY
Thanks to amazingly successful propaganda about the state of the Social Security trust fund, members of the media, politicians and millions of Americans have become convinced that the fund is soon to go broke. As we have tried to point out from time to time, according to the actuarial figures, this just isn't so -- unless we have depression level economic growth in coming decades.
So you don't believe us? Okay, but will you take a former trustee of the fund and ex-labor secretary? In the recent issue of American Prospect Robert Reich states flatly, "Social Security is not endangered." Says Reich the actuarial prediction is "based on the wildly pessimistic assumption that the economy will grow only 1.8 % annually over the next three decades. Crank the economy up just a bit, to a more realistic 2.4% a year (what the actuary gloomily termed the "high option: projection) and the fund is flush for the next 75 years." Incidentally, 2.4% growth is exactly what the White House budget predicts for the next five years.
Here are some other healthy, handy things to do to take your mind off the Great Social Security Scam:
- Switch from a wage based tax to an income based tax. And make it progressive while you're at it. That way Tim Russert and Cokie Roberts and Pete Peterson will be contributing more to social security and talking less about it. Social Security was a radical idea in New Deal days and a regressive wage tax was one way to make it more palatable to the high rollers of the time.
- Hire the head of a health insurance company to run the Social Security program. The New York Times reports that health insurance companies are planning to increase premiums up to five times the rate of inflation. Maybe they could show the Social Security how to find a little more money as well.
- Put the defense budget in a trust fund and let the Pentagon go bust, too. No one but a bunch of politicians said you had to fund Social Security out of a trust fund. And you can tell them that they're wrong.
- Worry about things that we really can't replace -- like oil -- or that we can't abuse indefinitely -- like the environment.
In the end, whether there is enough money for Americans in their old age is a matter of political choice, not economic destiny. If we demand that the money be there (rather than spent on missiles or corporate welfare) it can be there; if we allow ourselves to be scared by those who want us to accept a lower standard of living, it won't be.
Ask your favorite media why they never tell you things like this.
LABOR
HALF MILLION FRENCH PROTEST PROPOSED INCREASE IN WORK WEEK
http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050205225155.ij9iyn0t.xml
JOEL ROBINE, AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - Hundreds of thousands of French people took part in demonstrations across the country to protest against government plans to reform the 35-hour work week. Organized by an alliance of trade-unions and backed by the opposition Socialist party, more than half a million people took part in marches in 100 towns and cities -- with 90,000 joining the largest demonstration in Paris. Police put the overall figure at slightly more than 250,000.
The protests came as a bill to enable private sector employees to opt for longer hours makes its way through parliament. The bill is expected to pass its first reading in the National Assembly on Monday. . .
Polls showed that nearly 70 percent of the public support or have sympathy with the protests, which come after three days of strikes in the public sector late last month.
BEHIND THE BUSHES
DUBYA AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
[This is funny, but it also raises a serious question whether the president is functioning on all cylinders. The event took place in Tampa on Feb 4]
WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don't really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem?
DUBYA: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
WORKING THE AMERICAN WAY
[With the President in Nebraska]
MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?
MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)
ALAN C. MILLER, JUDY PASTERNAK, LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2000 -
The Times obtained the governor's schedules through the Texas Open Records Act. Revealing patterns emerge from 3,125 pages of appointments covering 1995 through 1998--along with interviews with Bush, top aides and others who saw him. . .
He focused on a few issues, preferred short meetings and insisted on a two-hour midday break centered on a rejuvenating run. . .
The governor's typical work schedule during his first term consisted of "two hard half days," in chief of staff Clay Johnson's words. . .
A two-hour midday break for exercise Bush's daily schedule often allows for a two-hour break around noon. "Gov time" or "private time" on the calendar usually meant a three-mile jog at a 7 1/2-minute pace. He often ran along a dammed-up section of the Colorado River.
Or Bush ventured to a University of Texas stadium, where world-class sprinters, distance runners and pole vaulters train for the upcoming Olympic Games. The governor was always welcome there. "He writes the checks," joked Dan Pfaff, a track coach.
Afterward, Bush sometimes hit the football weight room--he once made the mistake of getting caught at Earl Campbell's usual machine when the legendary Longhorn running back wanted to use it. And he liked to hop on the physical therapy table for soft tissue massage. The workouts provide time for reflection and a chance to renew his energy, Bush said.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/08/02/latimes.bush.detail/
VIA WONKETTE
http://wonkette.com
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA .
CONSTITUTION REJECTED IN TSA SCREENING
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9089-2005Feb8.html
SARA KEHAULANI GOO WASHINGTON POST -
The Bush budget calls for the Department of Homeland Security to create an office called Screening Coordination and Operations that would absorb some programs of TSA and other divisions. The office would oversee records on millions of Americans and foreigners in vast databases that contain digital fingerprints and photographs, eye scans and personal information from travelers and transportation workers. . .
If approved, the Screening Coordination and Operations office would include:
- Secure Flight, a proposed TSA program that would probe the backgrounds of each traveler who books an airline ticket and determine whether they should receive additional screening.
- Registered Traveler, TSA's program now being tested at Reagan National Airport and four others that allows frequent travelers to submit digital fingerprints and undergo a background check in exchange for receiving a fast pass through the airport checkpoint. . .
- International Registered Traveler, a newly announced program that would speed customs and immigration processing for some frequent international travelers who submit to a background check. It is now being tested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The consolidation of programs worries privacy activists who fear the government is seeking to create a national surveillance system. "This confirms our worst fears that DHS will become a one-stop shop for background checks on a wide variety of Americans, ranging from airline passengers to train travelers to workers in a variety of industries," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. Steinhardt said the new office would allow the government to maintain records on tens of millions of Americans each year.
BUSHWHACKS
KEITH REED, BOSTON GLOBE - President Bush's 2006 budget would force Amtrak into bankruptcy, jeopardizing the future of long distance passenger train service including the popular Acela Express that moves millions of people between Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., every year. Bush's proposal would end federal operating subsidies for Amtrak, whose executives have already said the national railroad needs more money than the $1.2 billion it got from the government for fiscal year 2005 to keep trains running. A Transportation Department spokesman said yesterday the idea is to force Amtrak to restructure itself to become a profitable company. . . .
Rail advocates said yesterday it was unlikely that Congress would pass a budget that did not include Amtrak funding, but Bush's proposal furthers his push for a major overhaul of the nation's passenger rail system. In 2003, the president proposed splitting Amtrak into two companies, leasing its Northeast tracks to states to operate, and letting private companies run the other routes.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/02/09/bushs_budget_threatens_amtrak_service_in_region/
OTHER NEWS
THE LIST
Best and worst run government agencies
[According to the OMB which rated them on five criteria]
BEST
Energy
Labor
State
Social Security Administration
WORST
Smithsonian
Housing and Urban Development
Army Corps of Engineers
OMB
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9070-2005Feb8.html
TODAY IN HISTORY
1971 Satchel Paige becomes first Negro-league player elected to baseball Hall of Fame.
Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go forever
Till one fine morning I'll reach up and grab me a handful of stars
And swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burning down the heavens
And look over at God
And say How about that!
— Samuel Allen, "To Satch"
http://www.negroleaguebaseball.com/
BOOKSHELF
ON THE RAMPAGE Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman
RAMPANT CORPORATE CRIME. Pollution. Cancer. Sweatshops. Dangerous working conditions. Wealth disparities. Corrupted politics. In a compilation of snapshots from two of the leading reporters on business power, On the Rampage documents the price we pay for living in a corporate-dominated society - and provides accounts of individuals and movements resisting, and triumphing over, concentrated corporate power.
ORDER
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1567512143/progressiverevieA/
WORDS
JAY LENO ON A ROLL:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales started his first week on the job. Remember those two naked statues that John Ashcroft had covered up when he took the job? Well they're naked again but now they just have leashes around their necks.
I don't know if you noticed this but when President Bush gave his State of the Union speech, he announced the person heading up the offensive on gangs and gang violence would be First Lady Laura Bush. Today the first lady announced the name of her anti-gang program 'Just Say Yo!'
Today they announced the big winner of the Iraqi election -- Halliburton.
Collateral damage
IRAQ'S CLOSED, LOOTED, AND DAMAGED MUSEUMS
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11712
JASON EDWARD KAUFMAN, ART NEWSPAPER - Violence and instability continue to threaten Iraq’s cultural heritage, report officials of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. All museums remain closed, and looting of archaeological sites continues. The Iraqis lack the funds, equipment, and personnel to cope with the restoration and maintenance of museums and monuments and the protection of archaeological sites. "None of the planned international initiatives can now be carried out inside Iraq", says Elizabeth Simpson, a professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York who organized an Iraq session at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting in Boston last month. . .
The latest estimates of objects looted [from the National Museum] are 15,000 taken from storerooms of which 10,000 have been documented and 3,323 returned. Another 1,450 pieces from other sites have been brought to the museum by Iraqis, police, customs, and the Coalition Provisional Authority. An in-house report on the thefts based on interviews with more than 90 people has been delivered to the Minister of Culture. Abdul Aziz Hameed, director of the SBAH, says that it is apparent that the perpetrators had inside knowledge of the location of items in the storerooms. . .
Other museums in Iraq remain damaged and closed: the Basra Museum is occupied by squatters, the Nasiriya Museum was burned, the Amara Museum was damaged but has been refurbished, the museums at Kufa and Nejef are occupied by the Islamist party, the new Tikrit Museum was destroyed by cruise missiles at the outset of the war (it was empty at the time), and the Mosul Museum, hit by a shell that damaged the Hatrian gallery roof. According to Dr Hameed the museum was looted with 30 bronze panels from the 9th-century BC Assyrian city of Balawat among the losses.
THE MEDIACRACY
MEDIA MYTHS ABOUT FDR AND SOCIAL SECURITY
http://mediamatters.org/items/200502040010
MEDIA MATTERS - Nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett and FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts. In fact, while Roosevelt advocated "voluntary contributory annuities" to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits, he never proposed replacing those benefits with private accounts.
Roosevelt was not advocating that the present system of guaranteed Social Security benefits "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Rather, he was proposing that both guaranteed Social Security retirement benefits and voluntary annuities would eventually eliminate the need for a different fund which was established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to the Social Security system.
Former Social Security associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr., Roosevelt's grandson, noted in a January 31 Boston Globe op-ed piece: "The implication that FDR would support privatization of America's greatest national program is an attempt to deceive the American people and an outrage."
SCHOOLS
FLORIDA STATE SPENT PUBLIC FUNDS TO SPIN BUSH POLITICS
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/02/02/m1a_FSUCENTER_0202.html
KIMBERLY MILLER, PALM BEACH POST - A Florida State University center has used more than a half-million in education tax dollars to put a positive spin on President Bush's key school policies, including hiring a public relations firm to teach charter schools to be more media-savvy. . .
In recent weeks, federal agencies have acknowledged using tax dollars to pay columnists to push Bush policies, including the No Child Left Behind Act. Critics argue that using public money for media campaigns could be considered illegal. . .
The center's mission is to make parents aware of all choice programs, including traditional magnet schools, expand the number of choice schools in the state, and help them "work the media" — as was written in one of the PR firm's pamphlets.
But links on the center's Web site are almost entirely to studies and articles from conservative groups and strong school-choice proponents such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Education Reform and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. . .
For example, a link to private-school voucher articles includes nine entries that provide positive news on the voucher movement, but no mention of the problems in Florida's three programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to be misused or stolen.
The center also hired a Tallahassee public relations firm, Moore Consulting Group Inc., to help charter schools and private schools sell their product. The group was given $45,000 to create template advertisements for choice programs, hold workshops, and offer tips such as "Never lie" to editorial boards and "Never screw up on a slow news day."
BUSH REGIME CONCEALS GOOD NEWS ABOUT HEAD START
http://www.educationnews.org/nhsa.htm
EDUCATION NEWS - The first full-year of test scores from the National Reporting System assessment of the progress of America’s poorest children served by the Head Start program provide convincing proof that the program works as intended to get America’s most at-risk four and five-year olds ready to learn in school. The National Head Start Association took the unusual step of releasing the NRS test scores to the public, since the Health and Human Services administrators in charge of advancing the Bush Administration proposal to dismantle the Head Start program have disseminated the information to date only in behind-the-scenes briefings for lawmakers, academics and grantees.
NHSA also pointed out that HHS has declined to release to the general public a separate report that provides additional confirmation that Head Start is succeeding. That study -- Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, looked at 2,500 Head Start children in its 2000 cohort and concluded that "graduates" of the program, despite their severe socioeconomic handicaps that put them well behind the starting line from which more affluent U.S. children start, were by the spring of their kindergarten year essentially at national norms in early reading and early writing and close to catching up to the national norms in early math and vocabulary knowledge.
BUSH REGIME HIDES FAILURES OF DC'S VOUCHER PROGRAM
http://www.educationnews.org/dc-vouchers-firs-year-flaws-and.htm
EDUCATION NEWS - Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Education through a Freedom of Information Act request and other publicly available information indicate that the first year of the federally-mandated school voucher program in the District of Columbia has been marked by a failure to achieve legislatively determined priorities, an inability to evaluate the program in the manner required by Congress, and efforts by administrators to obscure information that might reflect poorly on the program, according to a report released today by People For the American Way Foundation.
The report, Flaws & Failings: A Preliminary Look at the Problems Already Encountered in the Implementation of D.C.’s New Federally Mandated School Voucher Program, demonstrates that concerns raised by opponents of the multimillion dollar voucher program were and continue to be valid. As the report discusses:
- Although the voucher law passed by Congress requires that priority be given to low-income students attending D.C. public schools labeled most in need of improvement, it appears that fewer than 75 of the more than 1,300 students who were awarded vouchers came from those schools.
- Although the voucher law requires a comparison between the performance of students using vouchers and those students who sought vouchers but did not receive them, so few students applied for vouchers that the program cannot be evaluated in this manner for the first year of the program.
"It is clear that in its first year the D.C. voucher program is not meeting the priorities claimed by its proponents and set out in legislation," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation. "And it seems that program administrators were intent on making the program look good by diverting attention from inconvenient facts."
REPORT
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=17828
WAR DEPARTMENT
RECRUITERS ON CAMPUS FACING HOSTILE STUDENTS
www.militaryproject.org
JAKE ELLISON, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER -[Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due] and Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were manning a table at Seattle Central Community College when they faced hostilities similar to what recruiters have reported at college campuses across the country in recent months. Hundreds of students at the Seattle campus stormed out of classes at midday to protest President Bush's inauguration. They marched through the campus, pounding on doors and encouraging others to leave. Then they came upon the recruiters.
One of the recruiters involved in the confrontation, Sgt. Jeffrey Due, said he was stunned how quickly things got out of hand. "I was in outright shock that they were protesting me," he said. Due had been warned about the student walk-out demonstration, but said he didn't expect that kind of trouble. "They were all going by making off-hand comments and saying 'no war.' We just waved at them," Due said. "Five minutes later, there was just a mob of 500 people surrounding the table."
Due said he was hit in the head with newspapers, and water bottles whizzed by, pounding the vending machine and wall behind him. They swarmed us, grabbing our stuff and ripping it apart, Due told Army Times. They yelled at us to leave, but I told them we were staying. We belonged there.
That's when protesters began pelting the soldiers with whatever they could grab, including the recruiting materials they had snatched from the table. . .
The crowd wouldn't relent, and the two sides were locked in a standoff for 10 tense minutes before city police and college security arrived. Due said the police asked the soldiers to help end the situation by leaving. They agreed and were escorted off campus. . .
Staff Sgt. Amedeo Trotta, who has been on recruiting duty for more than five years, said he has seen anti-military actions increase since the beginnings of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He works in college towns throughout upstate New York. Although his campus visits have generally gone well, he has still endured attacks when dealing with students.
Once, when he was walking in uniform with two students near Ithaca College in New York, a man wielding a 2-by-4 confronted him. Ithaca is home to several universities. The man began yelling at the students, Trotta said, threatening them. The man asked the students why they were consorting with a soldier when there were others overseas killing for oil. . .
Recruiting on college campuses may get even more difficult now that an appellate court recently overturned the Solomon Amendment, which required educational institutions receiving federal aid to grant access to military recruiters. After the ruling was issued, Harvard Law School was quick to change its policy to one that bars military recruiters from campus.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 5:53 AM
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