Undernews For March 24, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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Editor: Sam Smith

24 March 2009

WORD
If the human body's obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me. - Larry Flynt

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

HAS WASHINGTON GONE MAD?
Sam Smith

Has Washington gone mad? Certainly there are other factors affecting political matters, but if you are feeling that those in charge - regardless of party - are strangely disconnected from reality, you may be on to something.

When Washington is engaged in something absurd - like starting or escalating a bad war - its establishment coalesces around a set of presumptions of questionable logic and then approves - with the media's strong support - huge sums to test them.

One cause of this dysfunctional behavior is the great power vested in the capital. Among the advantages of such power is that you can blow a large number of bucks and bodies on a problem before you finally have to face the fact that what you're doing isn't working.

For example, soon after September 11, our leaders and much of our media drew the conclusion that our salvation lay in world dominance - in empire.

Within just days we moved from tragic reality to delusional myth. Empires don't have their major military and economic icons damaged or destroyed by a handful of young men with box cutters. Empires don't turn suddenly phobic at everything foreign, everything sharp, every place crowded. Empires don't jettison their Constitution and turn on their own people out of blind fear. Empires don't get hopelessly bogged down invading two small countries - one which had a military budget less than two percent of ours, the other with a gross domestic product smaller than the cost of the bombs we were dropping on it.

Something similar happened in Vietnam. The journalist Bernard Fall early in the conflict noted that the French, after their failed battle at Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

The same was true of the hugely expensive war on drugs, which has been going on for over three decades and only now is it becoming somewhat acceptable to say so.

Now we are launched on a bailout of our financial system that no one can explain, no one knows where the money is going, and no one knows who is really going to benefit. An inordinate amount seems to be going to the wealthiest corners of the country while Congress and the White House remain stunningly indifferent to the more modest yet more critical needs of ordinary Americans. It all doesn't make sense but few seem interested in having it do so.

If you start to apply logic, it just doesn't work. It's not unlike those struggles one occasionally has trying to introduce the real into a fitful dream. The fantasy grabs back control all too easily.

Driving the fantasy are comforting words like stimulus and a trillion here, a trillion there. After all, how can you spend a trillion and not have it work? Unless it doesn't.

The irony is that Washington loves to define others as mad - the Palestinian insurgent, the skeptic concerning some badly resolved mystery such as the JFK death, an Illinois governor engaged in what seems now to be a somewhat modest scam, or - most recently - those fearful and crazy "populists" who have the nerve to be furious over what's going on.

By Washington's standards, insanity is the disease of the weak. Just look at the difference in the way the Governor Blago and the Bernie Madoff scandals have been handled: Blago is crazy but Madoff is just an evil genius.

The key issue is power. By the capital's rules, the powerful may be wrong, they may be corrupt, they may even be naive, but they may not be insane, because that would cut too close to the bone, threatening the widely accepted Washington thesis that power proves wisdom.

One way to help figure out what's going on is to count the bodies. Healthy people don't leave a trail of victims as they go through life. On the other hand, the disordered, no matter how convincing their claim to normalcy or how noble their purported purpose, produce a wake that tells a different story. The body count of the fiscal crisis is not comforting.

At the moment, much of Washington seems to be run by two groups: the crazy and those afraid to challenge the crazy. The latter group sadly includes our president, who owes his election in part to those who created the fiscal mess and relies on advisors who contributed to it. Saner economic voices are found on the Internet but not at the White House.

For those outside the capital and not responsible for the current crisis, knowing that a significant portion of what's happening isn't going to help or will help the wrong people, isn't based on logic and isn't being pursued in a rational fashion, may not be of much comfort. But it may save some time and angst searching for logical solutions in barren fields and guide our efforts elsewhere. Such as to an approach more like those of those fearful and crazy populists - the ones who started the fight for the graduated income tax, election of the Senate by direct vote, civil service reform, pensions and the eight hour workday. Now there's insanity we can believe in.

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THE RISE OF AN AMERICAN YOUTH JUNGEN
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - DeKalb County school officials are forging ahead with plans to open a first-of-its-kind military-style public high school, despite a growing campaign by activists upset at the involvement of the U.S. Marines.

"It's the worst thing that's ever happened in Georgia education," said Michael Burke, a DeKalb resident and spokesman for the Georgia Veterans Alliance, a group that aligns itself with the work of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, among others. "The whole thing is just a ploy" to help the Marines recruit, Burke said. "We expect to fight it tooth and nail.". . .

"This is not a training ground to send kids into the military," said DeKalb schools Superintendent Crawford Lewis, whose system, with 99,700 students, is the state's third-largest. "My job is not to look after a portion of children but all the children. One size does not fit all. For the mom who believes her child is capable of going to college but lacks discipline, this is a choice."

A DeKalb school spokesman said Monday the system has hired a commandant for the school, which system officials hope to open in August. The commandant was selected from a list of three candidates from the Marines. .

The DeKalb Marine Corps Institute will be the first of its kind in Georgia, and joins an expanding network of such schools nationwide. The first public military academy opened in Richmond, Va., in 1980, and more than a dozen now exist in places from New York to Wisconsin.

One proponent has been Arne Duncan, recently nominated as the nation's education secretary after leading the Chicago public school system since 2001. Chicago opened the nation's first public high school run by the Army's Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and now features six full-site military academies, among other military-style programs.

DeKalb officials say their school will combine academics with a military-style regimen for as many as 650 ninth- through 12th-graders. The school's commandant will handle anything not related to academic instruction. A principal will be hired to handle academics, which includes a focus on math and science.

According to Lewis, the Marines would share costs of operating the school, including paying for teacher salaries. DeKalb would pay for benefits.

Andy Kroll, Tom Dispatch - Duncan leaves behind a Windy City legacy that's hardly cause for optimism, emphasizing as it does a business-minded, market-driven model for education. If he is a "reformer," his style of management is distinctly top-down, corporate, and privatizing. It views teachers as expendable, unions as unnecessary, and students as customers.

Disturbing as well is the prominence of Duncan's belief in offering a key role in public education to the military. Chicago's school system is currently the most militarized in the country, boasting five military academies, nearly three dozen smaller Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within existing high schools, and numerous middle school Junior ROTC programs. More troubling yet, the military academies he's started are nearly all located in low-income, minority neighborhoods. This merging of military training and education naturally raises concerns about whether such academies will be not just education centers, but recruitment centers as well. . .

Today, the flagship projects in CPS's militarization are its five military academies, affiliated with either the Army, Navy, or Marines. All students -- or cadets, as they're known -- attending one of these schools are required to enroll as well in the academy's Junior ROTC program. That means cadets must wear full military uniforms to school everyday, and undergo daily uniform inspections. As part of the academy's curriculum, they must also take a daily ROTC course focusing on military history, map reading and navigation, drug prevention, and the branches of the Department of Defense. . .

CPS also boasts almost three dozen smaller Junior ROTC programs within existing high schools that students can opt to join, and over 20 voluntary middle school Junior ROTC programs. All told, between the academies and the voluntary Junior ROTC programs, more than 10,000 students are enrolled in a military education program of some sort in the CPS system. Officials like Duncan and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley justify the need for the military academies by claiming they do a superlative job teaching students discipline and providing them with character-building opportunities. "These are positive learning environments," Duncan said in 2007. "I love the sense of leadership. I love the sense of discipline." . . .

Without a doubt, teaching students about discipline and leadership is an important There is obviously a correlation between these low-income, minority communities, the military academies being established in them, and the long-term recruitment needs of the U.S. military. The schools essentially function as recruiting tools, despite the expectable military disclaimers.

The Chicago Tribune typically reported in 1999 that the creation of the system's first military school in the historically black community of Bronzeville grew, in part, out of "a desire for the military to increase the pool of minority candidates for its academies." And before the House Armed Services Committee in 2000, the armed services chiefs of staff testified that 30%-50% of all Junior ROTC cadets later enlist in the military. Organizations opposing the military's growing presence in public schools insist that it's no mistake the number of military academies in Chicago is on the rise at a time when the U.S. military has had difficulty meeting its recruitment targets while fighting two unpopular wars.

OUR MEXICAN DRUG POLICY REPEATS THE SORRY STORY OF PROHIBITION
Bruce Mirken, Alternet - Like it or not, marijuana is a massive industry. Some 100 million Americans admit to government survey-takers that they've used it, with nearly 15 million acknowledging use in the past month.

That's a huge market -- more Americans than will buy a new car or truck this year, or that bought one last year. Estimates based on U.S. government figures have pegged marijuana as the number one cash crop in America, with a value exceeding corn and wheat combined.

Our current policies are based on the fantasy that we can somehow make this massive industry go away. That's about as likely as the Tooth Fairy paying off the national debt.

We haven't stopped marijuana use -- indeed, federal statistics show a roughly 4,000 percent rise since the first national ban took effect in 1937 -- but we have handed a virtual monopoly on production and distribution to criminals, including those brutal Mexican gangs. . .

We've seen this movie before. During the 13 dark years of alcohol Prohibition, ruthless gangsters like Al Capone and "Bugs" Moran had a monopoly on the lucrative booze market. So lucrative, in fact, that these scoundrels would routinely gun each other down rather than let a competitor share their territory. Sound familiar?

Today, the bloodbath is taking place in cities like Tijuana and Juarez, Mexico, but it's beginning to spill across our border. Prohibition simply doesn't work - not in the 1930s and not now. . .

The situation is so intolerable that three former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have recently joined the chorus calling for a shift in U.S. marijuana policy.

There is no reason to believe that our nation's current marijuana policies are reducing the use and availability of marijuana. Indeed, in the Netherlands -- where, since the mid 1970s, adults have been permitted to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses -- the rate of marijuana use is less than half of ours, according to a recent World Health Organization study. More importantly, the percentage of teens trying marijuana by age 15 in the Netherlands is roughly one-third the U.S. rate.

By taking marijuana out of the criminal underground and regulating and taxing it as we do beer, wine and liquor, we can cut the lifeline that makes these Mexican drug gangs so large and powerful. And at the same time we'll have a level of control over marijuana production and distribution that is impossible under prohibition.

"COLD FUSION" BACK IN PLAY AS "LOW ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTION"
Agence France Presse - Researchers at a US Navy laboratory have unveiled what they say is "significant" evidence of cold fusion, a potential energy source that has many skeptics in the scientific community.

The scientists described what they called the first clear visual evidence that low-energy nuclear reaction, or cold fusion devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists say are indicative of nuclear reactions.

"Our finding is very significant," said analytical chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss of the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (in San Diego, California.

"To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from a LENR device," added the study's co-author in a statement.

The study's results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The city is also the site of an infamous presentation on cold fusion 20 years ago by Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons that sent shockwaves across the world. Despite their claim to cold fusion discovery, the Fleishmann-Pons study soon fell into discredit after other researchers were unable to reproduce the results.

Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss's published work, said the study did not provide a plausible explanation of how cold fusion could take place in the conditions described.

"It fails to provide a theoretical rationale to explain how fusion could occur at room temperatures. And in its analysis, the research paper fails to exclude other sources for the production of neutrons," he told the Houston Chronicle.

"The whole point of fusion is, you're bringing things of like charge together. As we all know, like things repel, and you have to overcome that repulsion somehow."

But Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, said the study was "big" and could open a new scientific field.

The neutrons produced in the experiments "may not be caused by fusion but perhaps some new, unknown nuclear process," added Krivit, who has monitored cold fusion studies for the past 20 years.

"We're talking about a new field of science that's a hybrid between chemistry and physics."

The back story . . .

For quite a few years now, the Review has been a lonely voice pointing out that, contrary to near unanimous media ridicule, there were responsible scientific figures still investigating cold fusion, not a few of them in other countries including Japan and India, but also including the US Navy

Sam Smith, Progressive Review, 1992 - You may recall the flurry of stories three years ago about that miracle of physics, cold fusion, that turned out, we were told, to be a flop, if not a scientific fraud. That's where the American media left us, but in the process may be missing one of the biggest stories of our time.

Despite an American media blackout on the subject, there are at present some 200 scientists around the world actively studying cold fusion. The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., which does research for the electric utilities, has spent $2 million on cold fusion research since 1989 and budgeted another $3 million to be spent in 1992.

On January 27, top cold fusion researchers gathered in Nagoya, Japan, to bear a series of reports on cold fusion projects. Major Japanese newspaper covered the event.

The Japanese, it is estimated, are spending $10-$15 million a year on cold fusion research and the leading journal Bungeishunju says that cold fusion "is no longer open to discussion. Cold fusion experiments and replication left those levels of doubt a long time ago, and entered a more concrete stage of development. Anyone who still says, 'such nonsense, it can't be!' is simply not looking at reality.

Meanwhile, in the United States, no federal or state money is being spent on cold fusion and as recently as last November The Washington Post ran a review by the director of the American Physical Society that attacked the cold fusionists with less than scientific reserve:

"If everyone knows it is wrong, why are they doing it? Inept scientists whose reputations would be tarnished, greedy administrators.... gullible politicians who had squandered the taxpayers' dollars, lazy journalists... - all had an interest in making it appear that the issue had not been settled. Their easy corruption was one of the most chilling aspects of this sad comedy. To be sure, there are true believers among the cold-fusion acolytes, just as there are sincere scientists who believe in psychokinesis, flying saucers, creationism and the Chicago Cubs. A Phd in sciences is not inoculation against foolishness. - or mendacity."

When Jed Rothwell, who heads Cold Fusion Research Advocates, asked the editor of Scientific American why his journal had not covered the cold fusion story, he described it as "pathological science" with no merit whatsoever.

Yet the Japanese version of the same publication ran a two-page story in March. And the signers of a petition to Congress to hold hearings on the matter include the names of a Nobel Laureate in physics; scientists from MIT, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Tufts, the US Army, Rockwell, Dow, and Motorola; the chair of the atomic energy commission of India, and leading scientists in Japan, China and Russia.

Will cold fusion pan out? Who knows? But the indifference of the media, Congress and the Bush administration to an idea that is being treated seriously in as serious a country as Japan, that even has attracted the attention of the American utility industry, seems strange at best. At worst, it could provide highly dramatic evidence that America's genius for invention and discovery is well on the wane.

Proeeting gressive Review, 2004 - At the March of the American Physical Society there will be 14 papers delivered in a session on cold fusion. This isn't the first time there has been such a session, and cold fusion has also been considered a respectable subject at the American Chemical Society. Reports cold fusion advocate Ed Wall, "They have been presenting at APS for a number of years, as well as the American Chemical Society. They generally do not generate much of a turnout, but because the scientists doing the CF research are in good standing in such organizations, and the methods employed are standard stuff and quality of the work they do appears to be good, they were able to argue (that they should be allowed to present their work."

There is one place, however, where cold fusion is not permitted to be discussed or debated: the American press. Says Wall: "Once CF started getting treated as a serious science, not just by a strong-willed minority of appropriately credentialed scientists, but by scientific and engineering establishments around the world (Japan), it appeared as more than bizarre that it was still considered heresy in the US."

Cold fusion is far from the first new scientific idea to get the cold shoulder both from scientists, the establishment and the media. Galileo's problems are well known but in a Nobel Laureates talk last June titled "Pathological Disbelief," Brian D. Josephson, a physicist from the University of Cambridge Lecture, gave some other examples.

Cold Confusion

New Energy Times - Low energy nuclear reaction research investigates a possible new form of clean nuclear energy and nuclear transmutations. This subject was formerly called cold fusion. LENR does not produce greenhouse gases, strong prompt radiation or long-lived radioactive wastes. The fuel is deuterium or hydrogen, which is abundantly available in ocean water. The dominant reaction product is helium-4, which is harmless.

Low energy nuclear reactions can occur at or near ordinary room temperature. The term "cold fusion" was applied to this field of research initially by the press, not by its discoverers. Many people thought and still believe that it is a form of fusion; however, this claim is speculative.

Initially, the term "cold fusion" distinguished this research from thermonuclear fusion or plasma fusion. Thermonuclear fusion experiments require multimillion-degree temperatures. Since 1951, when thermonuclear fusion research began in the U.S., researchers have not succeeded in generating any useful amounts of energy.

The term "cold fusion " was never ideal to describe low energy nuclear reactions, because it implied that they were just a colder form of thermonuclear fusion, which they are not. The term was adopted by the media in 1989. . . LENR's benign byproducts distinguish them from thermonuclear fusion and a variety of other nuclear experiments that also can run in room-temperature laboratories. . .

A variety of models has been proposed to explain LENR, some speculate the mechanism as fusion, others do not.

What does the terminology Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions and Condensed Matter Nuclear Science mean?

Condensed matter nuclear science includes multiple subject matters including low energy nuclear reactions, an entirely new branch of science that gained widespread attention beginning in 1989 with the Fleischmann-Pons "cold fusion" announcement at the University of Utah.

Condensed matter nuclear science studies nuclear effects in and/or on condensed matter, targeting its application for portable clean nuclear sources. It is an inter- and multidisciplinary academic field encompassing nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, surface physics and chemistry, and electrochemistry. CMNS applications involve many other fields as well, including nuclear engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, laser science and engineering, material science, nanotechnology and biotechnology.

What mistakes did Fleischmann and Pons make and why was cold fusion initially thought to be a mistake?

Fleischmann and Pons introduced an entirely new field of science. It didn't belong to physics; it didn't belong to chemistry. It was somewhere between them. A turf battle started the day it was announced.

Cold fusion appeared to contradict known nuclear fusion theory; nuclear reactions at room temperature were generally unheard of before Fleischmann and Pons. The reactions were viewed as inconceivable, impossible. The two men were looked on as heretics. They were also regarded as making reckless, unsupported, unscientific claims, and this won them no respect from the community of nuclear scientists whose work was affected by their speculations. But as history has shown, a new phenomenon is often a surprise, and its social, historical, scientific and technological significance can take years to comprehend.

Although Fleischmann and Pons were the first to introduce the subject of low energy nuclear reactions to the world, they were not the first to perform related research. Their research followed that of Fritz Paneth and Kurt Peters in 1926, Nobel Prize winner in physics Percy Bridgman in 1929, and physicist Alfred Coehn in 1947. Paneth and Peters subsequently renounced their claim, but only after being the targets of great hostility and outrage from the science establishment. . .

Making matters worse for Fleischmann and Pons were numerous problems with the way they and the University of Utah administrators introduced the discovery to the world. Scientists are expected to be cautious and conservative, particularly when public trust is an issue. When Pons stated at the March 23, 1989 press conference: "We've established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction," he and Fleischmann couldn't have looked more ridiculous and suspect in the eyes of most of the world's nuclear physicists.

Their failure to sufficiently inform and share information with their peers caused an enormous amount of animosity. They also extrapolated their observations and this resulted in an exaggeration of their claims. Fleischmann and Pons made it sound like cold fusion was an easy experiment; this couldn't have been further from the truth. Consequently, thousands of scientists around the world hurried off to try to make Utah fusion, and when they failed, their anger fueled the already-burning hostility against Fleischmann and Pons. Lastly, Fleischmann and Pons made a significant error in their neutron measurements that initially led some critics to dismiss the entire set of observations, including the claim of excess heat. . .

The basic and most significant claim of Fleischmann and Pons, that of excess energy in the form of heat, was never disproved, despite myths to the contrary. However, the theory that Fleischmann and Pons proposed was clearly wrong, and their claim for significant neutron emissions also was found to be invalid. This discouraged many scientists from paying further attention to the field.

The result, after the 1989 chaos, was that the media and a large part of mainstream science ignored a fundamentally new nuclear process for many years. . .

A major turning point occurred in 2004 when the U.S. Department of Energy took a second look at LENR. Although the official government response was lukewarm, the attention sparked new interest in the subject worldwide.

EMANUEL WANTS DENIAL OF 2ND AMENDMENT RIGHTS TO THOSE ON NO FLY LIST
Despite its notorious inaccuracy and total lack of constitutional procedure, Rahm Emanuel in a speech two years ago called for the denial of 2nd Amendment rights - specifically the right to own a hand gun - to anyone on the no fly list.

Some past stories. . . .

Penn Live - A Gulf War veteran and his wife say they've been unfairly placed on a federal list that limits their commercial flight access and threatens his job as a commercial pilot. To fight back, the couple, who are Muslim, filed a lawsuit against a host of U.S. government agencies. "We don't know why they're on the list. They don't know why they're on the list. The government won't tell us why they're on the list," said Amy Foerster, an attorney with Saul Ewing, who is providing pro bono counsel and working with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Schuylkill County couple on the case, which was filed in U.S. district court. The suit filed against the U.S. departments of Homeland Security and Justice and the FBI, among others, is "unique" because Erich Scherfen, a New Jersey native who converted to Islam in the mid-1990s, is a commercial airline pilot whose flight privileges were revoked in April, said Witold Walczak, the legal director of the state ACLU chapter.

On Sept. 1, Scherfen will be terminated by his employer, Colgan Air, despite the airline's cooperation. "My livelihood depends on getting off this list," Scherfen said. What list he is on and which government entity maintains it is unclear, Walczak said. The federal government has declined to acknowledge flight restrictions placed on the pilot.

But Scherfen says he and his wife, Pakistan-born Rubina Tareen, have been detained for hours on several occasions in airports and even border crossings and been told by airport ticket agents and security personnel that they're on a "terrorist watch list."

CNN - James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country. He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government's defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane.

But there's one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government's terrorist "watch list."

That means he can't use an airport kiosk to check in; he can't do it online; he can't do it curbside. Instead, like thousands of Americans whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.

"Shocking's a good word; frustrating," Robinson -- the pilot -- said. "I'm carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I'm still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list."

The American Civil Liberties Union estimates more than 1 million names have been added to the watch list since the September 11 attacks.

The FBI, which manages the Terrorist Screening Database, disputes that figure. It says that there are about 400,000 actual people on the list and that about 95 percent of those people are not U.S. citizens.

"There's going to come a point in time where everybody's on the list," Robinson said.

WHY BANK RAGE IS NOT POPULISM
Unsilent Generation - The cover of Newsweek on the stands today reads "The Thinking Man's Guide to Populist Rage." . . . The issue is filled with serious essays on the subject, by Michael Kazin, Eliot Spitzer, and others. And in this morning's New York Times, John Harwood makes similar claims, painting people's anger at Wall Street as part of a populist resurgence. Harwood's most prominent source is, of all people, Ed Rollins, the Republican strategist whose credentials on the subject consist of working on the campaign of faux-populist Ross Perot.

One person not quoted in these pieces is the original, and still unequaled, historian of populism, Lawrence Goodwyn. He identified the first populist movement?-the agrarian revolt of the 1890s-as the greatest mass movement in American history, and as a largely unfulfilled dream. Goodwyn's 1978 book, The Populist Moment, is still in print and well worth reading, both for its stirring history and its insights into what is going on today-and what isn't going onn.

Goodwyn traces the Populist Movement to its origins in the rural depression after the Civil War, when farmers formed clubs that fought the monopolistic railroad rates set by the big Eastern railroads, to the detriment of Southern and Western farmers. By the 1870s these clubs had grown in number and size, forming themselves into Farmers Alliances, which engaged in all sorts of cooperative action, from catching horse thieves to buying supplies. By the 1890s, the alliances had a combined membership of more than one million people and were in the thick of politics, fighting railroad rates, fighting the big cattle operators, demanding taxes on speculative landholdings, defending local merchants, and demanding paper money to replace the gold standard.

Most significantly, in relation to today's economic crisis, the alliances believed they needed to wrest control of credit, and of the money supply in general, from the hands of bankers and other blood-sucking plutocrats, and place it in the hands of the farmers and laborers who were the real producers of wealth. . . ."

As an alternative, the populists proposed what they called the "sub-treasury plan," under which a new monetary system would be created and operated "in the name of the whole people," and credit would be freely extended to farmers, small producers, and other ordinary citizens. The plan represented a genuine challenge to the commercial banking industry, and to big corporations in general. .

But the revolt collapsed, for a myriad of reasons: It failed in its efforts to build alliances with industrial labor unions and with black farmers in the South. And it was deprived of its driving force when economic conditions improved. Some rebellious farmers went home to the Republican Party; others splintered off into generally futile local movements. Certain populist ideas were gradually worked into the overall economy-railroad regulation, some banking reform, direct election of senators, postal savings banks, initiatives and referendums, and an expanded concept of currency.

But in fact, the movement's co-optation into the mainstream politics of the Progressive Era was what cemented its demise. Goodwyn sees these reforms as "skin-deep parodies of the original ideals." As he puts it, what happened was "a consolidation of our current political culture, framed by the narrow aspirations of 'reform,'-falling within the labels of 'progressive or 'liberal.' No one would ever again challenge the basic structures of the political economy." . . .

What's going on today bears little resemblance to the great surge of political organizing that began in and spread through the South and West in the 1890s. . .

THE POLICE 'HOOD
Robert Neuwirth, City Limits - I spent 24 hours in the slammer the other day. My crime? Well, the police couldn’t tell me when they locked me up. The prosecutor and judge couldn't either, when I was arraigned the following day. I found out for myself when I researched the matter a few days after being released: I had been cited for walking my dog off the leash - once, six years ago.

Welcome to the ugly underside of the zero-tolerance era, where insignificant rule violations get inflated into criminal infractions. Here's how it worked with me: a gaggle of transit cops stopped me after they saw me walk between two subway cars on my way to work. This, they told me, was against the rules. They asked for ID and typed my name into a hand-held computer. Up came that old citation that I didn't know about and they couldn't tell me about. I was immediately handcuffed and brought to the precinct. There, I waited in a holding cell, then was fingerprinted and had the contents of my shoulder bag inventoried. I could hardly believe it: I was being arrested without ever having committed a crime. . .

I was held overnight in the Midtown North Precinct lock-up (shoelaces and belt confiscated, meals courtesy of the McDonald's dollar menu). In the morning, my fellow convicts and I were led, chain-gang style, to the Manhattan Community Court next door. The judge there dismissed the charge against me - because no one ever does time for that kind of crime. A few days later, at Brooklyn's central court, my warrant was lifted for "time served" - again because no one is ever locked up for breaking the leash law. . .

With zero tolerance, we have finally done it: We have criminalized everyday life. After all, in the course of their life people sometimes ride their bikes on the sidewalks. And once upon a time not too long ago, it was normal to go into the parks after dark. My friends and I did all the time, particularly if we had time to kill before or after the opera, the symphony, or a jazz or rock concert. We walked brazenly between subway cars. Some of us even - horror of horrors - played music on the street or in the subway without a license. And, though my parents would not be happy to know it even now, we sometimes drank beer in public - making sure, in an important but legally meaningless gesture, that the bottle was in a paper bag. If I did any of this on a regular basis today, I'd probably be considered a behavioral recidivist and sent to Riker's Island.

After a dip in 2002, the number of "quality of life" summonses rose under Mayor Bloomberg to more than 700,000 in fiscal 2004. They've declined since then to 527,000 in fiscal 2008-still higher than under the previous mayor. . . In 2007, the last year for which the court system published statistics, the number of arraignments for infractions and violations was the highest in 10 years - 20 percent greater than the previous year.

CRASH TALK
Tim Wood, Financial Sense - With the average American consumer tapped out, ask yourself a common sense question. How, are these bailout plans going to stimulate aggregate demand? Did the balance in your checking account increase because of any of these efforts? Did the liability side of your balance sheet change? Do you suddenly feel the urge to go borrow more money or to make a major purchase? As I see it, these efforts are not reaching the consumer and therefore, this is not going to stimulate demand. What it is doing is saving the financial institutions that made the bad loans.

Sacramento Bee - More than 31,000 personal and business bankruptcy petitions were filed in the Eastern District of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2008, an increase of 79 percent over 2007's filings, according to a report released by the federal court. The caseload is such that callers to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento are greeted with a message that says clerical staff are too busy to speak with them. "We have never experienced increases with the number of percent we're seeing," said Richard Heltzel, clerk at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California, based in Sacramento. "With unemployment comes the loss of health insurance - so many of our bankruptcies are triggered by uninsured health care costs," Heltzel said. "I expect to see close to 40,000 cases this year."

Paul Krugman, NY Times - The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system - that what we're facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved. . .

In effect, Treasury will be creating - deliberately - the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn't, that's someone else's problem. . .

Dollars & Sense - Over 2 million properties went into foreclosure proceedings last year, a number that experts fear could jump to 10 million in the next few years. Foreclosures aren't just pushing owners into the street. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, renters make up an estimated 40% of families facing eviction because of foreclosure. And because the shakiest loans are concentrated in inner cities, the impact of vacant buildings on already fragile neighborhoods can be devastating. . . . Families facing eviction are left to fend for themselves, often with little understanding of their legal rights or other options

OBAMA SIDES WITH RECORDING INDUSTRY BULLIES
Slashdot - The Obama Administration's Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old.

Its oversized, 39-page brief relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision - rather than the Supreme Court's more recent decisions involving punitive damages - was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages.

Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the government brief asked the judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?

NEWS FROM THE COLONIES: U.S. TO DEMOTE KARZAI
Guardian, UK - The US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.

The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August. . .

As well as watering down Karzai's personal authority by installing a senior official at the president's side capable of playing a more efficient executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul. .

The risk for the US is that the imposition of a technocrat alongside Karzai would be viewed as colonialism, even though that figure would be an Afghan. Karzai declared his intention last week to resist a dilution of his power. Last week he accused an unnamed foreign government of trying to weaken central government in Kabul.

"That is not their job," the Afghan president said. "Afghanistan will never be a puppet state."

HOLBROOKE CALLS AFGHAN ANTI-DRUG POLICY MOST WASTEFUL HE'S SEEN
Times UK - President Obama is planning an overhaul of the ineffective anti-drugs policy in Afghanistan as Washington prepares to announce the non-military side of its strategy to defeat the Taleban. Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to the region, announced at the weekend that Congress would soon be asked for funds to rebuild the Afghan economy. . .

The biggest disaster, according to Mr Holbrooke, is the botched antinarcotics programme that has failed to stop Afghanistan supplying most of the world's heroin. Mr Obama is expected to announce his strategy for Afghanistan this week before the 60th anniversary summit of Nato in April.

"The United States alone is spending over $800 million a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing," Mr Holbrooke told the Brussels Forum on Saturday. "It is the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years.". . .

According to US government figures, last month Afghanistan supplied 90 per cent of the heroin in the world. "By forced eradication we are often pushing farmers into the Taleban hands," Mr Holbrooke said. "We are going to try to reprogramme that money. About $160 million is for alternate livelihoods and we would like to increase that."

AUTO PLANE IN THE WORKS

MSNBC - Terrafugia's Transition is part-car, part-airplane. . . The vehicle successfully completed its first test flight earlier this month, the company announced.

The flight was short -- just 37 seconds -- and right over the runway, but as Anna Mracek Dietrich, a Terrafugia co-founder and its chief operating officer, pointed out, flying wasn't the key goal

"The first flight is great, but first landing is what matters," she told Discovery News.

That apparently went well too, according to Phil Mateer, a retired Air Force test pilot . . . "The flight was remarkably unremarkable," Mateer said. . .

The goal is to create an airplane that can be driven to and from a runway and parked in the family garage at night. Transition runs on regular unleaded gasoline and can travel up to 500 miles on a single tank of gas. It takes less than 30 seconds for the vehicle's wings to fold up or extend to transform from plane to car or vice-versa.

The company plans to begin selling the vehicles, which cost $194,000, in 2010, said Richard Gersh, Terrafugia's vice president of business development. The company has taken deposits for 40 vehicles already, Deitrich said.

OBAMA ALIGNS HIMSELF WITH RIGHT WING OF DEMOCRATS
Politico - President Barack Obama firmly resists ideological labels, but at the end of a private meeting with a group of moderate Democrats on, he offered a statement of solidarity. "I am a New Democrat," he told the New Democrat Coalition, according to two sources at the White House session. . . The self-descriptions are striking given Obama's usual caution in being identified with any wing of his often-fractious party. He largely avoided the Democratic Leadership Council . . . As recently as last week, he steadfastly refused to define his governing philosophy. .

Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report - Back in 1984 and 1988 the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns scared the living daylights out of the white Democratic Party establishment. What frightened the good old white boys in charge of the Democratic Party most wasn't Jackson's poetic oratory or the color of his face. It was the middle and end of the Reagan era, and tens of millions of Americans, including white ones, were ready and eager for a deep and thoroughgoing change in the nation's politics. .

The mostly white bosses of the Democratic party a quarter century ago and today, prefer a Democratic base that votes, and then goes away after the elections, one that allows them to do the talking instead of speaking and moving for itself, a Democratic base that will not and cannot hold its elected representatives to any standard of articulating and carrying out the people's will for peace abroad and economic justice at home.he said it

The threat to Democratic party leaders faded after the '84 and '88 elections, when Jackson demobilized his people into the existing structures of the Democratic party. But the lesson was not lost on Democratic Party leaders. In the wake of the small-d democratic upsurge of the 1980s they cemented their hold on the Democratic Party by founding the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC assured them access to the same sources of corporate funding as Republicans, and on the same basis. As long as Democrats carried the water of big insurance, big pharma, the airlines, the energy companies and Wall Street, as long as DLC-funded candidates could speak for the party's base rather than allowing that base to speak for itself, and as along as the Democratic base was sent home between elections, Democrats would be assured a steady stream of corporate funding. "The so-called New Democrats with whom Barack Obama identifies are, next to the House Blue Dogs, the most rightwing of Democratic reps in Congress, with considerable overlap between the two groups.". . .

New Democrats supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and continual increases in the military budget. They all supported the bailout, and uphold No Child Left Behind and favor the gradual dismantling and privatization of public education in the US which NCLB set in motion. New Democrats are tepid at best on the Employee Free Choice Act. . .

And despite the fact that single payer health care would create 2.6 million new jobs and cover all the uninsured while costing no more than the present and profoundly broken health care system, New Democrats prefer a healthy private insurance sector to a healthy population. .

New Democrats favor throwing trillions at banks to "revive" the economy, but are willing to cut or gut Social Security. All these policy positions, and the New Democrat label itself are the heritage of the Democratic Leadership Council, with which Obama was briefly affiliated early in his career, but forced to disavow. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a leading New Democrat in the Congress, has always been a stalwart of the Democratic Leadership Council. Emmanuel used corporate campaign cash to run pro-war Democrats against antiwar Democrats in 2006 and 2008.

The Democratic Leadership Council has always been "Republicans-lite," a pack of corporate funded Trojan Horses inside the Democratic Party responsible to their funders, and not to the Democratic Party's base. Now President Obama has assumed his place, as the leader of that pack.

Chris Cillizza, Washington Post - The recent retirement of Democratic Leadership Council chief executive Al From and the decoupling of the DLC and the Progressive Policy Institute, its longtime think tank, mark the first major changes at the organization in the better part of a decade. . .

One senior party strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the DLC has recently "had trouble finding a footing.". .

"The DLC's way of doing politics, of trying to blur the differences between us and Republicans, gave us a Republican majority, eight years of George W. Bush and little hope for victory," said Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos and a leading voice in the Net roots.

Others -- including newly named DLC President Bruce Reed -- vehemently dispute that characterization of the group, its mission and its relevance to the current political debate. "The Bush years were a lousy time for Democrats generally," Reed said in an interview with The Fix. "Other organizations thrive in opposition more than we do."

In a recent essay for Slate, Reed noted that President Obama had not only described himself as a "New Democrat" but also put forward a reform-minded agenda -- particularly on education -- that put him squarely in line with DLC values.

"From his education reform agenda to his team of pragmatists to his heavy emphasis on responsibility, Obama is leading the country the way he promised he would: neither to the left nor right but on a path that's new and different," Reed wrote.

Conversations with party strategists who take no firm position on the rise or decline of the DLC suggest that Reed's presence as the new face of the organization is likely to keep it relevant. Reed is close to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- the two worked together in the Clinton White House and co-wrote a book on "big ideas for America" titled "The Plan" in 2006 -- and they speak regularly over the phone. . .

BREVITAS



HARDWARE CHESS SET

POLICE BLOTTER

Michigan Live - State police have launched an investigation into the death of a teen whom police tased. The 15-year-old died about 3:40 a.m. Sunday after Bay City police used a stun gun to subdue him at an apartment on South Catherine near East John. Neighbors summoned authorities to quell a large fight, police said. When officers arrived, neighbors directed them to an apartment where they found two people arguing. Officers' attempts to diffuse the situation failed, police said. Police say they used the stun gun after the teen tried to fight with them and others in the apartment.

SPOOKY STUFF

Sunday Herald, Australia - The late President Milosevic's secret police chief and organizer of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92. The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region. Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. . . Like in a Cold War spy thriller, Serbia's secret police chief met his CIA handlers in safe houses, parks and boats on the river Sava to betray his master's action plans. He provided, it is claimed, information on the whereabouts of NATO hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for Muslim mass graves and helped the US set up secret bases in Bosnia to monitor the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace accord.

THE LOCAL

LA Times - Though people sometimes complained about the Carbondale Valley Journal, its demise came as a blow after 34 years as the mountain town's only newspaper. . . A friend of Rebecca Young's died and there was no obituary. "I didn't hear of his death for a couple of weeks," she said. "I was so sad I wasn't at his service." Young, who founded the newspaper in 1975 and ran it for five years before selling it, sent out an e-mail: Was anyone else upset? By the next day, she had 45 messages from people agreeing that something had to be done. So Young and six other residents started a new newspaper, the Sopris Sun, run as a nonprofit and staffed mostly by volunteers. The free weekly is named after a snow-capped peak towering over the Roaring Fork Valley. "It just beat the dickens out of sitting around whining that our paper was dead," Young said.

FROM OUR READERS
Excerpts from reader comments

TSA INTRODUCES MORE HASSLES FOR PASSENGERS

I empathize with all of you who have so much hassle at the airport with rude security screeners. I can't say as I share the problem though, since I fly by private jet when I need to travel distances where car travel isn't effective. Most of my business associates travel by private jet too. Our time is just plain too valuable to spend in airport delays. I would say that our travel has been a lot safer since the screening was instituted. Even though we travel by private jet, we still use many of the same facilities and would certainly be inconvenienced by a terror attack.

HOUSE APPROVES CONSIDERATION OF NATIONAL DRAFT

Service guarantees citizenship. - Sky Marshall Dienes

Any time this criminal Congress wants to take the people's wealth back off the billionaires who legally stole it to pay for the work that desperately needs to be done in this country, my kids will be happy to have a worthy job.

VOLCANOES

Volcanic ash enriches topsoil, adding valuable nutrients from Mother Earth that helps restore topsoil for growing healthy food. It is released into the atmosphere during seismic events and also helps reverse global warming. Following a large volcanic eruption, the sky may darken or turn red for a few days until rains wash this new ash blessing down from the skies. Until rains cleans the dust from the air, the fine stardust can seep through cracks in windows and doors. Covering one's mouth with a wet cloth or bandana, and open cracks with wet rags is beneficial for health and safety. Damage to automobiles may occur from driving in dusty conditions.
It is ideal, if possible, to remain indoors and help those in need of assitance by sharing food and water. - Mark

THE COST OF DISSIN' LABOR UNIONS

Only work produces wealth. A dollar bill cannot even fix you a cup of tea - only humans can, only humans produce and provide work products; goods and services. And all the works mankind has ever performed upon the earth were performed from work done by Mother Nature for everyone in equal shares. And only demand creates jobs. . . not rich people.

Maximum individual sacrifice of time and energies to working is limited, therefore the pool of wealth is finite. This means when one person is allowed to take from the pool of wealth more than he or she sacrificed to put in, then others are forced to take less than they put into the pool.

No one is working a billion, a million, or even a hundred times harder than the average person can work long term. . . it is physically impossible.

MASSACHUSETTS HEALTHCARE PLAN FAILING

Gingrich Care is a failure; it's the Massachusettes system that forces people to buy insurance at gunpoint, with private insurers to have free rein in denying care and pricing it out of the reach of people. Single-payer healthcare is a much more efficient plan.

If someone else goes w/o healthcare, it can affect you. For instance:

- Someone gets tuberculosis, but can't afford a doctor. They work with food, and expose people -- maybe your family -- every day to TB.

- Someone's been diagnosed with a seizure disorder, but they can't afford continuing to go to the doctor, or afford their meds. They continue driving to their job, to their child's school, to the grocery store, etc. They have a seizure behind the wheel and take not only themselves out, but another car full of a family that they plowed into.

- American businesses will never be competitive with businesses in other countries as long as healthcare is not a basic human right here; it's getting too expensive for many businesses to even offer healthcare bennies.

- Many businesses get rid of -- or won't hire -- anyone over 35-40, due to the extremely high healthcare insurance costs. That's a lot of people who are being idled -- who could be working -- in this economy.

- Think of the many people who'd go into business for themselves, if healthcare was guaranteed. Many people are stuck in jobs they'd rather leave, but cannot as they must stay for the healthcare bennies. That makes them virtually slaves, and too many businesses have no problem with that.

What we need is the same healthcare system that helps Bush and Cheney and Paul and Feingold to be extended to the rest of us. That would be the easiest way to do it. That and have the taxes on those that earn more than $108,000 to pay their fair share of Social Security and other taxes to even out the payments for all. Less bureaucracy so less paper work and with easy access we will need more doctors so the AMA needs to be relieved of their idea of rationing doctors for us. Less anxiety will also help everyone's overall health too. Health will go up as costs go down.

WHY IS AIG SO IMPORTANT?

Someone has pulled off the most elaborate heist in world history. I remember it being said that if you made the crime big enough, and in plain sight, you would not be able to convince anyone that it ever happened. That's exactly what has happened here with AIG and the banking industry in general. The sheer brilliance of it is mind boggling. Create and sell fraudulent securities on a scale so huge that you can blackmail nations to hand over additional trillions to keep you from bringing down the world economy. Brilliant. It actually worked. And no world leaders that I know of are willing to call the bluff. The sad part about all of this is that the world economy will crash anyway at some point.

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