Undernews For March 1, 2010

Undernews For March 1, 2010

Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it

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SHOP TALK

After 64 hours, conventional power is back on at the headquarters of the Progressive Review. About 33,000 other Mainers, however, remain off the grid.
Thursday night truly was a corker. About twelve miles from the Progressive Review's headquarters, they clocked winds of 94 mph. Can't remember winds that strong outside of a hurricane. But it was probably just some crazy liberal environmentalists messing with the wind gauge. - Sam

THE SILENT SURRENDER

Sam Smith

One of the scariest things about living in America these days is how few - especially in government and the media - seem to care about the things that used to define the place.

Thus there is hardly a murmur as the Senate approves by a voice vote the extension of the despicable Patriot Act or when Bush and Obama wreck the Fourth Amendment or as the latter increasingly treats the U.S. like a corporation he has taken over in a merger deal - with those who used to be considered citizens now just employees wondering how much longer they'll have a job.

What we have now is a silent surrender. No terrorists, no war, no revolution, just incremental capitulation led by those supposed to guard our rights and our freedoms.

A case in point is the mandatory mandate in the Democrat's health plan. The idea that the government can order how you spend your money in the private sector is unprecedented. No, auto insurance is not a parallel, since you don't have to drive a car on a public road. You do, - if you want to be human, that is - have to live.

There is one reason for this extraordinary plan: to avoid having to admit that the government would be raising taxes. In fact, the mandate is a tax on some of those least able to pay it and it would be one of the great tax increases in American history.

To understand the madness, consider that if the government can order you to pay a badly administered, fiscally irresponsible, avaricious corporation for some health insurance, that same government could order you to buy a computer for each of your children so they will be properly educated or purchase a condo for your aged parents. It could even close all public schools and fire stations and require you to pay tuition to corporate beneficiaries of its plan.

But the greatest madness is that no one is talking about this. Once again, as we have done so often in recent years, we are simply giving up our rights because there is no one in power to tell us what is really going on.

OBAMA PERFORMS TRIPLE AXEL ON PATRIOT ACT

Demonstrating his high skill at rotating three and a half times on key issues, Barack Obama has signed an extension on the Patriot Act. Here, in his own words, is where he was on the issue in 2005:

"This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law.. .When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary. They simply need sign-off from a local FBI official. That's all."

"And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document - through library books they've read and phone calls they’ve made â€" this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law.

"No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong."

HOUSE DEMOCRATS SUPPORT TORTURE

ANTI-WAR - In a vote which still broke down almost entirely around party lines, House Democrats managed to pass the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 by a vote of 235-168, a bill which will provide $50 billion in funding for classified intelligence operations.

The Democratic leadership only managed to win this passage after hastily removing the "Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Interrogation Act of 2010," an amendment to the funding act which would have criminalized the torture or other abuse of detainees. Interrogators violating a long list of very specific torture bans would have faced up to 15 years in prison, and a maximum of life in prison if they tortured the detainee to death.

It became clear last night that there were not enough votes to pass the act with the torture ban attached, after Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) angrily condemned the ban as "outrageous" and claimed that the funding act was supposed to be about "defending our nation, not giving greater protections to terrorists."

Though Hoekstra still voted against the bill even with the ban removed (as did every other Republican who voted except for Joseph Cao (R-LA)), the ruckus he raised over the torture ban led several centrist Democrats to voice their opposition to the ban as well, which would have made it impossible to pass the funding with the ban included.

CABLE NEWS OUTLETS NOT REVEALING CORPORATE TIES OF GUESTS

Since 2007, at least 75 registered lobbyists, public relations represenatives and corporate officials have appeared on cable news broadcasts "with no disclosure of the corporate interests that paid them," reports the Nation magazine.

Many of these people are "paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests," writes Sebastian Jones.

For example, Tom Ridge, identified as the former governor of Pennsylvania, appeared on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews urging the White House to "create nuclear power plants." What viewers were not told, though, is that Ridge since 2005 has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's biggest nuclear power company.

On the same day, last Dec. 4th, retired general Barry McCaffrey, told MSNBC viewers the war in Afghanistan would require a three-to-ten-year effort and "a lot of money." Unmentioned, Jones says, was the fact DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone and that DynCorp has a five-year, $5.9 billion deal to aid U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Jones describes MSNBC as "the cable network with the most egregious instances of airing guests with conflicts of interest." He notes, "Only on MSNBC was a prime-time program, Countdown, hosted by public relations operative Richard Wolffe and later by a pharmaceutical company consultant, former Governor Howard Dean, with no mention of the outside work either man was engaged in. And MSNBC has yet to introduce DynCorp's Barry McCaffrey as anything but a 'military analyst.'"

Moreover, last January 22nd, MSNBC's Morning Joe audience saw Mark Penn, identified only as a Clinton administration pollster, suggest the Obama administration put healthcare reform on ice. Unmentioned, says Jones, was "Penn's role as worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which has an entire healthcare division devoted to helping clients like Eli Lilly and Pfizer 'create and manage perceptions that deliver positive business results.'"

Jones reports that what transpires on MSNBC also occurs on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN and CNBC. During a Sept. 18 Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight Strategies---whose clients include marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy & Mather---lambasted Sen. John McCain for proposing to "Let AIG fail," saying his position demonstrated "just how little he understands the global economy today." Whitman's work for AIG was not mentioned.

REALITY CHECK: BIG EARTHQUAKES

THE GUARDIAN has a lot of interesting data about past earthquakes such as: "the most deadly earthquake to strike over the past 110 years hit Tangshan in China in July 1976. Measuring 7.5, the quake caused 255,000 deaths.

Over the past ten years the world has averaged about 15 earthquakes a year that were strength 7.0 or higher and about 1.4 a year that were strength 8.0 and higher. The world has average about 26,000 earthquakes a year with last year's total - 14,788 - being the lowest of the decade. If earthquakes continue at the rate of the first two months of 2010 the figure for the year will be even lower - around 10,000.

Death rates vary markedly, however, ranging from the over 200,000 this year and in 2004 to only 712 in 2007.

COUNTY SHERIFF INTERRUPTS CLASS TO CHIDE PROFESSOR

COLLEGE VOICE, MERCER COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE, NJ - Mercer County Sheriff Kevin C. Larkin and what appeared to be a female aide interrupted a State and Local Politics Class at Mercer's West Windsor Campus on February 1.

Associate Professor Michael Glass was conducting a discussion of what changes students would propose to the state budget to avoid the expected $2 billion shortfall. Some students suggested cutting the salaries of what they felt were overpaid state administrators.

The issue of state employees who "double dip" into state pension plans was raised during the class. Students asked Prof. Glass for a local example. At that point, Prof. Glass provided examples of several law enforcement officers, including Sheriff Larkin, who collects a Police and Fire Retirement System Pension as well as a government salary.

Information about Larkin's pension was widely publicized in the Times of Trenton May 23, 2009 article entitled "Pension eligibility spurs controversy" by Anthony Coleman. The article described how "Larkin was cashing in on a move allowed under the state's pension system: he can legally continue working as sheriff (at a $129,634 annual salary) while collecting a pension based on his 'retirement' from that very job."

As reported by Coleman, Larkin has been collecting an $85,000 annual pension since January 1, 2009 after retiring from the Sheriff's Office at the rank of Chief Sheriff's Officer, while concurrently earning a $129,634 salary as County Sheriff. . .

The comments were made at roughly 7:30PM, when Brooke Seidl, 26, a student and County Clerk, apparently informed Sheriff Larkin of Glass's comments, via text message. . .

At 8:18PM, Mercer security logs indicate that Sheriff Larkin called the FA-107 Dispatcher "needing to reach Prof. Michael Glass." An index card requesting Prof. Glass contact Larkin was delivered to MS-205 at 8:26 PM, during the class break, according to the logs.

Glass indicated that he believed the note to be a prank from one of the students. "I thought it was a joke," said Glass. After the break Glass dismissed the supposed prank and proceeded with his lecture.

At around 9:20, a half hour before the class's scheduled 9:50 end time, Sheriff Kevin C. Larkin, dressed in a trench coat, opened the door to Prof. Glass's classroom. According to one student attending the class that night, Max Grindlinger, "[Larkin] said, 'Michael, can I see you for a minute?"

According to Buckley, Grindlinger and another student, Diane Walker, Sheriff Larkin and Prof. Glass had a roughly three-minute conversation outside of MS 205. No one overheard the conversation. The two then reentered the classroom, Prof. Glass introduced Sheriff Larkin and apologized for "making disparaging comments" about the Sheriff.

"[He] gives an apology while Sheriff Larkin is standing no less than six inches from him," said Grindlinger.

Both Buckley and Grindlinger report Sheriff Larkin as saying, "This isn't over," on his way out of the classroom. According to Buckley, Larkin's aide, who was waiting outside the classroom, said as the classroom door was closing, "You're a terrible teacher, you should get your facts from a book."

BRITISH GOVERNMENT SET TO WRECK OPEN WI-FI IN UK

ZDNET, UK - The [British] government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.

This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access.

Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, told ZDNet UK that the scenario described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in an explanatory document would effectively "outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses", and would leave libraries and universities in an uncertain position. . .

In the explanatory document, Lord Young, a minister at BIS, described common classes of public Wi-Fi access, and explained that none of them could be protected. Libraries, he said, could not be exempted because "this would send entirely the wrong signal and could lead to 'fake' organizations being set up, claiming an exemption and becoming a hub for copyright infringement".

Young added that universities will need to figure out for themselves whether they qualify as an ISP or a subscriber. This is a distinction that carries very different implications under the terms of the bill, which would establish possible account suspension as a sanction against subscribers who repeatedly break copyright law, and force ISPs to store user data and hand it over to rights holders when ordered to do so.

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

MEDIA BISTRO reports that the tabloid National Enquirer is considering opening a Washington bureau. It won't be the first time as this clip from your editor's memoirs about the 1960s recalls:

SAM SMITH, MULTITUDES - It was a time for trying things. I even seriously considered working for the National Enquirer. A friend at Congressional Quarterly called with news that a mutual acquaintance -- a deputy editor at the tabloid -- was looking for a Washington column. The Enquirer was willing to pay $800 a week -- an enormous sum at the time albeit some of it intended for loosening lips.

My friend's scheme was brilliant. Four of us would write under a single pseudonym. Thus we could all keep our day jobs while writing one quarter of a column.

For five hours, we sat in the dark, dignified dining hall of the Mayflower Hotel discussing the project with the tabloid's chief editor, a small, dapper Englishman who moved from national politics to the importance of dog stories in perfect segue. We sold each other on ourselves and the three other conspirators -- all of whom worked for Congressional Quarterly -- returned to broach the subject with their publisher, Nelson Pointer. Pointer pointedly responded that they could either work for CQ or for the Enquirer but not for both. The scheme disintegrated. I did get paid $100 for a one paragraph item the Enquirer published, but afterward I felt a little tawdry and never submitted anything else.

UNEMPLOYMENT BY INCOME LEVEL

FULL REPORT

ANOTHER REASON TO BOYCOTT THE RECORDING INDUSTRY

WIRED - A federal appeals court is ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 - $750 a track - for file sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Texas federal judge who had ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or $200 per song. The lower court had granted her an "innocent infringer's" exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum of $750 per track because she said she didn't know she was violating copyrights and thought file sharing was akin to internet radio streaming.

The appeals court, however, said the woman was not eligible for such a defense â€" even if it was true she was between 14 and 16 years old when the infringing activity occurred on Limewire. The reason, the court concluded, is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs of the music in question provide copyright notices.

Harper, now 22 and a Texas Tech senior, said in 2008 interview that she didn’t know what she did was wrong when she file shared Eminem, the Police, Mariah Carey and others as a teen.

"I knew I was listening to music. I didn't have an understanding of file sharing," she said.

Scott Mackenzie, the woman's attorney, said Friday that "She's going to graduate with a federal judgment against her." The RIAA, which has sued thousands of people for infringement, labeled Harper as "vexatious" when she refused to settle the case.

Only two RIAA cases against individuals have gone to trial, both of which earned the RIAA whopping verdicts.

LAST MONTH HOTTEST JANUARY EVER

DAILY EXPRESS - Climate scientists stunned Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the ¬hottest January the world has ever seen.

The remarkable claim, based on global satellite data, follows Arctic temperatures that brought snow, ice and travel chaos to millions in the UK.

At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: "January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we've ever seen.

"Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen. November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen." Veteran¬climatologist Professor Nicholls was speaking at an online climate change briefing, added: "It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years."

His extraordinary claims came after the World Meteorological Organization revealed 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began in 1850.

RECOVERED HISTORY

MEDICARE PAYMENTS TO DOCTORS TO BE CUT 21% DUE TO SENATE INACTION

NAPLES NEWS - Physicians left their practices Friday frustrated at their elected leaders in Washington for failing to reverse a 21 percent Medicare payment reduction that will now take effect Monday.

The fallout is physicians may scale back on the number of Medicare patients they treat and some may drop out of the Medicare program entirely.

The payment cut likewise applies to members of the military on the federal government's TRICARE insurance.

Physicians have been on pins and needles for sometime over the Medicare payment cut and they didn't expect it would go through because of extensive lobbying and historically, Congress has reversed the cut in prior years.

A reimbursement cut, of a varying amount, from Medicare is expected annually with the start of the new fiscal year on Jan. 1 but Congress usually acts in time to reverse it. In the final days of the session last year, Congress only postponed the 21-percent cut for this year to March 1.

At issue is what physicians and the American Medical Association say is a flawed formula, called the sustainable growth rate, that sets an annual target for Medicare spending on physician services.

After the Senate Friday failed to act and delay again the overall physician cut, which the House did on Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, CMS, notified contractors to hold off processing Medicare claims from physicians for 10 days.

The move to sit on the claims is similar to action taken in 2008 when the Medicare cut of 10.6 percent that year went into effect before Congress later froze it. The pending claims then did not have to reflect the 10.6 percent cut.

Unless Congress reverses the 21-percent payment reduction in the near future, some physicians may reduce the number of Medicare patients they see or opt out of Medicare entirely. A third option is accepting Medicare patients but not participating in the Medicare program, he said. In that case, the physician bills the patients but not more than 15 percent above what they would get from Medicare, he said.

If a physician decides to opt out of Medicare entirely, the physician can charge what he or she wants and the Medicare patient pays the doctor and seeks to be reimbursed from Medicare, Gauta said.

WAR: SOME POCKET PARADIGMS

Sam Smith

War is the joint exercise of things we were trained not to do as children.

War is doing things overseas that we would go to prison for at home.

Anyone can start a war. Starting a peace is really hard. Therefore it is much harder to be a peace expert than a war expert.

The media treats war as just another professional sport.

War has rules, which means that we can change the rules.

Murder, rape and slavery still exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have banned them. The same is true of war.

Telling a country we won't negotiate with it until it does what you want is like saying you won't play a game unless you are allowed to win.

There is no evidence that supporting war, or telling presidents to do so, improves your testosterone level, so Ivy League professors are better advised to stick to tennis.

There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the problems and complaints of the most rational.

Of course, there can be peace with so-called terrorist organizations; it's just a matter of whether one waits the better part of a century, as the British did in Northern Ireland, or whether you start talking and negotiating now.

Three thousand people is, of course, far too many to die for any reason. But it is also far too weak an argument for the end of democracy.

Peace is a state of reciprocity, of trust, of empirically based confidence that no one is about to do you in. It exists not because of intrinsic goodness or rampant naivete but because of a common, implicit understanding that that it works for everyone.

Implicit in the "what about their violence?" argument is the idea that what we do wrong is excusable because it has been matched by the other side. Of course, the other side sees it the same way so you end up with a perfect stalemate of violence. When I raised a similar argument as a kid, my mother's response was, "If Johnny were to jump off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff, too?" I never could come up with good answer to that and so eventually had to concede that somebody else's stupidity was not a good excuse for my own.

From the moment we commence a moral intervention we become a part of the story, and part of the good and evil. We are no longer the innocent bystander but a full participant whose acts will either help or make things worse. Our intentions become irrelevant; they are overwhelmed by the character of our response to them. The morality of the disease is supplanted by the morality of the cure. In fact, every moral act in the face of mental or physical injury carries twin responsibilities: to mend the injury and to avoid replacing it with another

One of the reasons America is in so much trouble is because it happily makes all sorts of compromises in order to get along with large dictatorships such as Russia and China, but thinks it can handle smaller operations like Hamas, North Korea, and Iran by simple obstinacy and belligerence. In other words, it is happy to talk with big terrorists, but not little ones. In fact, most of these small entities - and those who lead them - suffer from extreme inferiority complexes. By threatening war, imposing massive embargos and so forth, America merely feeds the sense of persecution and encourages the least rational reaction. A more sensible approach would be to constantly negotiate with these leaders and edge them towards reasonable participation in world affairs.

Imagine if we had told Israel and Palestine a few years ago that if they would just make nice we would give them enough money to equal Israel's GDP for one year and Palestine's for three. Take the time off, go to the Riviera or the Catskills, forget about productivity, and just party on thanks to the American taxpayer. Or if Israel and Palestine wanted to be really sensible, they could have invested in their countries' future instead. Think how much safer we would be today. . . But where would such a large sum of money come from? Well, all we would have had to have done was to cancel the invasion of Iraq and used the money as a carrot rather than as a bludgeon. For that is just what it has cost us so far. (2007)

The people who built castles and walled cities and moats are all dead now and their efforts at security seem puny and ultimately futile as we visit their unintended monuments to the vanity of human presumption. Like the castle-dwellers behind the moat, we are now spending huge sums to put ourselves inside a prison of our own making. It is unlikely to provide either security for our bodies nor solace for our souls, for we are simply attacking ourselves before others get a chance.

Empires and cultures are not permanent and while thinking about the possibility that ours is collapsing may seem a dismal exercise it is far less so than enduring the dangerous frustrations and failures involved in having one's contrary myth constantly butt up against reality - like a boozer who insists he is not drunk attempting to drive home. Instead of defending the non-existent, we could turn our energies instead towards devising a new and saner reality.

Places like Harvard and Oxford - and their after-school programs such as the Washington think tanks - teach the few how to control the many and it is impossible to do this without various forms of abuse ranging from sophism to corporate control systems to napalm. It is no accident that a large number of advocates of war - in government and the media - are the products of elite educations where they were taught both the inevitability of their hegemony and the tools with which to enforce it. It will, therefore, be some time before places such as Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations are seen for what they are: the White Citizens Councils of state violence.

Castro, in his early days, spoke at the UN. But the hotels of New York refused him space. The result: Malcolm X found him a hotel in Harlem and a key early step was taken in the alienation of a man who, with just a little respect and effort, might not have tormented every American president since by refusing to die or fade away. Respect is important because it is a door wide enough for peace to enter. We need to try it more often.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BREAKTHOUGH?

UPI - A U.S. energy company has unveiled a fuel cell that it says can transform the nation's current system of grid-distributed power into localized energy sources.

The Bloom Energy Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif., says its "Bloom Energy Server" -- or "Bloom Box" -- is a solid oxide fuel cell that can use a variety of fuel sources to provide "a cleaner, more reliable and more affordable alternative to both today's electric grid, as well as traditional renewable energy sources."

Bloom says its device generates enough power to meet the needs of approximately 100 average U.S. homes or a small office building in approximately the footprint of a parking space. For more power, multiple servers can be installed side by side.

"Customers who purchase Bloom's systems can expect a 3-5-year payback on their capital investment from the energy cost savings," the company said. "Depending on whether they are using a fossil or renewable fuel, they can also achieve a 40-100 percent reduction in their carbon footprint as compared with the U.S. grid."

Company co-founder and CEO K.R. Sridhar told a Wednesday news conference: "We believe that we can have the same kind of impact on energy that the mobile phone had on communications. Just as cell phones circumvented landlines to proliferate telephony, Bloom Energy will enable the adoption of distributed power as a smarter, localized energy source."

TREE HUGGER - Bloom Energy's 3 main selling points are: "lower energy costs, clean power, and reliable power."

The first will obviously depend on many things, especially how low they can get production costs for Bloom Box fuel cells. K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy, claims that costs could be brought down as low as $3,000 for a stack. . .

The second point depends on what you compare it to. If you take the current U.S. grid average, then a Bloom Box running on natural gas would indeed be clean and produce about half the CO2. But compared to cleaner sources like hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, biomass, etc, you'd probably still produce more CO2. But if these fuel cells are deployed first in states that are very dependent on coal and that have access to natural gas (or even better, biogas), they could make a pretty significant difference.

The most promising use of the Bloom Box. . . is as a backup for a wind or solar power system. The natural gas/biogas fuel cell would be your backup for when the sun or wind doesn't shine. If Bloom Energy really can bring the price down low enough, it could be more affordable than large battery packs.

The third point, reliability, will be entirely dependent on how good the technology is. Fuel cell membranes can be contaminated in various way, so the robustness of the design will be key.

Some of Bloom Energy's current customers (or beta-testers) are: FedEx, Google, eBay, Coca-Cola, Staples, and Wal-Mart. This will no doubt help legitimize the company in the eye of other big corps, so if the product is actually good and pays for itself in 5-7 years (as they claim, though that probably includes government incentives), I think we can expect a pretty fast adoption rate.

GETTING TAX CREDITS FOR DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY

DEAN BAKER - The WSJ told readers that Democratic senators claimed that the employment tax credit in a job bill passed by the Senate would create 1.3 million jobs. It then added: "but some independent economists said they expected it would have less impact than that."

It would be surprising if any independent economists believed the tax credit would create even one-tenth this many jobs. Every month, roughly four million workers leave or lose their job. Employers hire roughly 4 million workers to replace these workers. (The job growth/loss number reported every month is a net figure, which is the result of this massive churning.) The vast majority of the 4 million workers who are already being hired every month would qualify for the Senate's tax credit.

This means that the overwhelming majority of the money would be paid out to firms that are hiring anyhow. Since the incentive provided by the credit is small, there is little reason to believe that it will have any noticeable effect on employment.

BIPARTISAN SUMMIT STATS: OBAMA TALKED OVER A THIRD OF THE TIME

By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes - nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a "talk clock" kept by GOP aides. - Washington Times

WORD

Warning: watching American politicians argue about healthcare can be seriously damaging to your health. Symptoms may include migraines, extreme fatigue and sudden violent urges. In the event of exposure to competing statistics - regarding "donut holes", "HMO deductibles", "reconciliation devices" or suchlike - seek immediate medical help. - Times, UK

CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATORS LOOKING AT FORMER HEAD OF NY FED

GREG KAUFMANN, NATION - Ongoing Congressional investigations into the AIG bailout have put the incestuous and murky relationship between the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in the spotlight. . . Critics from both sides of the aisle fault Geithner and Bernanke for mismanagement, unnecessary secrecy and undermining Congressional oversight. But neither of them has been the target of questions about gaming the system for personal financial gain.

That distinction belongs to Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs. Through those two posts, Friedman may have had access to privileged information about the extent of Goldman's exposure to AIG and the opportunity to profit from the Fed's bailout of the beleaguered insurance giant. While he was serving on both boards, Friedman purchased 52,600 shares of Goldman stock, more than doubling the number of shares he owned. These purchases have since risen millions of dollars in value--and raised allegations of insider trading. . .

In late January, House Oversight Committee chair Edolphus Towns called in Geithner, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Baxter and Friedman to testify about the AIG bailout. Friedman's Goldman deal was a significant line of inquiry.

And now, at least one member of the committee, Massachusetts Representative Stephen Lynch, is calling not just for continued Congressional investigation but for other enforcement agencies to look into possible insider trading and other matters surrounding the AIG bailout . .

That Friedman was simultaneously chair of the New York Fed and a board member of Goldman Sachs was itself a violation of Fed policy. . . To allow him to maintain his roles at the Fed and Goldman, New York Fed officials, led by then-president Geithner, asked the Federal Reserve board of governors in Washington for a waiver, which was granted on January 21, 2009.

In the meantime, the New York Fed made its now-infamous decision--on November 9, 2008--to pay AIG counterparties like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch full value for insurance on mortgage-backed securities that had tanked when the housing bubble burst. It was a $62 billion deal, and Goldman was the greatest domestic beneficiary, receiving an estimated $13 billion

DETROIT MAYOR SAYS CITY CAN'T SUPPORT ALL ITS NEIGHBORHOODS. . .PEOPLE WILL HAVDE TO MOVE

DETROIT NEWS - Detroit mayor Dave Bing says the city plans to encourage residents to move from some neighborhoods: 'If they stay where they are I absolutely cannot give them all the services they require.'

In his strongest statements about shrinking the city since taking office, Bing told WJR-760 AM the city is using internal and external data to decide "winners and losers." The city plans to save some neighborhoods and encourage residents to move from others, he said.

"If we don't do it, you know this whole city is going to go down. I'm hopeful people will understand that," Bing said. "If we can incentivize some of those folks that are in those desolate areas, they can get a better situation.".. .

He said there's no timeline, price tag or estimate on the number of people who would have to be moved, but said federal funding would be needed. Bing said he plans to focus on the neighborhoods in which Detroit Public Schools plans to build schools with $500 million in bonds voters approved last year.

"You can't support every neighborhood," Bing told WJR's Frank Beckmann. "You can't support every community across this city. Those communities that are stable, we can't allow them to go down the tubes. That's not a good business decision from my vantage point."

Bing acknowledged it won't be "an easy conversation." And he's already facing opposition from activists such as Ron Scott, who said he is "adamantly opposed" and believes the business community is pushing Bing to get cheap access to large tracts of the city.

"Sounds like reservations to me, it sounds like telling people to move," Scott said. "The citizens of the city of Detroit who built this city, the working class, didn't create this situation. You are diminishing the constitutional options people have by contending you have a crisis."

WHO'S ARCHIVING THE WEB?

BBC - The UK's online heritage could be lost forever if the government does not grant a "right to archive", a group of leading libraries has said.

The British Library, along with other institutions, has been archiving UK websites since 2004 but has only been able to cover 6,000 of an estimated 8m.

Currently, it must ask permission from website owners before archiving them.

The group, which has just made its UK Web Archive available to the public, warned of "a digital black hole".

"We've got the know-how but we need the rules to say we don't need to ask permission," said a spokesman for the British Library.

"We're archiving for the nation rather than commercial gain."...

The British Library said research showed that the average life expectancy of a website was just 44 to 75 days, and suggested that at least 10% of all UK websites were either lost or replaced by new material every six months.

Several other countries - including Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Portugal - have already have started to archive their national web material.

Other informal projects - such as the WayBack Machine - also exist.

WHY CAN'T OUR POLITICS BE THIS MUCH FUN?

BBC - British Eurosceptic MEP has unleashed a volley of insults against the President of the European Council.

Nigel Farage, who leads UK Independence Party MEPS in the European parliament, said Herman Van Rompuy had "the charisma of a damp rag".

He compared the former Belgian prime minister to a "low-grade bank clerk" and said he came from a "non-country".

The attack, which stunned the chamber, came as Mr Van Rompuy made his maiden appearance in parliament in Brussels. . .

FARAGE'S ATTACK
BBC NEWSNIGHT TRIES TO FIND OUT WHO THE HELL MR VAN POMPUY IS (AND HOW TO PRONOUNCE HIS NAME)

VERMONT VOTES TO SHUT DOWN NUCLEAR PLANT

ABC NEWS - A week after Obama announced plans to finance construction of the first new nuclear power plant in decades, lawmakers in Vermont voted today to shutter the aging Vermont Yankee reactor.

"The plant is old and tired. It was designed to be retired in 2012, and that's what we're going to do," Peter Shumlin, president pro tem of the state senate, said Tuesday. The senate voted 26 to 4 not to extend the plant's license.

Shumlin and other Vermont Democrats said they are pushing back against a general softening in the nation's attitudes about nuclear power, a movement that has been fueled in part by the ability of reactors to produce energy without emitting harmful greenhouse gasses.

The state senator said repeated safety scares - including a cooling tower collapse in 2007 and a tritium leak discovered earlier this year - contributed to his decision to push for the plant's closure, along with his belief that the state can find a ready supply of energy from other sources.

"It's pretty tough to convince the environmental community here that a plant leaking tritium and cobalt is providing clean energy," Shumlin said.

INTERACTIVE CHART BASED ON SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR POPULAR HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS

SENATE APPROVES RENEWAL OF UNCONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOT ACT WITHOUT OBJECTION

ANTI-WAR - The Senate voted to extend the PATRIOT Act for another year, as requested by the Obama Administration. The vote came without any debate, and by voice vote so that individuals did not have to make their position public.

Perhaps the most galling part of the vote was that not a single privacy provision was added to the bill, despite Congressional Democrats promising such reforms.

Even the Obama Administration seemed to have resigned itself to the privacy provisions, demanding only that they not weaken the president’s powers. In the end however, the Senate’s Democrats backed off entirely and approved the bill exactly as-is.

The bill will now move into the House of Representatives.

BREVITAS

UTNE READER - Cleveland is playing host to an exciting experiment in employee-owned business, The Nation reports. The city's Evergreen network debuted last fall with the LEED-certified Evergreen Cooperative Laundry in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood, where, The Nation notes, residents' median income is around $18,000. "After a six-month initial 'probationary' period, employees begin to buy into the company through payroll deductions of 50 cents an hour over three years (for a total of $3,000)," The Nation explains. "Employee-owners are likely to build up a $65,000 equity stake in the business over eight to nine years-a substantial amount of money in one of the hardest-hit urban neighborhoods in the nation." Evergreen is also operating a solar-panel installation enterprise, Ohio Cooperative Solar, and hopes to open at least two more cooperatives in the near future: Green City Growers, a massive urban-food operation to be housed in a 230,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse, and the Neighborhood Voice, a community newspaper. All in all, The Nation reports, Evergreen hopes to launch 10 integrated companies, and create about 500 jobs, in the next five years.

DALLAS NEWS - A bent to conservatism and family makes Hispanics a promising pool of votes for Republicans, but the party's targeting of illegal immigrants has withered its attraction. . . It shows more than half of Texas Hispanics call themselves conservative. . .

WHAT'S NEW IN SCIENCE - "Beauty: In the Gonads of the Beholder - and the Beheld," Peter T. Ellison, Hormones and Behavior, vol. 53, no. 1, January 2008, Pages 11-3. Last sentence: "But although we can be fairly sure our gonads are speaking to us in our judgments of attractiveness, we can't yet be sure what they are saying."

TESTIFYING ON HER NEAR DEATH experience with Toyota-made Lexus of anarchistic acceleration , Rhonda Smith of Sevierville TN, coincidentally added to research on how long it takes God to intervene in disasters: "I prayed to God to help me. After, six miles, God intervened" and slowed the car.

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE LAW - Trial judge's comment "Hooray for you" in response to wife's statement that she took her daughter to have her bellybutton professionally pierced, instead of wife actually doing the piercing herself, did not rise to the level of showing actual bias so as to warrant recusal of judge in child custody case. - Brown v. Brown, 877 So. 2d 1228 (La. Ct. App. 2004)

LA TIMES - The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities stands to lose $290,000 in state funding in the next fiscal year and have all remaining support -- more than $1 million -- withdrawn in 2011, according to a proposed budget. The foundation runs more than 20 statewide programs on literature, history and culture, including the Virginia Festival of the Book

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