Undernews For August 23rd 2010

UNDERNEWS

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
news@prorev.com

LATEST HEADLINES
RSS FEED
UNDERNEWS
EMAIL US
FREE EMAIL UPDATES
SEND US A DONATION
ABOUT THE REVIEW
UNSUBSCRIBE

To comment on a post, click on headline and go to comment link
FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS
Sam Smith

Like most media, the Progressive Review has repeatedly defined what has been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars. But two pieces of news in the past twenty-four hours have raised questions is to whether this is still wise.

- The US has revealed it is spending hundreds of millions on airbases in Afghanistan that won't even open until, according to the Obama schedule, the war will be supposedly winding down.

- Vice President Biden said in a speech that the Obama administration is "following President Bush's proposal for a long-term relationship with Iraq,"

These items remind us that war is only one part of what we are up to in Iraq and Afghanistan. The primary nature of our presence is the occupation of what now amount to two colonies of the United States. The use of the military will ebb and flow, and the administration's name for it will be adjusted with new deceits, but the reality is that we will remain the illegal occupiers of two colonies: Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is perhaps time that we change our language as well, so we are no longer hostages to the government's public manipulation of its troops and their role. Yes, we must end the war but we must end the occupation as well.

PERSONAL TO THE LOS ANGELES TEACHERS UNION
Sam Smith

The planned release by the Los Angles Times of the test score standings of individual teachers in your system is one of the worst acts of journalism I've run across in a half century in the trade. It's unfair, cheap and disgusting.

It is a sort of yuppie version of the anti-gay, anti-Muslim or anti-latino movements, but instead of going after someone because of their gender, religion or ethnicity, you pick on some of the weakest people in the economic system and blame them for your troubles.

It's mean, ignorant and selfish.

Here are a few suggestions for dealing with the problem:

Journalists like to think of themselves as highly ethical. To prove this, how about asking LA Times reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith to publish all personnel reviews they have received over the past seven years, any notes from mental therapy, and the results of all their physical exams. That way we will know how much to believe them.

Even more productive would be a law suit demanding the release of similar information from all other city workers, including the mayor and the police, fire and sanitation departments. The successful arrest records of all police officers and all public complaints against city officials would be included.

I realize that since local judges might object to being assessed in the manner the LA Times has chosen for teachers, you could have a hard time with such a case, but pursuing it, even if it fails, might remind people, even editors of the LA Times, where decency resides.
WHY DOES THE RIGHT WING HATE 99.9 PERCENT OF AMERICANS?
Paul Krugman, NY Times - We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy. But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country. . .

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. . .

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent.
PUBLIC EDUCAITON: ROTTEN TO THE COMMON CORE
M. A. Reilly, By Road and the Main Road - The 8th grade [Common Core standards] maps, especially the fourth unit, simply defy common sense. In the "Authors and Artists," a four-week unit, the "essential" question: How are artists and authors similar is posed. I'm a bit unclear as to why and for whom that question is essential, but was willing to pretend it could be essential to someone, somewhere. What baffled me though was the list of 4 stories that were offered as the stories for the unit. They were:
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg)

Leaving Eldorado (Joann Mazzio)

Talking With Tebe: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist (Mary E. Lyons) (easier)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) (advanced)

Mixed Up Files, a story about an 11-year-old girl and her younger brother who run away from home and head to the Met. Perhaps a bit young for 8th grade, but it could fit. Leaving Eldorado, an epistolary novel features 14 year old Maude who turns down marriage to become an artist. Historical fiction that could be an appealing read for some 8th graders, especially girls. Talking With Tebe: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist, a picture book biography about an African-American sharecropper who was an artist is intended for younger audience, but certainly might be appealing to 8th graders as a quick read. Three books with three strong female protagonists.

What about boys? Well, I guess that would leave the last selection. Let's see what was that? James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It does feature a male protagonist. But wait a minute. Portrait in middle school?

"How does James Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man help you understand the character's motivations? Write responses to these questions in your journal, citing specific examples/page numbers from the text."

Okay, so I'm a slow study, but at 51, I am still trying to understand Stephen's motivation and that's after reading and teaching Portrait, Dubliners and reading Ulysses as an adult. I can't imagine why a 13-year-old would care to read Portrait, nor why educators would offer it as one of four choices for a unit about artists and authors.

Did they imagine that at the end of reading Portrait (if some student actually got that far) that the students, like Stephen, would declare:

Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality
of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated
conscience of my race. . .Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Finally, how does reading these texts or any of the ones offered or writing the essays assigned actually help a student to answer the "essential" question: How are artists and authors similar? I always thought authors were artists. Isn't that what Stephen is declaring?

Susan Ohanian - I am a longtime 7-8th grade teacher. The Common Core Curricululm maps do not offer a representation of any area of a classroom I have seen or would want anyone I care about to be a part of.

Little Women posited as an exemplary text for 8th graders provides a useful snapshot of what is wrong with these Common Core Curriculum maps. I consider myself a good teacher but I can't imagine trying to pull any 13-year-old through this book.

From the outdated to the bizarre, James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is recommended for "advanced" 8th graders. Here's how it begins:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms On the little green place.
He sang that song. That was his song.
O, the green wothe botheth.
When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell.

Assuming that Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and New York Times editorial writer Brent Staples would qualify as "advanced 8th graders," I'd like to see them read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then do the activities/assessments on John Merrow's Learning Matters.
Determine an author's point of view in a text, compare it with an artist's perspective in a work of art, and discuss the impact perspective has on what was created. Discuss how the use of literary techniques, such as humor or point of view, helps engage readers with the text. Compare and contrast authors' and artists' motivations for creativity.

[The New Yorker puts this book on its recommended list for people in javascript:void(0)their 20s - not for 13-year-olds.]

School administrators, call your lawyers. Are you prepared for parent reaction when James Joyce and J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye appear on the recommended reading list for 8th graders?

Everybody knows that many readers, particularly boys, much prefer nonfiction, so why are they left with the choices referred to here as "informational text?" The selection is very heavy on biographies of children's book illustrators while good science writing is minimal. That said, we must not start offering up our booklists. The whole concept of prescribed book lists for every classroom in America is wrongheaded and dangerous.

When I started teaching in New York City--quite literally in the middle of someone else's lesson plan, I complained to my department chair that one 9th grader refused to read the prescribed Johnny Tremain. "Then find a book he will read," he advised me.

And I did.

This remains the best advice I ever received about teaching: Find books they will read became my mantra. I added read and savor.

Make no mistake about it, what is recommended here will become the law of the land. Bill Gates carries a bucket of money and a big stick.

Money and big stick be damned: What's going on here amounts to grand theft. It should be declared a felony. Elitists with rear-view mirrors permanently attached to their foreheads are stealing from children their right to an appropriate, exciting, and joyful education.

Sam Smith - I was blessed with three of the best possible English teachers. One, Ed Gordon, was strict and made us do things like "describe a fountain pen to someone who's never seen one before." He went on to start a masters in teaching program at Yale. David Mallery went on to become an admired and beloved school consultant who was still sending me occasional emails of encouragement before he died about a year ago. Bob Boynton went on to start his own textbook publishing company, but when we were in school he once told me of his dream of a course where there would be a textbook but the entire assignment would be to find out what was wrong with it.

In my memoir of those days, I wrote: "Mr. Boynton made writing seem both possible and desirable, but you had to work at it. And you had to read. I read [in 10th grade], according to a list I still have, at least 20 books that year including Walden, Brave New World, Murder in the Cathedral, Antony & Cleopatra, Hamlet, the maritime history of Massachusetts, Voltaire, two books on jazz, Mark Twain, Anatole France, Thurmond Arnold's Folklore of Capitalism and Wendel Wilkie's One World. It was a hardly a well-rounded list but it spanned the growing number of my interests and Mr. Boynton mainly wanted to keep you reading. And thinking. He seemed to be always saying, in effect, that you're not there yet but you will be if you keep on trying."

This may help explain why I consider what the Common Core is proposing to be child abuse at best and a felony at worst.

WORD
Twenty-first century American capitalism is essentially two economies, a real economy and a virtual economy. The real economy is the economy of goods and services, the virtual or fictitious economy is the economy driven by hedge funds, investment banks and is driven by fictitious capital and derivatives, like Credit Default Swaps and Credit Debt Obligations. Globally the real economy is about $70 trillion dollars, the fictitious economy is $700 trillion. Wall Street is about the fictitious economy. The Bush and Obama administrations socialized the banks’ losses and allowed the banks to privatize profits, and working people are paying for the whole bloody mess. We will pay for this in closed schools, hospitals, libraries, firehouses, and police protection and so on for generations. - Anthony Monteiro, Black Agenda Report
RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Sharon Angle: "Am I too conservative? They probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin."
BLAGO WITNESS LIST TO GROW IN NEW TRIAL
Fox News - In a second trial on corruption charges, the defense may call Washington officials like White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Sunday. Blagojevich said he talked plenty with several Washington bigwigs about political horse-trading when he was responsible for filling the Senate seat vacated by President Obama, but none did anything wrong.

"In the second round, we're going to put a defense on, I'm certain. And in that particular case, you know, we're going to call witnesses like Rahm Emanuel, Senator Harry Reid, Senator (Robert) Menendez, Congressman (Jesse) Jackson, Congressman (Jerry) Costello, and a host of other leading Democrats who were involved in this process to try to make a decision on who the next senator should be," he told "Fox News Sunday."

THE ULTIMATE BOOKCASE

APARTMENT THERAPY

WORD
ferociousj: It is possible that we as a civilization have come up with too many cran-based refreshment option.

URBAN PLANNERS MAKE YOU FAT
Tree Hugger - George Monbiot writes that "We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us," quoting a series of studies which show trees make us more social, quiet areas are friendlier and vegetation reduces crime. He also notes the relationship between urban planning and body mass index: "Where settlements are dense (and therefore able to support public transport) and close to shops, work places and recreation places, people are more likely to walk and cycle and less likely to be fat."

He continues: "Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities. "
RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Pamela Geller, a rightwing blogger who has played a major role in encouraging the anti-Christian, anti-American attack on Muslims once claimed that Barack Obama was the bastard stepchild of Malcolm X.

Carl Paladino, A GOP candidate for NY governor wants to house welfare recipients in empty prisons, require them to work for the state such as the military or "in some cases park service." They would also get lessons in personal hygiene. "Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene . . . the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes."
WHY YOU FELL FOR HIM OR HER AT THE BAR
Discovery - Everyone looks better after you've tipped back a pint or two, and now we may know why. It turns out that alcohol dulls our ability to recognize cockeyed, asymmetrical faces, according to researchers who tested the idea on both sober and inebriated college students in England. "We tend to prefer faces that are symmetrical," explained Lewis Halsey of Roehampton University in London.
60 MILE TRAFFIC JAM IN CHINA
MSNBC - A traffic jam stretching more than 60 miles in China has entered its ninth day with no end in sight, state media reported. Cars and trucks have been piling up since August 14 on the National Expressway 100, which is also known as the G110, the major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, Xinhua News reported.

Britain's Sky News reported that the snarls have been commonplace since May as a result of a spike in the number of trucks using the roads, with the daily peak reaching about 17,000.
DEA WANTS EXPERTS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CALLED EBONICS
Smoking Gun - The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records. A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered non-consensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).”

Additionally, while “technology plays a major role in the DEA’s efforts, much of its success is increasingly dependent upon rapid and meticulous understanding of foreign languages used in conversations by speakers of languages other than English and in the translation, transcription and preparation of written documents.”

CONTRACT
U.S. BUILDING LONG TERM BASES FOR ITS TROOPS AND PLANES IN AFGHANISTAN
Washington Post - Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war -- and President Obama's pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 -- many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. None of the three projects in southern and northern Afghanistan is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts.

Overall, requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress. The House has approved the money, as has the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full Senate has yet to vote on the measure.

In addition, the United States has already allocated about $5.3 billion to construct facilities for the Afghan army and the national police, with most of the "enduring facilities . . . scheduled for construction over the next three to four years," according to a Pentagon news release this month.
PHILLY REQUIRES BLOGGERS TO PAY $300 TAX
Washington Examiner - Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut. In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says. . . When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city’s now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, “I was told to hire an accountant.”
VERIZON & GOOGLE'S PLAN TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET
Rep. Alan Grayson, Alternet - The Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Proposal begins by stating that "Google and Verizon have been working together to find ways to preserve the open Internet." Well, that's nice. Imagine what they would have come up with if they had been trying to kill off the open Internet.

Actually, you don't have to imagine it. Because that's what this is. An effort to kill off the open Internet.

Much of the coverage of the Verizon-Google Proposal has focused on only one of the proposal's many problems: the fact that the proposal allows wireless broadband carriers -- like, say, Verizon, for instance -- to discriminate in handling Internet traffic in any manner they choose. They can charge content providers, they can block content providers, and they can slow down content providers, just as they please. That sure doesn't sound "neutral."

We've already seen examples of political censorship over mobile networks. In 2007, Verizon refused to run a pro-choice text message from advocacy group NARAL, due to its supposedly 'unsavory' nature. Yes, this happened; yes, this kind of censorship would be continue to be legal under the Google-Verizon deal; and yes, Google, this is evil.

But the Verizon-Google Proposal allows almost as much latitude to other internet carriers, like cable and DSL carriers. Under the heading "Network Management," all carriers can "engage in reasonable network management," which "includes any technically sound practice" (which means what?). And it specifically includes the power to "prioritize general classes or types of Internet traffic, based on latency." The term "latency" means delays in downloading, from carrying video files and such. So if you want video, and YouTube won't pay Verizon to provide it, then Verizon can "prioritize" other traffic. And then your two-minute video will take two hours to see. And let's say you want to start a new website that offers video -- good luck getting through to Verizon's customer service department, to have Verizon place it in the right 'tier' of Verizon's internet service. In my experience, customer service requests have extraordinarily high "latency.". . . .
TOO BIG TO FAIL, TOO BIG FOR JAIL
Danny Schechter, Op Ed News - Barclays is coughing up $298 million for violating a US Trade law. A Judge is still deliberating on a settlement that may cost Citi $70-$100 million for misleading investors about $40 billion in sleazy subprime holdings. Last week, It was Wells Fargo settling for $200 million after being caught gouging their own customers. This follows in the wake of a $550 million dollar settlement on the part of Goldman Sachs and then a $600 million deal involving Countrywide and Bank Of America.

What have these settlements settled other than payoffs substituting for criminal prosecutions? Bear in mind that very little, if any, of this money wrested from the banksters by the SEC and other agencies goes back to the people who were ripped off in the first place.

Some of the bankers consider this extortion, but it certainly isn't justice. The avaricious banks remain too big to fail and, unfortunately, too big to jail.This issue is still off the media agenda. If the bankers were Muslims, who wanted a mosque in the lobby of JP Morgan Chase, this might change. For now, the problem of accountability and transparency in the world of big money doesn't interest the networks who are making money head over fist by pandering and inciting racial and religious prejudice. They are also tied into to many of these institutions. . .
AUSTRALIAN GREENS DO WELL
Green Party Watch - The Australian Green Party performed very well in Australia’s recent federal election. Adam Bandt won his seat in Melbourne constituency giving the Greens one seat in the lower House of Australia’s parliament. A first for a general election for The Greens. The Greens got about 12% of the vote in the Lower house.

The Labour Party suffered a huge set back and were pushed back to 72 seats while the center right Liberal/National Coalition gained 73 seats. So it appears that the lone Green along with four Independents will control the balance of power in this hung parliament. It also looks like The Greens will also hold the balance of power in the Senate (upper house). Expect Labour and the Liberals to negotiate with the Greens in these coming days.
RURAL GROCERY STORES ARE CLOSING
Rural Blog - We've previously reported on the decline of rural groceries, and one advocate says the decline has become a full-blown crisis. "These businesses are closing at an alarming rate," David Proctor, director of the Center for Engagement and Community Development at Kansas State University, writes for the Daily Yonder. "Almost daily another small-town, independently-owned store shuts its doors and closes up shop." In Iowa nearly 43 percent of groceries in towns smaller than 1,000 people have closed, and Kansas has lost nearly one in five rural groceries since 2006.

Proctor identified seven key challenges facing rural grocery owners: competition with big-box stores, operating costs, labor issues, governmental regulations, lack of community support, low sales volume and meeting suppliers' minimum purchase requirements. Among those challenges, competing with big box stores was most prevalent, with 80 percent of respondents identifying it as a challenge.
BROADBAND PROVIDERS MISLEAD ON SPEED
Ars Technica - Broadband providers in the US have long hawked their wares in "up to" terms. You know¬"up to" 10Mbps, where "up to" sits like a tiny pebble beside the huge font size of the raw number. In reality, no one gets these speeds. A new Federal Communications Commission report makes a sharp conclusion: broadband users get, on average, a mere 50 percent of that "up to" speed they had hoped to achieve.
NEARLY 50% LEAVE OBAMA FORECLOSURE PROGRAM
Huffington Post - Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out. The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments.

More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year. "The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.
EXCEPTIONAL CAVE PAINTINGS FOUND
Observer, UK - Exquisite artworks hidden under 2,000 years of soot and grime in a Jordanian cave have been restored by experts from the Courtauld Institute in London. Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.
Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity's lost masterpieces, while revealing little about their colours and composition, so the revelation of these wall paintings in Jordan is all the more significant.
WHY AN INTERNET KILLER SWITCH WON'T WORK
Technology Review - Paul Kocher, current CEO of Cryptography Research, is a legend in the field of security - one of the engineers behind SSL 3.0 and an innovator in a host of other areas. here's what he had to say about the so-called "Internet Kill Switch."

"Networks like the Internet are critical for a lot of tasks - if you ever flipped a switch on that, you'd cause tremendous amounts of harm. It's unclear you'd get any particular benefit from doing that.". .

Attempts to degrade the quality of civilian GPS signals shows that disabling communications networks hurts the good guys more than it hurts the bad guys.

"The whole GPS infrastructure is built with a mechanism where they can degrade the quality of location measurements. It's designed so they could have the military have more accurate GPS units than civilians.But it turned out the military ended up using civilain GPS receivers because they're cheaper. They ended up disabling the degradation capability because the harm caused to the U.S. military exceeds the benefit to the folks they're fighting."

"Stopping a Denial of Service attack by shutting down the Internet is like trying to stop a small explosion by triggering a much larger one."
INVESTMENTS FIRMS QUESTION TARGET & BEST BUY OVER POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
Center for Political Accountablity - Three leading sustainability investing firms have filed shareholder proposals this week at Target and Best Buy, which are under fire for making sizable political contributions to a group channeling funds to a Minnesota gubernatorial candidate known for his opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

The proposals call attention to the misalignment between the donations and the companies' corporate values. Both Target and Best Buy have exceptionally strong workplace policies for LGBT employees, and have supported LGBT community activities in Minnesota.

The candidate for governor, Minnesota state representative Tom Emmer, has adopted a highly adversarial stance toward the LGBT community. He opposes same-sex marriage and led an effort to deny LGBT couples full parental rights in Minnesota. In addition, his campaign made a contribution to a Christian hard rock ministry that praised Muslim countries that execute their citizens for homosexuality as being "more moral than even the American Christians."

Target and Best Buy have made apologetic statements acknowledging objections to their contributions, but neither has asked the pro-business group, Minnesota Forward, to return any funds. Both companies are facing boycott campaigns.

CLEVELAND TO SPY ON CITIZEN'S TRASH
Cleveland Plain Dealer - The city plans to sort through curbside trash to make sure residents are recycling -- and fine them $100 if they don't. The move is part of a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes.

The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection. If a chip show a recyclable cart hasn't been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables. Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens. Recyclables include glass, metal cans, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard.
BREVITAS
Reform ain't what it used to be: According to a study by the National Business Group, health insurance costs are expected to rise around 9% for large employers next year.

We have previously noted that foundations such as Gates - that give governments grants conditional on them doing what the foundation wants - are actually engaged in a form of bribery. If an individual tried what the Gates Foundation is doing it would be a criminal offense. But Kenneth Saltman notes in The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy, that it's even worse than that: foundations are using diverted public funds from their huge tax breaks. Someone needs to get on this case.

Business Insider - Wall Street is ditching the white stuff in favor of something somewhat more green. And we're not talking about cash.Marijuana was present in 80% of failed drug tests last year, up from 64% in 2007, according to the tests reviewed by Sterling Infosystems Inc.. Cocaine showed up in only 7% of positive Wall Street drug tests last year, instead of 16% in 2007.Relative to the rest of the working world (3.6% of whom failed drug tests last year), the finance industry is pretty clean, with only a 2% rate of drug test failure, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Jaunted - Airline fee trendsetter American Airlines has announced a new charge for "Express Seats," which are just the rows toward the beginning of coach. For a mere $19-$39, passengers will get to board first and sit down in their cramped coach seats before other coach passengers. Then they will get to leave the plane just before other coach passengers. The seats aren't actually any bigger or better. They don't have more leg room. They're just closer to the front.
BLOOMBERG PROPOSES MASSIVE BIKE SHARING PROGRAM
HOW TO MAKE A PRESSMAN'S HAT
NEW CREDIT CARD RULES
TROOPS PUT ON LOCKDOWN FOR REFUSING TO ATTEND CHRISTIAN EVANGELICAL CONCERT

© Scoop Media