Undernews For October 7, 2010

Undernews For October 7, 2010

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WORD

The very idea that we're going to reduce terrorism by more intensively bombing more Muslim countries is one of the most patently absurd, self-contradicting premises that exists. It's exactly like announcing that the cure for lung cancer is to quadruple the number of cigarettes one smokes each day.- Glenn Greenwald

MORNING LINE: DEMOCRATS FACE SENATE DISASTER

Senate: Democrats down 9 with 3 Dems and 1 GOP unclear.

House: Democrats down 50 seats

Governors: Democrats down 5 with 2 Dems & 1 GOP unclear

MORE DEMOCRATS SEE POT AS A GOOD ISSUE

Wall Street Journal - Democratic strategists are studying a California marijuana-legalization initiative to see if similar ballot measures could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election. Some pollsters and party officials say Democratic candidates in California are benefiting from a surge in enthusiasm among young voters eager to back Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in certain quantities and permit local governments to regulate and tax it.

Party strategists and marijuana-legalization advocates are discussing whether to push for similar ballot questions in 2012 in Colorado and Nevada¬both expected to be crucial to President Barack Obama's re-election¬and Washington state, which will have races for governor and seats in both houses of Congress.

OBAMA DUMPS NEARLY A MILLION WORKERS FROM KEY HEALTHCARE PROTECTION

Bloomberg Business News - Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers. Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald's and Jack in the Box, won't be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether. Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.

CIA HAD TORTURE PRISON IN POLAND

BBC - The CIA used a secret prison in Europe to torture its most important terrorism suspect, according to an official who first uncovered a secret network of prisons for holding suspects. He told the BBC there was now reliable evidence that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, was tortured in Poland in the months before that country joined the European Union.

WIND POWER CAUSING PROBLEMS FOR NEARBY RESIDENTS

NY Times - Residents living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility in Vinalhaven, Me., say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life unbearable. “In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”

They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power ¬ a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels ¬ is not without emissions of its own. Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states.

POLL FINDS GREENS GERMANY'S SECOND PARTY

DW World, Germany - For the first time since its founding three decades ago, a poll suggests the German Green party has overtaken the Social Democrats in popularity, bolstering the Greens' claim that they are the main opposition party. The poll, conducted by Berlin-based pollster Forsa and sponsored by Stern magazine and private broadcaster RTL, found that 24 percent of Germans would vote for the Greens in an election, up one percentage point from last week. The Social Democrats (SPD) dropped two points to 23 percent.

Several other opinion research institutions have found national support for the Greens to be somewhat lower, just below the SPD around 20 percent. But many polls suggest the Greens are ahead of the SPD in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and in Berlin - where they appear to be the strongest party. Green Party chief Claudia Roth pointed to the poll as evidence that the party has broken out of its previous role on the sidelines and is becoming a major player in German politics on par with the SPD and CDU. "The time of being the 'junior partners' is over," she told daily newspaper Rheinische Post. "Some former SPD supporters still have not yet understood that we are not a satellite or splinter group from them."

FEDS SUE COMPANY FOR FIRING HEAVY WOMAN

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed suit against Resources for Human Development, Inc., for firing an employee because of her obesity, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The case arose from the charge of a former RHD employee, Lisa Harrison, who claimed that RHD fired her from a New Orleans facility because of her disability.

RHD fired Harrison in September of 2007 because of her severe obesity, the suit alleges. The EEOC alleges that, as a result of her obesity, RHD perceived Harrison as being substantially limited in a number of major life activities, including walking. Harrison was able, according to the lawsuit, to perform all of the essential functions of her position. Before the EEOC filed suit, Harrison died. Her private interests will be represented in the lawsuit by her estate.

GREAT EXLUSIVES FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dean Baker - "Many Scientists Believe [carbon emissions] Cause Global Warming." That's what AP told readers today. Tomorrow we will no doubt find that many scientists believe that the earth is round and that humans evolved from more primitive primates. Stay tuned.

JUDGE JAILS LAWYER FOR REFUSING TO SAY PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

NEMS 360, MS - Wednesday, Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn sent [a] 49-year-old Oxford attorney [to jail] for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in court. At 10 a.m., [attorney Danny] Lampley was in jail garb. By 2:30 p.m., Littlejohn ordered his release and return to the Lee County Justice Center to continue their business. . .David Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said forcing Lampley to repeat the pledge is clearly a violation of his free-speech rights. "I've never heard of a judge jailing a lawyer over this," he said Wednesday.

CONDOMS CLOG DRAINS AT COMMONWEALTH GAMES

Reuters, India - , Thousands of flushed condoms threaten to choke the Commonwealth Games village's drainage system, media reports said, in the latest problem to hit the venue from hidden snakes to outbreaks of dengue. Games organisers, who won a race against time to ready the village, are now battling to clear clogged drains after thousands of non-biodegradeable contraceptives were flushed down toilets in the first week of the event.

Following a decision to provide free condoms at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, it has become something of a tradition. At the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, athletes quickly used up the 70,000 free condoms provided, forcing organisers to supply another 20,000, while at the 2004 Games in Athens, the provision was doubled to 130,000. At both the Beijing Games in 2008, and the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February, 100,000 condoms were provided for athletes.

SCHOOL "REFORM" IS ABOUT CLASS, NOT CLASSROOMS

SAM SMITH

Unanswered in all the noise about "education reform" is why, over the past decade, America's establishment has become so obsessed with controlling public education, a complete reversal of two centuries of American faith in locally controlled schools.

There are answers that the op-eds will give you, such as the need to compete in the global marketplace, but this is pretty weak stuff and not the raw material for major presidential policy under two administrations.

There are answers that can be found in the general shift in government towards data as a worthy substitute, or delaying tactic, for action. As long as you're assessing something you don't actually have to do anything about it.

Then there's the milking of the cash cow of testing. For example, the Washington Post now gets the bulk of its profits from the Kaplan education division, profits bolstered by the paper's constant editorial boosting of the test tyrants. And Neil Bush started a company designed to help students pass the tests of his brother's No Child Left Behind policy.

Certainly there is precedent for this, such as the efforts to privatize Social Security and subsidize health insurance companies, all part of a three decades rip-off of public programs by private industry.

But how, for example, does one explain that this effort has been carried out with such an extraordinary absence of knowledgeable educators or skilled teachers? What has happened is as if we had tried to reach the moon with space vehicles designed by economists, lawyers and corporate buddies of the president.

It has, in the end, a hopeless mush of sleaze, stupidity and statistical static, all having remarkably little to do with real education.

There is, however, an even more disreputable matter lurking in the background that has not been exposed, debated or confronted - namely growing evidence that the assault on public education is part of an urban socio-economic cleansing that has long been underway as the upper classes attempt retrieve the cities they surrendered to the poor many decades ago.

For several decades, I followed this phenomenon as a journalist in my hometown of Washington, DC. It was a topic seldom mentioned in the corporate media and not polite to mention at all in the better parts of town.

In 2006 I wrote, "Part of the socio-economic cleansing of the capital city - still underway - included draconian measures to discourage the minority poor from staying in DC. Some of these were fiscal -- such as a tax break for predominately white first-time homeowners but no breaks for the lower income blacks pushed out by them. But they also included a variety of punitive measures including new restrictions on jury trials, increased lock-ups such as for trivial traffic offenses, stiffer sentencing, soaring marijuana arrests, a halving of the number of court-appointed defense attorneys, increased penalties for pot possession, and the shipping of inmates to distant prisons

And in 2007: "This is a 60% black city undergoing socio-economic cleansing. One suburban county has so many black former DC residents that it is known here as Ward 9. But it's no joke. Here are just a few of things that have happened: Huge budget cuts of which 60% of the burden fell on the poor; closing of four of the city's ten health clinics; slashing the number of public health workers; cutting the budget for libraries, city funded day care centers, welfare benefits, and homeless shelters; creation of a tax-subsidized private "charter" school system; dismantling the city's public university including a massive cut in faculty, destruction of the athletic program and elimination of normal university services; selling the city's public radio station to C-SPAN; transferring prisoners to private gulags hundreds of miles away; a dramatic increase in the number of lock-ups including for traffic stops; and the subjugating of the elected school board to an appointed board of trustee."

There were other signs: the destruction of public housing units, the removal of a homeless shelter from the center city, and even a blockade of a crime- hit black neighborhood - with entry permitted only for approved cause - not unlike apartheid South Africa or the Israelis in the West Bank - about which the liberal gentry class said nothing.

In other words, it was absolutely clear and absolutely unmentionable that the upper classes - both white and black, incidentally - wanted the city back again and were using a plethora of tactics to achieve this goal, especially after our energy consciousness increased and it became apparent that the suburbs were no longer the favored haven, but the ghettos of the future.

Furthermore, it was clear that satisfying this goal was behind most of the major new city programs, ranging from the subway to the baseball stadium - only please always call it economic development rather than getting rid of the poor.

Public education "reform" fit the plan in some ways. For example, although it was widely claimed that charter schools did not discriminate in their selection of students it was obvious that parents - a central factor in any child's ability to learn - differed drastically between those with enough ambition to apply for a charter school seat and those either indifferent or with too much else on their mind. The charter schools were in this way a subtle part of socio-economic cleansing as they helped to reduce the old public facilities to what were once called "pauper schools."

Then there was the carefully crafted schemes for closing "failing" public schools. But there is far more to schools than aggregate test scores. They help define a community, anchor its loose pieces to common ground, and provide a place for children to meet and play in a decent and clean environment.

Describing DC's plans to close eleven schools (mostly in order to build condos), DC Statehood Party activist Chris Otten argued a few years ago, "There are lots of ways we can use our publicly owned properties -- homeless services and shelters, child care, before- and after-school care, services for children with special needs, transitional housing and permanent affordable housing, health care, literacy programs, training for jobs and workforce readiness, senior services, gardening and green spaces, recreation. It's outrageous that Mayor Fenty would rather transfer them to his friends and other well-connected and powerful real estate and development interests."

But Fenty and other mayors were not only willing to get rid of such schools, they were wiling to damage community in the process and force young residents to travel far away from their community and its values. It was not only bad educationally cruel it was mean to the communities as a whole.

But these schools were located on suddenly valuable ground and so the government stole from the children and their parents and gave to the developers.

But there was something more at work.

It took the recent DC mayoral election to make me realize that I had been putting too much emphasis on educational considerations in examining what was happening. What I had missed was that the war on schools was not designed to bring the upper classes into the education system but primarily as a a marketing tool to bring the upper classes and corporations back to the cities. The message was, as with crime sweeps, baseball stadiums and the subway. It was now safe, folks, to live here.

In DC, the battle peaked between incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty, who with his school chancellor Michelle Rhee was strongly committed to the Bush-Obama school model, and his opponent and strong critic, Vincent Gray.

Eddie Elfanbeen did a precinct by precinct analysis of the contest. Some 31 precincts gave Fenty 75% or more of the vote while 53 gave him 25% or less. All of the top Fenty precincts were heavily white while all the top Gray precincts were heavily black. But more significant perhaps was that the former were all upscale precincts while the latter were at the lower end of the income scale. .

This year Fenty got 80% of upscale white Ward 3 and 16% of far poorer and black Ward 8.

Rhee and the school system was obviously a factor. As Natalie Henerson pointed out in the Atlantic, "Among white Democrats, 68 percent said Rhee is a reason to support Fenty. Fifty-four percent of black Democrats cite her as a reason to vote against the mayor, according to a Washington Post poll. In an earlier August poll by Clarus Research, Rhee got her most unfavorable ratings from black women, only 15 percent of whom viewed her favorably."

Now, here's the hooker. Only five percent of the public school system consists of white students. So why did it matter so much? For example, why did heavily gay precincts - with a constituency least likely to ever use the school system - give over 70% of their vote to Fenty?

It seems that it mattered because school test scores represent a symbol that the city is getting the poor under control or out of the way. It was not about educating the city's young but about marketing to the city's newcomers. Another poll, for example, found that Fenty won overwhelmingly the vote of those who had lived in DC less than ten years and Gray those who had lived there longer.

Thus, it was not unlike the crime war phenomena. Back in the nineties I noted that "Between 1985 and 1988, in the wake of the revived drug war, murders in Washington, DC soared from 145 a year to 369. During this period, the city's office of criminal justice planning did an unusually detailed analysis of homicides. The report illustrates [that] it was virtually impossible to be killed in Washington if you were a young white girl living in upscale Georgetown on an early Thursday morning in July. If, on the other hand, you were a young black 20-year-old male living in low-income Anacostia, dealing drugs on a Saturday night in June, your chances of being killed were far greater than the overall statistics would suggest. And if you were not buying or selling drugs at all, your chances of being killed in DC were about the same as in Copenhagen."

But being safe and feeling safe are two different things. And, as with crime, it was important for effective marketing to be seen as keeping the problem population under control.

To be sure, whatever appeal school "reform" had, it was not matched by the facts. For example, here are DC's scores according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress broken down by income class (based on food stamp eligibility)

Several things to note here. The overall improvement was minimal - but half as much for the poor as the better off. Furthermore, the gap between the scores of the better off and the poor actually widened by far more than the overall improvement percentage. So, as 8th grade reading improved 2% for the better off between 2002 and 2009, the gap between these two groups increase by 19%. Obviously, we are not talking about better education here.

And DC was far from alone. Just recently it was reported that in Massachusetts, 57 percent of public schools had fallen short of the yearly progress standard.

Diane Ravitch has noted other flaws in the school reform con:

"A study released days ago by Sean Corcoran of New York University showed that a teacher who was ranked at the 43rd percentile, using student test scores, might actually be at the 15th percentile or the 71st percentile because the margin of error in this methodology is so large."

"Privately managed charter schools do not get better results on average than regular public schools. Some are excellent, some are awful, but most are no better than their public counterparts. Even the Superman movie admitted that only one in five (actually, only 17%) of charters get great test scores. Twice as many charters (37%) are even worse than the neighborhood public school."

"One group of teachers in Nashville was offered bonuses up to $15,000 if they raised students' math scores; another, the control group, was offered nothing. The average teacher pay is about $50,000, so this was a significant incentive to get higher scores. Over the three years of the study, both groups produced the same results."

Of DC, Leigh Dingerson wrote recently:

"There’s nothing remarkably visionary going on in Washington. The model of school reform that’s being implemented here is popping up around the country, heavily promoted by the same network of conservative think tanks and philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton Family Foundation that has been driving the school reform debate for the past decade. It is reform based on the corporate practices of Wall Street, not on education research or theory. Indications so far are that, on top of the upheaval and distress Rhee leaves in her wake, the persistent racial gaps that plague D.C. student outcomes are only increasing. . .

"Despite glowing reports from the adoring media, D.C.’s education miracle is a chimera at best. . . "

But that, it turns out, was probably the point: to create a political illusion that would support the city's myth, sell real estate, and attract new residents and businesses. Just as it didn't matter that Washington's Metro was designed in a way that actually increased rather than reduced street traffic, it didn't matter that school reform didn't improve things. It only had to seem to change things.

Meanwhile the real city remained.

In 2008, one in five DC residents was poor, a higher rate than in any year since 1997-98. Since the late 1990s, some 27,000 more DC residents fell into poverty. Thirty-two percent of the District of Columbia's children live in poverty, nearly twice the national average. And in 2008 there were over 52,000 families on the waiting list for affordable housing.
But perhaps most important for the educational system, and discussion about it, is something hardly ever discussed: in the first decade of this century, employment among residents with a high school diploma fell to the lowest level in nearly 30 years. Just 51 percent of DC residents at this education level were working.

Every one in the system - parents, teachers, students - knew this reality and reacted accordingly. This, more than any other factor, defined public education in DC. But few wanted to face it.

After all, the poor don't balance your budget. Cutting their services and shoving them out into new suburban ghettos can. And they certainly don't attract tax paying residents and businesses. So you talk the talk of education reform but walk the walk of socio-economic cleansing.

OBAMA SELLS OUT BIG TIME TO ISRAEL

Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam - Just read an interesting piece by a N.Y. Times reporter . . . Among the points that Mark Landler’s featured experts make is the incredible giveaway that Obama is offering Israel as an inducement to serve up a mere 60-day extension of the settlement freeze: "The United States is offering military hardware, support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, help with enforcing a ban on the smuggling of weapons through a Palestinian state, a promise to veto Security Council resolutions critical of Israel during the talks and a pledge to forge a regional security agreement for the Middle East."

It’s really extraordinary. The U.S. is in effect foreclosing the option of a major portion of the West Bank being returned to the Palestinians (the Jordan Valley). Even more astonishingly it is promising to exercise its veto for ANY anti-Israel Security Council resolution. That means if Israel bombs Iran, we veto. If Israel invades Syria or Lebanon or Gaza, we veto. It’s not so much the veto itself, because it’s almost a given that we veto any resolutions critical of Israel. But it’s the idea that we’re promising an a priori veto even before we know what the issue might be. . . And one wonders, if this is what’s required to get a measly 60 day extension what will we have to give away to get a full peace agreement?

INDICATORS

Business Insider - The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. Approximately 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 workers while they were still in operation.

As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.

The "big four" U.S. banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) had approximately 22 percent of all deposits in FDIC-insured institutions back in 2000. As of June 30th of last year that figure was up to 39 percent.

HILLCLIN WARNING

The Hillclin hype is back so we better remind you of who she really is.

IT COSTS AT LEAST $50 MILLION TO KILL ONE TALIBAN SOLIDER

Information Clearinghouse - The Pentagon will not tell the public what it costs to locate, target and kill a single Taliban soldier because the price-tag is so scandalously high that it makes the Taliban appear to be super-soldiers. The estimated cost to kill each Taliban is as high as $100 million, with a conservative estimate being $50 million. . . To put this information another way, using the conservative estimate of $50 million to kill each Taliban: It costs the American taxpayers $1 billion to kill 20 Taliban. As the U.S. military estimates there to be 35,000 hard-core Taliban and assuming that no reinforcements and replacements will arrive from Pakistan and Iran: Just killing the existing Taliban would cost $1.75 Trillion

POOR BEING CHARGED FOR PUBLIC DEFENDERS

USA Today - States increasingly are imposing fees on poor criminal defendants who use public defenders even when they can't pay, causing some to go without attorneys, according to two reviews of the nation's largest state criminal justice systems. A report out today by New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice found that 13 of the 15 states with the largest prison populations imposed some charge, including application fees, for access to counsel.

In Michigan, the report says, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association found the "threat" of having to pay the full cost of assigned counsel caused misdemeanor defendants to waive their right to attorneys 95% of the time.

MAINE VALUES

SOIL AND WATER SAMPLES CONTRADICT BP AND FEDS

Truth Out - In August, Truthout conducted soil and water sampling in Pass Christian Harbor, Mississippi; on Grand Isle, Louisiana; and around barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana, in order to test for the presence of oil from BP's Macondo Well. Laboratory test results from the samples taken in these areas show extremely high concentrations of oil in both the soil and water.

These results contradict consistent claims made by the federal government and BP since early August that much of the Gulf of Mexico is now free of oil and safe for fishing and recreational use.

AMERICANS LIKE VARIED SEX

Med Page Today - Americans -- young, old, and in-between -- have varied and diverse sexual behaviors, according to a nationally representative study. Indeed, the survey found 41 different combinations of sex acts reported by nearly 6,000 participants, Herbenick and colleagues at Indiana University reported in a supplement to the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Condoms are used in one of four acts of vaginal intercourse and the proportion goes up to one in three if the analysis is restricted to singles.

About 85% of men report that their partner had an orgasm at the most recent sexual event, but only 64% of women report they had an orgasm at their most recent sexual event.

At any given time, most U.S. adolescents are not engaging in any partnered sexual behavior. But when they do have vaginal intercourse -- and the proportions rise with age -- four of five teens will use a condom.

Condom use fell with age and was higher among adolescents than adults.

Among adults, it was highest among unmarried adults (46.7% of past 10 events), and higher among black and Hispanic individuals (30.9% and 25.4% of past 10 events, respectively) than other racial groups.

14% of 14-year-old males reported any kind of sexual interaction with a partner in the previous three months. Among 17-year-old males, the proportion was 40%, he said.

For all teens in the study, regardless of age, the most common sexual activity was solo masturbation, with a lifetime prevalence of 80% for males and 48% for females.

CAMPAIGN BRIBES SOAR THANKS TO SUPREME COURT RULING

Washington Post - Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from. The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post. The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM: AMERICA'S GREATEST UNDERACHIEVERS

Bottom of the pile
Christine O'Donnell
BP
Glenn Beck
Goldman Sachs
Sarah Palin
Arizona
Michelle Bachman
Lindsay Lohan
New York City police
Sharon Angle
Joe DeMint
Facebook
Mel Gibson
Levi Johnston
Michelle Rhee
Michaele Salahi
Alan Simpson
Recent underachievers

Joe Mller would end the minimum wage and reduced funding of the EPA. He also thinks Social Security is unconstitutional because it's not in the Constitution

Senator Jim DeMint, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal "said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

Glenn Beck: Slavery wasn't that bad until government fouled it up

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has warned that he "would block all legislation that has not been cleared by his office in the final days of the pre-election session," Politico reports. . . Senator Jim DeMint, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal "said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

RECOVERED HISTORY: THE POWER OF CO-OPS

John Kelly, Washington Post - The history of marketing in Washington - that is, the buying of food, not the shilling for a product or a politician - began with the city markets: purpose-built, centrally located halls where vendors could sell to customers. As the city expanded outward, small grocery stores opened in neighborhoods far from downtown. These were the archetypal mom-and-pop stores run by families, more often than not Jewish families.

In 1922, a dozen of these small grocers decided to pool their resources and form a cooperative: District Grocery Stores. At its peak, around 300 stores in Washington and the suburbs were members.

"DGS was one of the largest cooperative grocery chains in the country," said Melvin Jacobson, whose father, Isaac, owned a grocery store at 10th and K NW and was president of DGS from 1930 to 1943. "They were able to buy directly from manufacturers like General Foods and Kellogg's and Campbell's Soups."

The size of the cooperative allowed DGS to negotiate better prices. In the late 1930s, Isaac Jacobson oversaw the construction of a DGS warehouse at Fourth and D streets SW. Right on the Pennsylvania Railroad line, it had its own siding so suppliers could unload their goods directly into the building. . .

In 1963, The Post's William Raspberry described how DGS worked: New members paid $2,500 toward the association's operating capital. Stores that wished to use the DGS name - about half displayed the distinctive orange and green sign - paid the cooperative $6 to $20 a week, depending on sales volume, for advertising costs. Other markets kept their own names but were able to buy from the DGS warehouse.

When Giant opened its first "self-serve" supermarket in 1936, the writing was on the wall.

BOB WOODWARD: WASHINGTON'S BIGGEST JOURNALISTIC SUCK UP

Justin Elliott, Salon - Politico had a piece the other day exploring the nature of Bob Woodward's "magic" as a journalist. High-ranking government officials want to give him good information because of his mystique, according to the piece, and this "effect is said to be especially vivid when he invites sources into his Georgetown dining room."

We've now had a chance to read "Obama's Wars," and there's another reason Woodward gets the access he does: The same flattery he uses in his Georgetown dining room extends into the pages of his book.

The defining characteristic of "Obama's Wars" is its adulation of establishment figures -- particularly in the military and intelligence establishments. Woodward's portraits of government officials typically involve haphazard deployment of praise words and résumé porn. If you're in government and you were a Rhodes scholar, tell Bob Woodward. He's going to put that in his book.

At times he seems to run out of ideas. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for example, "worked harder than anyone," while Gen. David Petraeus "put other workaholics to shame."

Here's a survey of Woodward's biggest crushes, culminating in his paean to Petraeus, whom he has known since 1990. . .

GLENN BECK: SLAVERY WASN'T THAT BAD UNTIL GOVERNMENT FOULED IT UP

Examiner - Glenn Beck went on a long rant about how health care reform is supposedly enslaving the American public. Then, in an attempt to explain the concept, Beck compares health care reform to the American system of slavery. According to Beck, slavery was not really evil and bad until the government stepped in to regulate it. It was at that point that owning people as property and all the other injustices of slavery became something to abhor.

Beck says that slavery "started with seemingly innocent ideas." Beck goes as far as to say that the evil of slavery did not start with the Atlantic slave trade, but instead it "started in a court room, and then it went to the legislatures." Beck then warns his audience that health care reform my be "creating slaves" just like slaves were supposedly created in the past.

80% OF AMERICANS DON'T LIKE TEST SCORE MANIA

Monty Neill, Washington Post - The 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on U.S. schools reminds us that Americans do not believe that the federal No Child Left law helps improve education. The 2008 Kappa survey found that four out of five people think classroom-based evidence of student learning, such as grades, teacher observations, or samples of student work (the most popular), provides a more accurate picture of student work than do student test scores.

The United States is virtually alone among nations in testing in so many grades. Top-ranked Finland barely tests at all, while Singapore tests in a few grades

Research shows that NCLB causes curriculum narrowing, intense teaching to the test, and worsening school climate. The rate of progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has declined since the law was implemented, while it's clear now that scores on state tests are greatly inflated. Testing even more with slightly different exams, which the federally-funded state testing consortia aim to do, is not a solution.

ELECTION LAWYER: RAHM ISN'T ELIGIBLE TO RUN FOR MAYOR

WLS, Chicago - Attorney Burt Odelson, a noted election-law expert, is predicting Rahm Emanuel will be ineligible for mayor because he is not a legal resident of Chicago. Odelson told Roe and Roeper on WLS Radio that when Emanuel leased out his Chicago home he could no longer claim he is a resident.

“He rented his house out in Sept 09 and has not been back since and has no residency in Chicago,” Odelson said. Odelson says he has been involved in several residency cases in Illinois that “the law is clear.”

WORD: THE DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

Joanne Yatvin, Washington Post - As a teacher educator and educational researcher, I have been visiting classrooms for years, and, for the most part, I don't like what I see. Many of the once excellent teachers I know have been reduced to automatons reciting scripted lessons, focusing on mechanical skills, and rehearsing students for standardized tests. The school curriculum has become something teachers "deliver" like a pizza and students "swallow" whole, whether or not they like mushrooms.

Kindergartens that used to be places for children to learn social behavior, songs, dances, and poetry; how to build cities with blocks, play store, and express feelings with crayons and paint, are now cheerless cells for memorizing letter sounds and numbers. In one kindergarten I visited last year, children recited all the words in their little books without ever recognizing that they were part of a story.

In a first-grade classroom, I watched children march in circles at mid-morning, waving their arms because there was no longer a recess to refresh their bodies and spirits. Still, there was time enough for them to shout out the sounds of letters in chorus everyday and to memorize the words "onomatopoeia" and "metaphor."

In the upper elementary grades I saw both English and math taught by formulas. Students were given a list of the parts of a standard essay, told to use them in order and to begin with a question or a surprising statement. They were also taught the formula for dividing by fractions (as if anyone ever does such a thing) and the Pythagorean theorem (useful whenever you want to know the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle).

Many school districts have also adopted summer homework policies, usually requiring students to read a prescribed list of books. This past summer my grandnephew, who is entering 9th grade, had to write a legal brief defending or condemning Martin Luther, although he had not been taught anything about that writing form or that famous man in 8th grade.

With the new Common Core Standards, created by experts who will never be tested on them, school life will grow even more onerous.

Algebra has been moved down to the 8th grade, and geometry, always a tenth grade elective, is now required of all ninth graders. Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," which I read as a graduate student, is on the 9th grade recommended reading list. ….

All this has happened because the politicians who now control America's schools have adopted the worst aspects of European and Asian education, which were designed to maintain social class boundaries in those societies.

Out of a misguided belief that students' test scores represent a country's economic health and, perhaps, out of wounded pride; our leaders appear determined to convert our once great public schools into robot factories and to extinguish the brilliance and imagination that have fueled our country's greatness for more than 200 years.

CADETS CHARGE AIR FORCE ACADEMY OVERRUN BY EVANGELICALS

Truth Out - An anonymous cadet at the US Air Force Academy spoke out against alleged religious discrimination at the school last week, saying that some cadets must pretend to be evangelical Christians in order to maintain standing among their peers and superiors. In an email to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the whistleblower stated that he is part of an "underground group" of about 100 cadets who cannot rely on proper channels to confront evangelical pressure.

The MRFF and allies from a myriad of civil rights and interfaith groups sent a letter Tuesday to the Department of Defense detailing the cadet's email and other startling complaints, including testimony from the parents of an academy graduate who believe their daughter was "methodically brain washed" by a fundamentalist group there, demanding an investigation of the academy and the evangelical academy ministry Cadets For Christ.

STARVING FOOD STAMPS TO CUT FAT

American Progress - Last month, the Senate passed a bill that aims to reduce hunger and obesity. There is much to like about this bill, which improves the nutritional quality of school meals and invests in strategies to enhance access to healthy foods.

Unfortunately (and ironically), the legislation proposes to pay for the bill’s improvements with $2.2 billion in cuts to improvements made to food stamp
Reauthorizing the child nutrition programs is a key legislative priority that must be accomplished this year if we are to make a dent in the president’s complementary goals of ending child hunger by 2015 and ending child obesity within a generation. But we will not accomplish those goals by taking money from one nutrition program to pay for another.

GATES TELLS KARZAI WE'RE NEVER LEAVING AFGHANISTAN

Anti War - Though the comments were made several months ago and only became public today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had a moment of shocking honesty during a May dinner for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely,” Gates insisted during comments at the dinner, “in fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.” The comments serve as a shocking contrast to his repeated comments over the summer, in which he insisted there was “no question” in his mind that the drawdown from Afghan would start in July 2011.

DESPITE HILLCLIN’S PROMISE, BLACKWATER GETS HUGE STATE DEPARTMENT CONTRACTS

Danger Room, Wired - Through a “joint venture,” the notorious private security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 billion, Danger Room has learned. Apparently, there is no misdeed so big that it can keep guns-for-hire from working for the government. And this is despite a campaign pledge from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ban the company from federal contracts.

NEW EPA RULES MAY DRIVE RENOVATION COSTS UP

Orange County Register- Renovating older homes is going to cost more than it used to, thanks to new rules from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “Common renovation activities like sanding, cutting, and demolition can create hazardous lead dust and chips by disturbing lead-based paint, which can be harmful to adults and children,” the EPA says . “To protect against this risk… EPA issued a rule requiring the use of lead-safe practices and other actions aimed at preventing lead poisoning.”

“Termite” Terry Singleton, president of an Orange County pesticide firm, says that the costs to consumers will be far, far higher ¬ some 400 percent higher, as he wrote to local lawmakers this summer. That would boost the cost of a common job from $490 to $2,328, according to his calculations.

BANKS SUSPEND FORECLOSURES AS HOMEOWNERS SUE OVER PROCEDURES

USA Today - After reviewing its own process for preparing affidavits used in the foreclosure process, Bank of America decided to suspend foreclosures in those states that require judicial approval. The bank notified courts to pull affidavits in foreclosure cases that have been submitted for judgment but not yet decided, says Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm.

Two other major servicers ¬J.P. Morgan and Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit ¬ have either delayed or halted foreclosures in 23 states. Those actions were taken after depositions taken in lawsuits by homeowners turned up officials who said they signed documents without reviewing them or having a notary present.

Hundreds of thousands of foreclosures could potentially be affected ....

GOVERNMENT CONSIDERING 62 MPG GOAL

CNET - Automakers would be required to nearly double fleet efficiency to 62 miles per gallon by 2025 under the most ambitious scenario of a U.S. government outlook on fuel economy and emissions released yesterday. "We must, and we will, keep the momentum going to make sure that all motor vehicles sold in America are realizing the best fuel economy and greenhouse gas reductions possible," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said…..A trade group representing the biggest auto companies, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the proposal was based on "very preliminary and incomplete data."

WHY FACEBOOK WON’T BRING THE REVOLUTION

Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker - The evangelists of social media . . . seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation¬by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece. . . Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.

The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change¬if it just wants to frighten or humiliate or make a splash¬or if it doesn’t need to think strategically. But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy. The Montgomery bus boycott required the participation of tens of thousands of people who depended on public transit to get to and from work each day. It lasted a year. In order to persuade those people to stay true to the cause, the boycott’s organizers tasked each local black church with maintaining morale, and put together a free alternative private carpool service, with forty-eight dispatchers and forty-two pickup stations. Even the White Citizens Council, King later said, conceded that the carpool system moved with “military precision.”

CHRISTINE O'DONNELL CLIP OF THE DAY

Video Cafe - Bill Maher released yet another clip of Christine O'Donnell from Politically Incorrect in 1999. Apparently witchcraft wasn't the only thing she "dabbled in" before turning to Christianity.

O’Donnell: I was dabbling into every other kind of religion before I became a Christian…
Maher: You were a witch.
O’Donnell: I was. I was…
Maher: You were.
O’Donnell: I was dabbling in witchcraft. I’d dabbled in Buddhism. I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn't want to become a vegetarian and that is honestly the reason why because I'm Italian, I love meatballs.
Maher: Boy are you spiritual.

BREVITAS

LA Times - Cities across California have skirted or ignored laws requiring them to build affordable homes and in the process mismanaged hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, a Times investigation has found. At least 120 municipalities ¬ nearly one in three with active redevelopment agencies ¬ spent a combined $700 million in housing funds from 2000 to 2008 without constructing a single new unit, the newspaper's analysis of state data shows. Nor did most of them add to the housing stock by rehabilitating existing units. In case after case, The Times found, cities spent substantial sums for little return.

Christine O’Donnell’s financial history gets even spottier: Her pro-abstinence, evangelical nonprofit, the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status after failing to file federal tax forms for three consecutive years. O’Donnell founded the group in 1996 and listed herself as its president on her financial disclosure documents she filed to run for the U.S. Senate.

Political Wire - Few are probably happier that Rahm Emanuel is leaving the White House than former DNC Chairman Howard Dean. Greg Sargent points to a section in Ari Berman's new book, Herding Donkeys, which says Rahm was the force behind the administration's refusal to give Dean a job:

"Those with firsthand knowledge of the transition process said that Emanuel, an infamous score settler, made his intentions regarding Dean perfectly clear. 'There was never any intention to hire Dean, and in fact there was a great deal of satisfaction at dissing him,' said a senior member of the transition team. 'The orders were coming down from Rahm that Dean was not to be considered for anything [high-ranking] and he didn't want anything to do with him.'"

FINAL EXAMS DISAPPEARING FROM COLLEGES

SUPREME COURT SAYS CONSTITUTION DOESN'T APPLY TO NSA

READER COMMENT CLIPS

THE IDEA MILL: ELECTRIC CO-OPS

A business is only as good as the people who run it. Here, in the Heartland, the 'owners' of the two electric co-ops I have an interest in, largely comprise a demographic made up of Tea Party supporting Christian pre-millenniumists and Christian post reconstructionists--none of whom have very much belief in the veracity of environmental issues dealing with global warming, species extinction, or human culpability in environmental degradation.

They embrace their confused and convoluted interpretations of biblical scripture and prophecy, divesting themselves of any personal responsibly with passive dismissals that it is all god's will. Along with this is the commonly held notion that god has given man dominion over the land, and therefore, whatever man does has god's sanction. Translated: bring on the coal plants and tell those godless socialist hippies to go back to California--hopefully in time to be there when the big one strikes and god dumps the whole forsaken place into the Pacific. It may have been true that the cradle of the great populist movement of the early 20th century was America's great Mid-west, it now appears that it is also here that it may meet its inglorious demise.

ENDS

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