Undernews For 19 January 2009

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19 January 2009
PAGE ONE MUST
LEMON SOCIALISM AT ITS WORST
Lemon socialism - the unstated but dominant American economic principle that capitalism is king except when it can't make money - has reached new heights with the notion of an "aggregator bank." After Wall Street received the biggest pork barrel giveaway in American history, plans are afoot to take more bad loans off its back. If there is to be a national bank, it should be allowed to make money as well as lose it.

Reuters - The incoming Obama administration is considering setting up a government-run bank to acquire bad assets clogging the financial system, a person familiar with the Obama team's thinking said on Saturday. The U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp have been in talks about ways to ease a banking crisis that is once again deepening -- and a government-run "aggregator bank" is among the options. . .

The source said advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Tuesday, were also considering the idea of an aggregator bank among a range of options that could be pursued. . .

In outlining the idea of an aggregator bank on Friday, Bair and Paulson said the government could use money from the Treasury-administered $700 billion financial rescue fund to capitalize a new institution that would be able to absorb toxic assets now weighing down bank balance sheets.

The hope would be that taking these bad assets off the hands of banks would allow the banks to attract badly needed private capital and renew lending, the original intention behind the bailout fund known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. . .
MORE ON ARNE DUNCAN'S MILITARIZATION OF CHICAGO SCHOOLS
Andy Kroll, Tomgram - Cadets must wear full military uniforms to school everyday, and undergo daily uniform inspections. As part of the academy's curriculum, they must also take a daily ROTC course focusing on military history, map reading and navigation, drug prevention, and the branches of the Department of Defense. . .

At the Phoenix Military Academy, cadets are even organized into an academy battalion, modeled on an Army infantry division battalion, in which upper-class cadets fill the leading roles of commander, executive officer, and sergeant major. . .

All told, between the academies and the voluntary Junior ROTC programs, more than 10,000 students are enrolled in a military education program of some sort in the CPS system. . .

All of CPS's military academies (except the Rickover Naval Academy) are located in low-income neighborhoods with primarily black and/or Hispanic residents. As a result, student enrollment in the academies consists almost entirely of minorities. . .

The schools essentially functional as recruiting tools, despite the expectable military disclaimers. . .
LIGHT RAIL VS. BUS RAPID TRANSIT
Baltimore Business Journal - Enhanced buses are a better option than light-rail cars along the proposed Purple Line in Maryland, according to a study from the World Resources Institute. The D.C.-based institute says that buses would be cheaper and combat global warming better than a light-rail system. . .

Light-rail transit features electric streetcars on rails and bus rapid transit has high-capacity express buses with designated lanes and multiple doorways.

The analysis compares both choices in the "medium investment" range, and says bus rapid transit would cut carbon dioxide emissions by almost 9,000 metric tons per year -- the same as taking about 1,600 cars off the road. MTA estimates the bus option would cost $580 million in capital investment and $17 million in yearly operational costs.

An equivalent light rail system would cost more than double, requiring $1.2 billion in capital and $25 million for annual upkeep. . .

Committee for Transit - A pro-bus think tank has failed to put a dent in the Maryland Transit Administration's analysis of the light rail option for the Purple Line. The World Research Institute's review of the air pollution section of the Purple Line reported that light rail performs slightly better than the state agency reported. The MTA compared light rail to so-called bus rapid transit for six types of air pollution. For five out of the six, light rail performed better. This finding is consistent with an independent analysis of light rail and [bus rapid transit] air emissions by Christopher Puchalsky of the University of Pennsylvania. The WRI chose to look at the one pollutant out of the six for which buses outperformed rail, CO2.

Richard Layman, Urban Places & Spaces - The thing you have to remember is that WRI is an active proponent of BRT as a transportation solution overseas, and they work on many projects there.

There is no question that BRT works great overseas, where far more people don't own cars compared to the U.S., and where people are willing to endure crush loads double what people are willing to endure in North America. In other words, they fit about 160 people on a 60 foot bus. . .

This fails to take into account three realities: (1) most people in the U.S., especially in the suburbs, have cars, access to cars, or could buy them; (2) to get people with the option of automobility to use transit you have to provide a high quality alternative; (3) research has proven time and time again that choice riders will ride fixed rail and except in rare instances, they won't ride bus.
PHILADELPHIA EASES FORECLOSURE CRISIS WITH COURT PLAN
Sharon Johnson, Women's E News - In the face of a mounting mortgage foreclosure crisis, financial advocacy groups are helping homeowners avoid further predatory lending practices and foreclosure auctions.

One effort began in June in Philadelphia, where the Court of Common Pleas now requires that mortgages of all owner-occupied properties scheduled for sale by the sheriff's office be reviewed by borrowers, lenders and the courts before they can be sold.

"Many of these owners were women who never should have gotten subprime loans in the first place," said John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, a nonprofit that helped establish the city's program to curb foreclosures. "Of the 552 homes referred to the program that had been scheduled for sheriff's sale from April to July, 230 were permanently removed from sale and 200 others had their sales postponed from one to five months for a 78 percent success rate."

A gender analysis of 10 million mortgages granted in 2007 conducted at the request of Women's E News by the Chicago Reporter, an investigative magazine that covers the Chicago area, suggests foreclosure-curbing programs could disproportionately benefit female homeowners across the country. . .

The Chicago Reporter analysis, released in October, found that while far more men than women signed mortgages, those women who did take out mortgages were almost twice as likely as men to receive subprime loans .
STUPID LIBRARY TRICKS
Bryce A. Suderow, DC Watch - I was upset when the head of the DC Libraries "weeded" the collections, removing classics and valuable texts in history and the humanities from the branch I use - the Southeast Branch. The weeding was explained as then-new Library Director Ginny Cooper's "refreshing" of the collections, to bring them up to date. What she did was remove most of the serious books, substitute DVDs, CDs and comic books, and add more computers to branches. In less than a year, she claimed greatly improved circulation statistics at Southeast - and she applied the same plan at all the libraries.

I tried for months to find out what happened to the books from Southeast from Cooper's bureaucrats. I was told various stories - that they were added to the collection at Martin Luther King, Jr., that they would be "always available" - but they would just not take up valuable shelf space at more than one place. Not quite true. Today I learned from librarians that Ms. Cooper sold the books on amazon.com. She didn't bother to remove the stamps and bar codes that identify them as Southeast library books. As a result, conscientious buyers, who bought them for pennies, are returning them to the library, saying there must be a mistake - that these books belong to Southeast Library. Seems as though she just can't get rid of those classics.
WHY ECONOMISTS SCREWED UP SO BADLY
Uwe E. Reinhardt, NY Times - Fewer than a dozen prominent economists saw this economic train wreck coming - and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, an economist famous for his academic research on the Great Depression, was notably not among them. Alas, for the real world, the few who did warn us about the train wreck got no more respect from the rest of their colleagues or from decision-makers in business and government than prophets usually do.

How could the economics profession have slept so soundly right into the middle of the economic mayhem all around us? Robert J. Shiller of Yale University, one of the sage prophets. . . finds an explanation in groupthink, a term popularized by the social psychologist Irving L. Janis. In his book "Groupthink", the latter had theorized that most people, even professionals whose careers ostensibly thrive on originality, hesitate to deviate too much from the conventional wisdom, lest they be marginalized or even ostracized.

If groupthink is the cause, it most likely is anchored in what my former Yale economics professor Richard Nelson (now at Columbia University) has called a "vested interest in an analytic structure," the prism through which economists behold the world.

This analytic structure, formally called "neoclassical economics," depends crucially on certain unquestioned axioms and basic assumptions about the behavior of markets and the human decisions that drive them. After years of arduous study to master the paradigm, these axioms and assumptions simply become part of a professional credo. Indeed, a good part of the scholarly work of modern economists reminds one of the medieval scholastics who followed St. Anselm's dictum "credo ut intellegam": "I believe, in order that I may understand."
WHY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IS BETTER THAN BUILDING MORE ROADS
Carli Paine, New America Media - Last week, Democrats in the House of Representatives revealed their economic recovery package, which calls for $90 billion in roads, bridges, waterways, and transit infrastructure investments. Public transportation capital investments would receive $10 billion under this proposal and $30 billion would go for highway construction. . .

In fact, public transportation creates 19 percent more jobs than the same investment in building roads or highways, according to an analysis of a 2004 United States Department of Transportation jobs creation model. And, according to the California Transit Association, for every $1 billion invested in new public transit projects, some 31,400 jobs are created and $3 billion is pumped into the local economy.

The figures make a lot of sense when you consider the difference in these endeavors: building new roads and expanding highways mostly involves paving over dirt, with some amount of construction of raised flyovers and interchanges. Extending a rail line means manufacturing the rail and the rail cars, then laying them, and after they are laid, on-going operation of the train. Similarly, new bus lines involve vehicle and parts manufacturing and long-term operations. Because most transit agencies also have Buy America policies, public transportation investment creates industry jobs in the United States, as well as construction jobs - operating jobs are an added plus.

For individuals struggling to reduce their personal expenses in this affordability crisis, being able to rely on buses and trains can free up money that would otherwise be spent on a car. In the United States, transportation is the second highest household expense, after housing. But people who live in a neighborhood well served by public transportation are able to reduce their spending on transportation from 25 percent of their household budget to just 9 percent. The money they save can go to ensuring that they pay their mortgage or rent on time or these dollars can go back into the economy through purchasing goods and services. . .

With transportation contributing one-third of all global warming pollution nationally, it's clear that we need transportation solutions that give people reliable, affordable alternatives to driving for every trip. Public transportation produces 95 percent less carbon monoxide (CO), 90 percent less in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and about half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx), per passenger mile, as private vehicles.

Carli Paine is the transportation program director for TransForm. TransForm (formerly the Transportation and Land Use Coalition) works for world-class transportation and walkable communities in the Bay Area and beyond
AP JOINS ATTACK ON SOCIAL SECURITY
Dean Baker, Prospect - An Associated Press news story referred to "soaring" and "skyrocketing" cost of Social Security. This are unusual adjectives to include in a news story and they are also not particularly accurate. Measured as a share of GDP, Social Security is projected to increase by approximately 2 percentage points over the next twenty years. This is approximately the same as the increase in military spending in the Bush years. Furthermore, this increase can be fully met by the designated Social Security tax. This article should have mentioned this fact. The Social Security tax and the bonds held by the trust fund will be sufficient to pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2049 according to the most recent projections from the Congressional Budget Office.
HOLDER SUPPORTS SECRET SEARCHES OF LIBRARIES & BOOKSTORE RECORDS
Don't Tase Me Bro' - President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general has endorsed an extension of the law that allows federal agents to demand Americans' library and bookstore records as part of terrorism probes, dismaying a national group of independent booksellers.

Eric Holder said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he supports renewing a section of the USA Patriot Act that allows FBI agents investigating international terrorism or espionage to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores. If not renewed by Congress, the provision will expire at the end of 2009.

The searches must be authorized by a court that meets secretly and has approved the government's requests in nearly all cases, according to congressional reports. The target of the search does not have to be suspected of terrorism or any other crime. A permanent gag order that accompanies each search prohibits the business or library from telling anyone about it.
THE NON-COMBAT TROOP TRICK
Sam Smith

Barack Obama has repeatedly talked about removing all combat troops from Iraq but neither the media nor his supporters have paid much attention to the critical adjective: combat.

Left in Iraq will be an uncertain number of "non-combat" troops. Among these will be 100,000 mercenaries that Minnesota Public Radio politely calls "the parallel army. . . filling in the gaps." Given that we have about regular 150,000 troops there now - both combat and non-combat - that's quite a few gaps being filled.

The other group being left in Iraq are "non-combat troops" estimated at somewhere around 30,000 to 70,000 - or about the same number of troops we had in Vietnam in early 1965. According to war secretary Robert Gates, the number will be "several tens of thousands."

What's the difference between combat and non-combat troops? The former are assigned to offensive operations while, as Amy Zalman puts it, non-combat troops "may provide training and mentoring, assist Iraqi troops, conduct intelligence and communications functions, among other tasks."

It is worth noting, however, that the troops left behind are good enough at combat to "provide training and mentoring," not to mention their ability to "assist Iraqi troops" that presumably will want, from time to time, to engage in combat. Writes Zalman, "The New York Times notes that the plan may seek to meet Obama's plan by 'remissioning' combat troops as non-combat forces and, moreover, that some may continue to conduct patrols with Iraqi forces, which is essentially a combat function.

Admittedly the Status of Forces Agreement provide for a total departure by the end of 2011, but that's a long way off. In any case, what is clear is that Obama's verbal sleight of hand is more than a little misleading.
AUTO BAILOUT INCLUDES WORKER STRIKE BAN
World Socialist - The federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers. The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.

According to the SEC filing, the Treasury Department could declare GM and Chrysler in default and revoke $17.4 billion in loans, throwing the automakers into bankruptcy, if "any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage."

The effect of this provision is to revoke the legal right to strike, an achievement won by the American working class in bitter struggles against "criminal conspiracy" laws used against striking workers in the 19th century. It was only with the 1935 passage, in the depths of the Great Depression, of the National Labor Relations Act that federal law recognized the right of workers to strike. This concession to the working class was not some freely given gift of the Roosevelt administration. It followed general strikes that erupted in 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Without the strike weapon, workers are reduced to the status of industrial slaves, legally compelled to accept the most brutal conditions of exploitation without any recourse to collective resistance.

Several commentators have questioned the legality of the anti-strike provision in the auto bailout bill. Nevertheless, under the terms of the bailout, the strike ban remains in effect as long as the auto companies have outstanding loans from the government, setting the stage for contract negotiations in 2011 in which workers would not have the slightest leverage to reject demands for even more draconian givebacks. .

Just as the 1980 Chrysler bailout and the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers' strike in 1981 initiated a wave of wage-cutting and union-busting in the 1980s and 1990s, the current attack on autoworkers is being used to spearhead a fundamental change in class relations in the US and internationally, under conditions of a global breakdown of the capitalist system.

The organization that ostensibly represents GM and Chrysler workers, the United Auto Workers union, campaigned for the government bailout of the Big Three companies, accepting its stipulations for tens of thousands of layoffs and wage and benefit cuts to bring unionized workers down to the level of non-union workers. It has not uttered a word of protest over the provision banning strikes and work stoppages.

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PALESTINIAN DOCTOR PLEADS ON ISRAEL TV FOR AID AFTER THREE DAUGHTERS ARE KILLED

Reuters - Israeli television broadcast desperate cries for help from a Palestinian doctor on Friday after his children were killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip and troops later helped surviving members of the family.

The telephone calls created extraordinary scenes during evening news broadcasts as the doctor, a Hebrew-speaking physician who spoke regularly on Israeli television, said three of his children were killed in a tank strike and others were wounded.

"My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled," he said in a voice shaking with emotion. "I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?"

Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish is a gynecologist who worked in one of Israel's main hospitals before Gazans were effectively sealed off behind an Israeli-led blockade on the Hamas-controlled enclave. He often gave interviews to Channel 10 television.

With Israeli journalists unable to report from the Gaza Strip independently, Aboul Aish acted as a Hebrew-speaking witness who told of the Palestinian civilians' suffering under fire during Israel's three-week-old offensive there.

Channel 10 correspondent Shlomi Eldar, who said he had planned a live on-air interview with Aboul Aish on Friday evening, produced a mobile phone in the studio, letting viewers here the voice of Aboul Aish: "My God, my girls, Shlomi," he said. "Can't anybody get to us, please?"

Eldar told his audience: "They have killed his family."

He said three of Aboul Aish's children were killed and two were seriously wounded. Building up the sense of drama, cameras followed him as left the studio, saying he would try to help arrange for their transfer for treatment, and safety, in Israel. . .

Aboul Aish's brother was also wounded and Eldar said two of his brother's children had also been killed in the incident.

The Israeli army said troops fired on Aboul Aish's house because a sniper had fired on soldiers from the building.

Aboul Aish responded: "All that was ever fired out of our house was love, hugs and acts of peace, nothing else, ever."
GALLERY:UNSOLD CARS AROUND THE WORLD

UNSOLD CARS AROUND THE WORLD

GAZA BEAT
Ynet News - Fruit growers in Israel have reported delays and reductions in orders from abroad since the military operation in Gaza was launched, due to various boycotts against Israeli produce. . . "We export persimmons, and because of the fighting a number of countries and distributors are canceling orders," Giora Almagor, of the southern town of Bitzaron, told Ynet. He said some of the produce had already been shipped while some was awaiting shipment in warehouses. Almagor said a large number of cancellations came from Jordan. "The produce stays packed in warehouses, and this is causing us massive losses," he said. . .

Ilan Eshel, director of the Organization of Fruit Growers in Israel, said Scandinavian countries have also been canceling orders. "It's mostly Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," he said. "In Scandinavia the tendency is general, and it may come to include all of the chains."

AFP - The Foreign Press Association urged its members to boycott Israeli army photos and video footage to protest at the shelling of a media building in Gaza City that wounded two cameramen. The move was also prompted by the Israeli army's refusal to allow reporters to enter the territory to cover the conflict in which some 1,100 people have been killed in the largest Israeli offensive ever launched on the Hamas-run enclave. "The FPA rejects and condemns the IDF policy of controlling the news coverage of the events in Gaza," said the group -- which represents foreign media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian territories, including AFP. . . The group asked media outlets not to use any photos or video footage provided by the Israeli military until it issues a formal apology for the attacks and "offers assurances that no such event will occur in the future."

The two cameramen, who worked for Abu Dhabi television, were wounded when an Israeli strike hit a building in Gaza City housing several international and Arab media outlets, witnesses and officials said.

Media outlets housed in the Al-Shuruq tower, located in the Rimal neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza City, include the Reuters news agency and television stations Fox, Sky and Al-Arabiya.

On January 2 Israel's Supreme Court ordered the state to allow foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip, but no journalists have gone in amid disagreements between the FPA and the authorities.

Israel's defence ministry sealed off Gaza when it launched an air offensive last Saturday. In recent days some journalists have been embedded with Israeli troops but none have been permitted to operate independently.

Robert Bryce, Salon - It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas. . .

In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel's $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's budget is also spent on oil. . .
REV. RICK WARREN SEES NAZI YOUTH AS MODEL
Bruce Wilson, Huffington Post - On April 17, 2005, at the southern California Anaheim Angels sports stadium thirty thousand Saddleback Church members, more than ever gathered in one spot, assembled to celebrate Saddleback's 25th anniversary and listened as Rick Warren announced his vision for the next 25 years of the church: the P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

Towards the close of his nearly one hour speech, Pastor Warren asked his followers to be as committed to Jesus as the young Nazi men and women who spelled out in mass formation with their bodies the words "Hitler, we are yours," in 1939 at the Munich Stadium, were committed to the Fuhrer of the Third Reich, a major instigator of a World War that claimed 55 million lives. Rick Warren has exhorted Christians towards Nazi-like dedication in at least several public speeches and also during a one hour video recording of a talk by Warren, explaining his P.E.A.C.E. Plan. .

By calling on his church members to follow Jesus with the fanatical dedication with which the Nazis, or Hitler Youth, gave to Adolf Hitler, Rick Warren appeared to be in effect asking his Saddleback members to be fanatically dedicated to Warren's own leadership, given his role in divining God's intent for the Saddleback church flock. During his speech, Rick Warren also explained that God had personally instructed him to seek, for the good of the world, more influence, power and fame.

Warren moved on, from his celebration of Nazi dedication to purpose, and held up Lenin, and Chinese Red Guard efforts during the Cultural Revolution, as behavioral examples for his Saddleback flock, whom Warren called on to carry out a "revolution".

Concluding his motivational speech, the Saddleback Church founder instructed his ranks in the stadium to hold up signs, from their official programs, with the preprinted message "whatever it takes". Warren then introduced, as leader of the first nation on Earth in which the P.E.A.C.E. Plan would be implemented, Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

In 1998 under Kagame's leadership Rwanda, along with the now officially "Purpose Driven" nation of Uganda, invaded the Democratic Republic of The Congo, touching off a conflict that has claimed more civilian lives than any since World War Two. On December 12, 2008, the United Nations accused Rwanda of aiding Congolese warlord Laurent Nkunda, accused of massacres and human rights violations and whose recent offensive has created several hundred thousand Congolese refugees.

In March 2008, Rick Warren's Saddleback launched an official national "Purpose Driven Living" program in Uganda, a country which was indicted in 2005 by the International Criminal Court for perpetrating "massive" human rights violations by invading and looting the natural riches of the Congo. . .

"Stop dreaming and start doing," the Purpose Driven Life author told his Anaheim Stadium crowd. Warren described a global Christian movement to bring the message of Jesus Christ to every man, woman and child on Earth. "It's going to cover the planet," he proclaimed, "and then the end is going to come.". . .

Though Warren's speech was in the idiom of Christianity, he did not seek to inspire his Saddleback audience with examples of great religious leaders who have changed history through persuasion or other nonviolent approaches. Rick Warren looked to 20th century exemplars of vision and dedication but not to Mohatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or any other religious leaders.

With more than a hint of admiration in his voice, pastor Warren described how in 1939 in a packed Munich Stadium before the leader of the Third Reich, young brown-shirted men and women spelled out in formation, with their bodies, words in German which read "Hitler, we are yours."

"And they nearly took the world, " pastor Rick told the stadium crowd. He moved on to quote another inspirational example from the 20th Century, Lenin, who said 'give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change the world.' Once again Warren observed, "They nearly did."

YOUTUBE CLIPS
REMEMBERING RESURRECTION CITY

For six weeks - between May and June in the tumultuous spring of 1968 - some 2800 members of Martin Luther King Jr's Poor People's Campaign came to the capital to give physical form to the economic programs King was pushing.

It was an audacious tactical gambit by the leaders of the SCLC, and one which is often thought to have backfired due to a number of overlapping factors. With Dr King's death in April and the urban disturbances that followed, the nation and SCLC were thrown into a state of uncertainty. The leadership of the SCLC fell to King's right-hand man Ralph Abernathy, and with that, the unenviable task of maintaining the momentum of the PPC whilst appeasing the growing factions within his own movement. Ultimately, the task of managing Resurrection City during its six week lifespan would prove to be highly problematic; with the venture being undermined by a combination of poor organization, hesitant leadership and dire weather conditions.

The design of Resurrection City was undertaken by a 'Structures Committee' ; a small group of architects and planners chaired by John Wiebenson, long time cartoonist for the DC Gazette, forerunner of the Progressive Review.

Estimating a potential population of three thousand, Wiebenson and his team went about producing designs for a plywood city; one which could be built economically, easily and quickly. The two main designs for Resurrection City were the Family Shelter Unit and the Dormitory Shelter Unit. Each version comprised prefabricated parts, which could be easily assembled by residents in less than an hour to create a simple, compact and weatherproof shelter.

An exhibit commemorating Resurrection City has been created by British artist Matthew Thompson and is on display at the Martin Luther King Library, 9th & G NW, in Washington through the middle of February.

BREVITAS
CRASH TALK

CNN - The real estate market is so awful that buyers are now scooping up homes for as little as $1,000. There are 18 listings in Flint, Mich., for under $3,000, according to Realtor.com. There are 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and a whopping 709 in Detroit. All of these communities have been hit hard by foreclosures, and most of these homes are being sold by the lenders that repossessed them. . . With prices this low, lenders aren't looking to make any money on these deals. They just want to get these houses off their books, so they don't have to bear the cost of maintaining them and paying property taxes. In fact, the $500, $1,000 or $3,000 that a buyer forks over often goes straight to the real estate brokers as a commission.

Although House Minority Leader John Boehner is a conservative Republican, a few items in his critique of the bailout approved by congressional Democrats should be of concern to progressives, even they reach dramatically different conclusions about what should be done about it:

The total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government.

President-elect Obama has said that his proposed stimulus legislation will create or save three million jobs. This means that this legislation will spend about $275,000 per job. The average household income in the U.S. is $50,000 a year.

The House Democrats' bill provides enough spending - $825 billion - to give every man, woman, and child in America $2,700.

$825 billion is enough to give every person living in poverty in the U.S. $22,000.

Although the House Democrats' proposal has been billed as a transportation and infrastructure investment package, in actuality only $30 billion of the bill - or three percent - is for road and highway spending. A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office said that only 25 percent of infrastructure dollars can be spent in the first year, making the one year total less than $7 billion for infrastructure.

INAUGURATION

DCIST - Portions of downtown [DC] have been declared a "Prostitution Free Zone" for the Inaugural celebration period. [The signs have] an expiration date, as though at all other times, hookers have free reign over downtown Washington . . . The basic idea is that [the law] allows police officers to issue fines of $300 to a group of two or more persons found congregating in a public space or property within the PFZ for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or prostitution-related offenses.

MID EAST

The Green Party has called for a halt in US military assistance to Israel. The party also urges boycott and divestment until Israel observes international law, ends the illegal 42-year occupation and systematic destruction of Palestinian civil society, and abolishes its apartheid-like system within Israel as well as in the occupied territories. Greens noted that Israel has barred Palestinian-Israeli candidates from upcoming elections because their parties opposed the Gaza operation and advocate changing Israel from a Jewish state to a state for all its citizens. Over 20% of Israel's population are non-Jews.

CRIME BLOTTER

KUTV - A Utah man had his gun confiscated after it accidentally went off and shot a toilet while he was hitching up his trousers in the bathroom. Police the 26-year-old was hurt after the bullet shattered the toilet and sent sharp shards into the man's arm but there were no serious injuries. . . He was a little shook up so we just wanted to take it (the gun) right then and allow him time to gether himself before releasing it to him."

NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME WATCH

Bill Sammon, Fox News - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is receptive to the idea of prosecuting some Bush administration officials, while letting others who are accused of misdeeds leave office without prosecution, she told Chris Wallace in an interview on "FOX News Sunday." "I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it," the California Democrat said. "And other things that are maybe time that is spent better looking to the future rather than to the past."
Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Friday he wants to set up a commission to look into whether the Bush administration broke the law by taking the nation to war against Iraq and instituting aggressive anti-terror initiatives. The Michigan Democrat called for an "independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities."

Paul Krugman, NY Times - During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it's giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off - which isn't too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators. Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again.

OH WHAT TANGLED WEBS WE WEAVE. . .

If you can't sell a Senate seat for $1 million, how come you can sell exclusive rights to broadcast an inaugural event at the extremely public Lincoln Memorial for $5 million? Don't expect an answer soon from the Obama administration, especially since one of the purchasers of the rights, HBO, went on to censor the performance, cutting out the prayer by gay bishop Gene Robinson, who had been squeezed into the act after protests over Obama's use of the bigoted Rev. Rick Warren for his inaugural invocation.

FURTHERMORE. . .

The ever obnoxious Abe Foxman has added Bill Moyers' to his list of anti-Semites, which brings to mind the old Quaker line that "Everyone's crazy except thee and me and sometimes I wonder about thee."

READER COMMENTS

OBAMA & LINCOLN

Obama is a black man. He is the first black person to be president. This is a huge factor, for him and for the nation. His embrace of the Lincoln aura is a protection for him and is also a way for him to use a powerful symbol to establish his auctoritas (gravitas) -- in the country at large surely, but also in Washington D.C. where he faces a horrific Bush legacy of failed and dangerous policies, plus a throng of powerful special interests, plus a veritable cauldron of liars and thieves, plus a slew of people who are ever ready to lay traps for him. He does not have much to throw into things on his side for the longer haul. His strengths are organization and symbols. He is a truly deft organizer, an amazing one in fact, and he surely knows the value of symbols and how to use them, as witness his embrace of Lincoln.

There is another side to this. Lincoln, after all, was no saint. Not by a long shot. Nor would he, Lincoln, think of himself that way. He was a shrewd and sometimes very calculating man. He could throw his weight around. He could, and did, do very unconstitutional (and anti-constitutional) things. He was cautious and daring by turns. He was in an impossible situation and made the best of it as he could. Not too different from what Obama faces now. Is Obama of that mettle? I don't know. I don't think any of us knows. He's not going to perform the miracles his clique and claque are so ready to claim for him. I don't think he believes for a minute the exaggerated hype and BS. that his (summer soldier) admirers proclaim for him and surround him with.

But he deserves a chance to see what he can do. He may well be so mired in the coils of the U.S. upper political class that he is part and parcel of them. But I don't think so. Besides, that political class is itself not monolithic. We will be seeing its less vicious side somewhat in the next few months; some things will be done that are long overdue and will help some millions of people. But the underlying problems and the dry rot of imperial power and cancerous economic growth syndrome will not be changed. All true. But Obama's stint will buy us time. The real question is, not whether he is a fine man or a media invention, but what are we going to do with the time that he may, however inadvertently, buy us. - John, ME

I agree Obama's use of the Lincoln symbolism has been heavy-handed, but it could have been worse. He could ride into Washington on a donkey. - Kevin Carson

Time someone spoke up and pointed out that the emperor has no clothes on. His choice of models is rather frightening. More Americans died violent deaths during Lincoln's administration that during all other presidents' administrations combined. He didn't "unite" or "save" the union at all, but engendered divisions that plague us to this day. He was a horrible president, maybe the worst we've ever had.

POOR LIKE ME

With the economy the way it is and the middle class sinking down into the ranks of the working class and the working class becoming either poor or poor and homeless, I see the class lines being drawn ever more sharply. I see actual fences going up around previously friendly landowners and actual gated communities like the feudal times of yore. It's only a matter of time before every body gets their scape goating focus off of the "illegal" immigrants and puts the blaring spot light back onto those subversive welfare mothers and other poor, white people.

For me, I am well spoken yet I am poor. A part of me thinks even if one day my brilliance actually gets recognized and I earn money for my talents, that I will still want to identify with the very core of myself that self-identifies as poor.

For one thing, I'm on social security. Rumors of Obama politics taking away the already shredded safety net from those of us who are barely out of the shark infested water as it is, are chilling and foreboding. For another, why should I have to give up my identity to finally become valid and "legitimate" just because I will eventually have achieved an education and all the accolades it bestows? Why can't the rest of my family and friends who were born poor, live poor and probably gonna die poor, be any less valid or "legitimate" than they are right now, just being who they are?

I see no difference between all these programs supposedly designed to get people out of poverty and the previous generation's assimilation programs directed at making black people act white or "civilizing" Indians. I'm not saying take away the safety net, I'm saying, stop trying to drag us out of the water. You're just not strong enough and every time we get a little bit out, one of ya drops us and we fall back deeper than we were before. Besides, there just isn't room enough for everyone on dry land. You don't really want us there. It just makes some of you feel better knowing that these programs are "out there" so you can blame the poor when the programs don't work and the money mostly goes to the administrators of the government and "non-profits" of the poverty industry.

Have I made my point? I'm tired of getting pulled over for "driving while poor" and having all kinds of ridiculous accusations thrown at me that they would never say to me if I were driving a Lexus and had my nails done. I'm tired of landlords that completely violate my tenant rights because they can and nobody will give a damn if I complain, it will just get me evicted. I'm tired of working low-wage jobs for long hours and when I can't stand any more and go sit down a minute I get put "on call" forever.

Or how about those college professors, the less enlightened ones, who misinterpret my chronic lateness and occasional absence as "irresponsibility" when it's not me, it's the stupid bus. And those bus drivers. The things they say to us, because they can. Or doctors who drop entire classes of people from their clientele because they all have one thing in common: state Medicaid. I'm tired of constantly worrying about how to pay the bills and buy food only to be humiliated at the store when I walk up to get a refund and she says, "Let me guess. you have no receipt and you bought it with cash. . . " Or the looks I get when I pull out my food stamp card. The judgments people think they have a right to make about what I eat are worse than being poor itself. It's not the poverty I mind so much, it's the powerlessness. Or, back to the police again, having my license plate run "at random" and getting pulled over because I missed a payment on my car insurance so they take my car, ticket me, and leave me crying on the sidewalk alone at 10 o'clock at night. Or, as one young deputy thought, of a police officer actually coming into my apartment and sexually propositioning me because he assumed that because I was a welfare mother I was easy. I have so many anecdotes about the police that I think that is where it should begin. They are the primary perpetrators of socioeconomic class social profiling. I hated it when I read about it in Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and I hate it when it's me and my family now.

If a black man can be president, can a white woman get a little justice?

I wish the ACLU cared more about the poor. I know they do legal work on behalf of the homeless and I'm grateful but I wish they would really go after social justice in a serious way about the rights of the poor to be free of government intrusion and biased, baseless scrutiny. Are you with me? - Lorian Gray

SAVING THE GLOBE VS. GROWING THE ECONOMY

If you compare growth-oriented capitalist societies to the alternatives, you will find that capitalism has the best environmental results. The societies which the author and the commenters propose is Haiti, which is completely denuded of tree life. Anti-capitalist economic systems always attack the environment first. Is it just symbolic that Obama and his party are promoting "shovel-ready" projects to get the economy going again? What do you think is on the other end of that shovel? - wellbasically

PROGRESSIVES

You and nearly all the "progressives" in this country live in a dream world. As long as the vast majority of Americans still believe in the lie referred to as the "American Dream" no matter how screwed they are, there will never be a truly progressive president elected in this country. And the Republicans know this which is why they are so good at selling the lie. - Chris

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