Undernews For 10 February 2009

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8 February 2009

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

BILL TO NOWHERE?
Sam Smith

One can say with confidence that the failure to pass the second bailout will substantially hastened the collapse of the economy.

But having said that doesn't mean it's a good bill, or even close. It's not unlike our healthcare system, legislated by a series of compromises, payoffs, ideological idiocies and unsupportable assumptions, resulting in something nobody really wants.

It is a classic example of Washington's political Asperger's Syndrome, with the best and the brightest producing the worst and the most opaque; abstract intelligence unable to deal with the practicalities of every day life.

Which is why, for example, the bill is so deficient in dealing with what we were told was the major problem: housing foreclosures. Why not, asked one of our readers, funnel the necessary money through the troubled homeowners rather than giving it directly to the banks? That way you help both, whereas with the chosen route, only the banks win.

Why not set up public banks to make the loans the private banks won't? Why not let the government become an equity partner with troubled homeowners?

A small businessman, writing in the Washington Post, offered another suggestion:

"What small businesses need, immediately, is healthy demand for their goods and services. The rebate checks of last year aimed to provide just that, but most Americans saved the money or used it to pay down debt. Less than 20 percent went to bolster consumer spending. There's little reason to expect more from the proposed $1,000-per-household tax cut in the current stimulus bill. . .

"A better choice would be something Americans are likely to spend, and without huge logistical headaches: a gift card. By sending every taxpayer a $2,000 debit card, the government stimulates spending directly. The card doesn't get deposited with a bank, a step that greatly reduced the use of last year's rebate checks for new spending, and with a defined expiration time, perhaps a year, the program could help precisely while other programs get underway. . .

"Gift cards have a nationwide redemption rate of 80 percent. If such debit cards were used at the same rate, the cost of the program would be $270 billion, for a greater effect at less cost than the proposed tax breaks."

Like it not, that's an example of the way a small business owner thinks and it's the sort of thinking that is sorely absent in the capital. You start with the ordinary people in trouble and try to help them.

The worst culprits, of course, are the Republicans who managed to get an extraordinary number of tax breaks of the sort that have been found useless in previous fiscal downturns. They were aided by Obama, who has become so bipartisized that he initially gave away a huge chunk of the deal, thereby making any compromise far larger than it needed to be.

The Democrats did their part, dumping pet projects into the bill of the sort that were heavenly gifts to GOP critics and rightwing talk shows. Further, they gave excessively to the highway lobby and badly shortchanged rail construction.

Then the Democratic leadership gave the extremist center its chance and sure enough it aimed at some of the best provisions of the bill including cutting funds for school construction, Head Start, food stamps, public transit and firefighting.

Because of its sheer size, it may help or it may only slow the disaster. What we can say, however, is that with a bit more integrity, smarts and concern for the fate of the ordinary American, it could have been a dramatically better measure.
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CRASH TALK
NY Times - Five hundred thousand dollars - the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money - seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

"As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable," said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, "The Manny," and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. "Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.". . .

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur's pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

"Some of them want their drivers to have guns," the driver said. "You get a cop and you have a driver." To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. "Going to those parties," said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary, "a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she's not going to wear the same dress." Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe - Within the $900 billion economic stimulus bill, Democrat Barbara Mikulski of Maryland sponsored an amendment to give tax breaks to new-car buyers, for the first $49,500 of the car's price tag. . . The amendment passed 71-26.

Just four hours earlier, the Senate considered an amendment sponsored by Democrat Patty Murray of Washington that would have pumped an extra $25 billion into public works projects, including $5 billion for mass transit. . .
That amendment failed by two votes. Just when millions of Americans are weaning themselves from unsustainable ways, the pork-brained Senate - with no complaint yet from Obama - remains the slick sales rep for a spent industry.

In Massachusetts, MBTA ridership set a new record with a 4.3 percent rise and the average number of riders per week on commuter rail is the highest in its 44 years. Ridership gains were far more dramatic in cities with younger histories of mass transit.

Commuter rail ridership in the third quarter of 2008 rose between 17 percent and 36 percent in Los Angeles, Dallas, Portland, Maine; Oakland, and Albuquerque. Bus ridership was up between 10 percent and 24 percent in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Orange County. Subway and elevated-train rides rose between 11 percent and 14 percent in Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. Trolley and streetcar ridership rose between 13 percent and 20 percent in Memphis, Buffalo, Denver, Minneapolis, and Sacramento. . .

Based on the American Automobile Association estimates of driving costs, the American Public Transportation Association calculates that Americans who rely on public transportation can save $8,368 a year. Boston leads the United States in calculated annual savings, at $12,285.

That dwarfs a $1,500 tax credit. . . Mass transit needs far more stimulus help to offset local budget cuts, but cannot get it because some say buses, trolleys, and trains are not "shovel-ready." America's automakers keep getting aid, even when a bailout is only a shovel to dig their own grave.

San Francisco Chronicle - Fifteen percent of all houses and apartments in the United States stood empty at the end of 2008 - a record 19 million homes - according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Vacant housing units in the fourth quarter increased nearly 7 percent compared with the same period in 2007, largely because of bank foreclosures and owners who abandoned their properties.'
BRITISH DRUG EXPERT SAYS ECSTASY NO MORE DANGEROUS THAN RIDING A HORSE
BBC - Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one. Ministers have outlined their opposition to any such move.

Professor Nutt wrote: "Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy."

The professor said horse-riding accounted for more than 100 deaths a year, and went on: "This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates - indeed encourages - certain forms of potentially harmful behavior but not others such as drug use."
HARD TIMES IN THE HUMANITIES
Thomas H. Benton, Chronicle of Higher Education - Most undergraduates don't realize that there is a shrinking percentage of positions in the humanities that offer job security, benefits, and a livable salary (though it is generally much lower than salaries in other fields requiring as many years of training). They don't know that you probably will have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect - a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete - and, as a result, they don't make any fallback plans until it is too late.

I have found that most prospective graduate students have given little thought to what will happen to them after they complete their doctorates. They assume that everyone finds a decent position somewhere, even if it's "only" at a community college (expressed with a shudder). Besides, the completion of graduate school seems impossibly far away, so their concerns are mostly focused on the present. . .

What almost no prospective graduate students can understand is the extent to which doctoral education in the humanities socializes idealistic, naïve, and psychologically vulnerable people into a profession with a very clear set of values. It teaches them that life outside of academe means failure, which explains the large numbers of graduates who labor for decades as adjuncts, just so they can stay on the periphery of academe. . .

There is work for humanities doctorates (though perhaps not as many as are currently being produced), but there are fewer and fewer real jobs because of conscious policy decisions by colleges and universities. As a result, the handful of real jobs that remain are being pursued by thousands of qualified people - so many that the minority of candidates who get tenure-track positions might as well be considered the winners of a lottery.

Universities (even those with enormous endowments) have historically taken advantage of recessions to bring austerity to teaching. There will be hiring freezes and early retirements. Rather than replacements, more adjuncts will be hired, and more graduate students will be recruited, eventually flooding the market with even more fully qualified teacher-scholars who will work for almost nothing. When the recession ends, the hiring freezes will become permanent, since departments will have demonstrated that they can function with fewer tenured faculty members.

Nearly every humanities field was already desperately competitive, with hundreds of applications from qualified candidates for every tenure-track position. Now the situation is becoming even worse. For example, the American Historical Association's job listings are down 15 percent and the Modern Language's listings are down 21 percent, the steepest annual decline ever recorded. Apparently, many already-launched candidate searches are being called off; some responsible observers expect that hiring may be down 40 percent this year. . .

It's hard to tell young people that universities recognize that their idealism and energy - and lack of information - are an exploitable resource. For universities, the impact of graduate programs on the lives of those students is an acceptable externality, like dumping toxins into a river. If you cannot find a tenure-track position, your university will no longer court you; it will pretend you do not exist and will act as if your unemployability is entirely your fault. It will make you feel ashamed, and you will probably just disappear, convinced it's right rather than that the game was rigged from the beginning.
WIND POWER BLOWING IN NEW JOBS
ABC News - Hundreds of workers lost their jobs after the Rockwell-Goss printing press factory closed here in Cedar Rapids in 2001. The hulking empty shell sat idle on the outskirts of the city for four years. Wind power sweeps new jobs into old-tech towns Two wind turbines stand near a traditional windmill on a farm near Mount Carmel, Iowa. Wind power has been sweeping new jobs into old-tech towns.

But that was before wind power blew into town, bringing thousands of clean-tech manufacturing jobs to Iowa and the Midwest.

In many cases, the new industry is setting up shop in defunct heavy manufacturing plants, bringing new economic life and vitality to old settings.

Bob Loyd, who once oversaw crews manufacturing the last printing presses to leave the old Rockwell-Goss factory, now manages workers assembling the newest generation of giant wind turbines in the same building.. . .

Before the nation's financial crisis hit, wind manufacturing was on a roll. Riding a wave of wind-farm development, some 55 new or expanded facilities popped up nationwide just last year -- from blade manufacturers to bearing makers -- in what some describe as a new north-south wind manufacturing corridor running roughly from Minnesota to Texas.

Such growth brought more than 1,000 new "green collar" jobs in wind manufacturing to Iowa just last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Nationwide, wind-turbine manufacturing added 13,000 jobs for a total of 85,000 wind workers last year.
WHAT LIES AHEAD IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN
From Meet the Press

MR. GREGORY: [We're] joined by Tom Ricks for his first interview on his new book "The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 through 2008.". . .

MR. RICKS: I think a lot of people back here incorrectly think the war is over. What I say in this book is that we may be only halfway through this thing. In fact, my favorite line in the book is the last line. Ambassador Crocker, a very thoughtful diplomat, says that the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened.

MR. GREGORY: That is an amazing statement. And a lot of people have to be listening to that, thinking, "Well, what's the other shoe to drop, then?"

MR. RICKS: There's a whole lot of shoes out there. A whole lot of shoes to be thrown, actually. This, this year we're in now, '09, is going to be, I think, a, a surprisingly tough year. You've got a series of elections in Iraq. Meanwhile, you've got American troops declining. General Odierno says in the book that the really dangerous withdrawals come at the end of this year. We're doing the easy troop withdrawals now, but down the road you start taking them out of areas that aren't so secure, that aren't so safe, that you're, that you're worried about. So they're going to be holding national elections in Iraq just when we have fewer troops there.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. RICKS: And finally, none of the basic problems that the surge was meant to solve have been solved. All of the basic issues facing Iraq are still there.

MR. GREGORY: You suggested--while the administration has said the surge was successful, undeniably violence has gone down, you suggested kick the can down the road. What do you mean?

MR. RICKS: Well, basically the surge succeeded military, failed politically. And that was its purpose; not just to improve security, but to create a political breathing space in which national reconciliation, in which major change could occur in Iraq that hasn't changed. What General Odierno says in the book--he's the U.S. commander there now. What Odierno says is that Iraqis, many of them use the breathing space we created to step backwards, to become more sectarian. They've become more divided. . .

MR. GREGORY: You write in the book that Obama will be torn between what his supporters expect and what his generals advise.

MR. RICKS: I think that's right, and I think we may see a confrontation between Obama and the generals by the end of this year. American voters, many of them, think we're going to be out of Iraq in 16 months; when he talks about having combat troops out of Iraq, that somehow no more Americans troops will die. Well, the news flash for Obama here is there are not such thing as non-combat troops. We don't have a pacifist wing of the U.S. military. All our troops are ready for combat. We're going to have American troops fighting and dying there for many years to come. What General Odierno says in the book is he would like to see 35,000 American troops there in 2015.

MR. GREGORY: In 2015.

MR. RICKS: Yeah. So, which means that Obama's war in Iraq may be longer than Bush's war in Iraq. So bottom line here, I think Iraq is going to change Obama more than Obama changes Iraq.

MR. GREGORY: Where are troop levels now?

MR. RICKS: We're about 155,000.

MR. GREGORY: And when do we get to that bottom-out level of 30, 35,000 that Odierno's talking about?

MR. RICKS: Well, that's going to be the fight all year long. When do you come down? How fast do you come down? Do you come down a brigade a month, as Obama indicated on the campaign trail? Or do you plateau it out this year and then bring it down early 2010? No matter when you do it, though, you're going to come to a point where the generals are going to say, "You know, this is not something I really want to do here. This is dangerous. We're taking troops out of a place where things are going to start breaking loose.". . .

MR. GREGORY: When--it was back in July of '08 when Senator Obama went with a couple of other senators for his first meeting with General Petraeus in Iraq. And here he is, he's getting off the helicopter and first seeing him. This was a rather contentious exchange, wasn't it?

MR. RICKS: It is. And it is one of my favorite moments in the book. Here you have Petraeus and Obama, who are in many ways similar guys; lean, smart, tough and vicious, more reserved than a lot of their peers. And they actually agree on a lot of where Iraq should be, of lowering our, our sights there and, and our goals. But the meeting in Baghdad was surprisingly contentious. It goes on for about 90 minutes, and essentially the general lectures Obama. And this feeling was, "I've been to your hearings. You guys have beat up on me. You kept on asking me questions and didn't give me time to answer. Now you're on my turf." And what should have been really a general with a candidate conversation became a 90 minute lecture by Petraeus: "Let me tell you about Iraq, fellow.". . .

MR. GREGORY: So what are the biggest challenges [Obama] faces now in Afghanistan?

MR. RICKS: Well, I think the first thing is to recognize that it's not really a war in Afghanistan, it's a war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a friend of mine said, it's hard to win a war in Afghanistan when the enemy wants to fight it in the next country over, Pakistan.

MR. GREGORY: Right. And that's the Taliban fighting and winning battles in Pakistan. This is where we went to war to take them out of power.

MR. RICKS: And that's very scary. And our supply lines through Pakistan are being challenged. Bridges are being blown up, American convoys are being attacked. So I think the first thing that Obama will do is begin to look at it as an Afghan-Pakistan war, in which Pakistan is really the more important factor. We could lose in Afghanistan. It would be unhappy, but not, you know, terrible for us. If you lose Pakistan, you end up having the mujahideen, Islamic extremists, with nuclear weapons. And that was a major al-Qaeda goal that we really do not want to see happen. .
THE HEALTH PLAN THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE BUT THE POLITICIANS
Daniel P. Wiert, MD, Houston Chronicle - A majority of physicians (59 percent) and an even higher proportion of Americans (at least 62 percent) support single payer national health insurance or "Medicare-for-All". In spite of this, virtually all we are hearing about today are mandate plans that would require everyone to buy the same private for-profit insurance that is already failing us. The for-profit insurance companies and their plethora of plans make for a terribly complex, fragmented, costly and inefficient system. Administrative overhead consumes about 31 percent of health care dollars in the United States, and the for-profit insurance companies are responsible for half of this, or 15 percent of $2.4 trillion. This money, more than $350 billion per year, provides no health care: it is consumed by enormous administrative costs, profits for investors and shareholders, and large salaries for managers of these for-profit insurance companies.

All of the incremental reform programs proposed tax subsidies, health savings accounts, individual or employer mandates, increased regulation of for-profit insurance companies keep these proverbial foxes in the henhouse and are doomed to fail to control costs and provide universal access. Competition among the foxes does not benefit the chickens, the patients, the doctors or the hospitals. The for-profit insurance companies fundamentally reduce choice. Your preferred doctor or hospital is "out-of-network"? Too bad, we won't pay, says your insurance company.

Incremental reforms, mostly mandate schemes which retain the for-profit insurance companies, have been tried in seven states over the past two decades: Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine. In all of these states the reforms have failed to contain costs. In all but Massachusetts, they have failed to reduce the number of uninsured. In Massachusetts, there has been a modest decrease in the number of uninsured, falling from 13 percent of adults in 2006 to 7 percent of adults in 2007, but at the cost of a substantial increase in public spending . . . Most of the gain in Massachusetts has come from expanding Medicaid and subsidizing the purchase of private insurance; very few people have signed up for the unsubsidized private insurance. Not to mention that 7 percent uninsured is unacceptably high. Far from controlling costs, these mandate plans will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation's health care costs.

The United States spends about twice as much per capita on health care as other industrialized countries. Yet it is a myth that the United States has the best health care in the world. The United States ranks near the bottom of industrialized countries in terms of important morbidity and mortality outcomes (for example, life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality).

About 18,000 American adults die unnecessarily every year due to lack of insurance. As reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2003, repair of an aortic aneurysm cost $8,647 in Canada and $13,432 in the U.S.

What accounted for the substantial difference? Most of the difference was due to much greater overhead costs in the U.S. The surgeons and surgical facilities are top-notch in Canada. The surgeons are very well paid. The difference is that Canada has adopted a true insurance system for financing health care, one that spreads risk across a broad population: a publicly funded single-payer national health insurance plan that eliminates the parasitic, investor-owned "insurance" companies that make profits by enrolling the healthy, screening out the sick and denying claims.

Single-payer national health insurance for financing health care is NOT "socialized medicine."

Under a single-payer, "Medicare-for-All" system, delivery of health care remains private. The providers of health care remain private. Patients choose any doctor and any hospital. . .

We have an American system that works. It's Medicare. It's not perfect, but Americans with Medicare are far happier than those with for-profit insurance. Doctors face fewer hassles in getting paid, and Medicare has been a leader in keeping costs down. And keep in mind that Medicare insures people with the greatest health care needs: people over 65 and the disabled. We should improve and expand Medicare to cover everyone. In contrast to the for-profit insurance companies, Medicare has a very low overhead about 3 percent. . .

A single-payer "Medicare-for-All" system is embodied in a bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 676, sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and cosponsored by 93 other members of Congress.

Its features are: automatic enrollment for everyone; comprehensive services covering all medically necessary care and drugs; free choice of doctor and hospital, who remain independent and negotiate their fees and budgets with a public or nonprofit agency; processing and payment of bills by a public or nonprofit agency; promotion of job growth and the entire U.S. economy by removing the excessive burden of health care costs from businesses; coverage for everyone without spending any more than we are now.
A COP IS MORE LIKELY TO KILL YOU THAN A TERRORIST
Eye Wash Station - After 9/11, the fear of another attack on U.S. soil cleanly supplanted the fear of having one's penis chopped off by a vengeful lover in the pantheon of irrational American fears. While we're constantly being told that another attack is imminent and that radical Islamic fundamentalists are two steps away from establishing a caliphate in Branson, Missouri, just how close are they? How do the odds of dying in a terrorist attack stack up against the odds of dying in other unfortunate situations?

The following ratios were compiled using data from 2004 National Safety Council Estimates, a report based on data from The National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, 2003 mortality data from the Center for Disease Control was used.

You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack

You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

You are six times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack

You are eight times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack

You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane

You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack

You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack

You are nine times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack

You are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
OBAMA SENT KISSINGER TO TALK WITH PUTIN
Telegraph, UK - The Daily Telegraph has learned that the 85-year-old former US secretary of state met President Dmitry Medvedev for secret negotiations in December. According to Western diplomats, during two days of talks the octogenarian courted Russian officials to win their support for Mr Obama's initiative, which could see Russia and the United States each slashing their nuclear warheads to 1,000 warheads.

The decision to send Mr Kissinger to Moscow, taken by Mr Obama when he was still president-elect, is part of a plan to overcome probable Republican objections in Congress.

Mr Kissinger is believed to have won a verbal rather than written undertaking for the deal. Tom Graham, a senior associate at Kissinger Associates and a former member of the national security council in the White House, confirmed that Mr Kissinger had met Mr Medvedev but denied that any negotiations had taken place and said he had not met with Mr Putin.

However, a diplomatic source said that Mr Kissinger held two days of talks with Mr Putin at his country house near Moscow.

While the details of the ambitious initiative are yet to be revealed, the proposal to return to the negotiating table after eight years of reluctance in Washington has been welcomed in Britain and elsewhere.

Mr Obama apparently chose Mr Kissinger for his consummate diplomatic skills and his popularity in Moscow, an affection earned by his open acknowledgment of Russia's international resurgence.

Despite his pariah status with many left-wingers in Mr Obama's Democratic Party, the president forged relations with Mr Kissinger during his campaign.
IS GATES SNUBBING OBAMA?
ACLU - Despite President Obama's orders to close Guantanamo and halt proceedings, it appears this has not filtered down through the Department of Defense," said Anthony Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Within days of taking office, Obama had ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year and requested a halt to military commission proceedings at the facility.

But a military judge at Guantanamo rejected the new administration's request to suspend the trial of Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of participating in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.

"Certainly Secretary Gates has the ability to put a halt to these proceedings," Romero told a press conference.

"One must question whether this is just the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, whether this is a revolt in the new Obama administration, or whether the new Secretary Gates is just like the old Secretary Gates," he said.
CIA'S BIN LADEN HIT MAN TESTIMONY UNDERMINES PANETTA ON TORTURE
Jeff Stein, CQ Spy Talk - The former head of the CIA unit charged with liquidating Osama Bin Laden said that national security officials in the Clinton administration "had no qualms" about transferring al Qaeda suspects to countries with reputations for torture.

Michael A. Scheuer, who worked on finding Bin Laden from 1996 to his retirement in 2004, made the allegation during an April 17, 2007 House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on the treatment of terrorism suspects picked up by the CIA. . .

"There were no qualms at all about sending people to Cairo," he said, adding that there was a "kind of joking up our sleeves about what would happen to those people in Cairo in Egyptian prisons, sir.".

Scheuer's testimony appears to contradict statements made about U.S. "rendition" policies during hearings on the Obama administration's pick to lead the CIA, Leon. E. Panetta. As President Bill Clinton's budget director and later chief of staff, Panetta is said to have regularly participated in White House discussions of CIA operations.

Panetta backed away from earlier remarks that he suspected the United States had transferred terror suspects to other countries so that they could be tortured. . .

As for "diplomatic assurances from countries like Syria that they won't torture someone," Scheuer said, "It isn't ... as Mr. Roosevelt's Vice President said at one time, worth a bucket of warm spit, sir."

"If you accepted an assurance from any of the Arab tyrannies who are our allies that they weren't going to torture someone, I have got a bridge for you to buy, sir," the former CIA official said in response to a question from the panel.

WHAT THE CENTRISTS HAVE WROUGHT
Paul Krugman, NY Times - To appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts. . .

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending - much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast - because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects - and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it's clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.
MILITARY DRAGGING FEET ON IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
Reuters - U.S. military planners have drawn up three options to allow President Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq, with senior commanders favoring the slowest of the three, officials said on Saturday.

The timelines under discussion are 16 months, proposed by Obama as a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, 19 months and 23 months, the officials said. "The focus of the effort is on those three options," said a U.S. official familiar with the process.

A U.S. defense official said U.S. Army generals Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, favored the 23-month option. "Odierno and Petraeus have said that we really need 23 months to do this without jeopardizing the security gains that we've secured," the official said.

Both officials, who spokes on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they did not believe the options had been presented to Obama yet.
SPEED BUMPS AS ENERGY SOURCES
Guardian, UK - "Green" speed bumps that will generate electricity as cars drive over them are to be introduced on Britain's roads. The hi-tech "sleeping policemen" will power street lights, traffic lights and road signs in a pilot scheme in London that could be rolled out nationwide.

Speed bumps have long been the bane of motorists' lives, but these will capture the kinetic energy of vehicles. Peter Hughes, the designer behind the idea, said: "They are speed bumps, but they are not like conventional speed bumps. They don't damage your car or waste petrol when you drive over them - and they have the added advantage that they produce energy free of charge." An engineer who formerly advised the United Nations on renewable energy sources, Hughes added: "If it [the energy] wasn't harnessed by the speed bumps, it would go to waste."

The ramps - which cost between L20,000 and L55,000, depending on size - consist of a series of panels set in a pad virtually flush to the road. As the traffic passes over it, the panels go up and down, setting a cog in motion under the road. This then turns a motor, which produces mechanical energy. A steady stream of traffic passing over the bump can generate 10-36KW of power.

The bumps can each produce between L1 and L3.60 of energy an hour for up to 16 hours a day, or between L5,840 and L21,024 a year. Energy not used immediately can be stored or fed into the national grid.
WHAT'S BEEN CUT
CNN - CNN obtained, from a Democratic leadership aide, a list of some programs that have been cut, either entirely or partially:

Partially cut:

- $3.5 billion for energy-efficient federal buildings (original bill $7 billion)

- $75 million from Smithsonian (original bill $150 million)

- $200 million from Environmental Protection Agency Superfund (original bill $800 million)

- $100 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (original bill $427 million)

- $100 million from law enforcement wireless (original bill $200 million)

- $300 million from federal fleet of hybrid vehicles (original bill $600 million)

- $100 million from FBI construction (original bill $400 million)

Fully eliminated

- $55 million for historic preservation

- $122 million for Coast Guard polar icebreaker/cutters

- $100 million for Farm Service Agency modernization Don't Miss

- $50 million for Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service

- $65 million for watershed rehabilitation

- $100 million for distance learning

- $98 million for school nutrition

- $50 million for aquaculture

- $2 billion for broadband

- $100 million for National Institute of Standards and Technology

- $50 million for detention trustee

- $25 million for Marshalls Construction

- $300 million for federal prisons

- $300 million for BYRNE Formula grant program

- $140 million for BYRNE Competitive grant program

- $10 million state and local law enforcement

- $50 million for NASA

- $50 million for aeronautics

- $50 million for exploration

- $50 million for Cross Agency Support

- $200 million for National Science Foundation

- $100 million for science

- $1 billion for Energy Loan Guarantees

- $4.5 billion for General Services Administration

- $89 million General Services Administration operations

- $50 million from Department of Homeland Security

- $200 million Transportation Security Administration

- $122 million for Coast Guard Cutters, modifies use

- $25 million for Fish and Wildlife

- $55 million for historic preservation

- $20 million for working capital fund

- $165 million for Forest Service capital improvement

- $90 million for State and Private Wildlife Fire Management

- $1 billion for Head Start/Early Start

- $5.8 billion for Health Prevention Activity

- $2 billion for Health Information Technology Grants

- $600 million for Title I (No Child Left Behind)

- $16 billion for school construction

- $3.5 billion for higher education construction

- $1.25 billion for project based rental

- $2.25 billion for Neighborhood Stabilization advertisement

- $1.2 billion for retrofitting Project 8 housing

- $40 billion for state fiscal stabilization (includes $7.5 billion of state incentive grants)
IF YOU THINK KELLOGG IS WRONG ABOUT PHELPS, CHECK OUT ITS FOUNDER'S THOUGHTS ON ABORTION, MASTURBATION, BEER & OTHER THINGS
The use of highly seasoned food, of rich sauces, spices and condiments, sweetmeats, and in fact all kinds of stimulating foods, has an undoubted influence upon the sexual nature of boys, stimulating those organs into too early activity, and occasioning temptations to sin which otherwise would not occur. The use of mustard, pepper, pepper-sauce, spices, rich gravies, and all similar kinds of food, should be carefully avoided by young persons. They are not wholesome for either old or young; but for the young they are absolutely dangerous.
FANS BACK PHELPS
Washington Times - There's a "Phelps backlash" out there. Fans and sympathizers have issued a cheeky call to boycott Kellogg's, the cereal and snack mega-manufacturer that dropped the Olympic swimmer's lucrative endorsement contract after his experience with marijuana became public a week ago.

"Kellogg's has profited for decades on the food tastes of marijuana-using Americans with the munchies. In fact, we believe that most people over the age of 12 would not eat Kellogg's products were they not wicked high," reads a multipart petition written by Lee Stranahan, a Los Angeles writer and filmmaker.

Pop-Tarts, Cheez-Its and other junk-food favorites of marijuana users figure prominently in the drive, along with mentions of the "freaky" lifestyle of John Harvey Kellogg, who founded the company in 1906. Mr. Stranahan's petition was featured Friday at the online Huffington Post and elsewhere.

Kellogg's said it would not renew a lucrative endorsement contract, which will expire at the end of this month, with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps after a photo was published of the athlete smoking marijuana. . .

Among the sponsors, Kellogg's stands alone in its harsh judgment so far.

Others commercial backers -- including Speedo, Omega and Visa -- appear satisfied with Mr. Phelps' public apology for "regrettable behavior" and "bad judgment," which was made after a British tabloid published a photo of the record-breaking Olympic athlete smoking marijuana at a college house party in November.

None have canceled their reported million-dollar sponsorships.

SUBWAY TO KEEP PHELPS

Radar - Subway has announced it still supports Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps, in spite of the growing fallout over Bong-Gate. In a statement, Subway says "Like most Americans, and like Michael Phelps himself, we were disappointed in his behavior. Also like most Americans, we accept his apology. Moving forward, he remains in our plans."

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