Undernews For March 9, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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Editor: Sam Smith

9 March 2009

WORD
Calvin Trillin says that he didn't do well in math or science because he couldn't explain to his teachers that his answers were meant to be ironic.

PAGE ONE MUST
SCIENTISTS: FIVE FOOT RISE IN SEA LEVELS BY 2100 POSSIBLE
Guardian, UK - Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defenses.

"It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe," said Dr David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey. "Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises.". . .

The International Panel on Climate Change - when it presented its most up-to-date report on the likely impact of global warming in 2007 - concluded that sea-level rises of between 20 and 60 centimeters [8-23 inches] would occur by 2100. These figures were derived from estimates of how much the sea will increase in volume as it heats up, a process called thermal expansion, and from projected increases in run-off water from melting glaciers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges.

But the report contained an important caveat: that its sea-level rise estimate contained very little input from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The IPCC forecast therefore tended to underestimate forthcoming changes. . .

These revisions suggest sea-level rises could easily top a meter by 2100 - a figure that is backed by the US Geological Survey, which this year warned that they could reach as much as 1.5 meters [five feet]
NEAR TOTAL BLACKOUT OF SINGLE PAYER BY MAJOR MEDIA
FAIR - Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama's March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system--two of whom participated in the summit--were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.

Single-payer polls well with the public, who preferred it 59-to-32 over a privatized system in a recent survey. But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper.

Over the past week, hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS's News Hour With Jim Lehrer mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database. Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of single-payer (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as "Medicare for all," or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer--none of which appeared on television.

Of a total of 10 newspaper columns FAIR found that mentioned single-payer, Krauthammer's syndicated column critical of the concept, published in the Washington Post and reprinted in four other daily newspapers, accounted for five instances. Only three columns in the study period advocated for a single- payer system.

The FAIR study turned up only three mentions of single- payer on the TV outlets surveyed, and two of those references were by TV guests who expressed strong disapproval of it.
BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL PUBLISHES WARNING OF "STAGGERING" CONSEQUENCE OF SHARING MEDICAL RECORDS
While the British bill is different than Obama's it raises similar concerns. The America media has not touched this issue.

British Medical Journal - The health consequences of the government's new data-sharing proposals could be "staggering" warns an expert in an editorial.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, Director of Professional Activities at the British Medical Association expresses concerns about the Coroners and Justice Bill which, in its current form, appears to grant the government unprecedented powers to access people's confidential medical records, and share them with third parties.

Simply it means that laws that currently limit health data sharing could be set aside, says Dr Nathanson. Even the Venereal Diseases Regulations and the provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act would not be immune to the potential for removal.

Health data is not privileged in the manner of legal information, but for many years it has been recognised as special, and as sensitive, she writes. Research shows that patients expect the health professional with whom they share information will hold it in confidence, and share it sparingly and on a need to know basis, usually those also involved in offering them care.

Yet Dr Nathanson believes that data in the current draft of the bill suggests blindness to the special sensitivity of health data.

If the current draft legislation goes through with minimal changes, the effect could be to to undermine doctor and patient confidence in the future control of data that neither is willing to record the most sensitive information, she warns.
HAMAS PEACE EFFORTS REJECTED BY OLMERT
Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam - Sol Salbe brings word of a news report from Israel's Galey Tzahal (Army Radio) about a fractious Israel cabinet meeting at which Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak went at each other hammer and tong about the current Palestinian rocket attacks. Here is Sol's translation of the key excerpt:
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A sharp confrontation has taken place around the table at the full Ministry meeting. Discussing the subject of the continual firing of rockets from Gaza. . . Defence Minister [Barak] explained to his colleagues that negotiations are being conducted to ensure an arrangement with Hamas with Egypt acting as the intermediary. He was interrupted by the prime minister who said: "There are no negotiations. Israel does not intend to arrange a "calm" with that organization."

The Defence Minister responded that the firing of the rockets would have stopped had Israel accepted the calm.

"What the Defence Minister proposes proves that there was no value to the whole Cast Lead Operation. You are suggesting that now that we have smashed Hamas, we should accept the conditions that they offered to us before the operation," said the prime minister.
[][][]
What Barak and Olmert appear to agree on (though coming at it from different vantage points and for opposite political purposes) is that Hamas presented terms for a ceasefire that could have averted Operation Cast Lead. Barak appears to have either proposed accepting the terms or at least limiting the Operation's duration once Israel decided to reject them.

Hamas' willingness, even eagerness to extend the ceasefire is confirmed by [an] eye-opening Guardian story which reveals that Israeli peace activist, Gershon Baskin relayed peace proposals at least three times between Hamas and an unspecified member of Olmert's family (his daughter, Dana, demonstrated outside the IDF chief of staff's home against the 2006 Lebanon war). The proposals were conveyed to Olmert, who promptly rejected them.

Clearly, it is Olmert who has an ax to grind against Hamas and any serious negotiation with the group. It seems inexplicable to me that he would deny, before his entire cabinet, that there are talks with Hamas when everyone in the room knows that there are. . .

Guardian, UK - Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization, attempted to conduct secret talks with the Israeli leadership in the protracted run-up to the recent war in Gaza - with messages being passed from the group at one stage through a member of prime minister Ehud Olmert's family.

Confirmation of attempts to establish a direct line of communication between Hamas and Israel - and the willingness of senior figures in Hamas to contemplate direct negotiations - fundamentally alters the narrative of the build-up to the war in Gaza which claimed more than 1,300 Palestinian lives and led to about a dozen Israeli deaths.

Most remarkable is the story of the involvement of a member of the prime minister's family in the passing of messages to Olmert about the case of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Although the Observer is aware of the identity of the family member and full details of the role played, it has agreed to protect anonymity. Gershon Baskin, a veteran Israel peace activist, was at the centre of attempts to open negotiations. Baskin was in touch with senior members of Hamas, Israeli officials and Olmert, via the member of his family. . .

Baskin, who has a long background in encouraging Israeli-Palestinian contacts, believes that the failure to pursue the overtures was a lost opportunity that contributed to the outbreak of conflict.

"Three times since Shalit's kidnapping [in June 2006 during a cross border raid out of Gaza] there has been the suggestion of opening a back channel through me. The first time that Hamas suggested to me opening a secret back channel was not long after Shalit's kidnapping."

According to Baskin, that offer was immediately rejected by the office of Olmert who said Israel did not negotiate with terrorists.
WHAT'S HAPPENING TO RELIGION IN THE U.S.
An excellent click and find guide to what's happening to religion in the U.S. and in your state.

USA Today - The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. . .

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey. Among the key findings:

- So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. . .

- Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

- Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

- The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

- Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS THE NY TIMES PAID MONEY NOT TO PRINT

Steve Brown, Alternet - The Kissinger image (by David Levine) is one of 320 illustrations - by 142 of the world's most acclaimed contemporary artists - that The New York Times itself originally commissioned for its op-ed pages, but then got cold feet about running, and eventually paid more than $1 million in "kill fees" to hide from public view (sometimes for as long as 38 years). . .

You'll find hundreds of such allegedly "not-fit-to-print" illustrations - together with the bizarre and often ludicrous reasons for suppressing them - in a sly and deliciously funny new book called All The Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't), by Jerelle Kraus, former Art Editor of the Times op-ed and editorial pages, who reluctantly quit her "dream job" at the Times after 13 years in order to publish it. And we're fortunate she did. Her book rescues 320 eye-stopping illustrations by 142 of the world's most provocative graphic artists, including David Levine, Jules Feiffer, Ronald Searle, Milton Glaser, Charles Addams, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman, Larry Rivers, Saul Steinberg, Ben Shahn, Art Speigelman, Andy Warhol, Garry Trudeau, and many more.

Samples
THE CASE FOR A GOVERNMENT RUN PENSION SYSTEM
Dean Baker, Congressional testimony - In addition to the problems stemming from inadequate coverage and high costs, the current pension system subjects workers to far more risk than has been generally recognized. The government can solve all three problems by allowing workers the option to contribute to a government run pension system that would provide a modest guaranteed rate of return.

The system would be a universal system like Social Security, however it would be voluntary. To try to maintain high rates of enrollment, there can be a default contribution from all workers of 3 percent, up to a modest level, such as $1,000 a year. Workers could be allowed to contribute some additional amount, for example an additional $1,000 per year, that would also earn them the same guaranteed rate of return.

The system should also be structured to encourage workers to take their payouts in the form of annuities, except in the case of life threatening illness. For example, a nationwide system could easily offer free annuitization, while charging a modest penalty (e.g. 10 percent) to workers who take their money out of the account in a lump sum.

Ideally, there would be tax subsidies for low and moderate-income workers that would make it easier for them to put aside 3 percent, or more, of their wages. However, if budget limitations make subsidies impractical, there is no reason that Congress could not move ahead to establish a structure and consider adding subsidies at some future date.

The guaranteed return should be set at a level that is consistent with a long-term average return on a conservatively invested portfolio. Such a guarantee should pose little new risk to the government. As recent events have shown, in extreme cases, the government will step in to protect savings, as it did when it opted to guarantee money market funds, even where it has no legal obligation to make such a commitment. Guaranteeing a modest rate of return over a long period of time should present very little additional risk to the government.

The funds in this system would be kept strictly separate from the general budget. The investment would be carried through by a private contractor in a manner similar to the way in which the Federal Employees Thrift Saving Plan current invests the savings of federal employees.

Even a modest contribution could make a large difference in the retirement security of most workers. For example, at a 3 percent rate of return, a worker who saved $1,000 a year for 35 years would be able to get an annuity of $4,200 a year at age 65. Such a sum would be a substantial supplement to their Social Security benefits. A contribution of $2,000 a year would be sufficient to provide an annuity that is almost equal to 30 percent of this worker's earnings during their working career.
36 YEARS OF SOLITUDE
James Ridgeway, Mother Jones - What's left of Albert Woodfox's life now lies in the hands of a federal appeals court in New Orleans. By the time the court hears his case, the 62-year-old will have spent 36 years, 2 months, and 24 days in a 6-by-9-foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. An 18,000-acre complex that still resembles the slave plantation it once was, the notorious prison, immortalized in the film Dead Man Walking, has long been considered one of the most brutal in America, a place where rape, abuse, and violence have been commonplace. With the exception of a few brief months last year, Woodfox has served nearly all of his time there in solitary confinement, out of contact with other prisoners, and locked in his cell 23 hours a day. By most estimates, he and his codefendant, Herman Wallace, have spent more time in solitary than any other inmates in US history.

Woodfox and Wallace are members of a triad known as the "Angola 3"-three prisoners who spent decades in solitary confinement after being accused of prison murders and convicted on questionable evidence. Before they were isolated from other inmates, the trio, which included a prisoner named Robert King, had organized against conditions in what was considered "the bloodiest prison in America." Their supporters believe that their activism, along with their ties to the Black Panther Party, motivated prison officials to scapegoat the inmates.*

Over the years, human rights activists worldwide have rallied around the Angola 3, pointing to them as victims of a flawed and corrupt justice system. Though King managed to win his release in 2001, after his conviction was overturned, Woodfox and Wallace haven't been so lucky. Amnesty International has called their continued isolation "cruel, inhuman, and degrading," charging that their treatment has "breached international treaties which the USA has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture." Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has taken a keen interest in the case and traveled to Angola last spring to visit with Woodfox and Wallace. "This is the only place in North America that people have been incarcerated like this for 36 years," he told Mother Jones.
OBAMA'S TELEPROMPTER DEPENDENCE
Politico - President Barack Obama doesn't go anywhere without his TelePrompter. . . Obama's reliance on the teleprompter is unusual - not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small. After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no such luck. . .

"It's just something presidents haven't done," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. "It's jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.". . .

Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months - whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.

THE ECONOMIST'S CASE FOR DRUG LEGALIZATION
Economist - The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and harm reduction (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of soft drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organized crime out of the picture.

Legalization would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organized crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalization would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalization might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalization would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state¹s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalization offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalization might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts‹a way of making legalization more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
OBAMA HAVING A HARD TIME KEEPING UP WITH IT ALL
Tim Shipman, Telegraph, UK - Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy. . .

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda. . .

British diplomats insist the visit was a success, with officials getting the chance to develop closer links with Mr Obama's aides. . . But they concede that the mood music of the event was at times strained. Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.

Mr Obama rang Mr Brown as he flew home, in what many suspected was an attempt to make amends.

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." . . .

The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.

"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

He said that on several occasions the president has had to hurry back from eating dinner with his family in the residence and then tucking his daughters in to bed, to conduct urgent government business. Matters are not helped by the pledge to give up smoking.

"People say he looks tired more often than they're used to," the strategist said. "He's still calm, but there have been flashes of irritation when he thinks he's being pushed to make a decision sooner than he wants to make it. He looks like he needs a cigarette."
COLLEGE JOURNALISTS RALLY TO SUPPORT THREATENED PAPER
Daily Californian - The entire editorial staff of the Daily Emerald - the student-produced newspaper at the University of Oregon - went on strike in protest of the attempts of its board of directors to install a publisher with unprecedented control over the newsroom.

College newspapers across the United States and Canada stand in solidarity with the editorial staff of the Daily Emerald in support of the independent collegiate press and student-controlled editorial content. We are deeply dismayed by the short-sighted actions of the Emerald's board of directors and strongly support the strike until the staff's demands are met, and independent student journalism can be safeguarded from such attacks at the Emerald and on college campuses nationwide.

The board of directors had the audacity to publish their own version of the Oregon Daily Emerald using content from The Associated Press and a front-page statement from the board. . .

In November, the board of directors hired Emerald alumnus Steven A. Smith as a consultant, and he drafted a plan that included a call to hire a publisher. Smith then authored the publisher's job description as well as his own terms of employment for the position, which the board approved without negotiation. On Feb. 24, the board voted to hire Smith as the Emerald's publisher, and to give him unprecedented control over the full paper's operation, including supervising the editor in chief. Smith could also have been concurrently employed by the university, creating a clear path for the university to control what should be student-produced editorial content.

In the face of the strike, Smith has decided to withdraw his decision to accept the position. The Emerald staff demands a nationwide search for a new publisher, whose authority would not extend over the editor and who would not be employed by the university. . .
BOOKSHELF
NINE LIVES: DEATH AND LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS

Dan Baum

The hidden history of a haunted and beloved city told through the intersecting lives of nine remarkable characters. After Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum moved to New Orleans to write about the city's response to the disaster for The New Yorker. He quickly realized that Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot. The most interesting question, which struck him as he watched residents struggling to return, was this: Why are New Orleanians-along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there-so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished, and violent corner of America?

Nine Lives is a multi-voiced biography of this dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city through the lives of nine characters over forty years and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed the city in the 1960’s, and Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. These nine lives are windows into every strata of one of the most complex and fascinating cities in the world. From outsider artists and Mardi Gras Kings to jazz-playing coroners and transsexual barkeeps, these lives are possible only in New Orleans, but the city that nurtures them is also, from the beginning, a city haunted by the possibility of disaster. All their stories converge in the storm, where some characters rise to acts of heroism and others sink to the bottom. But it is New Orleans herself-perpetually whistling past the grave yard-that is the story’s real heroine. Nine Lives is narrated from the points of view of some of New Orleans’s most charismatic characters. By resurrecting this beautiful and tragic place and portraying the extraordinary lives that could have taken root only there, Nine Lives shows us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved. ORDER

BRUSH CAT

Jack McEney

Brush Cat recounts a year in the life of men who perform one of the most dangerous jobs in America - logging New England's vast forests for timber used in hundreds more ways than most of us realize, from houses to furniture to paper to electricity. In the spirit of John McPhee and Tracy Kidder. While they are first and foremost loggers cutting down trees, they are also ardent and effective conservationists who depend on healthy, intact forests for their long-term survival.

The narrative moves from useful tips on how not to lose body parts to a chain saw, through the terror of huge trees that fall the wrong way, to inconsistent and wrong-headed government forest management. It explores the worldwide demand for wood and wood chips, as well as the effect of climate change on the forest, and traces the money that keeps it all moving. Brush Cat clears the branches to reveal a hidden and fascinating world. ORDER

PEACEFUL POSITIVE REVOLUTION

Steven Shafarman

In the 1960s, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans supported plans to guarantee people's economic security. Advocates included George McGovern, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard Nixon, and more than 1,200 economists, among them John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. Peaceful, Positive Revolution updates those ideas and invites every American to participate in taking back our country from the special interests.

Steven Shafarman is president of Income Security For All and a member of the coordinating committee of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network. This is his fifth book. He lives in Washington, D.C. ORDER

CLOWN PRINCE

Ted Cohen

This memoir portrays the young George W. Bush. He was a spoiled rich brat. He was an adolescent drunk. He was a prankster frat boy at an Ivy League. His famous father got him out of the draft. He got elected to the highest office in the world. Impressive resume. Stranger than fiction. By the Maine reporter who busted W for drunk driving. ORDER
HIDDEN PENSION FIASCO MAY FOMENT ANOTHER $1 TRILLION BAILOUT
Bloomberg - Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that's been looming for years. Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy. The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year.

The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.

With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion. That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -- public records show.

The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
PRISON SPENDING GROWTH TOPS ALL BUT MEDICAID
NY Times - One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study. Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to the report by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years. .

States have shown a preference for prison spending even though it is cheaper to monitor convicts in community programs, including probation and parole, which require offenders to report to law enforcement officers. A survey of 34 states found that states spent an average of $29,000 a year on prisoners, compared with $1,250 on probationers and $2,750 on parolees. The study found that despite more spending on prisons, recidivism rates remained largely unchanged.
SHOPPING MALLS IN TROUBLE, TOO
Grist - Here's a name that deserves a bit more attention in this financial meltdown: General Growth Properties, which owns, manages, or has interests in more than 200 shopping malls in 45 states. Staggering under a massive debt load and battered by the bad economy, General Growth looks headed for bankruptcy or a fire sale. As recently as last June, its shares fetched $40. Today, you can snap one up for less than 40 cents.

Does General Growth's plight augur the unmalling of America? Maybe. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that:

Last year, [mall-based] retail sales on a per-square-foot basis in the top 54 U.S. markets declined by their greatest extent since the 1990-91 recession. . . Vacancy rates at U.S. malls climbed to 7.1% in the fourth quarter, the highest rate since real estate research firm Reis Inc. started tracking the figure in 2000. And average rents have started to decline.
CONYERS PROPOSES TO HIDE SCIENCE FINDINGS IN JOURNALS
Discover Magazine - Rep. Conyers wants science to be secret. . . or you will pay. . . Recently, government-sponsored agencies like NIH have moved toward open access of scientific findings. That is, the results are published where anyone can see them, and in fact (for the NIH) after 12 months the papers must be publicly accessible. . . .

John Conyers (D-MI) apparently has a problem with this. He is pushing a bill through Congress that will literally ban the open access of these papers, forcing scientists to only publish in journals. This may not sound like a big deal, but journals are very expensive. They can cost a fortune: The Astrophysical Journal costs over $2000/year, and they charge scientists to publish in them. So this bill would force scientists to spend money to publish, and force you to spend money to read them.

Why would Conyers do this? Interestingly, if you look at the bill sponsors, you find that they received twice as much money on average in donations from journal publishers than Congress critters who don’t sponsor the bill - though to be fair, the total amount is not large. Still, Conyers got four times as much.

Ironically, this bill is called The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, which is much like the Clean Air Clear Skies Act or the Patriot Act, in that it does exactly the opposite of what its name says. This bill is not fair, it puts a burden on scientists and keeps research from being publicly accessible as it should be. I myself rely on things like Astro-ph to do my reporting here; it could become illegal to post papers there for federally-sponsored scientists if this bill is passed.
CRASH TALK
Boston Globe - With major banks flailing and criticism swelling in some quarters over how President Obama is handling the crisis, a growing chorus of economists, former top government officials, and analysts is calling on the Obama administration to put the institutions into federal receivership and closely follow the model of how the government dealt with the savings and loan crisis.

They avoid the word "nationalization," but say that some major institutions that have received billions in taxpayer money might otherwise be insolvent.

Those voices, from both parties, include a Republican senator, a Nobel-winning economist who backed Obama, and a former top banking regulator given a starring role by Obama's team during the height of last year's presidential campaign.

Joseph Stiglitz, The Nation - American banks have polluted the economy; it's a matter of equity and efficiency that they now be forced to clean it up. The news that even Alan Greenspan and Senator Chris Dodd suggest that bank nationalization may be necessary shows how desperate the situation has become. It has been obvious for some time that a government takeover of our banking system -- perhaps along the lines of what Norway and Sweden did in the '90s -- is the only solution. It should be done, and done quickly, before even more bailout money is wasted.

The problem with America's banks is not just one of liquidity. Years of reckless behavior, including bad lending and gambling with derivatives, have left them, in effect, bankrupt. If our government were playing by the rules -- which require shutting down banks with inadequate capital -- many, if not most, banks would go out of business. But because faulty accounting practices don't force banks to mark down all their assets to current market prices, they may nominally meet capital requirements -- at least for a while.

No one knows for sure how big the hole is; some estimates put the number at $2 trillion or $3 trillion, or more. So the question is: who is going to bear the losses? Wall Street would like nothing better than a steady drip of taxpayer money. But the experience in other countries suggests that when financial markets run the show, the costs can be enormous. Countries like Argentina, Chile and Indonesia spent 40 percent or more of their GDP to bail out their banks. For the United States, the worry is that the $700 billion appropriated for the bank bailout may turn out to be just a small down payment. . .

There is a basic principle in environmental economics called "the polluter pays": polluters must pay for the cost of cleaning up their pollution. American banks have polluted the global economy with toxic waste; it is a matter of equity and efficiency that they must be forced, now or later, to pay the price of cleaning it up. As long as the banking sector feels that it will be bailed out of disasters -- even ones it created -- we will continue to have a moral hazard. Only by making sure that the sector pays the costs of its actions will efficiency be restored. . .

Paul Krugman, NY Times - Among people I talk to there's a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama's failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.

Here's how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.

Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again.

Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away. . .

What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt but are being kept alive by government aid. "I don't know of any large zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on to specifically deny that A.I.G. . . is a zombie. . .

The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren't willing to face the facts. They don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.

But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president's fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.

CNN A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps at the latest count, an increase of 700,000 people in one month with the United States in recession, government figures showed. . . The average food stamp benefit is $115 a month for individuals and $255 a month per household.

Las Vegas Review Journal - A report from First American Core Logic showed that 58 percent of home mortgages in Las Vegas have negative equity in which the loan balance exceeds the home's value. The report said Nevada has the highest percentage of "underwater" mortgage holders in the nation with more than a quarter of Nevadans, 28 percent, owing more than 125 percent of their home's value. Those are the people, too, who will not qualify for aid under President Barack Obama's plan, which restricts refinancing aid to borrowers whose first mortgage does not exceed 105 percent of the current market value of their homes.

Washington Post - The House passed legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of troubled home mortgages, overcoming fierce opposition from the financial industry.

The bill, a package of housing-related initiatives, passed 234 to 191, largely along party lines. It now heads to the Senate, where it will face a tougher fight but has the backing of some powerful members.

Under the legislation, bankruptcy judges could cut the principal on a homeowner's mortgage as well as reduce the interest rate and extend the terms -- provisions known as cram downs.

Daily Inter Lake - A joint press release from Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester claimed that $1.3 million in federal recovery funding would create 40 new jobs for the Flathead City-County Health Department. The money, however, simply will provide another year of funding for the department's Community Health Center, an operation that already has 10 full-time positions and plans to add only two more jobs during the next fiscal year.

"Dozens of new jobs will boost the Flathead Valley, thanks to $1.3 million in funding announced by President Barack Obama and Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester," according to the press release. "President Obama says the money, which will go to the Flathead City-County Health Department in Kalispell, will create 40 new jobs."

Baucus spokesman Barrett Kaiser and Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy both attributed the 40-jobs claim to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services. They could not elaborate on how national and local employment estimates were generated.

WCBS TV, NYC - A massive protest was held outside City Hall in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, where it seems people have just about had it with the recession. Anxiety has turned into frustration, and that frustration has boiled over at City Hall where tens of thousands of people took to the streets to vent to city and state officials.

Organizers estimate that 50,000 people lined Broadway with a message to Gov. David Paterson that cuts are not the answer to fixing New York's budget problems. The protesters were made up of a widespread coalition of labor unions, community groups, and even families uniting to have their voices heard. . . The massive group was calling for fair share tax reform, and increasing the income tax of New Yorkers earning $250,000 or more, generating $6 billion and they hope to prevent the cuts.
BEYOND THE BULL & BAILOUTS: DEAN BAKER
From an interview with Dean Baker by Leo Gerard, president of the United Steekworkers of America

Leo W. Gerard: Economist James K. Galbraith. . . recently told Deborah Solomon of the New York Times that you are 'the person with the most serious claim' for predicting the onslaught of the current credit disaster. . . When did you get the first inkling that the collapse was impending and what did that feel like?

Dean Baker: I learned from the stock bubble in the 1990s that the timing was hard to predict but I first became convinced that it was starting to burst in the fall of 2006, (house prices had begun to fall) and I wrote a forecast projecting a recession for 2007. It turned out that I was still somewhat premature. I was expecting the price decline to gain speed more quickly and to have a more immediate impact on the economy. However, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions, the current recession did begin in 2007, so I was not too far off.

As a more general matter, I did feel somewhat vindicated, although it was striking to me, that even as the bubble was very much in the process of deflating in late 2007 or even early 2008, most economists were still convinced that it would have little consequence for the economy. I recall repeated pronouncements from former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke that the problems were contained in the subprime market.

Gerard: What were the clues you saw that others ignored or missed?

Baker: For most economists, the idea that a market would take leave from its senses - that it would be driven by speculation - is almost inconceivable. Given that we had just seen a massive bubble in the stock market, it really should not have surprised people to see one also develop in the housing market.

The main factor that attracted my attention was the sudden spurt in house prices beginning in the mid-90s. For the hundred years from the 1890s to the 1990s, house prices nationwide had just tracked the overall rate of inflation. Yet, from 1995 to 2002 (when I first noticed the bubble), house prices rose by 30 percent in excess of the rate of inflation.

There was no explanation for this sudden jump in prices based on the fundamentals of supply and demand. Income growth had been healthy in the late 90s, but not extraordinary by the standard of the early post-war years. Furthermore, income growth had largely stopped during the 2001 recession.

Population growth was slowing, which should have slowed housing demand. On the supply side, we were building houses at near record rates, so clearly there was no serious supply constraint.

If there is a big run-up in house prices and no obvious force driving it on either the demand or the supply side, then it sure looks like a bubble. Just as additional confirmation, I checked rents, which tend to more or less follow sale prices. Rents had increased only slightly more than the rate of inflation in the late 90s, and by this decade, they were falling behind inflation. There certainly was no evidence of growing demand pressure on the housing market there.

Finally, I noticed the rise in vacancy rates. This is consistent with people buying homes for speculative purposes. Many investors were willing to gamble on a high price for a new home or condo, betting that it would go up even more in the future. Of course, this is not sustainable. Not many people can afford to keep a unit vacant for a long time, since it means that they are paying the mortgage and getting little or nothing back. The high vacancy rates of this era virtually guaranteed that the bubble would burst. . .

Gerard: But if you noticed those clues, and looking back on it, those clues are actually quite obvious, why did the vast majority of financial analysts and economists and managers for large investment funds including pensions and endowments, fail to see the bubble and its implications?

Baker: The bulk of financial analysts and economists largely repeat the conventional wisdom without ever seriously trying to assess whether it makes sense. They unthinkingly follow the conventional wisdom because of the structure of incentives in their profession. No one is going to get fired because they didn't see the housing bubble. In fact, few people are likely to even miss a promotion because they didn't see the bubble.

Economists and financial analysts are not like steelworkers or people in other occupations. They don't get evaluated based on their performance. They can mess up every day of the week through their whole careers, and this would be just fine, as long as they messed up in the same way as their peers.

On the other hand, the few economists/analysts who spoke up to warn about the bubble were taking huge risks. Of course, we were all ridiculed at the time. If you were an economist working at a major investment bank and tried to tell them that all their big money- making deals were going to get them in trouble, they would probably tell you to shut up and fire you if you didn't.

If the housing market stayed strong and house prices kept rising or just remained stable, then any economist who had warned of the bubble would be laughed off as a chicken little.

In short, the incentives are such that the overwhelming majority of economists will never challenge conventional wisdom even if they think it is wrong. They are there to hold on to their jobs, not to inform the public about the economy.

Gerard: Did you know the collapse would be this bad? How bad will it get?

Baker: I knew that it could be very bad. I was trying to be contained in my pessimism (I couldn't completely ignore the conventional wisdom either), but I did warn that the downturn could develop into a Japan-style financial crisis. This obviously is the case that we are looking at. Of course, if the Fed and Treasury had moved more quickly, they could have prevented some of the damage that the financial system is now seeing.

The same applies to fiscal stimulus. It was painful sitting through the months of the election campaign and then the transition when the government was completely paralyzed. At that point, economists from across the political spectrum all recognized that the economy needed further stimulus, but the politics were such that nothing could move.

As it is, the stimulus package passed by Congress is a good start, but it is nowhere near big enough to turn the economy around. . .

In addition to higher unemployment, house prices will continue to fall at least until summer. The big question in my mind is whether house prices return to their pre-bubble level or they overshoot on the way down. At this point, I would bet on overshooting. This implies an even larger loss of wealth for homeowners, more foreclosures and more big losses for banks.

Gerard: Will the stimulus stop the free fall?

Baker: If we are to turn things around, we really need much more stimulus and we need it quickly. My favorite idea at this point is a tax credit to employers for giving workers paid time off. For example, if employers offer paid parental leave or sick leave, or paid vacation, or increase the days they already offer, then the tax credit would cover the lost work. This can be a quick way to get millions of people back to work.

The arithmetic on this is straightforward. Suppose that employers of 100 million people give their workers an amount of additional paid time off that is equal to 5 percent of their work time. These employers would suddenly have demand for 5 percent more workers, or 5 million workers. I can't think of a quicker, less bureaucratic way to create jobs at this point, especially now that we have already funded most of the shovel-ready infrastructure projects.

Gerard: What must be done to prevent this from recurring?

Baker: There are two key points. First we must rein in the political and economic power of the financial sector. The financial sector must serve the real economy, not the other way around. There is a long list of reforms that are needed to ensure this outcome, but the main point is that an efficient financial sector is a small financial sector.

One way to keep it small is to tax it. If we had a very modest financial transactions tax, for example 0.25 percent on the purchase or sale of a share of stock, it would have very little impact on people who invest for the long-term. However, it would have a huge impact on people who are buying at 2:00 and selling at 3:00. This sort of tax would discourage such speculation, making the markets friendlier to long-term investors.

It would also reduce the size of the financial sector, since the industry makes much of its profit off this sort of speculation. In addition, such a tax could raise more than $100 billion a year. That's real money even in Washington.

The other point is that a balanced economy, in which workers share in the gains of growth, is not conducive to financial bubbles. We didn't have any major bubbles in the three decades following World War II. During this period, productivity gains were passed on in wage gains, which in turn fed consumption, which led firms to invest in expanded capacity. The basis for the bubble economy was created in the 80s when this virtuous circle broke down and workers could no longer count on seeing their wages rise in step with productivity.

In short, if we want to prevent another financial bubble and the sort of economic collapse caused by its bursting, we should support policies that allow workers to share in the gains of growth. That sort of world favors investment in the productive economy rather than financial speculation.
BREVITAS
HEALTH & SCIENCE

CNN - One out of three Americans under 65 were without health insurance at some point during 2007 and 2008, according to a report.

OBAMALAND

Montreal Gazette - Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's. . A veteran politician, Clinton compared the complex European political environment to that of the two-party U.S. system, before adding: "I have never understood multiparty democracy. "It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy." The remark provoked much headshaking in the parliament of a bloc that likes to trace back its democratic tradition thousands of years to the days of classical Greece.

ECO CLIPS

UPI - The International Union for Conservation of Nature says two-thirds of the world's population will face water shortages by 2025.

SHOP TALK

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