Undernews for Tuesday 10 May 2011

News by the numbers

Relative news hits on Google in past 24 hours. Warning: not to be confused with actual poll results. And now on to foreign news:

The budget solution they don’t want to talk about
Mark Engler, New Internationalist - I have a proposal: Let’s double US government funds devoted to promoting renewable energy. Let’s expand allocations for foreclosure prevention to help another million Americans keep their homes. Let’s launch a $10-billion infrastructure programme to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Let’s double the number of new maths and science teachers that President Obama hopes to train, bringing the total to 200,000. And let’s hire back all of those police officers fired by the city of Camden, New Jersey – already among the most dangerous places in the country before budget constraints compelled it to dismiss half of its police force in December.

While we’re at it, let’s reduce the deficit by about $40 billion.

This proposition is not voodoo economics. It is taboo economics. All of these things could be accomplished by trimming US military spending by just 10 per cent. Some of these suggestions (teacher training, Camden cops) are trifling items by the standards of Pentagon budgeting, together accounting for less than the cost of a single Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet.

Last year, the New York Times website offered an interactive feature, through which readers could attempt to balance the budget by choosing between a variety of cost-saving measures. The exercise showed that runaway healthcare expenses must be controlled for the US government to remain solvent in the long term. Yet, even with the troublesome burden of our private healthcare system, covering the projected 2015 budget shortfall was easy, provided you did two things: allowed Bush-era tax cuts to expire (including estate tax cuts for the wealthy) and opted for a selection of modest rollbacks for the military.
Making big bucks out of prisons
AFL-CIO - Some of the biggest privatization prizes are state prison systems. A new report from AFSCME follows the money from corporations to the lawmakers who are now pushing lucrative prison privatization contracts in several states.

The three largest private prison companies are The GEO Group, Inc., Corrections Corporation of America, and the Management & Training Corporation. Each election cycle, according to the report, these corporations pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of governors, state legislators, and judges, in the hopes of advancing their political agenda¬establishing more private prisons and reducing the number of public ones.

Here are two examples from the report.

Florida: The Miami Herald reports that since 2001, the Florida GOP has received more than $1.5 million from the two largest prison contractors and their affiliates. Over two thirds of that total can be traced to the GEO Group of Boca Raton, which manages two of the state’s private prisons. The Florida Senate is now pushing to outsource corrections facilities to private companies in 18 additional counties.

Texas: In Texas, private prison companies and their PACs have given over $130,000 to candidates for public office since 2006. Texas has more privately operated correction facilities than any other state in the country. Harris County¬the most populous county in the state¬is now deliberating a plan to privatize the state’s largest jail.

The AFSCME report also points out that private prisons “routinely experience more inmate escapes and higher rates of violence due to chronically lax security and poorly trained minimally paid staff.” It also notes that there is no
Iran update
Guardian, UK - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declined to officially support the supreme leader's reinstatement of a minister.

An unprecedented power struggle at the heart of the Iranian regime has intensified after it emerged that the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had given an ultimatum to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to accept his intervention in a cabinet appointment or resign.

A member of the Iranian parliament, Morteza Agha-Tehrani – who is described as "Ahmadinejad's moral adviser" – told a gathering of his supporters on Friday that a meeting between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei had recently taken place, in which the president was given a deadline to resign or to accept the decision of the ayatollah.

The extraordinary confrontation came to light after Ahmadinejad declined to officially support Khamenei's reinstatement of a minister whom the president had initially asked to resign.

The rift between the two men grew when the president staged an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest at Khamenei's decision. In the first cabinet meeting since ending his protest, the intelligence minister at the centre of the row, Heydar Moslehi, was absent and in the second one on Wednesday, he was reportedly asked by Ahmadinejad to leave.
US taxes at lowest level since 1958

Internet sightings

Word
Every moment is travel - if understood -- Disraeli

Worth seeing, yes. Worth going to see, no. -- Samuel Johnson on being asked whether Rome was worth seeing.

If I should go away I would miss something. -- Henry Beetle Hough, editor of the Martha's Vinyard Gazette

He who travels to be amused, or to get something which he does not carry, travels away from himself and grows old even in youth among old things. - RW Emerson
Race to the Bottom: Roman Catholic Church
Catholic Charities, which operates one of the largest adoption agencies in Illinois, is threatening to halt services in the state rather than comply with state law requiring the organization to place children with gay couples. The law goes into effect when same-sex civil unions become legal on June 1. - Wisconsin Gazette
What they didn’t tell you about the latest job report
Where’s the Change - Between March and April 2011, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black female workers over 20 years of age in the United States jumped from 12.5 to 13.4 percent under the Democratic Obama administration and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives; while the official unemployment rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 16.8 to 17 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The number of unemployed African-American female workers over 20 years-of age increased by 90,000 (from 1,127,000 to 1,217,000) between March and April 2011; and the number of jobless African-American male workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 21,000 (from 1,361,0000 to 1,382,000) during this same period. In addition, between March and April 2011 the number of Black women workers over 20 years-of-age with jobs dropped by 87,000 (from 7.923,000 to 7,836,000); while the number of Black male workers over 20 years-of-age with jobs dropped by 27,000 (from 6,758,000 to 6,731,000). The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years of age was still 41.6 percent in April 2011, while the official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16 years-of-age (female, male and youth combined) increased from 15.5 to 16.1 percent between March and April 2011.
Division growing in Iran
Al Jazeera - A political dispute between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader is reported to have intensified. Ahmadinejad is said to be contemplating resigning after Heidar Moslehi, the intelligence minister he had sacked, was reinstated by Khamenei.

The president is understood to have shirked some of his duties and skipped cabinet meetings for the past ten days in anger over the decision. Mehrdad Khonsari, an analyst with the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies in London, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the dispute, which began last month, had become "serious".

"It shows the level of disunity at the very top of the Iranian [political] hierachy [with] Ahmadinejad having already polarised the internal political scene as a result of fraudulent election results that were announced more than 20 months ago," Khonsari said. "He is now beginning to encroach on the powers and privileges vested in the supreme leader, and he and his constituency - mainly among the Revolutionary Guards - have tried to do this.

"And, of course, the supreme leader has tried to make a stand and in this stand he has been joined by many people from the ruling establishment who have been cast aside by Ahmadinejad."
Khonsari said that since the president came to power "powerful people like [Akbar Hashemi] Rasfanjani and ... [Mohammed] Khatami and many of the key reformers as well as the president of the current Council of Experts" have been sidelined.

"This is quite a standoff," he said. "Ahmadinejad, I think, at this particular time, has bitten more than he can chew and has been forced to essentially step back, but the fact [remains] that both he and the supreme leader are damaged as a result of this conflict."
Pocket paradigms
The collapse of the First American Republic has been due in part to four major factors:

- Margaret Thatcher, personal brain coach to Ronald Reagan, who started America's disintegration. Reagan wasn't bright enough to do it without her.

- The Harvard Business School, which taught its students that you didn't have to know anything about what you were managing and which turned the once ridiculed Organization Man into a sex symbol.

- The Yale Law School which produced such decadent figures as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.

- The Kennedy School of Government which has allowed the Harvard faculty to foul up American domestic politics much as it did our foreign policy during the Vietnam era.

The mechanism is a subtle one, Our academic institutions serve as a sort of covert Jonestown where potentially rebellious activists are enticed by grants in order to drink intellectual Kool-Aid and never again truly threaten the establishment. - Sam Smith
Word
Totalitarianism demands the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or, on the other hand, that modern physics has proved that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact science, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian and the sociologist. -- George Orwell
Why we need public libraries

There, I fixed it

The ultimate climate change FAQ

Local heroes: Why I'm suing the federal government over climate change

Selected passport seekers will undergo intrusive questioning
The Future of Freedom Foundation - A 5-page biographical questionnaire, Form DS-5513, is being proposed as a new requirement for at least some Americans who seek a passport. The questionnaire is so intrusive as to constitute data rape.

Stated guidelines do not indicate who would be required to fill out the biographical questionnaire; nevertheless, the government estimates that approximately 74,000 people would initially “qualify.” One category of applicant is likely to be those without an original birth certificate. Two other likely categories are those born to American citizens on foreign soil and home births attended by midwives.

Given the pervasive tendency of bureaucracy to expand over time, however, the questionnaire will almost certainly be required of an increasing number of Americans. Indeed, the requirement may well be invoked at the discretion of a bureaucrat in much the same manner as de facto strip searches are conducted in airports at the discretion of TSA agents. What if the passport is denied to a DS-5513 applicant? As with the TSA and no-fly blacklists, there will almost certainly be no transparency nor any real ability to appeal a denial of passport.

Some of the proposed form’s invasive questions seem designed to establish the mother’s citizenship and the applicant’s place of birth. Such questions include:

mother’s residence one year before, after and during your birth
mother’s place of employment at your birth
did she receive pre- or post-natal care at medical facility
the name of her doctor and dates of her appointments
names and contact info of those present at your birth
was a religious ceremony conducted at your birth

Almost all answers on the proposed form require addresses and/or phone numbers for verification.

Other questions seem utterly irrelevant to establishing citizenship. For example, applicants are required to list the address of every place of residence since birth. They are required to list all schools attended and every instance of employment, including addresses, phone numbers, and names of supervisors. Presumably, if a 60-year-old applicant pumped gas at the age of 16, he would be required to track down the name of his “supervisor.” A question can always be left blank, of course, but the proposed form states, “Failure to provide the information requested on this form may result in the denial of a United States passport, related documents, or service to the individual seeking such passport, documents, or service.”
Race to the Bottom: South Dakota
Council on American-Islamic Relations - The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on the South Dakota Department of Public Safety to drop its endorsement of a national security conference featuring Walid Shoebat, a notorious Islamophobe who claims "Islam is the devil" and that President Obama is a Muslim.

CAIR said the DPS's continued sponsorship of the 2nd Annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference to be held next week in Rapid City, S.D., would send the message that the department endorses Shoebat's anti-Muslim views.

"South Dakota taxpayers need to know whether their hard-earned dollars are helping to fund a conference that will offer anti-Muslim hate and stereotyping to law enforcement and security personnel," wrote CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper in a letter sent yesterday to DPS Secretary Trevor Jones.

Hooper said Shoebat is scheduled to offer a keynote address May 11 about "Jihad in America" and will lecture conference attendees on "basic Islam theology."

Shoebat once told a Missouri newspaper that he sees "many parallels between the Antichrist and Islam" and "Islam is not the religion of God -- Islam is the devil."

In a Youtube video, Shoebat said, "If Islam is not playing the major role in Antichrist spirit, why do you think the devil wants to appoint somebody connected to Islam in the White House?" He told radio host G. Gordon Liddy, "No one is called Hussein unless he is Muslim. So it is very clear that Barack Hussein Obama is definitely a Muslim."

According to an official who attended a similar Shoebat lecture at a conference in Las Vegas, the solution he offered for the threat of "militant Muslims" was to "Kill them ... including the children."
Great moments you may have missed. . .
President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history. It was when this wounded nation watched their commander in chief stand on that rubble and say that they will hear us, we are going to avenge this. - Condoleezza Rice
Climate change affecting world's crop yields
Wired - Farms across the planet produced 3.8 percent less corn and 5.5 percent less wheat than they could have between 1980 and 2008 thanks to rising temperatures, a new analysis estimates. These wilting yields may have contributed to the current sky-high price of food, a team of U.S. researchers reports online May 5 in Science. Climate-induced losses could have driven up prices of corn by 6.4 percent and wheat by 18.9 percent since 1980.

For reasons still up for debate, temperatures largely held steady in the U.S. over the study period. So Iowa, by and large, doesn’t seem to have lost out. Rice and soybean yields have also proved resilient to rising temperatures so far, the team discovered.
Bin Laden cost us $3 trillion
Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley, National Journal - As we mark Osama bin Laden’s death, what’s striking is how much the cost our nation - and how little we’ve gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down.

What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden’s terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt, which threatens to hobble the economy unless lawmakers compromise on an unprecedented deficit-reduction deal.

All of that has not given us, at least not yet, anything close to the social or economic advancements produced by the battles against America’s costliest past enemies. Defeating the Confederate army brought the end of slavery and a wave of standardization¬in railroad gauges and shoe sizes, for example¬that paved the way for a truly national economy. Vanquishing Adolf Hitler ended the Great Depression and ushered in a period of booming prosperity and hegemony. Even the massive military escalation that marked the Cold War standoff against Joseph Stalin and his Russian successors produced landmark technological breakthroughs that revolutionized the economy.
TV ownership declines for first time in twenty years
Jaymi Heimbuch,Tree Hugger - Nielsen reports that for the first time in 20 years, TV ownership has dropped from 98.9% to 96.7%. It doesn't look like a huge drop, but the 2.2% represents about 1.2 million households that don't own televisions.

Nielsen suspects that when the big switch to digital happened a couple years ago, many lower income families decided not to spend the bucks on a new television and instead are just going without. But another possibility is that with the rise of streaming shows and movies online, many people have decided a TV is just an unnecessary item.

Nielsen reports, "A small subset of younger, urban consumers are going without paid TV subscriptions. Long-term effects of this are unclear, as it's undetermined if this is also an economic issue, with these individuals entering the TV marketplace once they have the means, or the beginning of a larger shift to viewing online and on mobile devices."

For these younger urbanites, a laptop is more than sufficient . . .
Word
When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.- Dave Eggers And Ninive Clements Calegari
Libya: Humanitarian neo-colonialism

Mozilla fights Homeland Security censorship
Torrent Freak - Homeland Security’s ICE unit is not happy with a Firefox add-on that allows the public to circumvent the domains seizures carried out during the past several months. In an attempt to correct this ‘vulnerability’ in their anti-piracy strategy, ICE have asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Unfortunately for them Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.

The add-on maintains a list of all the domains that ICE (hence the antidote, ‘fire’) has seized and redirects their users to an alternative domain if the sites in question have set one up. The developers told TorrentFreak that they coded it to demonstrate the futility of the domain seizures, which they find objectionable.
South Dakota finds a way to ban abortions
Argus Leader - No pregnancy help centers have registered with the state in response to the new law requiring a woman to consult with one and wait 72 hours before getting an abortion. If no center comes forward, will it make an abortion unobtainable in South Dakota?

It's a question that officials haven't yet addressed - and it might be a moot point if a promised lawsuit prevails. It's been two months since state lawmakers passed legislation requiring counseling and more than a month since Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the bill that will take effect July 1.
The GOP platform
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signs a bill that bans local ordinances guaranteeing workers' paid sick and family leave.
A mathematician takes on the school test tyrants

Bookshelf: An introduction to Green politics
The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics

Derek Wall

Scott McLarty, Green Papers - Although the party has been in existence for three decades, any book that comes out now about the Greens, at least in the US, is still going to be an introduction, and ‘The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics’ by Derek Wall is no exception. In this year of protests against the union-busting agenda of several governors ¬ Democrats like Andrew Cuomo in New York as well as Republicans like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker ¬ and a nuclear catastrophe unfolding in Japan while the Obama White House continues to defend nuclear power, Mr. Wall’s case for the Green Party’s importance as an independent political alternative is especially timely.

More detailed analyses of the Green political movement, covering the progress of Die Gruenen (German Greens) or the tangled history of the Green Party in the US would be valuable, and I’d like to see a book some day on the Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green presidential campaign with a few good chapters critiquing the ‘spoiler’ accusation that Democratic Party apologists have hurled at Green candidates since Election Day 2000. . .

Overall, however, ‘Green Politics’ is a valuable, concise, and inexpensive introduction to the Green Party, green movements, and Green politics in general.
Pakistani official uses White Bulger as an excuse in Bin Laden case
Howie Carr, Boston Herald - You’ll have to admit that the Pakistani ambassador to the United States did have a point when he was explaining how Osama bin Laden could live so openly in Pakistan for so long.

“If Whitey Bulger can live undetected by American police for so long,” Husain Haqqani told the Atlantic, “why can’t Osama bin Laden live undetected by Pakistani authorities?”

He’s right, isn’t he? The reason Whitey could live “undetected” so long was exactly the same reason that bin Laden could likewise remain “undetected” in Pakistan. He was one of the boys, he was on the team.

Haqqani, it turns out, is a former BU professor, so he knows the Whitey story. My old friend Chris Lydon told me that yesterday, and Lydon pointed out another similarity between the FBI’s two Most Wanted. Both were recruited by U.S. intelligence (FBI, CIA) for use against other enemies (the Italians, the Soviets). Eventually, however, the wars the feds hired them to fight were won.

As Lydon wrote to Haqqani yesterday, “The U.S. authorities in both cases forgot to deal with their agents, who suddenly went rogue and then disappeared entirely.”

What was it that Whitey once said to the cops from the DEA? “You’re the good good guys and we’re the good bad guys.”

You can find out more about Bulger in Carr's new book, "Hit Man. "
Assange calls Facebook a gift to government spies
Global Post - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are being used by the U.S. intelligence community to spy on users.

In an nterview, Assange was especially critical of Facebook, the world's top social network. The information Facebook houses is a potential boon for the U.S. government if it tries to build up a dossier on users, he told the Russian news site RT. Assange also told RT that Google and Yahoo "have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence."

"Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented," Assange said. "Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence."

"It's not a matter of serving a subpoena," he said. "They have an interface that they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use."
Homeland Security ends anti-Muslim procedure

Personal to Jay Carney
Anti-War - The US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad came without any permission from the Pakistani government. Most people overlooked this given the nature of the target, and assumed the attack was a “special case.” White House spokesman Jay Carney, however, suggested that this was a precedent-setting event, and that President Obama “reserves the right” to launch comparable attacks into Pakistan in the future.

Question: What provision in national and international law gives Obama the authority to reserve such a right?
Bookshelf: Making schools part of the prison state
Annette Fuentes is the author of a new book, Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes the Jail House, published by Verso. The book explores the reasons zero tolerance policies have grown, and investigates the impact those policies are having on students.

Jacob Simas, New America Media: We've witnessed a trend over the last 20 years or so, of schools embracing security and punishment as a means to control student behavior. Would it be safe to assume, then, that our schools are not as safe as they used to be?

AF: It would be very inaccurate (to say that). Schools today are among the safest places for children to be, and that includes their homes and their neighborhoods. We know, the experts know, that the level of violence in our public schools is among the lowest level it’s been in in about 20 years. School violence peaked in the early ‘90s. . .

JS: So why the hysteria around violence? Now, you mentioned Columbine, but certainly the hysteria is due to more than just one isolated incident.

AF: Columbine happened in 1999, but in fact there had been a handful -- maybe four or five – of very high-profile school shootings in the years preceding Columbine. . .

Now, remember, these shootings were very high profile; they claimed multiple victims. But compared to how many kids are killed every day in acts of violence in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods, it just doesn't even compare. . .

My book talks about everything, from the increased presence of police, the increased use of drug-sniffing dogs, of drug testing in schools -- and I'm not even talking urban schools, I'm talking about schools in suburban New Jersey or suburban Oregon -- where parents are afraid that their kids are doing drugs and are out of control. We are clamping down on kids with other high tech security and surveillance equipment at a time of scarce school resources. School districts are spending money on the surveillance hardware of the prison state.
A teacher on the sexulization of teenage girls
Matt Amaral, Teach 4 Real - Everyday I am confronted with the reality of the sexualization of our young girls. . . Now you can argue that I’m being prudish and girls and women should be able to choose what they wear. . . But let me tell you how this plays out in high school. A couple days ago I was in the middle of a lecture when a girl from a different one of my classes came in, wearing black tights, to get some work because she was being suspended . . . This is what happens: As I stop class, walk to my desk to get her some work, she is standing at my desk with her back to class. I look up and every single male student in the class, fifteen to twenty of them, are staring at her butt. They are pointing, smiling, pursing their lips, laughing, making sure everyone sees it. Most of the girls are looking too. What am I supposed to do?. .

Let’s not just focus on tights, let me tell you some observations I’ve made over my career about girls who have a general tendency to dress more provocatively than other girls.

-They have lower GPAs, or are failing out of school all together.

-They are suspended more for behavioral issues.

-They are less likely to go to college.

-They get in more fights (yes, girls get in just as many fights as boys).

-They are more likely to have boyfriends, and over their entire four years, more of them.

-They know more about sex and are probably engaged in it at a younger age.

. . Now, the larger point here is that the girls who don’t dress like this¬the ones who are a little more conservative in their jean choices (yes, we all know some jeans are worse than others), and their clothing choices in general, are better students. They go to college at higher rates, they get better grades, they talk about interesting things and are more interesting people. They make Facebook posts from college campuses when they graduate, instead of expletive-laced tirades directed at their last five boyfriends this month, none of whom are the father of their child. They also don’t have a tendency to come to school wearing sunglasses because their boyfriend gave them a black eye. They don’t end up switching to the other high school in the district because that’s the high school with childcare on campus. But they do end up with a little longer childhood.
Word
In an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. -- Aldous Huxley
Pocket paradigms
Making some people afraid of other people is one of the best ways to control all of them. - Sam Smith
Race to the Bottom: CUNY
The trustees of the City University of New York have cancelled an honorary degree planned for Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, because of critical comments he has made about Israel
For first time, Americans have lower hopes for their children
WTMW, Portland, ME - A recent Gallup poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans believe today's youth will not have a better life than their parents.This is the first time on record that the majority of Americans expressed pessimism.
The GOP platform
Dennis Hoey, Maine Today - State Rep. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, told Gov. Paul LePage in a letter last week that LePage's economic development commissioner had made "outrageous statements" to Aroostook County residents and told them he had "no vision for his department" after months on the job. Martin's single-page letter, dated April 25, was followed two days later by Phil Congdon's resignation as commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development.

On Wednesday, the governor's office publicly released the letter in response to a Freedom of Access request from Maine Today Media. Martin, who could not be reached Wednesday night, told LePage in the letter that constituents had said Congdon's comments included:

• "The problem with higher education today dates back to the civil rights movement in the '60s that allowed blacks to enter colleges. That resulted in the large amount of remedial education required in colleges."

• "People in Aroostook County ought to get the hell off the reservation and create jobs for Aroostook County. You have not done a good job of educating your kids."

• "We need more hydro power -- wind power is no good. You should be heating your homes with light bulbs."

Tree Hugger - If New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gets his way at a budget hearing, state funds that had been dedicated to clean energy will be redirected to highway-widening and other fossil fuel-promoting development projects; recycling funds would go instead to general state operations; and the state will be removed entirely from the 10-state Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
The hidden factor in the Afghan war
Tribune, Pakistan - The cost of the [gasline] project is estimated at around $7.8 billion, said Akbari. Construction work, with the help of an American firm, will begin by 2012 and is expected to be completed by 2014, he added.

The Tapi pipeline aims to transport over 30 billion cubic metres of gas annually from the Dauletabad gas fields in southeast Turkmenistan and could turn into a cash cow for Afghanistan in transit fees.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai called it “a highly important project” and assured that he would “put in efforts to ensure security both during construction and after completing the project”.

MORE ON PIPELINES AND WAR
If God seems a little distant, it may be because he's otherwise engaged

Obama floats plan to tax cars by the mile driven
Pete Kasperowicz, The Hill - The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. The plan is a part of the administration's "Transportation Opportunities Act," an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

“This is not an Administration proposal," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "This is not a bill supported by the Administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the Administration, does not taken into account the advice of the President’s senior advisors, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the President.”

How well this will go over can be surmised by some of the comments on the Hill article:

Doesn't the federal gas tax already hit those that drive more the hardest? Didn't Obama promise that no American families making less than $250,000 a year would not see their taxes increased by one dime? This ridiculous idea will hurt the poorest the hardest - but then again, this administration couldn't care less.

Evidently we are not paying enough at the pump in their eyes, guess we'd be easier to control if we can't afford to drive and had to stay home. . .

This is the most ridiculous thing ever. Why punish people who have to commute to a job so far away or any job for that matter not to mention if they have a elderly mother or father that need to go to doctor's appointments or even the grocery store or even just to drive to check on them to see how they are doing and if they are okay. a lot of working people are living paycheck to paycheck now and are constantly cutting back to make ends meet because of the ever increasing cost of gas, food, utilities, and medical care.

Those who could least afford these taxes in the hinterland would be most heavily punished.

I live 130 miles from the nearest city where i can use a hospial. My parents are old. I drive them at least twice a week to the Dr's. that is a total of 520 miles a week. This does not take into consideration that I take my family to the city to shop for food clothing and the needs for my family. This would kill me at the pump. The
The phony anti-war movement: opposed only to Republican wars
Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report - Two university researchers have proven, by the numbers, what the real anti-war movement has known for years: that many of the folks that turned out in such large numbers to demonstrate against America’s wars when George Bush was president, were really only opposed to Republican wars. Thus, when Barack Obama captured the White House, the so-called anti-war movement largely collapsed.

The new study was put together by Michael Heaney, of the University of Michigan, and Fabio Rojas, of Indiana University. It shows, essentially, that many Democrats were motivated to pick up peace placards and shout anti-war slogans more by their dislike of George Bush and the Republicans, than for genuine opposition to America’s multiple wars around the globe – wars that Obama expanded upon, while adding his own, new theaters of war. Professor Heaney puts it this way. “The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead,” says Heaney, “attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated.” The professor concluded that, “The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions."

In other words, much of the anti-war movement was phony, a cynical gathering of partisan Democrats who were really never all that concerned for the victims of U.S. imperial warfare, or for the huge dislocations that the national security state places on the U.S. economy. No, they just wanted their guy, the Democrat, to win. Once Obama was safely in the White House, the anti-war movement was all but dismantled, having served its partisan political purpose. For the phony anti-warrior, imperialism with a Democratic face, is just fine.
Report: 50 million environmental refugees by 2020
Joanna Zelman, Huffington Post - At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, experts warned that, "In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees," the AFP reports.

A refugee is currently considered by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees to be a person who is fleeing persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, etc. There is no mention of the environment as a reason to flee. And yet, if you have no water from a drought, have no food due to flooding, or if your home is quite simply underwater, what other option do you have but to flee?

For example, there is currently a drastic increase in migrants flooding Southern Europe. Why? Food shortages have a lot to do with it, according to a report by Karin Zeitvogel of the AFP. Professor Ewen Todd explains, "Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany... but we're going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in. And it was food shortages that put the people of Tunisia and Egypt over the top."
Entropy update
Blackwater's (now XE) new ethics chief is none other than the notorious Bushie, John Ashocroft. As Wired notes, he's " the official who vigorously defended the Patriot Act’s sweeping surveillance powers; told civil libertarians that their dissents “only aid terrorists,” and covered up the Spirit of Justice’s boob.
Labor victory for Rite Aid workers: a model in a bad time

Things to do on your next vacation
A few questions about Bin Laden

Russ Baker, Who What Why? - The White House declared that bin Laden’s identity was established quickly using a variety of methods, including DNA. But a DNA expert says it takes 16-20 hours to confirm a DNA match. Can the administration provide a detailed accounting that addresses this discrepancy?

We were told that Osama bin Laden’s death was unavoidable because he was “resisting” the invaders in some manner that posed a serious threat. We were also told that the men of the house were cowardly and used a woman as a human shield. Now, when the moment of maximum public attention is past, we learn in dribs and drabs that these characterizations are inaccurate. How did these inaccuracies get out in the first place?

If Osama bin Laden was the sick and feeble individual (with kidney disease and walking with a cane) we have long been told he was, how did he constitute a serious threat to highly-trained, highly-armed individuals in protective gear using night-vision goggles who had apparently already apprehended more able-bodied individuals in the house and managed to bind their hands together?

Wouldn’t Osama bin Laden, alive, be just about the most important intelligence catch ever? Couldn’t he have cleared up the mysteries and speculation that abounds about Al Qaeda, its nature, capabilities, size, activities and plans?

Regarding bin Laden’s fate, why did the US not follow the procedure in the cases of others, including Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, accused of complicity in the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands, and make extraordinary efforts to capture bin Laden alive and then turn him over to the International Court of Justice? Would that not have impressed the world with the United States’ respect for international law (which forbids going into a sovereign country and murdering anyone even if proven guilty) and commitment to a single standard in the global pursuit of justice?

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Britain has rejected instant runoff voting by about two to one. Sad, but not all that surprising in a collapsed empire trapped between nostalgia over monarchy and a constant effort to outdo George Orwell’s imagination. A hat tip to Cambridge, Oxford, central Liverpool and central Edingurgh that got it right.

Daily Pennsylvanian - For the first time in Penn’s history, minority students comprise a majority of the newly admitted class. Among the prospective Class of 2015, 52 percent of accepted students are self-identified minorities ¬ defined by the Admissions Office as Asian, black, Latino and American Indian. This number, which includes international students, is up from 48 percent last year.

The Washington Post’s profits fell 67% in the first quarter of this year including a 73% drop at the Kaplan unit – the corporate college operation now bringing in over half the Post’s income.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Americans think 21 should remain the legal drinking age in the United States. This is down from the low 50s in surveys back to August 2008. Thirty-five percent say Americans should legally be allowed to consume alcohol at age 18. Eight percent favor raising the permissible age to 25, while five percent think 16 is more appropriate.

NBC Chicago - Blagojevich was miserable. In a conversation with chief of staff John Harris, he summed his problems up in three words: legal, personal and political. . . “I’ve got the scrutiny going on, lawyers to pay for,” said Blagojevich. “How the hell am I going to send my kid to college? That’s the biggest (expletive) downside that I’m really dealing with. Never again am I going to (expletive) screw my kids and family and put them in a position like this. I gotta fix this!” But the fix wasn’t easy. Federal prosecutors were closing in. Unbeknownst to him, the FBI was listening in at that very moment. He was jealous of the new president, who he felt was being given a pass on his own associations with convicted fundraiser Tony Rezko. “You know Axelrod and Obama’s people clearly turned, you know, got the Chicago media to make Rezko all about me,” he told Harris.

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