Undernews: May 1, 2012

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Readers like. .
What Mormanism has spawned
White House Correspondents Dinner contd
Praying with Mitt
Why you don't want Romney anywhere near your economy
Chicago's war on protests escalates
Missionaries (like Mitt)
White House Correspondents Dinner cont'd
Recovered history: Sex and security in DC
Arizona says Christianity the only religion allowed to be taught
The next six months at Dysfunction Junction

Living in politicial madness
Sam Smith

After three decades of national policies damaging the average American, it is amazing that the reaction has been as calm has it has been. Highly deceptive propaganda, the collapse of liberalism, and the atomizing ipodization of ordinary life have all contributed, but even these can't permanently conceal the fact that most Americans are being badly screwed. And know it.

The arrest of "anarchists" allegedly plotting to blow up an Ohio bridge is a reminder that just because something is delayed doesn't mean it isn't coming. A reasonable expectation is that the number and intensity of violent reactions will increase substantially. And the reasons won't simply be public anger. It has been part of the strategy of our government since 9/11 to create fear in order to justify actions to protect themselves. One thing our leaders understand is that the anger is directed at them far more than at ordinary citizens. It was, after all, the World Trade Center and not Dubuque that was attacked.

The rise in public anger will vary from the heroic to the inspiring to the badly misguided. The corporate media will inevitably use the latter examples to characterize all of what is happening and to justified new police assaults on our Constitution and communities.

Hence we can expect to hear much about the Ohio bridge episode, even as we hear virtually nothing about the numerous bridges on the verge of collapse due to Republican greed and indifference. It is one of the characteristics of such times that only those with the power to enforce the law may violate it with impunity. Thus our president can murder at will, trash the law and never have to worry that those three reporters in the corner of the press room might actually be FBI agents.

In such times - when some are blowing up bridges and others blowing up the law - a sense of anarchistic chaos develops. A plethora of madness and a paucity of common sense.

Central to maintaining one's own sanity at such times is to not let the media, bomb throwers, the FBI or politicians define our world and situation.

Ignore that rule and you find yourself falling into a fantastical miasma. For example, consider this report by NPR:

“The FBI announced this morning that it "has arrested five people on terrorism charges, accusing them of planning to blow up a bridge near Brecksville, Ohio," our colleagues at WKSU report.

“The station says the bridge on State Route 82 "crosses over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Brecksville and Northfield." And it adds that "the FBI says the five were identified as self-proclaimed anarchists with no connection to international terrorism. They're accused of conspiring to get C-4 explosives that would be detonated remotely."

“According to CNN, the FBI says in a statement that ‘the public was never in danger from explosive devices ... [the suspects were] closely monitored by law enforcement ... [and the explosives were] inoperable and posed no threat to the public.’

“Cleveland's Plain Dealer writes that, according to the FBI, the men had ‘planted what they believed were explosive devices under the Ohio 82 bridge ... as part of a May Day protest today.’”

Now, one might ask, where did they get these inoperable explosive devices? Based on past experience, the most logical source was the FBI. We might also ask, to what extent did the FBI encourage and create this enterprise in the first place? Did the agents con some not so intelligent "anarchists" into doing something they probably wouldn't have done if the FBI had never been there to show them how?

We won't know the answers, if at all, until a lot of other things have happened. But we do know that, as David Shipler wrote in the NY Times:

“The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.”

Now count the number of laws that President Obama, law enforcement agencies, and public officials of all sorts have routinely broken. Then consider the anger this has created and the encouragement to meet fire with fire that it has caused. For every bomb that explodes or envelope of white powder that appears on the desk of someone in power, ask yourself: would this have happened if those in power had operated within the law and with respect and sanity?

There is, of course, no way to sort all this out without the distance of history. But in the meanwhile, those seeking a road back to democracy and decency have to avoid getting caught in the cauldron of craziness. Bridge bombers, much of the police and media, and many of our political leaders have enormous vested interest in chaos. The answer is not in judging righteousness of specific acts but in resolving the conflicts that created the problem in the first place.

The rest of us need to keep helping to build an alternative reality unruled by chaos and violence. We can not let ourselves be defined by the madness of others.

America lags in life expectancy in many locales
McClatchy - “What are we getting for our health care dollar if we’re spending more per capita than any other country and we have the life expectancies of countries that are reeling from civil wars or natural disasters?” asked William Heisel of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “By many measures, we should have better outcomes.”

The institute, based at the University of Washington, compiled data on every county in the U.S. to calculate life expectancy each year from 1989 through 2009. It also compared county life expectancies to those in other countries. The average life expectancy for men in the U.S. in 2009 was 76.2 years and for women 81.3 years, the institute found. But life expectancies varied dramatically. In Marin County, Calif., men could expect to live to a ripe 81.6 years. In two Mississippi counties, male life expectancy was just 66.1 years, about the same as in Pakistan.

Women’s life expectancies ranged from 85.8 years in Collier County, Fla., to 74.1 years in McDowell, W.Va., comparable to that of Algeria.

Infrequently asked questions
If killing Bin Laden was so great, why aren't we safer and happier?

Don't say he didn't warn you
"Too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938." Barack Obama, 2006

Federal judge stops Texas from banning funds to Planned Parenhood
Freak Out Nation - A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting State funds through the Women’s Health Program. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law forbidding state agencies from providing funds to any organization affiliated with abortion providers even though eight Planned Parenthood clinics do not provide abortions so they sued the State. According to Planned Parenthood via Think Progress, “over 40 percent of women who received services through the Women’s Health Program chose to rely on a Planned Parenthood health center for Women’s Health Program services.”

Criminalizing kids
Shine - When a six-year-old boy kicked his school principal last week, the school called in police, not parents.
The student had already been suspended for kicking and biting another official, when he allegedly threatened a teacher and kicked Principal Pat Lumbley. This time, the child was placed in police custody and charged with battery and intimidation.

Increasingly, precincts have become de facto detention centers. In Albuquerque alone, 90,000 students were arrested between 2009-2010. In Texas, an estimated 300,000 kids were give misdemeanors in 2010. That number includes children as young as 6.

..Over the past year, kids under the age of 13 have been arrested, or threatened with arrest, for giving wedgies, having a food fight and spraying perfume. In more serious circumstances, children are facing real prison time over hockey game fouls and threatening classroom notes.

The difference between politics and life
Boston Globe - Senator Scott Brown, who won office vowing to be the 41st vote to block President Obama’s health care law, and who has since voted three times to repeal it, acknowledged Monday that he takes advantage of one of its components to keep his elder daughter on his congressional health insurance plan. “Of course I do,’’ Brown said. He said that element of the law, which has proven widely popular despite a split over the broader measure, can be provided by states.

FBI & NY police engage in pre-May Day intimidation
Buzz Feed - Federal and New York City authorities paid surprise house calls to people related to the Occupy Wall Street movement this morning in advance of tomorrow's May Day protests. At least three residences were visited by police, two by officers from the New York City police department, one by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, according to Occupy organizers and a representative of the National Lawyers Guild.

1800 University of Oregon profs win union status
AFL-CIO - More than 1,800 University of Oregon faculty members now have a voice at work after they chose to join United Academics, an affiliate of AFT Oregon and the American Association of University Professors. The Oregon Employment Relations Board Friday certified the professors’ choice after the university dropped its objections. The new union includes tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty, adjunct instructors, research associates and assistants and post-doctoral scholars

What we really should be doing about Social Security
Michael Hiltzik, LA Times- The greater danger in all the panicky talk [about Social Security] from politicians and pundits, not to mention Wall Street grandees,...is that it will keep people from focusing on the most important figure in the trustees' report. It appears on Page 2, and what it says is that right now Social Security is providing benefits to 55 million people.

That testifies to the reach of a program that keeps 20 million Americans out of poverty and helps stabilize the economy by putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on goods and services. And it points to the best way to improve Social Security's value for all Americans: by increasing benefits to better serve the neediest workers, and expanding its reach to cover workers and dependents who have been cheated by or excluded from the system for far too long.

..The idea has been around for years, but its supporters have been hunkered down against a conservative campaign to cut, cut, cut. It's emerging from its foxhole now because the long recession and two stock market crashes have put the final bullets into the hopes of millions of Americans for a secure retirement.

Of the customary three legs of the retirement stool, two personal savings and employer-paid pensions have been shattered into smithereens by the markets, high unemployment and changes in workplace benefits. Social Security is the third leg.

"What we really should be doing is beefing up the third leg of the stool, and not breaking it too," says Kelly Ross, a retirement expert at the AFL-CIO. The union is calling for increasing benefits across the board, changing the cost-of-living formula to an index geared to the real costs faced by seniors, and scrapping the cap on wage income subject to payroll taxes, which has been set for this year at $110,100.

Why shouldn't we be depressed?
Chris Hedges, Truth Dig - When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony.

..The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression¬which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

MORE

Private prison corporations fight sane justice policies
Alternet - The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws." The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

Orwellandia orders no photos of huge Heathrow customs lines
Guardian - Heathrow Airport has been ordered by the UK Border Agency to stop handing out to passengers leaflets acknowledging the "very long delays" at immigration, which have become a serious government concern in the runup to the Olympics. Passengers flying into the airport at the weekend reported having to wait for up to three hours before clearing passport control. But after leaflets apologising for the problem were handed out by BAA, which owns Heathrow, the UKBA warned that they were "inappropriate" and that ministers would take "a very dim view". The airport operator was also told to prevent passengers taking pictures in the arrivals hall, according to the Daily Telegraph, which obtained correspondence from Marc Owen, director of UKBA operations at Heathrow. Pictures of lengthy queues have been posted on Twitter by frustrated travellers.

Chicago anti-protest plans becoming bizarre
CBS Chicago - Are there plans in place for a mass evacuation of downtown in the event of riots on May 20-21? A Red Cross memo out of Milwaukee indicates that there is.

Officials there have been asked to make plans to assist residents in the event of a mass exodus.

Chicago officials say the plan didn’t come from them. The U.S. Secret Service isn’t talking.

There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans.

Praying with Mitt
Last week we ran a series on the relationship between Mitt Romney and Mormonism, a topic with which neither the candidate nor the media wish to deal. The whole series can be found here. We close the series now with a collection of short items on the topic

Salon - Mormon leader Marlin Jensen has recently acknowledged that Latter-day Saints are leaving the fold in droves. The former church historian spoke frankly to a group of students at Utah State University, saying, "We've never had a period of - I'll call it apostasy - like we're having now."

Church leaders never anticipated the Internet generation would access their history online. Joseph Smith used magic stones to see into the past. Today, young Mormons use Google. When they discover that their founding prophet wedded several teenage girls, it is often a traumatic revelation. Mormons experience a crisis of trust, if not outright betrayal, from their leaders.

Though the actual numbers of defections have not been published, anecdotal stories abound throughout Utah. It's not just Joseph's sex life that causes many Mormons to mistrust their leaders, but also the church's persistent commitment to right-wing politics.

Mitt Romney, 2002 - My commitment to my Church and faith is all encompassing

Sally Denton, Salon - At the recent GOP presidential debate in Florida, Romney professed that the Declaration of Independence is a theological document, not specific to the rebellious 13 colonies, but establishing a covenant "between God and man." Which would suggest that Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.

Romney avoids mentioning it, but [Joseph] Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an "army of God" advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that "they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them." Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. He had predicted the emergence of "the one Mighty and Strong" - a leader who would "set in order the house of God" - and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.

….A multibillion-dollar business empire that includes agribusiness, mining, insurance, electronic and print media, manufacturing, movie production, commercial real estate, defense contracting, retail stores and banking, the Mormon church has unprecedented economic and political power. Despite a solemn stricture against any act or tolerance of gambling, Mormons have been heavily invested and exceptionally influential in the Nevada gaming industry since the great expansion of modern Las Vegas in the 1950s. Valued for their unquestioning loyalty to authority as well as general sobriety - they are prohibited from imbibing in alcohol, tobacco or coffee - Mormons have long been recruited into top positions in government agencies and multinational corporations. They are prominent in such institutions as the CIA, FBI and the national nuclear weapons laboratories, giving the church a sphere of influence unlike any other American religion in the top echelons of government.When Morman intellectuals question their faith

When Mormons defect

What Romney presumably believes about American history, as outlined by Robert M Bowman Jr of the Institute for Religious Research:
• American Indians are direct descendants primarily of the Book of Mormon people known as the Lamanites, who were of Israelite stock.
• The American continent is the "promised land" of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and the LDS Church's mission is to conduct the "gathering of Israel" by bringing them to America.
• Zion is to be built in America, centered at a temple to be built in Independence, Missouri.

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection for his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." -Thomas Jefferson

White House Correspondents Dinner cont'd
Dylan Stableford, The Cutline - "It is the single most revolting annual gathering of pseudojournalistic **** suckery in all the land," Gawker's Hamilton Nolan wrote. "The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is a shameful display of whoredom that makes the 'average American' vomit in disgust." Nolan was not invited.

"I ask one question every year," CBS News' Mark Knoller (who was invited) wrote. "Who are all these people? Didn't see any of them covering [the president] at Ft. Stewart yesterday."

"The White House Correspondents' Dinner underlines everything that's systemically wrong with American journalism," Milo Yiannopoulos, editor of Kernal magazine, wrote. "The purpose of a free press is to hold the powerful to account. You can't do that if you're sucking up, hoping for swanky dinner invitations."

"Is the fawning, sycophantic worship service to wealth, power and celebrity over?" Politico's Ben White pondered early Sunday. "Or is there more crap today?"

Shiller: Maybe no housing rebound for a generation
Reuters - The Housing market is likely to remain weak and may take a generation or more to rebound, Yale economics professor Robert Shiller told Reuters Insider on Tuesday.

Shiller, the co-creator of the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, said a weak labor market, high gas prices and a general sense of unease among consumers was outweighing low mortgage rates and would likely keep a lid on prices for the foreseeable future.

"I worry that we might not see a really major turnaround in our lifetimes," Shiller said.

Britain to station surface to air missiles on citizens' homes for Olympics
Boing Boing - Residents of a gated community in east London got Ministry of Defence leaflets through their doors advising them that their roofs might be commandeers for surface-to-air missiles during the London Olympics this summer. The MoD assured them that the missiles on their roof "will only be authorised for active use following specific orders from the high

Arizona says Christianity the only religion allowed to be taught
Phoenix New Times - Under Arizona law, "all books, publications, papers and audiovisual materials of a sectarian, partisan or denominational character" are prohibited from public schools and their libraries.

Thanks to Governor Jan Brewer's signature on House Bill 2563, that law now excludes the Bible.

The Bible's been declared OK, as the bill also allows high schools to offer classes on "how the Bible has influenced Western culture," although nothing requires youngsters to take the class.

..According to a House summary on the bill, here's what the classes will include:

• The contents, characters, poetry and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory and public policy.
• The contents of, history recorded by and literary style and structure of the Old and New Testament.
• The influence of the Old and New Testament on laws, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values and culture.
• While that happens, telling a story from the Bhagavad Gita will cause a teacher to lose his or her teaching certificate. Telling the kids about the story of Noah, from the Quran -- kiss the teaching certificate goodbye. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? No way.

Stats
Bloomberg - Wisconsin placed 42nd in the most recent Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States index, which includes personal income, tax revenue and employment. Illinois gained 32,000 jobs in the 12 months ending in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found. Wisconsin, where [Governor] Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs with the help of business-tax breaks, lost 16,900.

Anti-government Tea Party votes for CISPA
Forbes - CISPA, or the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing And Protection Act, passed the House yesterday. The bill is full of problematic intrusions into individual privacy and online liberty, and yet those members of the House who associate themselves with limited government were largely responsible for its passage.

“The complete roll call shows 206 Republicans voting for the bill, 28 against,” writes Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh. “Democrats went 42 to 140 in the opposite direction.”

Of these Republicans, “47 of the 66 members of the House Tea Party Caucus” also supported the bill, notes Patrick Cahalan.

How the media has twisted the Social Security issue
Columbia Journalism Review - Shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, Washington Post budget correspondent Lori Montgomery reported that, while a debate raged around major budgetary changes and the wisdom of cutting Social Security, a “surprisingly broad consensus is forming around the actions required to stabilize borrowing and ease fears of a European-style debt crisis in the United States.” A consensus among whom, we asked? Ordinary people who like Social Security the way it is, opinion leaders, or the reporters who record what those opinion leaders say?

Gallup polls dating back six decades consistently show some 70 percent of the public strongly supports Social Security. Most Washington opinion makers think otherwise, though. Indeed, listening to the politicians and policy gurus, one would conclude that this most basic of retirement programs for nearly all Americans is in grave danger, and America itself is in grave danger because of it.

For nearly three years CJR has observed that much of the press has reported only one side of this story using “facts” that are misleading or flat-out wrong while ignoring others...

To be sure, Social Security is not in perfect financial health. But the fact is, the program can pay full benefits until 2036, and three-quarters of the benefits after that without new revenues. Many experts believe small fixes like lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes¬$110,100 for 2012¬will make Social Security solvent for decades. But that option is not on Washington’s table, nor has it been discussed much in the press. Why not? Because it doesn’t fit into the doom-and-gloom narrative that has proved politically expedient to tell?

..“The elite press repeatedly quotes the commentary of the devoted opponents of social insurance retirement programs,” says Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor. “But they appear unaware of how they are supporting a strategic attack on social insurance that has been going on for years.”

..When, last year, the congressional supercommittee was attempting to cut a deal on Social Security, the Post noted that “crunch time” came with “a new round of self-centered, shortsighted intransigence on the part of AARP and its fellow don’t touch-my benefits purists.”

Samuelson has made these points before. In 1988, writing for Newsweek, he argued Social Security is a welfare program. In 1996, also in Newsweek, he seemed to challenge Bill Clinton “to alter the debate on ‘middle class entitlements.’” Earlier this year in the Post, Samuelson asserted “spending on the elderly is slowly and inexorably crowding out the rest of government.”

MORE

CISPA explained

Ex-Israeli spymaster worried by country's leadership
Common Dreams - The former head of Israel's Shin Bet security agency has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of having "messianic feelings" behind their threats to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran and they should not be trusted.

"I don't have faith in the current leadership of Israel to lead us to an event of this magnitude, of war with Iran," Yuval Diskin said at a public meeting Friday, video of which was posted on the Internet the today and quickly became the lead news item in Israel.

"I do not believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on Messianic feelings," he continued. "I have seen them up close. They are not messiahs, these two, and they are not the people that I personally trust to lead Israel into an event."

Diskin also said, "Over the past 10-15 years Israel has become more and more racist. All of the studies point to this. This is racism toward Arabs and toward foreigners, and we are also become a more belligerent society."

Physics news update
Phys.org -- Finding new connections between different disciplines leads to new – and sometimes useful – ideas. That’s exactly what happened when scientists in the Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York, in collaboration with City College of CUNY, Purdue University and University of Alberta, leveraged mathematical topology to create an artificially nanostructured anisotropic (exhibiting properties with different values when measured along axes in different directions) metamaterial that can be switched from a non-conductive dielectric state to a medium that behaves like metal in one direction and like a dielectric another. The metamaterial’s optical properties was mapped onto a topological transformation of an ellipsoidal surface into an hyperboloid – and transitioning from one to the other dramatically increases the photon density, resulting in dramatic increase in the light intensity inside the material.

Andrew Cuomo is making history; just ask him
NY Times - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is making history.

How can New Yorkers know for sure? Mr. Cuomo says so and has almost every week since he took office 16 months ago.

On his fifth day in office, he challenged lawmakers to “write a new page in the history book of New York State government,” and his administration has done just that more than 80 times, judging by the number of press releases issued by his office that described one of the governor’s actions as historic.

Today's helpful advice from Mitt
Political Wire - Mitt Romney had some advice for students at Ohio's Otterbein University, telling them that if they want to start a business or pay for their education, they should just borrow from their parents. Said Romney: "Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."

Why isn't the closing of 40 Philadelphia public schools news?

Diversity training doesn't work
Peter Bregman, Psychology Today - A study of 829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had "no positive effects in the average workplace." Millions of dollars a year were spent on the training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes and the diversity of the organizations remained the same.

It gets worse. The researchers Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota concluded that "In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity."

How the federal government may play a role in mad cow disease
Washington's Blog - The government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are prohibited from testing for mad cow disease, and even investigating factory farming may get one labeled as a terrorist, even though a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter mBio shows that overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers creates “superbugs”.

Now even the Vermont Senate is ditching the Constitution
Vermont Public Radio - The Vermont Senate has voted to allow police access without a search warrant to a database of Vermonters' prescriptions maintained by the Vermont Department of Health.

In an 18-11 vote after more than two hours of debate on Wednesday, the Senate rejected the arguments of some members that allowing police access to the database would violate rights against search and seizure promised by the U.S. and Vermont constitutions.

The House earlier voted to require a search warrant before police got access to the database. A conference committee likely will have to work out the difference.

Dutch reverse forty years of pot progress
Reuters - A controversial law that will make it harder for foreign tourists to buy cannabis at the Netherlands' famous coffee shops has been upheld by a Dutch court.

The law, which reverses 40 years of liberal drugs policy in the Netherlands, is targeted at the many foreigners who have come to see the country as a soft drugs paradise and to tackle a rise in crime related to the drug trade.

The law, which goes into force in three southern provinces on May 1 before going nationwide next year, means coffee shops can only sell cannabis to registered members.

Stats
Portion of states where the projected climate in 2100 will not be able to sustain their official tree or flower: 3/5 - # HarpersIndex

Word
Andy Borowitz 1962: America trying to win space race w/Russians. 2012: America trying to keep up w/Kardashians

What Mormonism has spawned
Death on behalf of religious beliefs has killed millions around the globe, and on a statistical basis the Mormon Church doesn’t deserve much blame, Nor can one expect Mitt Romney to take responsibility for things like the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre or other historic violent excesses of his church.

But presidents are elected, not acquitted, and one would hope to find in their beliefs something that inspires or at least calms the spirit more than it raises questions. Romney has been a missionary, leader and donor of millions for a church that has, even in recent years, spawned groups and individuals who, though parting ways with their parent congregation, came originally out of it and subsequently practiced sexual abuse and various other criminal activities including murder.

To be sure, members of other religions commit crimes but it is rare to find a dissident Presbyterian extremist creating a cult in some mountain village or an out of control Unitarian murdering people in the name of purer non-conformity. Aside from Catholic priests abusing young boys, the LDS Church has probably been the birthplace of more strange and unpleasant religious practices than any major American religion – even though many of these practices are offensive to conventional Mormons as well.

Which raises the reasonable question: why has the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spawned such an odd, and disturbing collection of violent and strange cults?

While the explanation for this is not easy to come by, examples are worth keeping in mind. Here are a few.

Wikipedia - The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy. The FLDS Church emerged in the early twentieth century when its founding members left The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The split occurred largely because of the LDS Church's suspension of the practice of polygamy and its decision to excommunicate its members who would continue the practice.

The FLDS Church is estimated to have 10,000 members …Prior to November 20, 2007, the church was being led by Warren Jeffs, who succeeded his father, Rulon Jeffs, in 2002. For nearly two years, Warren Jeffs had been wanted on sex-crimes charges. From May 2006 until his arrest in August 2006, he was on the FBI's Ten Most-Wanted List. On September 25, 2007, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape and was sentenced to ten years to life in prison. This conviction was later overturned. On January 28, 2011, Jeffs again asserted his leadership of the denomination. Warren Jeffs has since been sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years along with a $10,000 fine after his conviction on aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault charges

Wikipedia – Jeffrey Lundgren was a self-proclaimed prophet, former leader of a cult group, and convicted mass murderer of five people. He was married to Alice Keeler who was also convicted of conspiracy to commit mass murder. Lundgren was born in Missouri and grew up as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. According to his allegations (supported by some of his former neighbors) he was severely abused as a child, particularly by his father. While Lundgren was living in a church-owned home, located next to the Kirtland Temple, on Chillicothe Road, in Kirtland, Ohio, he volunteered as a tour guide of the historic Kirtland Temple, for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (since 2001, the Community of Christ). He began to teach the concept of "dividing the word," known as "chiastic interpretation" or "chiasmus," to interpret scriptures. Lundgren falsely claimed to have created chiastic interpretation. The foundation was that in everything created by God, the right side is a mirror image and, therefore, scripture had to be interpreted using that same method. …To apply this concept to scripture, one takes a sentence from scripture; if the sentences before and after are consistent, the center sentence is the "truth"; when the sentences before and after conflict, the center sentence is a lie. His teaching of scriptural interpretations attracted his followers. Lundgren claimed that he moved to Ohio from Missouri because the word, "OHIO" is "chiastic". About 1987, Lundgren was asked to leave the church-owned house and his job as tour guide was terminated due to suspicions of theft.

On April 23, 1988 a neighbor told Kirtland police officer Ron Andolsek that she suspected that a cult was living at the farm house and that Lundgren's son warned the neighbor's children that on May 15th the earth would open up and demons would emerge…

Lundgren began to offer Bible study services at his home. Lundgren would dominate the services himself and he would intimidate anyone who didn't agree with him. He would later encourage others to intimidate those who disagreed as well. He sought to convince his congregation that he was God's last prophet. He asked for money from his supporters, and some would give him their life's savings, which often were calculated to be thousands of dollars.

Lundgren then proclaimed he had received a call from God to move to Kirtland, Ohio, a Lake County suburb, located twenty miles east of Cleveland, Ohio. . .By this time, seven of Lundgren's 12 followers had moved into the family home. The remaining five were members of Dennis Avery's family. Lundgren felt that the Averys were committing a sin by not living in his house.

…On April 10, 1989 in Kirtland, Ohio, Lundgren ordered two of his followers to dig a pit in the barn, in anticipation of burying the Averys' bodies there…According to followers' admissions, Lundgren later went inside the barn, with a church member named Ron Luff luring Dennis Avery into a place where the other men awaited by asking him for help with equipment for the camping trip. Luff attempted to render Avery unconscious with a stun gun, but due to a malfunction a stun bullet struck Avery but did not knock him out.

Avery then was gagged and dragged to the place where Lundgren awaited. He was shot twice in the chest, dying almost instantly. To mask the sound of the gun, a chainsaw was left running. Luff then told Avery's wife, Cheryl, that her husband needed help. She was gagged, like her husband, but also had duct tape put over her eyes, and dragged to Lundgren. She was shot three times, twice in the breasts and once in the abdomen. Her body lay next to her husband's. The Averys' 15-year-old daughter, Trina, was shot twice in the head. The first shot missed, but the second killed her instantly. Thirteen year old Becky Avery was shot twice and left to die, while six-year-old Karen Avery was shot in the chest and head. Both died.

Wikipedia- Ervil Morrell LeBaron (1925 –1981) was the leader of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group who ordered the killings of many of his opponents, using the religious doctrine of blood atonement to justify the murders. He was sentenced to prison for orchestrating the murder of an opponent, and died in prison. He had at least 13 wives in a plural marriage, several of whom he married while they were still underage, and several of whom were involved in the murders.

Wikipedia- John W. Bryant (born 1946) was the founder and first leader of a Mormon fundamentalist sect that is today known as the Church of the New Covenant in Christ and is headquartered near Salem, Oregon…Beginning in 1974, Bryant began to state that he was receiving revelations from Jesus. He claimed that "John the Beloved" had visited him as an angel and instructed him to form an "Order of the Ancients". In 1975 he was taken in vision to the City of Enoch, where AUB founder Joseph White Musser and Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith, Jr. ordained him to the presidency of the church and the high priesthood. .. During his time as a leader of the group, Bryant had six wives and taught his sect about drug experimentation and heterosexual and homosexual group sex. According to sources, sect members had sexual relations during the group's temple ceremonies. In 1981, the group lost the Fair Haven Ranch when they were unable to keep up on mortgage payments. As a result, Bryant, five of his six wives, and some of the members of the group relocated to Marion County, Oregon, near Salem.

And not the least interesting aspect of all this is the fact that the attorneys general of Utah and Arizona last year published a booklet entitled The Primer: A Guidebook for Law Enforcement and Human Services Agencies Who Offer Assistance to Fundamentalist Mormon Families. It noted that “a recent, informal survey indicated there are approximately 38,000 people (residing primarily in the Rocky Mountain region) who consider themselves to be Fundamentalist Mormons. This means they adhere to the religious doctrines of early Mormonism which include polygamy or “plural marriage”, sometimes called “The Principle”. Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“LDS” or Mormon Church) excommunicates known practitioners and advocates of polygamy.”

The primer, which lists over a dozen different cults, also notes some of the problems that can be expected to be found:

• Child Abuse
• Lack of safe housing
• Lack of income/pronounced poverty¬no personal assets
• Lack of job training
• Distrust of government, including the criminal justice system
• Distrust of outsiders
• Strong belief that family issues are private matters
• A powerful “collective conscience” where community shares same values/beliefs
• Leaving the abuser may mean leaving the community and loss of support network
• Leaving the abuser could mean leaving children behind
• Belief that divorce/leaving is wrong
• Perpetrator’s violence and control
• Belief that leaving will mean eternal damnation
• Belief that it is her duty as a wife to remain or as a parent to protect children from abuse

The primer also notes various forms of abuse including spiritual, which includes “using the scriptures to justify, manipulate, or control; spiritual pressure to not access medical care; pressure to be perfect, obedient; unselfish or faithful to husband or leaders; not being allowed to have own spirituality.”

Mitt Romney’s church is not one of those cited, but every one of them that is had their roots in the religion that has meant so much to him yet that he is so reluctant to tell us about.

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