FURTHERMORE. . . .

Pam Hartwell-Herrero was elected to the 5 member Fairfax [CA] Town Council, making Fairfax the only Green majority town council in the United States. In Minnesota, incumbent Minneapolis City Council Cam Gordon was re-elected. Dan Robinson maintained his seat on the Takoma Park, MD council and Christine Nagle won her election to the College Park, MD council. In New Caanan, CT, three Greens ran for Constable and all were elected. Elsewhere in new England, Kevin Donoghue and David Marshall won re-election to the Portland ME City Council. Chuck Turner was re-elected to the Boston City Council. In New York, in a partisan race, Mary Jo Long was re-elected to the Afton Town Council and Jennifer Dotson was re-elected to the Ithaca Common Council. Lynne Serpe put the Green Party on the map in New York City, winning nearly 25% in her race for New York City Council.

Reihan Salam, Daily Beast - Muslims remain a fairly small minority in the United States, with estimates ranging up to 7 million adherents at the high end. This number has increased dramatically since the immigration reforms of the mid-1960s, which led to a sharp increase in the number of Asian and Middle Eastern Muslims entering the country. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 45 percent of Americans know a Muslim. Of those who have a high level of familiarity with Islam, 57 percent view Muslims favorably while 25 percent view them unfavorably. For those with a low level of familiarity, 21 percent have a favorable view, 35 percent have an unfavorable view, and 44 percent, a significant plurality, have no opinion. The Pew survey also found that 58 percent of Americans believe that Muslims face a high level of discrimination, while 64 percent believe the same is true for gays and lesbians. These numbers suggest that a large majority of Americans are open-minded about Muslims. And though there are pockets of distrust, far more Americans worry that Muslims face discrimination than hold negative views of Muslims.

Fair Vote - Instant runoff voting may face a binding repeal vote next year in Aspen after what for now is a narrow loss by six votes in an advisory referendum -- more votes are still to be counted. The result was tied to several factors. The city's highly competitive IRV election in May brought more voters to the polls than ever before, but the novel "two-seat IRV" system for council was very close and frustrated some backers of losing candidates. In addition, a losing mayoral candidate who had raised the most money in Aspen city history prefers a traditional runoff and has worked hard against IRV. While The Aspen Times supported IRV's retention, its editorial appeared after many people had voted in an all-mail election. Still, IRV will only be repealed if defeated in a separate vote in the future. Ranked voting also suffered a loss in Lowell MA, where a campaign had placed the choice voting form of proportional voting on the ballot by petition. A completely unknown idea to most city voters just a few weeks ago, choice voting earned 43% of the vote despite opposition from the local media.

ALTERNATIVE AMERICA

ARTICLES

Robert Lawless on anthropology's sorry history of helping empire

The generational recession

ARTS & CULTURE

The end of libraries?

How to write like an academic. We tried it and came up with this: " The reification of post-capitalist hegemony opens a space for the historicization of the gendered body."

TELEVISION

The Good Solider: Friday, November 6, 9:00 PM (EST) on PBS. Bill Moyers Journal broadcasts a documentary about the impact on soldiers of learning to kill - or be killed. Follows four veterans - one from World War II, two from Vietnam and the fourth from Iraq - as they reveal how the experiences of battle changed their lives.

FILM

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"

GREAT MOMENTS IN HEALTH CARE

News 10, Sacramento - The parents of a Sacramento State student beaten to death by a dorm mate last month said they were stunned to receive a $30,000 bill from the UC Davis Medical Center as well as a letter asking their murdered son not to return because of payment issues.

Gerald and Elizabeth Hawkins said last weekend -- ten days after their son Scott was killed -- they got a bill to their Santa Clara home for $29,186.50 from the UC Davis Medical Center.

In addition to documenting the 5 minutes of emergency room work done, the envelope also included a letter to "the patient," saying Scott Hawkins was considered indigent and shouldn't come back for further treatment. . .

UC Davis spokeswoman Carole Gan apologized for the letter, calling the incident an accident of automation.

GOLDMAN SACHS EVEN RIPS OFF SWINE FLU VACCINE

Citizens for Ethics in Washington - The CDC is distributing the much sought-after vaccine to Wall Street firms despite reports of vast shortages. In fact, just yesterday CDC Director Thomas Frieden informed Congress that only 32.3 million doses are available, far less than the 159 million needed to cover those at the highest risk. Given the scarce supply, the CDC has recommended the vaccine be directed only to those at highest risk: pregnant women, infants and children and those up to 24 years, those who care for infants, health and emergency services personnel, and adults with compromised immune systems or other chronic health problems. Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today, "Although CREW has been unable to uncover the demographic makeup of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase, it seems safe to assume the vast majority of their employees are not pregnant women, infants and children, young adults up to 24 years old, and healthcare workers."

TEN YEARS AGO: CLINTON, SUMMERS, SCHUMER BLOW IT

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota

NY Times November 5, 1999 - Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression. . .

Administration officials and many Republicans and Democrats said the measure would save consumers billions of dollars and was necessary to keep up with trends in both domestic and international banking. Some institutions, like Citigroup, already have banking, insurance and securities arms but could have been forced to divest their insurance underwriting under existing law. Many foreign banks already enjoy the ability to enter the securities and insurance industries. . .

But consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest financial institutions. They say that it fails to protect the privacy interests of consumers and community lending standards for the disadvantaged and that it will create more problems than it solves.

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''. . .

''The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,'' said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska. . .

''If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. ''There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive.''. . .

The White House has estimated the legislation could save consumers as much as $18 billion a year as new financial conglomerates gain economies of scale and cut costs.

THE END OF LIBRARIES?

Inside Higher Ed - What started as a debate over whether brick-and-mortar libraries would survive much further into the 21st century turned into an existential discussion on the definition of libraries, as a gathering of technologists pondered the evolution of one of higher education's oldest institutions.

"Let's face it: the library, as a place, is dead,"� said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. "Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is."�

Thorin prefaced her comments by saying that for the purposes of the debate she would be taking an extreme position on the fate of libraries. But her argument tapped into theories about the obsolescence of libraries - traditionally defined - that have grown along with the emergence of Web-based reference tools, e-books, digitized and born-digital content, and other technologies that some see as changing essential library functions.

"The scientists have mostly gone online with their library needs,"� Thorin said. "Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing."�

Certain major research universities, she noted, have even begun moving their books to off-campus storage facilities due to space issues and a diminishing need for on-site hard copies. Libraries everywhere are eliminating pricey subscriptions to printed academic journals, often opting for less expensive digital versions.

FLOTSAM & JETSAM: INDIVIDUAL & INSTITUTIONAL MADNESS

Sam Smith

The recent murders at Ft. Hood recall Pascal's observation that "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction."

Of course, the assumption in this country at the moment is that only Muslims are evil, which ignores Christians doing evil to Muslims in Afghanistan or Jews threatening to nuke Iran in the name of civilization.

In the end, it doesn't make much difference whether your husband or son is killed by a Muslim major in Ft. Hood, an American drone in Pakistan, or a Israeli soldier in Gaza. In each case the dead are victims of violent religious and cultural hubris.

The media, though, was quick to smell the bait. Even before Fox News had corroborated the suspect's name, Shepard Smith asked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, "The names tells us a lot, does it not, senator?"

Replied Hutchison, "It does. It does, Shepard."

And the White House, joint chiefs and national security advisors treated it all as another wartime crisis rather than a solitary case of madness.

Which is logical, perhaps, because it is getting harder and harder to separate individual and mass insanity.

We assume there are people who are crazy and those who are rational but when your government reacts to those that brought down the World Trade Towers with an eight year futile war in Iraq that has killed, by the most conservative estimates, over 40 times as many innocent people, that line disappears.

Or consider that the war, along with that in Afghanistan, was the creation of politicians blithely willing to cause that many deaths to win reelection and supported by generals and admirals who thought it was a good idea and who then ordered Major Hasan and tens of thousands of others to engage in battle as an absolutely indisputable act of responsibility.

Or think about one little symbol of all this. Pull up a photo of the Joint Chiefs, those responsible for conducting wars like Iraq and Afghanistan and sending people to fight in them. Notice their chests bedizened by ribbons.

Now ask yourself: in what other field of human endeavor could one wear ribbons indicating areas of service, major campaigns, training, unit achievement, and personal accomplishment without people regarding you as completely mad?

And in what other job can you wantonly kill so many people and be treated as a normal human being?

None of this excuses Major Hasan but it puts his acts in perspective: a uncontrolled act of madness in a deliberately insane system.

We don't think about such things much, because most of us don't have to. The business of war has been outsourced to the weakest parts of our economy, to victims of our pathological economic system among others.

This is one reason there are so many suicides amongst soldiers. War is no longer a one time misery; troops are being recycled through it because there are too few to take their place.

One of the reasons, although we don't talk about it, is that an increasing number of people see war as a crazy idea of which they want no part. For the better off, that's a choice, but for others madness is simply the best job they can find.

The good news is that while perhaps a third or more of history's major wars (in terms of fatalities) have occurred in the 20th century, since WWII the death rates have gone down. We seem to be tiring of war but don't yet know it.

Which is good, all morality aside, since the only war America has won since the 1940s has been the invasion of Grenada and no government has surrendered to us since Japan.

There is a parallel madness to be found in other aspects of our uberculture - our approach to the environment, economy and education for example. This can lead one to an alternative subculture, depression or violent acts. The more we tend to the first course, the more haven we offer to those who might otherwise slip into the latter.

It's not easy to do but it helps to bear in mind when something like the recent killings occur that it is only a small outward and visible sign of a massive inner and invisible madness that can drive us crazy as well.

GALLERY

THE REMARKABLE ICEBERG PHOTOS OF DAVID BURDENY
David Burdeny/Young Gallery

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE HITS 10.2%, HIGHEST SINCE 1983

	Unemployment rate hits 10.2%, highest since 1983 - 11/09
	By the fall of 2008, most American workers were bringing home roughly the same weekly wages they had earned in 1983, after accounting for inflation. -NYT
	The employed worked fewer hours in May 2009 - an average of just 33.1 hours a week - than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began counting in 1964
	The percentage of people in the labor force not working but looking for work in August 2009 rose to 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948. - New York Times
	Real unemployment highest since depression 7/09

MORE INDICATORS

WORD

It was 1931 that we last reported on television, and our readers must be wondering how things are shaping up. Not any too good. Engineers are working like beavers, but it appears that our homes are in no immediate danger. The cost of sending and receiving even the sappiest image is terrific; twenty-five miles is still considered a good hop; and a facial expression, however rapt, is often damaged en route. We went last week to a demonstration of television on the sixty-second floor of the R.C.A. Building, where some rather startling images were ending up after being tossed around the midtown district. We sat in a darkened room squarely in front of a receiving set and, as we understand the matter, the persons and objects which we saw were down on the third floor of the same building, where they were first photographed televisually by an iconoscope, thence sent by direct wire to the Empire State Building, and then came back on a megacycle to the sixty-second floor of R.C.A. The magical unlikelihood of this occasion was not lessened any by the fact that a stranger wearing a telephone around his neck was crawling about on all fours in the darkness at our feet. This didn't make television seem any too practical for the living room of one's own home, although of course homes are changing. -- EB White, New Yorker, 1936

CIA PATHOLOGY UPDATE

Daniel Tencer, Raw Story - The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said.

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Ny Times - F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners "manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock," and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including "How close is each technique to the 'rack and screw,' " according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released by the Justice Department. . .

The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says department officials declined to prosecute the case.

The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington advocacy group.

Time - Twenty-two CIA agents who were convicted by a Milan court on Wednesday of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric are unlikely to spend any time in prison. The verdict, announced by Milan judge Oscar Magi, is only the first step in the labyrnthine Italian legal system, and the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has shown no desire to pursue the case. . .

Magi convicted 23 Americans, one of whom is an Air Force officer, for the February 2003 kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, under the CIA's controversial "extraordinary rendition" program. Three other Americans were acquitted because they have diplomatic immunity. Two Italian secret agents were also convicted. Five other Italians were acquitted, including the head of the country's military intelligence, who resigned when the kidnapping became public. Of the 23 Americans convicted, 22 were sentenced to five years in jail; Robert Seldon Lady, the agency's former station chief in Milan, was given eight years. All of the Americans, however, were tried in absentia. . .

GAY MARRIAGE

Bangor Daily News - Maine sent mixed messages about extending voting rights to women, before finally doing so. After the Legislature strongly endorsed women's suffrage in 1917, a people's veto took back those voting rights. Two years later, however, Maine voters changed course and voted to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the right to vote to women.

NPR - "If you are someone running for office and want to be re-elected, you're not going to feel better today about supporting same-sex marriage," says Richard Socarides, a former adviser on gay rights in the Clinton administration. "I mean, those are the facts."

Socarides says advocates may have to shift from a state-by-state strategy to a push in the federal courts. Two major lawsuits are now pending: One case in California argues that state bans on gay marriage violate the federal Constitution; another case challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act. . .

Maine Politics - John Aravosis at America Blog has noted that Organizing for America, the successor to the Obama campaign and now a part of the DNC, sent an email to its Maine list asking them to phone bank for Governor Corzine's re-election in New Jersey but failing to mention the election in Maine. The DNC has apparently denied that such an email was sent to Mainers, but I can confirm that I received it and have never been on their list as anything but a resident of Maine.

Washington Blade - David Mixner, a gay Democratic activist, said national LGBT groups must rethink their strategy on how to achieve marriage rights for same-sex couples in the country. "I think that we have to completely evaluate where we're going, what our strategy is and what kind of leaders we need in this kind of movement," Mixner said. "We cannot continue as we have been continuing for the last two decades and hope that maybe in five or 10 years we'll finally get across the 50 percent mark.". . . ."Do we continue spending $50 [million] or $100 million every two years on these initiatives, or is there a way to think out of the box and approach this differently?" he said. "One thing is clear = proceeding as [we] have been proceeding is totally unacceptable, and the national organizations have to hear that loud and clear.". . .

FURTHERMORE. . .

Honolulu Star Bulletin - A judge has ruled that the state is liable for monetary damages for failing to put native Hawaiians on the land to which they were entitled under the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust. . . The decision came in a class action lawsuit filed in 1999 on behalf of about 2,700 native Hawaiians who claimed they were not promptly awarded homesteads between 1959 and 1988. . . "Some of our clients waited more than 30 years or longer for a homestead award and some still are waiting," said attorney Tom Grande.

According to Fair Vote, the most highly partisan states in terms of presidential elections (the deepest red and the darkest blue) have been more likely to elect governors of the minority party, not the majority party. For example, five of the ten most Democratic states in the 2008 presidential elections today have Republican governors even though they voted comfortably for Democratic candidates for president in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Among these 10 strongly Democratic states in presidential races, only Delaware has had a Democratic governor throughout the decade, while two of these states (Rhode Island and Connecticut) have only elected Republican governors since the mid-1990s. Similarly, the 13 most heavily Republican states in the 2008 presidential election were all won by Republican presidential candidates in 2000-2008, but currently have seven Democratic governors.

Consumer Reports - The chemical Bisphenol A, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because of potential health effects. The Food and Drug Administration will soon decide what it considers a safe level of exposure to Bisphenol A which some studies have linked to reproductive abnormalities and a heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. Now Consumer Reports' latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods we tested contain some BPA. The canned organic foods we tested did not always have lower BPA levels than nonorganic brands of similar foods analyzed. We even found the chemical in some products in cans that were labeled "BPA-free."

With the recent election, Saint Paul joins Minneapolis and more than a half a dozen other jurisdictions around the United States and democracies around the world, including Ireland and Australia in using instant runoff voting. IRV, also known as Ranked Choice Voting, is a system by which voters rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring majority winners in single-winner races where there are more than two candidates on the ballot. Under IRV, voters cast their vote for their favorite candidate knowing that if no candidate gathers a majority of votes in the first round of counting their votes can count toward their second choice. Votes cast for the less popular candidates are not "wasted", but rather redistributed to more popular candidates, based on the voters' second choices, until one candidate emerges with a majority of votes.

ROBERT KUTTNER ON THE HEALTH CARE BILLS

Robert Kuttner American Prospect - On the minus side, the plan leaves most people dependent on employers for health coverage and reinforces the political and economic power of the private insurance industry. It subsidizes insurers with more than half a trillion public dollars over 10 years, mainly using tax credits. And it gets most of that money by requiring savings in Medicare and other federal health programs of about $400 billion and by taxing so-called Cadillac insurance policies -- many of which are actually Chevrolets that cost a bundle because of the present system's inefficiency and tendency to penalize older and sicker policyholders.

Largely missed in the debate is the fact that the plan doesn't address the problem of unraveling coverage for people who are insured -- some 86 percent of the population. According to a Commonwealth Fund study, there were 25 million underinsured Americans in 2007, meaning that high deductibles and co-pays and uncovered treatments or services left them nominally insured but often unable to get the care they needed. That's a 60 percent increase since 2003, and nothing in the bill prevents this crisis from worsening.

In short, the plan has reasonably good safeguards for the new subsidized policies for the currently uninsured, but it leaves intact the problems afflicting the rest of the system. The government won't use its power to negotiate wholesale drug prices; insurers are free to keep increasing premiums, deductibles, and co- pays at will. The bill does help the uninsured, but the basic flaws remain in the existing system for the rest of us. . .

By working with rather than against the insurers, the administration denied itself not just a worthy target but the kind of cost savings achievable from more systemic reform. The best strategy was an expansion of Medicare to the working-age population. . .

In 2008, The Lewin Group calculated that such a program would cost about $49 billion in the first year but produce a net savings of a trillion dollars over a decade because of its efficiencies and bargaining power. The campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Obama all embraced versions of Hacker's idea.

But this plan was anathema to Obama's partner, the insurance industry, and the "public option" was quickly reduced to a token. Even in the House bill, the plan would cover only 11 million or 12 million people, not 130 million, and would have no significant effect on costs, according to Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf. In Sen. Max Baucus' version of the bill, the public option is further reduced to a system of "co-ops." CBO says these "are unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments."

It takes a huge leap of faith to believe that this measure is a good incremental strategy to achieve secure health care for Americans and a more just and efficient allocation of health resources. The long-term struggle for health reform doesn't end with this bill. In the next round, Harry and Louise should accurately be identified as the problem, not the partners.

WALL STREET BONUES SET TO INCREASE BY ABOUT 40 PERCENT

Reuters - Wall Street cash bonuses are set to increase by about 40 percent this year, the Wall Street Journal said citing a report by compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. . . Johnson Associates projects that the biggest increases in year-end cash bonuses and equity awards will go to employees in rebounding businesses such as fixed income and equities, the paper said. However, those working at hedge funds, private-equity firms and prime-brokerage operations would see a decline in their incentive pay to the tune of 15 percent to 30 percent because of lower return on investments, the paper said citing the report.

WHY NO HEALTH CARE BILL IS BETTER THAN A BAD ONE

John Geyman MD, Physicians for a National Health Plan - The new House bill for health care reform will not fundamentally reform U. S. health care. If you would believe the hype that accompanied its release, you might think that it would be as important as Medicare and Social Security. The New York Times concluded that "This bill will take a long stride toward universal coverage while remaining fiscally responsible." Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman added: "The political environment is as favorable for reform as it's likely to get. The legislation on the table isn't perfect, but it's as good as anyone could reasonably have expected."

After all of the political compromises along the way that have led to the introduction of the new bill, on the positive side we can say that it will introduce some reforms to the health insurance market, expand coverage by about 36 million to health insurance by several means (especially through government subsidies to individuals and small employers and expansion of Medicaid), and help to address some other major system problems, such as the growing shortage of primary care providers.

But the negative side far outweighs the positive:

- There are no effective cost containment mechanisms built into the bill, either for the costs of health insurance or for health care itself. As it whines about loosening of the individual mandate that will likely limit some of its big increase in the insurance market, the health insurance industry is already warning that sharp premium increases will result. The most the bill will do is to require disclosure and review of premium increases, without any regulatory teeth. Although the bill would set up a Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend a minimal essential benefits package (with four tiers), insurance industry lobbyists will argue for the most minimal levels of coverage, and we can anticipate an exponential growth in underinsurance. Moreover, there are no price controls to be applied anywhere in the system, except perhaps in authorizing the government to negotiate drug prices with manufacturers. But that provision will almost certainly not clear the Senate, where we can expect even less concern for affordability and prices.

- Although the public option has been the target of intense controversy, it will play a negligible role in health care reform. The CBO has concluded that it would cover no more than 6 million Americans, just two percent of the population, in 2013, and will cost more than private programs, mostly due to adverse selection in attracting sicker individuals and its inability to set reimbursement rates for physicians and hospitals as is done by Medicare. Moreover, middle-income families may be required to spend 15 to 18 percent of their income on insurance premiums and co-payments.

- HR 3962 will not result in making health care more affordable, despite allocating some $605 billion over ten years for subsidies to low- and middle- income Americans to buy insurance on exchanges. We can count on continued increases in the cost of health insurance as far as the eye can see, together with less actuarial value of coverage.

- Buried in the fine print of this monster bill are many provisions that will benefit corporate stakeholders in the medical industrial complex on the backs of patients and their families. . .

In sum, this $1.055 trillion plan over ten years will not fix the major problems of cost and affordable access to health care in our deteriorating system, will add new layers of bureaucracy and complexity to the present system, is not fiscally responsible, and is not sustainable.

Rather than accept an unworkable bill that is politically expedient, we would be better off to make a major course change. The best first option would be to call for a floor vote, as originally promised by the House Speaker Pelosi, for the amendment proposed by Anthony Weiner (D-NY) to substitute a single-payer proposal. If that fails, shelving this bill would be the best option, but if that is not possible, lawmakers should be pressed to retain the amendment proposed by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans, as a number of states would like to do (eg. California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, New York and Pennsylvania). That amendment has already been passed by a rare bipartisan vote of 27-19 in the House Education and Labor Committee.

Whether a health care bill survives the end game in both chambers of Congress in this session is still up in the air. If a bill is finally enacted into law, however, it will be ineffective in remedying the big problems of cost and access to health care. We should be gearing up for an intense effort in 2010 to push for real health care reform-Medicare for All.

FUEL EFFICIENCY 2010 CARS

TASER TORTURE UPDATE

From Don't Tase Me Bro'

Minneapolis: Man tasered with his hands on the hood of a car, clearly NOT "resisting arrest".

Alaska: 81 year old Episcopal priest tasered.

Man tasered for "resisting arrest" by washing his hands.

Thanks to Jonathan Turley

THE BEST OF LYNDON JOHNSON

RECOVERED HISTORY: LBJ ORDERS SOME PANTS

FLOTSAM & JETSAM: LOCAL DEMOCRACY AS WELL AS LOCAL LETTUCE

Sam Smith

Voting for the first time in Maine, I have had the pleasure of another first: an election in which 50-70 percent of voters in my town agreed with me on six out of seven referenda (including supporting gay marriage). There was one city council member running unopposed and I haven't heard yet about the three slots on the sewer district, but I took the advice of an old friend (and a Republican) on that one so it doesn't really count.

The fact that I got to vote for who was on the sewer district, however, does count. After all I spent some four decades in Washington DC, trying to convince people that we should have an elected attorney general and comptroller and only now has a bill for the former been submitted to Congress. Submitted to Congress because DC is still a colony of the U.S. and the world's greatest democracy doesn't want its capital deciding for itself whether to have an elected attorney general.

The other evening I got another taste for what local democracy felt like. I attended a meeting concerning an alternative agricultural center whose manure runoff during the wettest summer in Maine history had helped cause the nearby clam flats to be closed.

The farm (with which I've been long involved) quickly removed cattle from the area and took other corrective steps; the meeting was about where to go from here. There were representatives from three state agencies, the local shellfish commission, the local clamming and oyster trade, the farm, not to mention the clam warden. It was all chaired by the head of the town council.

I calculated that attendance - around 50 - represented approximately six percent of the population of the town. In DC this would have meant a crowd of 3500, something I never saw. Secondly, in my former home the issue would have likely become highly controversial and full of superfluous rhetoric. I had been a neighborhood commissioner there and worked my way through problems like this and it wasn't fun.

But the participants at the Freeport meeting made rational arguments and proposals, listened to the others present, were clearly interested in facts, and sought to find a solution that worked for everyone, both clammers and coastal farm. It was an extremely complicated issue including when and how the water sampling is done, identifying the cause of variations, relative fecal contamination of wild and domesticated animals, shifts in animal location, length of stay in that location, and geography of location.

By the end of the evening, both interests had joined to pressure the Department of Marine Resources to open the flats sooner than they had planned.

I mentioned to a friend afterwards that maybe we should send the whole lot down to Washington to work out a solution on the healthcare bill.

It was also nice, I thought, to be talking sensibly about real manure rather than, as during most of my life, ranting about the fake stuff that is spread so wantonly in Washington.

On election day, the one issue where I was in the minority concerned school consolidation. The state, inspired by the bureaucratic obsessives at the Brookings Institution, had required school districts to consolidate. A number didn't like it for good reason: for example, it would cost money or the districts were too far apart. For more than fifty years, America has been consolidating school districts and the main effect has been to replace educators with bureaucrats and wardens,

But while Freeport voters supported the consolidation with a 62% majority, 79% of Pownal voters, the next town over - and ordered to consolidate with us at a considerable increase in expense - rejected the plan. Since the plan survived statewide, Freeport won and Pownal lost. It's a hell of a way to start a relationship.

But it is part of the bureaucratic myth that we are all the same as long as the data says so.

The clamflat meeting - arranged within the community - and the school consolidation - imposed from outside - reflect the difference between what John McKnight called associations vs. institutions:

"The structure of institutions is a design established to create control of people. On the other hand, the structure of associations is the result of people acting through consent."

Here are some of the characteristics McKnight found among associations in contrast to institutions:

- Interdependency. "If the local newspaper closes, the garden club and the township meeting will each diminish as they lose a voice."

- Community is built around a recognition of fallibility rather than the ideal.

- Community groups are better at finding a place for everyone.

- Associations can respond quickly since they lack the bureaucracy of large institutions.

- Associations engage in non-hierarchical creativity.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the importance of localizing food. It makes excellent sense but a question keeps coming to mind: why lettuce and not democracy?

One of my big disappointments in politics has been the indifference of liberals - the sort who boost local food - with keeping democracy close to home as well. They often talk about it as though it was some sort of holdover from the states' rights days of segregation.

A growing number of people who identify with new liberalism see themselves as experts and take it for granted that the wisest decisions will be made at the top and then passed down as regulations.

These decisions - like school consolidation - tend to rely on data that wipes out the normal variations of human existence. This data turns judgment into an indentured servant instead of just informing it.

Thus we have a stimulus package that creates innumerable obstacles for state and local government, an education plan that wipes out the very system that taught America to be what it became, and a healthcare plan that absolutely no one understands.

Until we rediscover the value of community, it will only get worse. We will find ourselves increasingly, as Bill Mauldin once put it, fugitives from the law of averages.

Propelled by the rapacious ambitions of their members, neither national party cares about this. But then they don't care about local food either and that didn't stop that movement from coming to life. Our goal should be to bring democracy, as well as our lettuce, as close to home as possible.

WORD

When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always. -- Rita Rudner

FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS IT'S OKAY FOR GOVERNMENT TO ILLEGALLY ARREST, TORTURE AND SUBMIT TO RENDITION AN INNOCENT PERSON

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - It's not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft. Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing. . .

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada." By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves "state secrets" and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved. What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how "democratic," "accountable," and "open" the United States is?

The Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

TOWN PLANS PRISON FOR BORN AGAIN CONS

NY Times, Wakita - This tiny town near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line north of Enid may soon own the country's only all-Christian prison, with Christian administrators, employees, counselors and programs.

The idea is backed by Wakita's leaders, has some support from state officials, and, its founders believe, is able to pass constitutional muster.

"If Chicken Little doesn't come to town, we'll be open in 16 months," said Bill Robinson, the founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., a Dallas nonprofit prison ministry that is spearheading the project.

Mayor Kelly George said officials of this town of 380 were fully behind the project and have done everything they need to make it happen. . .

The prison would accept only men near the end of their sentences who volunteer to come into the prison and sign an agreement to participate.

MAJOR MONEY CHANGERS HEAD FOR TEMPLE TO JUSTIFY THEIR GREED

Bloomberg - Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London's Trafalgar Square last night and told the packed pews of the church that "profit is not satanic."

The 53-year-old head of Britain's second-biggest bank said banks are the "backbone" of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn't conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

"Talent is highly mobile," Varley, a Catholic, said. "If we fail to pay or are constrained from paying competitive rates then that talent will move to another employer."

"Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes," he said in an interview after the speech in the 283-year-old church. "And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes."

Varley joins Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths and Lazard International Chairman Ken Costa as London bankers who've gone into London churches in recent weeks and invoked Christianity to defend a banking system that critics say has created wealth and inequality in the U.K.

"The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest," Goldman's Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul's Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London's financial district. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.". . .

"It seems like the bankers aren't listening to society," said Jacob Needleman, a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and author of "Money and the Meaning of Life." Needleman said Griffiths should make "an immediate donation of some several million pounds to a beautiful charity" to show he can "walk the talk."

THE GAY MARRIAGE DEFEAT

Sam Smith, Progressive Review - Having lived most of my life in the gay friendly city of Washington, I wasn't prepared from some of the nastiness involved in the Maine gay marriage debate. Especially the sick video that claimed that the state's schools would be teaching gay marriage in class.

And while I knew the Pope was the George Wallace of gender, I had never been this close to the repulsive cruelty of the Catholic church on the issue, not to mention hypocritical - given the behavior of more than a few of its priests.

Finally, I realized too late how easy it was to slip into the media's assumption that this was just another issue - and not a major test of morality. It was only after the returns came in that it occurred to me how little the difference was between denying gays entry into marriage and denying a black kid's entry into a school or that kid's parent's entry into a restaurant. It was not just gay marriage being judged, but the rest of us as well. A minority's rights is not a gift to be bestowed but a strong reflection of our own honor and decency. And we failed.

The two state failure

In considering the vote, however, it is important to keep in mind that on some matters, Maine is two states, not one

Maine is, by east of the Mississippi standards, a huge state. It takes as long to drive from one end to the other as it does to go from Boston to Baltimore. Half that distance is in one county - known as "the county" or Aroostook. Aroostock is the largest county east of the Mississippi - the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, but with a population of only 73,000. Seventy-three percent of its votes approved the repeal of gay marriage.

If you take the map above from the Portland Phoenix and draw a horizontal line where it says United States, you will have roughly divided the state into counties - the ones above the line - that voted 60% against gay marriage

Now note the blue counties on the map. All coastal, they are the four that supported gay marriage with Cumberland - home of Portland - casting 60% of its vote on its behalf. (Your editor's town, Freeport, voted 64% for gay marriage).

A vote for the establishment of religion

Among other reasons, the banning of gay marriage is illegal because its purpose and origin is based almost entirely on the principles of certain religions. To ban gay marriage is to establish some religions' beliefs as superior to those of others. Specifically, the Maine gay marriage vote makes the following lesser religions compared, say, to the Catholic Church:

The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, Ecumenical Catholic Church, Church of God Anonymous, Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Reconstructionist Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Unitarian Universalist Association, which all approve of same sex marriage

The United Church of Christ, Episcopal and various Quaker groups leave the decision to clergy, congregations or local governing bodies. And, adds the Interfaith Workig Group, the Presbyterian Church (USA) allows the blessings of same-gender unions with terminology restrictions.

So the result was not just a repeal of gay marriage but a totally unconstitutional vote to restrict the rights of the aforementioned religion http://www.iwgonline.org/s

Time - Mainers' 53-47 vote to reject gay marriage does more than simply slap down a law that just six months ago had made Maine the U.S.'s second state to permit same-sex couples to wed. With voters thronging to the polls, the closely watched - and ultimately not very close - vote extended the winning streak of gay-marriage opponents nationwide, who have now prevailed in more than 30 straight state elections over whether to allow gays to marry. Just like Californians one year ago, Maine voters insisted on having their say on an issue that simply will not go away. . .

But Maine's vote, much like all of the states before it, including California's vote on Prop 8 a year ago, will do little to slow the fight over gay marriage. Not in Maine, where Tuesday's vote was only the equivalent of a veto and can be easily reversed by lawmakers when they next meet, and not in the rest of country, where the issue continues to roil courthouses and statehouses alike. "Ultimately, this is going to have to have a national resolution," says same-sex-marriage activist Mary Bonauto, one of the nation's top lawyers involved in the campaign to legalize gay marriage. "It's about aligning promises found in the Constitution with America's laws." A leader in Maine's campaign to uphold gay marriage, Bonauto is best known for arguing the same-sex case that led the Massachusetts Supreme Court to strike down prohibitions against gay marriage in a hugely influential 2003 decision that paved the way for that state to become the first to permit gay marriage in 2004.

That decision has been cited in numerous cases that have followed, as the number of states whose courts have demanded equal marriage rights for gays has grown. But those same cases have also helped fuel opponents, who say gay marriage is being foisted upon the U.S. by out-of-touch judges. In order to counter that argument, Bonauto and other gay-marriage activists in Maine who began organizing to press for gay marriage there decided to avoid taking the issue to court. Instead, they set about electing lawmakers who were friendly to their cause two years ago, and this year successfully convinced the legislature to become the nation's first to establish gay marriage by statute, rather than by decree. "Frankly, we had heard the criticisms about going the court route, and so we said, 'Fine, we'll go to the legislature,' " says Bonauto. "And it has been an incredible campaign." . . .

With the loss in Maine, the focus inevitably turns back to the courts, and for now that means back to California. That's where former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson and powerhouse attorney David Boies have brought a suit insisting that the Constitution forbids any law that prohibits gay marriage. Bonauto won't comment on the criticism that gay-rights groups heaped on Olson when he filed the case, saying it was premature given the heavily conservative bent of the federal judiciary. But she said to win across the country, gay-rights supporters must press the marriage case wherever the fight takes them, be it in courthouses, state capitols or voting booths. "It's never been an either-or choice," she says. "When the issue is one of social justice, we have to get the judicial branch involved. There is absolutely a role for the courts.". . .

Maine was supposed to be different. To begin with, it was the first state to legalize gay marriage by statute, and with the governor's support. When the unprecedented new law was challenged, supporters hoped that political backing from the governor, coupled with Maine's traditionally independent mind-set, would provide the breakthrough that gay-marriage supporters have been waiting for.

The vote prompted an outpouring of cash and other resources from far beyond the borders of the Pine Tree State. From New Jersey, the National Organization for Marriage sent a $1.8 million check to help defeat gay marriage. Gay couples in California and others still heartbroken over the Prop 8 vote sent lots of smaller checks to help bring the 'Vote No on 1' coalition some $4 million. On Tuesday, Californians manned phone banks to help encourage the vote, which Maine's Secretary of State told reporters Tuesday was exceptionally large. . .

Gay marriage bills are under consideration in New York and New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., city leaders are mulling whether to expand rights for same-sex couples, too. Olson and Boies' case is set for trial in January, and gay activists could learn soon how valid their fears about the federal judiciary are.

Boston Globe - Even with incomplete vote figures, the turnout was at least 53 percent of eligible voters. Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap says the figure could grow to around 60 percent -- approaching what Maine sees in a major election year.

Maine Public Broadcasting - [Jesse Connolly of Protect Maine Equality] has always maintained that same-sex marriage opponents deceived voters into thinking gay marriage and gay sex would be advocated and taught to students in public schools, even though Maine's attorney general and education commissioner said there was nothing in the law that related to school curricula. . .

For 14-year-old Sam Putnam and his family, the campaign for marriage equality has been a personal and gratifying one no matter what the outcome. Putnam was thrust into the spotlight last spring when he chose to testify on behalf of his two moms at a public hearing. His testimony was put on You Tube and before Putnam knew it, he was being asked to appear in a television advertisement and his classmates and teachers at Portland High School were offering their support.

"I talked about how I'm an average teenager, which I am," Putnam says. "I play sports for my school. I have a lot of friends. I'm an honor student. I participate in the community as much as I can and no matter what happens tonight, it's not going to change me as a person at all. It's just going to change the way my family is being seen."

Putnam will have to wait a while longer for his two moms to be recognized the way he'd like. But Maine Governor John Baldacci says that day is coming. "We may not get there as soon as I'd like to get there, but we're going to get there because that's the future."

Linda Hirshman, Daily Beast - I had hoped gay marriage would win out in Maine. I even gave them a little money (thank you to gay friends for a dinner). So when it lost, I was sorry . . .

But winning or losing makes no difference to the real question: what in the world was this issue doing in a referendum anyway? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that James Madison invented the life-tenured federal judiciary to decide?

Recently, a bunch of legal scholars and influential commentators representing themselves as liberals, have suggested that it's not. The federal courts should just bow out, they say, of deciding things like gay marriage (and abortion rights). (Little-known fact: the Bow Out movement started with a suggestion that the Supreme Court had made a mistake when it integrated the schools. Imagine what the law would look like if the Brown court had waited until a majority of states were ready to pass the Civil Rights Acts.) Painful as it is to them, as sincere supporters of abortion rights/gay marriage/your issue here, these wise ones think the federal courts should follow the election returns. Only when a majority of states have legalized something should the federal courts find that it was a fundamental constitutional right all along.

Look at the damage, the law professors say, from the Court's "premature" decision to protect women's right to abortion in 1973. Why, bands of protesters are still showing up at the Supreme Court building with pictures of fetuses. How much better it would have been, they argue, to fight these grinding, state- by-state battles to protect women's choices, than to have legal abortion protected as a matter of equality and privacy for 36 years.

What these academic treatises ignore is the concern that Madison and others had that what they called the tyranny of the majority was legitimate. A majority, Madison predicted, often whipped up by demagogues, would oppress a helpless minority. . .

When confronted with gay marriage, a record number of states, red and blue, stood that carefully constructed system on its head. In the Maine gay marriage campaign, the popularly elected branches were invoked, when, in a matter of great human importance and intimacy, gay marriage should have been a matter of fundamental rights for the courts from the beginning. . .

That gay marriage has to run this gauntlet is not an accident. Before the Bow Out movement, most big social change claims made their way to the federal courts without this huge windup of state-by-state legislative efforts, which then alerted the opposition to the social change that was coming. More importantly, a thoroughly organized, heavily funded conservative movement is now securely ensconced on the political stage and has seen its tyrannical opportunity in the majoritarian vehicle of the referendum. The combination has pulled the American political system in a radical new direction the Founders actively opposed.

Charles C. Haynes, First Amendment Center - According to a 2008 survey taken by Public Religion Research, when asked whether they would favor allowing gay couples to marry "if the law guaranteed that no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples," support for legalizing same-sex marriage jumped from 29% to 43%.

Portland Press Herald - The push to legalize same-sex marriage in Maine began in January, when hundreds of activists gathered at the State House to announce that Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, would sponsor a bill to change the definition of marriage.

The bill defined marriage as "the legally recognized union of two people" rather than "the union of one man and one woman joined in traditional monogamous marriage," a definition put in place by the Legislature in 1997.

It allowed any two people to apply for a marriage license "regardless of the sex of each person." And, finally, it allowed religious institutions to refuse to perform same-sex marriage if it is not consistent with their beliefs.

Rev. Bob Emrich of Palmyra: "God has given us this victory and it is very important for us to recognize that he is the one who put the energy into this campaign."

FURTHERMORE. . .

It's not just blogs that are giving the Associated Press fits. The Chicago Tribune will experiment next week with not using AP at all, except for sports stats and a few key stories. Instead the Trib will use the NY Times, Global Post and Reuters. At its annual meeting last April, some 180 papers - 14% of AP's US business - threatened to dump the service.

When something bad happens to the Washington establishment, we love to see how the enabling media handles it. So we weren't disappointed with today's headline from the Washington Post: "Karzai is wild card for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan." If only all our disasters were just wild cards.

If you're curious about what Harvard is doing with an ethics center, you might wish to attend its lecture on November 12 at Emerson Hall 105. The speaker will be the former governor and attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

TMZ - Mere hours before bidding was scheduled to end on the infamous DUI La-Z-Boy-Mobile, the motorized recliner suddenly vanished from the auction -- and TMZ has learned it's all because of a battle over its name. With the price at $43,100 and rising, eBay received a demand letter from the most unlikely of parties -- the La-Z-Boy corporation itself. We're told La-Z-Boy played the trademark card due to the title of the auction "La-Z-Boy DWI Chair" and eBay was forced to pull the auction. Here's the worst part: the chair was being auctioned off by the Proctor Minnesota Police Department and all profits were to benefit the taxpayers. . . Fear not motorized chair enthusiasts -- we've learned the cops plan on re-listing the chair.

KTLA, Los Angeles - Five people are charged with torturing and robbing two loan modification agents they thought falsely promised to save their home from foreclosure. Two men were charged Monday with torture, robbery and false imprisonment. Another man and two women pleaded not guilty to the same charges Friday. Prosecutors say Daniel Weston and Mary Ann Parmelee hired two loan modification agents in hopes of keeping their home but believed the men took their money and did nothing. Prosecutors claim the victims were lured to Glendale on Oct. 20, held for hours, beaten and robbed before one escaped.

Tweet of the day: Anyone notice that the pres signed a $680 billion defense approp bill in the midst of our heated debates about $90b a yr for hc? - Chris Hayes

Headline of the day: Survey reveals that married gay couples are just as boring as their straight counterparts - Fark

Problems dealing with Wachovia

ALTERNATIVE VOICES

Joe Bageant: Our produce or die culture is killing us

A California couple tries to do battle with Goldman Sachs

ARTS & CULTURE

Writing long stories in the time of Twitter

BOOKS

Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by David Swanson

FILM

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"

RECOVERED HISTORY: WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGAN

USA Today, January 2006 - As housing prices soared last year, an eye-popping 43% of first-time home buyers purchased their homes with no-money-down loans, according to a study released the National Association of Realtors. The trend is potentially ominous. The real estate market is cooling in some areas, and rates on adjustable-rate loans are creeping up. As a result, some no-money-down buyers could owe more than their homes are worth. The median first-time home buyer scraped together a down payment of only 2% on a $150,000 home in 2005, the NAR found. Already, home prices in many areas are declining, and the "For Sale" signs are hanging in front yards longer. There's now at least a 50% risk that prices will decline within two years in 11 major metro areas, including San Diego; Boston; Long Island, N.Y.; Los Angeles; and San Francisco, according to PMI Mortgage Insurance's latest U.S. Market Risk Index. . . Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says that if housing prices fall at least 10%, it could be even more damaging than the collapse of the high-tech stock bubble in 2000. . . Baker and other economists are concerned that many lenders have pushed a series of creative but potentially dangerous loans to help more Americans afford a home.

HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES SCREW ORGAN DONORS

Fox - Kidney donors may be stuck with shocking medical bills because having one kidney could constitute a pre-existing condition resulting in a denial of health care coverage, according to UPI .

Donors getting billed for transplant-related care has been a national problem for years, Donna Luebke, a nurse practitioner in cardiology at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, told the American Statesman .

"Right now it is the issue for living donors in this country," Luebke said. "I know of donors who have paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for complications."

Luebke added that as Congress debates reform of the health care system, it should require Medicare to ascertain that donors are covered, as provided by a 1972 law , regardless of states' conflicting policies.

STUDY: NEARLY HALF OF ALL U.S. CHILDREN WILL USE FOOD STAMPS

Washington University, St Louis - "49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood," says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Rather than being a time of security and safety, the childhood years for many American children are a time of economic turmoil, risk, and hardship," Rank says.

Other study findings include:

- 90 percent of black children will be in a household that uses food stamps. This compares to 37 percent of white children.

- Nearly one-quarter of all American children will be in households that use food stamps for five or more years during childhood.

- 91 percent of children with single parents will be in a household receiving food stamps, compared to 37 percent of children in married households.

WHY PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS ARE A WONDERFUL THING

Washington Post - Former president Bill Clinton said Monday that, without term limits, he would have stayed in the job "until I was carried away in a coffin, or defeated in an election."

WHY TODAY'S ELECTIONS DON'T MEAN WHAT THE PUNDITBURO SAYS THEY DO

David Sirota, Open Left - Karl Rove and the Beltway Punditburo are busy trying to tell us all why the three big elections today - the Virginia gubernatorial, the New Jersey gubernatorial, and the New York special congressional election - are a referendum on President Obama and the progressive agenda, and a bellweather for future elections. . . The idea that these three races are big-time commentaries on progressivism itself is is just plain moronic . . .

Virginia has long been a conservative, Republican-leaning southern state, and it is coming off four successive statewide wins by Democrats (Warner for Governor, Kaine for Governor, Webb for Senate and Warner for Senate). On top of that, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Creigh Deeds, has run a pretty lackluster general election campaign, making the strategically stupid decision to run away from Obama. . .

New Jersey has always been a much more "purple" place in statewide elections than the Punditburo would have you think. Twelve years ago, New Jersey had a Republican governor. In 2004, John Kerry managed just 52 percent of the vote in the state. In 2005, Jon Corzine racked up only 53 percent of the vote in his run for governor. Add that stealth swing quality to the fact that A) Corzine is a former Goldman Sachs CEO running in the shadow of a Wall Street meltdown and B) high-profile New Jersey Democrats like Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevey did their level best to ruin the Democratic Party's name in the Garden State, and it's amazing Corzine is even running close.

Finally, when it comes to the supposed bellweather special election in New York's 23rd district, everyone seems to forget what the ultraconservative Weekly Standard quietly admits: This seat has been held by Republicans for 138 years. The idea that a district that has been in GOP hands since the end of the Civil War is some sort of telltale gauge of national trends is absolutely laughable - especially when you consider that, as In These Times notes, organized labor has been split between the Democratic and Republican candidate. Again, in a state where high-profile Democrats like Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson haven't exactly helped their party image, the real news here is that a Democrat has even managed to put up a serious fight - not that Republicans might hold onto a seat they've controlled for more than a century.

PHILLY TRANSIT WORKERS STRIKE

Boston Globe - The Philadelphia transit system's largest union said that contract negotiations had broken down and its workers are on strike, bringing the city's bus, subway and trolley operations to a halt before Tuesday morning's rush hour.

The strike by Transport Workers Union Local 234 will all but cripple a transit system that averages more than 928,0000 trips each weekday. The union represents more than 5,000 drivers, operators and mechanics of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

Willie Brown, the local's president, said they decided to strike after both sides agreed that they had gone as far as they could go in negotiations. The announcement came just hours after the Phillies beat the Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series, the last game to be played at Citizens Bank Park.

The union had threatened to go on strike during the World Series. But Gov. Ed Rendell over the weekend ordered the union and SEPTA to remain at the bargaining table or risk "significant consequences."

SEVENTY PERCENT OF PLANTS, 20% OF MAMMALS, IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION

Guardian, UK - A fifth of the world's known mammals, a third of its amphibians, more than a quarter of its reptiles and up to 70% of its plants are under threat of extinction according to the red list of threatened species, the latest annual survey compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Among the critically endangered species are the western lowland gorilla and the bactrian camel. The golden-headed lion tamarin is listed as endangered and the socorro dove is extinct in the wild. Only a single male specimen of the Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog, which lives in central Panama, has been heard calling in the last three years and attempts to breed it in captivity have so far failed.

The IUCN estimates that nearly 17,300 of the world's 47,677 assessed species are under threat of extinction.

LAND RIFT IN ETHIOPIA MAY LEAD TO NEW SEA

University of Rochester - In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

The new study, published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed. In addition, such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study. . .

"The whole point of this study is to learn whether what is happening in Ethiopia is like what is happening at the bottom of the ocean where it's almost impossible for us to go," says Ebinger. "We knew that if we could establish that, then Ethiopia would essentially be a unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory for us. Because of the unprecedented cross-border collaboration behind this research, we now know that the answer is yes, it is analogous."

THE PRICE OF AVOIDING SOCIALISM

FURTHERMORE. . .

There's been a 9% decline in charitable giving this year according to Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy

In his 2004 interview with the FBI, Richard Cheney equivocated 72 times. Not quite up to the 250 times that Hillary Clinton, in congressional testimony, said that she didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar - but getting there.

Roger Morris on Taylor Branch's book on Clinton: In this writing of history as well as making it, there is personal tragedy. From their 1972 origins, Branch and Clinton took very different directions, the author choosing what he called with justification the "greater integrity"� of writing over politics. Yet what might have been a redemptive rejoining of the two paths in The Clinton Tapes ends in the ineffable sadness of exceptional men using and being used. We are all the poorer.

Ballot Access - Quimby, Iowa, is holding its city election on November 3. Voters will be choosing a mayor and three city council members. However, no names are printed on the ballots. The winners will be determined by write-in votes. Iowa is one of the few states that permits write-ins and yet does not have a write-in declaration of candidacy procedure, so there is no such thing as a declared write-in candidate. Thus anyone might win, even if the person who wins didn't want the job.

OBAMA SIGNS ON TO FREE SPEECH SUPPRESSION

Stuart Taylor Jr, National Journal - It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, "I strongly disagree" with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.

But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. . . I'm talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton's own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.

The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere "negative racial and religious stereotyping." This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.

To be sure, the provisions to which I refer were a compromise, stopping short of the flat ban on defamation of religion sought by Islamic nations, and they could also be construed more narrowly and innocuously. It all depends on who does the construing.

Is it "negative stereotyping" to say that the world's most dangerous terrorists are Islamists, for example? Many would say yes.

. . . The real problem is a provision, which the U.S. championed jointly with Egypt, exuding hostility to free expression.

That provision "expresses its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human-rights law, to address and combat such incidents"

What is this clot of verbiage supposed to mean?

It could be read narrowly as a commitment merely to denounce and eschew hate speech. But it could more logically be read broadly as requiring the United States and other nations to punish "hostile" speech about -- and perhaps also "negative stereotyping" of -- any race or religion. It's a safe bet, however, that the Islamic nations that are so concerned about criticisms of their religion will not be prosecuting anyone for the rampant "negative racial and ethnic stereotyping" and hate speech in their own countries directed at Jews and sometimes Christians.

INVESTIGATION RAISES ISSUE OF WHETHER GOLDMAN SACHS BROKE LAW

McClatchy Newspapers - In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."

John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who served on an advisory committee to the New York Stock Exchange, said that investment banks have wide latitude to manage their assets, and so the legality of Goldman's maneuvers depends on what its executives knew at the time.

"It would look much more damaging," Coffee said, "if it appeared that the firm was dumping these investments because it saw them as toxic waste and virtually worthless."

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chairman and chief executive, declined to be interviewed for this article.

A Goldman spokesman, Michael DuVally, said that the firm decided in December 2006 to reduce its mortgage risks and did so by selling off subprime-related securities and making myriad insurance-like bets, called credit-default swaps, to "hedge" against a housing downturn.

DuVally told McClatchy that Goldman "had no obligation to disclose how it was managing its risk, nor would investors have expected us to do so ... other market participants had access to the same information we did."

For the past year, Goldman has been on the defensive over its Washington connections and the billions in federal bailout funds it received. Scant attention has been paid, however, to how it became the only major Wall Street player to extricate itself from the subprime securities market before the housing bubble burst.

NEW FEDERAL REGULATION THREATENS AMERICAN HANDMADE TOYS

NY Times - William John Woods makes wooden baby rattles and toys at his studio in Ogunquit, Maine.

But now he and others like him - makers of small toys and owners of toy resale shops and boutique stores - say their livelihood is being threatened by federal legislation enacted in the last year to protect children from toxic toys through more extensive testing. Big toymakers, including those whose tainted imports from China led to the recall of 45 million toys and spurred Congress to take action, have more resources and are able to comply with the new law's requirements.

"This is absurd," said Mr. Woods, whose toys are made of maple, walnut and cherry and finished with walnut oil and beeswax from a local apiary. He estimates it would cost him $30,000 - a figure he calculated from having to pay $400 in required tests for each of the 80 or so different items he produces - to show that they are not toxic.

"I use beeswax," Mr. Woods said. "The law was targeted at large toymakers using lead. There was no exclusion for benign products."

These homegrown toymakers are banding together to portray themselves as victims of bureaucrats and consumer advocates, and have started letter-writing campaigns to Congress.

The Handmade Toy Alliance, which has a section of its Web site titled "Countdown to Extinction," sponsored a march on Washington last April and continues to buttonhole members of Congress. Still others have hired the Washington lobbying firm of Rudy Giuliani.

"The law is flawed," said Rob Wilson, a director of the Handmade Toy Alliance, which wants Congress to reopen the 2008 legislation to new amendments. "It reflects decision-making that in a sane world makes no sense."

"The law isn't making toys more safe, but is making everything more convoluted," added Mr. Wilson, owner of Challenge and Fun, an Ashland, Mass., company that sells organic toys from Europe. "We're all losers, including the consumer."

EIGHT REASONS WHY DUNCANS TEACH FOR DOLLARS PLAN WON'T WORK

Gordon MacInnes, Century Foundation - Education Secretary Arne Duncan insists that states should be ready to mandate that teacher evaluation and compensation be pegged to how well their students perform on standardized tests. In the proposed rules for the Race to the Top Fund . . . having a data system that does not block teacher and student identifications is one of just three absolute conditions for receiving funding. The Department of Education will not even read a state's application if it stumbles on this mandate. Here are eight reasons why everyone's time, energy, and tax dollars would be better spent elsewhere.

Reason #1: Tying test scores to teacher compensation suggests that teachers are holding back on using their experience, expertise, and time because they are not being paid for the extra effort.

Instead, the evidence is strong that most teachers simply do not know what to do when confronted with concentrations of poor children who are unprepared for the grade level or content taught. The surge in students from non-English speaking families further complicates teachers' jobs. . .

What is more worrying, and should be the object of reform efforts in Washington and state capitals, is that the leaders of most urban districts and schools-those who set the tone and the boundaries of practice-do not know what to do to improve the educational prospects of poor children. Moreover, there is no evidence that the policymakers on boards of education, in legislatures, or in departments of education have a clear vision of how to educate concentrations of poor children effectively. Otherwise, after forty years of serial reforms, the gap between poor and affluent students would have narrowed more than it has.

Reason # 2: The standardized tests in most states are lousy and so are the standards they are designed to measure.

Many well-organized groups have raised legitimate concerns that standardized testing can be detrimental to students by undermining the richness and breadth of their education, and drawing a false picture of academic achievement. But it is Secretary Duncan who has said that he believes that existing tests are weak and easily manipulated by many states, and that state academic standards are too plentiful, too vague, and too easy.

Reason #3: The idea of compensating teachers individually in order to differentiate their performance from their school colleagues defeats a principal tenet of good instruction-that teachers need to learn from one another to solve difficult pedagogical challenges.

The Department of Education is praising higher-performing charter schools such as KIPP that strongly emphasize a culture of teacher cooperation. Establishing such a culture is one of the options under the department's proposed rules that states and districts can use to turn around failed . . .

Good instructional practice can be thought of as being much more like professional basketball than professional golf. The legendary Boston Celtics won thirteen championships through their unselfish play and relentless team defense. The benchwarmers, who sharpened the game of the starters, received the same championship rings as Bill Russell and Bob Cousy. Golfers, in contrast, are paid only when they score better than other competitors.

The last thing we need is to isolate city teachers from each other by introducing test-score driven competition with their colleagues.

Reason #4: Most teachers do not teach a grade or subject that is subject to standardized testing.

By itself, this is reason enough to be wary of the Department of Education's proposal. No framework or advice, or even a vague notion, is offered by the department as to how a kindergarten or French teacher would be evaluated as a part of the new scheme. If the idea is that "we're-all-in-the-same-boat" will govern the evaluation of the entire school, then the teacher-student identification capability need not be one of three absolute conditions for application.

Reason # 5: Even reliable standardized tests are valid only when they are used for their intended purposes.

The state tests mandated by NCLB for grades 3–8 and one year of high school are to measure how well students have mastered their state standards. They are not designed to measure how well teachers teach.

Reason #6: A key assumption of using test scores to judge teachers is that students are randomly assigned, first, to schools, and, second, to classes. Neither is true.

This is a methodological problem that has bedeviled the evaluation of charter and magnet schools, since it so difficult to assign a numerical value for having parents who seek better schools for their children. Ask principals of affluent suburban schools if they could get away with random classroom assignments. The situation is the same in city schools. If Mr. Jones knows a little Spanish, then he should take the recent immigrant from Mexico who speaks no English; the recently hired Ms. Cuccio can take the below-grade level readers; while the veteran complainer Mrs. Green gets most of the kids already reading at grade level. This "selection bias" contaminates the value and validity of much statistically driven research. . .

Reason #7: State data systems are in their infancy. It turns out that it is harder, is more expensive, and takes longer for states to produce reliable, accurate, and secure longitudinal data on students and teachers than widely assumed. . .

Reason #8: The rationale for tying tests to compensation is not clear.

One possible reason is to increase the effort, time, and resources devoted to teaching the content and skills to be tested. However, the consensus is very strong that the No Child Left Behind Act's testing mandate has narrowed instruction too much already at the expense of art, music, social studies, and foreign language instruction. A second reason might be to differentiate among teachers to identify the "slugs" from the "maestros." However, in most schools, one does not need a standardized test to identify the worst and best, and it will not work to sort those in the middle with sufficient precision to withstand the inevitable court challenge. A third reason might be to instill better practice. But if teacher compensation does not keep up with inflation because of poor student performance, then teachers will . . . what? Work harder? Dig deeper? Stay longer? There is no evidence that such measures improve instructional practices or student outcomes.

SEATTLE CRACKS DOWN ON MILITARY RECRUITER ABUSE

M.L. Lyke, Seattle Post-Intelligencer - High school military recruiters who overstep lines can be kicked off campus, under revised policies adopted by the Seattle School Board.

Under the amended policies, recruiters for the military, for careers or for colleges who harass students, provide misleading or untrue information, or become disruptive may be banned from high school campuses for the remainder of the semester.

"It's not OK to come in and lie to our kids," said School Board member Darlene Flynn.

The new rule was part of a unanimous vote amending district-wide regulations on all campus visitors -- an attempt to standardize a jumble of individual school recruitment policies. . .

Seattle has been a hotbed of anti-recruitment activity this year. In May, Garfield High School PTSA became the first in the state to try to oust recruiters from campus. Shortly after, local colleges and high schools staged campus walkouts that temporarily shut down some recruiting centers.

Under the new guidelines, schools must adopt specific recruiting rules by Oct. 3. Those include how frequently recruiters are allowed on campus, and where they can set up. They'll be required to make advance appointments with schools, and schools will have to post calendars showing when those appointments are scheduled.

No one recruiter can visit a campus more frequently than another, and military recruiters must come in uniform.

The guidelines also ensure groups offering alternatives to the military service -- such as conscientious objector groups -- can have equal access to students, at the same time and same place.

Wednesday night's meeting at the John Stanford Center Auditorium was packed with concerned students and parents, some carrying signs that read "Rumsfeld -- hands off our students," "Don't die for a recruiter's lie" and "Money for jobs and education: not for war and occupation."

In emotional testimony, some parents and students complained that recruiters unfairly target low-income and minority children. "They are recruiting people of color to fight for a country that might let them drown in New Orleans," said Jeff Rice, leader of a Filipino youth group.

Many parents and students called for an outright ban on campus military recruiters, even though, under the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act, any school district that allows college and career recruiters but ousts military recruiters can lose federal funding.

SEVEN QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY THAT AREN'T BEING ASKED

David M. Shapiro

1. Why did none of the financial institutions that allegedly needed (and actually received) TARP funds beginning in the Fall of 2008 not warn their shareholders of their precarious financial positions in prior public filings?

2. If senior management and the boards of directors of these financial institutions were genuinely caught short and did not possess actual knowledge of the precarious financial positions of the financial institutions under their stewardship, did they possess constructive knowledge (i.e., they could have and should have known of the precarious financial condition)?

3. If they neither could have nor should known about the precariousness of the financial conditions of the financial institutions under their stewardship, how relevant and reliable were the accounting information systems of these financial institutions?

4. If the precariousness of the financial conditions was neither forecast nor capable of forecast (e.g., the perfect storm), why did some entities (e.g., hedge funds) take significant positions (e.g., credit default swap protection from loss of value of Lehman Bros. debt) from which they benefited enormously after the public dissemination of the precariousness of the financial positions of the financial institutions was exploited by politicians (e.g., U.S. Congress), administrators (e.g., U.S. Treasury Secretary), and regulators (e.g., Federal Reserve Bank of NY) to bail-out financial institutions' creditors?

5. If the financial institutions and the ultimate beneficiaries of the bail-outs (e.g., financial institutions' creditors) were indeed 'too big to fail,' why haven't the individuals responsible for creating the bail-outs acted forthwith to correct such bigness and systemic risk?

6. If the financial institutions (and their creditors) have largely recovered as a result of the bail-outs, why hasn't the U.S. economy created more jobs?

7. If the financial institutions' responsibility is neither job creation in the U.S. nor development of projects promoting the general welfare of the U.S., why were they so important that they had to be rescued by U.S. taxpayers?

RECORD INDUSTRY HITTING BEST CUSTOMERS WITH DOWNLOAD WAR

Independent, UK - eople who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else, according to a new study. The survey found that those who admit illegally downloading music spent an average of L77 a year on music – L33 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly.

The findings suggest that plans by the Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, to crack down on illegal downloaders by threatening to cut their internet connections with a "three strikes and you're out" rule could harm the music industry by punishing its core customers.

An estimated seven million UK users download files illegally every year. The record industry's trade association, the British Phonographic Industry, believes this copyright infringement will cost the industry L200m this year.

CHINESE CREATE ARTIFICIAL SNOW FALL

AFP - Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said. . .

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

Although the technique often gets results, a drought in the north of the country has continued for over a decade.

LOCAL POLICE CREATING AN AMERICAN STASI

Phil Leggiere, Don't Tase Me Bro - When the infamous Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information Prevention System) program, which would have "empowered" US workers with access to private citizen's homes with de facto spy powers to report on suspicious activities, was floated by the Bush White House in 2002, the program was thwarted, thanks to a broad (at the time nearly unprecedented) civil libertarian coalition uniting left and right.

Operation TIPS itself was killed by the US Congress, which prohibited the program explicitly in the Homeland Security Act, passed in November 2002.

Its spirit, however, is alive and well, reincarnated in programs like iWATCH, an initiative developed by Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton, designed to enlist citizens to actively look for signs of potentially suspicious behavior and report it to police.

While Bratton and the 63 police departments in the US and Canada which have endorsed the program present it as a 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch, critics claim that, in addition to creeping out America with positively Orwellian promotional videos, iWATCH will encourage a Stasi like network of anonymous snitching.

In the words of the Los Angeles ACLU, iWATCH "actively encourages people to report a variety of ordinary activities--such as people who are wearing clothes that are too big, or who are drawing buildings, or who are doing something else that could be innocuous. That leads toward racial and religious profiling."

LAist reports that, according to the ACLU, "People will report ordinary behavior of people who fit a preconceived notion of what suspicious people look like. And what does that mean for the so-called suspicious person? "[They] could be visited by police and have personal data sent to government databases, where it could be used indefinitely to subject them to extensive searches at airports, deny them government

THE LITERATURE OF BOAT LOGS

David D. Platt, Working Waterfront - As literature, these accounts are all over the map. Buckley, not surprisingly, is erudite and not afraid to describe the contents of his wine cellar or wander off into politics; Silver Donald Cameron, an experienced Canadian journalist, recounts entire conversations with people he meets between Nova Scotia and the Bahamas. He writes movingly about traveling with his elderly dog, and entertains with observations on everything from navigating New York to ordering engine parts to his tourist experience at Colonial Williamsburg. Rockwell Kent recounts near-misses and dangers dealt with, leaving the impression of a man risking his life for the experience

OBAMA CAVES TO ISRAEL ON SETTLEMENTS

Anti-War - In May, the Obama Administration was pointedly demanding that the Israeli government abandon all construction in all of its settlements, insisting that no exceptions could be tolerated and the move was a must for peace.

It took less than six months for that position to be abandoned in its entirety. The hawkish Netanyahu government is now relishing a major victory over the US as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Israel, which has angrily rejected those demands, for their commitment to the peace process.

It seems that President Obama's ambition for Palestinian statehood has given way, in the face of furious anti-Obama protests across Israel, to a 180 degree turn back to the unquestioningly pro-Israel position of the past several US presidents.

Now the Palestinian Authority, once eagerly praising the Obama Administration for pressing Israel, says that Clinton is actually undermining efforts to resume the stalled talks. Since Israel has repeatly ruled out any peace talks with the PA in recent weeks, there wasn't much to undermine, but their frustration is clear.

WORD

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. --Thomas Babington Macaulay

BRITISH GOVERNMENT FACING MASS RESIGNATIONS OVER FIRING OF DRUG POLICY CRITIC

Times, UK - The Government is facing mass resignations from the official advisory body on drugs after the sacking of its chairman, The Times has learnt. Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs quit in protest at Alan Johnson's dismissal of David Nutt in a row over the relative harm caused by drugs and alcohol. Les King, an expert chemist, was the first to resign. He said that the Home Secretary had denied Professor Nutt his right to free speech and called for the council to become truly independent of politicians. He was swiftly followed by Marion Walker, a pharmacist and clinical director with the substance misuse service at the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. The affair has led scientists to question the Government's wider commitment to the independence of external scientific advisers, and raised fears that experts will become reluctant to sit on advisory panels.

DRUG ADVISER SACKED