http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-tax22-2009jul22,0,7339976.story
Oakland voters approve a tax on medical marijuana
Shops selling pot in the cash-strapped city will pay $18 on each $1,000 in sales. The city administrator estimates that it could raise $300,000 in annual revenue.
By Julie Strack
July 22, 2009
Reporting from San Francisco -- Oakland voters resoundingly approved a tax increase on medical marijuana Tuesday evening, the first such tax of its kind in the nation.
The measure will levy an $18 tax for every $1,000 in gross marijuana sales. Firms in the city now pay a $1.20 business tax on each $1,000 in sales. Other cities may soon follow suit. Voters approved the measure by a margin of 80%, according to preliminary results released by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.
Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who co-sponsored the measure, said it could generate $1 million in annual revenue.
The city administrator places the estimate at about $300,000.
The Los Angeles City Council proposed a medical marijuana tax July 15, and Kaplan said Berkeley and San Francisco may consider similar legislation.
"Oakland will show that this can work if it's done right," said Keith Stephenson, executive director of the Purple Heart Patient Center.
"There will be some cash-strapped areas that will use this to balance their budgets."
The legislation was backed by Oakland's four medical marijuana dispensaries. There was no organized opposition.
The city's four dispensaries reported revenue of $19.7 million in the last fiscal year. Kaplan said budget gaps and a pledge by the Obama administration to stop prosecution of dispensaries that adhere to state laws have spurred officials to consider marijuana as a revenue source. The legislation was one of four mail-in ballot measures passed to help close the city's $83-million shortfall.
"It was the perfect moment," Kaplan said. "We had a horrible budget crisis in the city, and we were looking for revenue. . . . But it would hardly make sense for us to tax a business that might be shut down by the federal government."
Legislation is also being considered on a statewide level. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill earlier this year to legalize and tax marijuana.
julie.strack@latimes.com
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Pirate Bay
Thanks to Richard Metzger & Dangerousminds.net for the following...
http://newteevee.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-the-worlds-entertainment-for-3000-a-month/
Written by Janko Roettgers
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Pirate Bay: Distributing the World’s Entertainment for $3,000 a Month
Much has been written in recent weeks about the future of The Pirate Bay, as well as about BitTorrent piracy in general. The sale of the site spooked some, while others are hoping to transform the new Pirate Bay into a legitimate, multimillion-dollar business. One aspect that has been largely overlooked is that the current Pirate Bay, due to the nature of P2P, is actually a relatively small and cost-efficient operation. The site’s trackers facilitate countless downloads of Hollywood blockbusters and music albums, but according to an insider, running these trackers could cost as little as $3,000 per month.
The implications of a number like that are huge. Not only does it mean that anyone with a medium-sized checkbook could replicate The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure in a heartbeat, but it also casts shadows over the hopes of anyone thinking about selling digital content online. Music fans were not longer willing to pay $20 for audio CDs once they noticed that blank CDs only cost a dime. How are they going to feel about download stores knowing that running the world’s biggest download service is that dirt cheap?
Earlier this week, when I was researching my story about federated tracker networks I had the chance to talk to some insiders close to The Pirate Bay as well as some folks working on newer projects aimed at picking up where it is leaving off. During one of these conversations, a person with inside knowledge of The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure estimated the total monthly costs of running the site’s trackers to be around $3,000. Compare that with recent reports that put YouTube’s bandwidth costs anywhere between $130,000 and a million dollar per day, and you’ll understand why I haven’t been able to get that number out of my head. : $3,000. What a steal. Literally.
Of course, that number doesn’t actually reflect all the costs associated with running The Pirate Bay in its current form. The site itself clocks more than a billion page views per month, according to statements from the prospective new owners, which should amount to a whole lot of additional bandwidth. The complete Pirate Bay set-up consists of a little more than 30 servers, of which less than a third are dedicated to tracking torrents.
Still, the impact of The Pirate Bay’s trackers are enormous. It tracks up to 2 million torrents and connects around 20 millions peers at any given time. Researchers estimate that 50 percent of the world’s publicly available torrents are tracked through The Pirate Bay. So how can just a massive system be so cheap?
The answer lies in the way the BitTorrent protocol work. Tracker servers never actually touch the files that are exchanged between users, and don’t compile huge lists of file names to query, either. Instead, these machines just collect the hash value of each torrent tracked. Users’ clients then query a tracker with these hash values, asking them for the IP addresses of others sharing the file associated with a particular hash value. So the whole message flow between client and server consists of just a few bytes, even if the files exchanged are massive Blu-ray videos.
I finished Chris Anderson’s new book “Free” this week, and I couldn’t help but think about The Pirate Bay’s $3,000 tracker while I was reading his theory of how the ever-decreasing costs of processing power, bandwidth and storage inevitably bring down the prices of digital goods as well. In the book, Anderson writes:
“In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. The Internet is the most competitive market the world has ever seen, and the marginal costs of the technologies on which it runs – processing, bandwidth and storage – get closer and closer to zero every year. Free becomes not just an option but an inevitability.”
Of course, content owners would rightfully argue that the cost of producing a Hollywood movie or a TV show is not zero. But that’s beside the point. If all it takes to distribute Hollywood’s entire creative output online is $3,000 a month, then there’s always gonna be someone who will offer this stuff for free — and you’d better find a really good way to compete with that.
http://newteevee.com/2009/07/19/the-pirate-bay-distributing-the-worlds-entertainment-for-3000-a-month/
Written by Janko Roettgers
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Pirate Bay: Distributing the World’s Entertainment for $3,000 a Month
Much has been written in recent weeks about the future of The Pirate Bay, as well as about BitTorrent piracy in general. The sale of the site spooked some, while others are hoping to transform the new Pirate Bay into a legitimate, multimillion-dollar business. One aspect that has been largely overlooked is that the current Pirate Bay, due to the nature of P2P, is actually a relatively small and cost-efficient operation. The site’s trackers facilitate countless downloads of Hollywood blockbusters and music albums, but according to an insider, running these trackers could cost as little as $3,000 per month.
The implications of a number like that are huge. Not only does it mean that anyone with a medium-sized checkbook could replicate The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure in a heartbeat, but it also casts shadows over the hopes of anyone thinking about selling digital content online. Music fans were not longer willing to pay $20 for audio CDs once they noticed that blank CDs only cost a dime. How are they going to feel about download stores knowing that running the world’s biggest download service is that dirt cheap?
Earlier this week, when I was researching my story about federated tracker networks I had the chance to talk to some insiders close to The Pirate Bay as well as some folks working on newer projects aimed at picking up where it is leaving off. During one of these conversations, a person with inside knowledge of The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure estimated the total monthly costs of running the site’s trackers to be around $3,000. Compare that with recent reports that put YouTube’s bandwidth costs anywhere between $130,000 and a million dollar per day, and you’ll understand why I haven’t been able to get that number out of my head. : $3,000. What a steal. Literally.
Of course, that number doesn’t actually reflect all the costs associated with running The Pirate Bay in its current form. The site itself clocks more than a billion page views per month, according to statements from the prospective new owners, which should amount to a whole lot of additional bandwidth. The complete Pirate Bay set-up consists of a little more than 30 servers, of which less than a third are dedicated to tracking torrents.
Still, the impact of The Pirate Bay’s trackers are enormous. It tracks up to 2 million torrents and connects around 20 millions peers at any given time. Researchers estimate that 50 percent of the world’s publicly available torrents are tracked through The Pirate Bay. So how can just a massive system be so cheap?
The answer lies in the way the BitTorrent protocol work. Tracker servers never actually touch the files that are exchanged between users, and don’t compile huge lists of file names to query, either. Instead, these machines just collect the hash value of each torrent tracked. Users’ clients then query a tracker with these hash values, asking them for the IP addresses of others sharing the file associated with a particular hash value. So the whole message flow between client and server consists of just a few bytes, even if the files exchanged are massive Blu-ray videos.
I finished Chris Anderson’s new book “Free” this week, and I couldn’t help but think about The Pirate Bay’s $3,000 tracker while I was reading his theory of how the ever-decreasing costs of processing power, bandwidth and storage inevitably bring down the prices of digital goods as well. In the book, Anderson writes:
“In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. The Internet is the most competitive market the world has ever seen, and the marginal costs of the technologies on which it runs – processing, bandwidth and storage – get closer and closer to zero every year. Free becomes not just an option but an inevitability.”
Of course, content owners would rightfully argue that the cost of producing a Hollywood movie or a TV show is not zero. But that’s beside the point. If all it takes to distribute Hollywood’s entire creative output online is $3,000 a month, then there’s always gonna be someone who will offer this stuff for free — and you’d better find a really good way to compete with that.
Bolivia holds key to electric car future
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7707847.stm
Bolivia holds key to electric car future
By Damian Kahya
BBC News, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Bolivia's lithium reserves could bring wealth to the country
High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.
Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future.
But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource.
Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones.
It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.
And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models.
GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. Mercedes is testing an electric version of its Smart, while BMW is doing the same with its Mini.
And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models.
The best of the pure electric cars can reach ranges of more than 150 kilometres per charge.
More is needed
But there is a problem.
Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.
And they have ended up in Bolivia.
"The demand for lithium won't double but increase by five times," according to Eichi Maeyama Mitsubishi's general manager in La Paz.
"We will need more lithium sources - and 50% of the world's reserves of lithium exist in Bolivia, in the Salar de Uyuni," he adds, pointing out that without new production, the price of lithium will rise prohibitively.
Locals fear the benefits will not be passed on
But almost all the commercially exploitable reserves are found in the brine under salt flats.
The world's largest reserves lie in Bolivia at the Salar de Uyuni - in the remote southern Andean plane.
But Bolivia is not a country known to be friendly to foreign industry.
Its socialist president, Evo Morales, is keen to expand state control over its natural resources, a task carried out by Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu.
"We want to send a message to the industrialized countries and their companies," Mr Echazu says.
"We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."
Modest ambitions
Gold, silver, tin, oil and gas have all been found and exported from here whilst the country remains the poorest in the region.
For President Morales' supporters, that is reason enough not to allow in foreign mining companies to extract the lithium.
Across the flats, freelance miners work to break up the surface salt selling it to passing trucks for just a few dollars.
Indigenous and poor, they are core supporters of the president.
A grizzled old miner, giving his name only as Alfredo, says he does not believe that lithium will ever be extracted.
"We don't want to see foreign companies here," he says.
"It would be very bad, as the government says."
Alfredo's hopes for the future are modest.
"I just want to work until I die" he says, a smile across his face. It is not an uncommon sentiment here.
Sharing the benefits
In spite of the grinding poverty here, attempts in the 1980's and 1990's by foreign companies to extract the lithium met with resistance from the community.
They say the money would go elsewhere.
Francisco Quisbert is a local activist with President Morales' party who took part in the resistance.
Now he is working with the president to hammer out a new plan for a state-owned pilot plant on the flats.
"We don't want international involvement," he says.
"This plan has raised the hopes of the region.
"Before our grandparents lived on the salt. They arrived from the valleys in caravans of llamas, but the market forced them to leave.
"We want to return to live on the salar [and] improve our living conditions and to participate in the project."
To begin with the pilot plant will produce no more than 1.2 kilotonnes a year.
If an industrial plant is then built it may increase to around 30 kilotonnes by 2012, - thats just under a third of current production.
But most lithium now goes to small batteries for electronic goods.
Car batteries are far larger and Mitsubishi estimates the world will need 500 kilotonnes a year just to service a niche market. For electric cars to become the norm, it could need far more.
Mitsubishi predicts that there will be a supply shortage by 2015.
Pollution nevertheless
Analysts suspect that Bolivia's government can produce this much.
"Governments in South America have had a very successful history of mining," explains Charles Kernot, a mining analyst at Evolution Securities.
But the question is how fast.
"They probably don't have a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing themselves so they'll have to bring in expertise and technology," Mr Kernot adds.
"That whole process may take a lot longer than people are anticipating."
Consequently, he continues, "the car manufacturers will have to strike a balance between how quickly they manufacture with the supply of metal because they don't want to drive the price up to such an extent that the cars get priced out of the market".
Long-term, Bolivia's government is wary of the environmental damage mass extraction could cause.
The mining minister, Mr Eschazu, has a stark message for Western firms.
"The capitalist leaders have to change," he says.
"If all the world had consumers like North America, everyone with a car, it would grind to a halt.
"It is also going to generate pollution, not just from fossil fuels but also from lithium plants, which produce sulphur dioxide. This isn't a magic solution."
It is not a view likely to go down well in the offices of Toyota and General Motors.
Bolivia holds key to electric car future
By Damian Kahya
BBC News, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Bolivia's lithium reserves could bring wealth to the country
High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.
Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future.
But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource.
Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones.
It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.
And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models.
GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. Mercedes is testing an electric version of its Smart, while BMW is doing the same with its Mini.
And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models.
The best of the pure electric cars can reach ranges of more than 150 kilometres per charge.
More is needed
But there is a problem.
Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.
And they have ended up in Bolivia.
"The demand for lithium won't double but increase by five times," according to Eichi Maeyama Mitsubishi's general manager in La Paz.
"We will need more lithium sources - and 50% of the world's reserves of lithium exist in Bolivia, in the Salar de Uyuni," he adds, pointing out that without new production, the price of lithium will rise prohibitively.
Locals fear the benefits will not be passed on
But almost all the commercially exploitable reserves are found in the brine under salt flats.
The world's largest reserves lie in Bolivia at the Salar de Uyuni - in the remote southern Andean plane.
But Bolivia is not a country known to be friendly to foreign industry.
Its socialist president, Evo Morales, is keen to expand state control over its natural resources, a task carried out by Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu.
"We want to send a message to the industrialized countries and their companies," Mr Echazu says.
"We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."
Modest ambitions
Gold, silver, tin, oil and gas have all been found and exported from here whilst the country remains the poorest in the region.
For President Morales' supporters, that is reason enough not to allow in foreign mining companies to extract the lithium.
Across the flats, freelance miners work to break up the surface salt selling it to passing trucks for just a few dollars.
Indigenous and poor, they are core supporters of the president.
A grizzled old miner, giving his name only as Alfredo, says he does not believe that lithium will ever be extracted.
"We don't want to see foreign companies here," he says.
"It would be very bad, as the government says."
Alfredo's hopes for the future are modest.
"I just want to work until I die" he says, a smile across his face. It is not an uncommon sentiment here.
Sharing the benefits
In spite of the grinding poverty here, attempts in the 1980's and 1990's by foreign companies to extract the lithium met with resistance from the community.
They say the money would go elsewhere.
Francisco Quisbert is a local activist with President Morales' party who took part in the resistance.
Now he is working with the president to hammer out a new plan for a state-owned pilot plant on the flats.
"We don't want international involvement," he says.
"This plan has raised the hopes of the region.
"Before our grandparents lived on the salt. They arrived from the valleys in caravans of llamas, but the market forced them to leave.
"We want to return to live on the salar [and] improve our living conditions and to participate in the project."
To begin with the pilot plant will produce no more than 1.2 kilotonnes a year.
If an industrial plant is then built it may increase to around 30 kilotonnes by 2012, - thats just under a third of current production.
But most lithium now goes to small batteries for electronic goods.
Car batteries are far larger and Mitsubishi estimates the world will need 500 kilotonnes a year just to service a niche market. For electric cars to become the norm, it could need far more.
Mitsubishi predicts that there will be a supply shortage by 2015.
Pollution nevertheless
Analysts suspect that Bolivia's government can produce this much.
"Governments in South America have had a very successful history of mining," explains Charles Kernot, a mining analyst at Evolution Securities.
But the question is how fast.
"They probably don't have a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing themselves so they'll have to bring in expertise and technology," Mr Kernot adds.
"That whole process may take a lot longer than people are anticipating."
Consequently, he continues, "the car manufacturers will have to strike a balance between how quickly they manufacture with the supply of metal because they don't want to drive the price up to such an extent that the cars get priced out of the market".
Long-term, Bolivia's government is wary of the environmental damage mass extraction could cause.
The mining minister, Mr Eschazu, has a stark message for Western firms.
"The capitalist leaders have to change," he says.
"If all the world had consumers like North America, everyone with a car, it would grind to a halt.
"It is also going to generate pollution, not just from fossil fuels but also from lithium plants, which produce sulphur dioxide. This isn't a magic solution."
It is not a view likely to go down well in the offices of Toyota and General Motors.
Nikola Tesla still alive after death
http://www.examiner.com/x-11705-NY-Holistic-Body--Spirit-Examiner~y2009m7d15-Nikola-Tesla-still-alive-after-deathNikola Tesla still alive after death
July 15, 2009
Nikola Tesla is the man responsible for every form of modern technology we have available to us today. There would be no Twittering, Googling, BlackBerrys, cell phones, satellites in space, airplanes, x-rays, or physics as we know it.
Did anyone remember Nikola Tesla on his birthday?
Nicolas Tesla was born on July 9th, 1856 at Midnight.
One man certainly remembered Nikola Tesla this week, Dr. Ljubo Vujovic. Dr. Vujovic is nominated this year to receive the American Biographical Institute, Inc. Award: "2009 Man Of The Year in Education" for his work as President and Editor of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York Website which is the main source of information about the famous inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla and other world figures in history.
It’s fascinating that Tesla has more notoriety for the lack of attribution given him than all his works combined. Though great efforts have been made by scholars all over the world, to finally recognize the genius and contributions of this great man, there still remains an air of mystery surrounding his life and works.
Many consider it was the most obvious of reasons: that his inventions were too progressive for the technical resources available and also too far advanced for humanity’s collective psyche at the time. Most theories point to his lack of business sense and a combination of his failed project with J.P. Morgan while building the "The Tower of Dreams,” a World Broadcasting Tower in Long Island that would have broadcast telephone messages across the ocean; broadcast news, music, stock market reports, private messages, secure military communications, and even pictures to any part of the world, had funding not ran out or other more insidious circumstances prevailed at the end.
Tesla told Morgan, "When wireless is fully applied, the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts."
Tesla obviously predicted the WWW and our computers. In 1937, he said, “At this very moment scientists working in the laboratories of American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a "thinking machine." I anticipated this development.”
He also invented our wireless boxes at the turn of the century.
Teleautomaton
The Teleautomaton, was a device Tesla invented in the 1890’s. It has a spooky resemblance to our wireless boxes atop our cable connections that make it possible for us to sit in Starbucks and drink coffee, type on our laptops, talk on our cell phones, fly our airplanes, watch our reality TV, and listen to our radios while waiting in traffic.
The Teleautomaton was simply an apparatus with Tesla coils. These coils, in the initial experiment were inserted into a boat and tuned to resonate with other coils located on shore. By tuning the coils, an operator on shore could remotely control the boat.
His resonance experiments at one point got a little out of hand even here in New York.
"In his lab at 46 E. Houston Street, while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators, he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings but, due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to apply a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. (Wikipedia: O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp 162-164).
It was probably experiments like those that got Tesla branded as a mad scientist. He has been accredited with experiments in time-travel, alien communication, and machines that record thought among many others. His later experiments, accessing “free energy” most likely got him in even more disfavor. Generally, not being able to “bill” energy, doesn’t go over too well with the “the powers that be.”
We tend to attribute “genius” to spiritual force or a gift from the Divine Spirit. Though Tesla had no gripe with religion; he said, “Religion gave man “ideals” that give significance to his life and most importantly promoted “good conduct,” he surprisingly (though associated with occult activities and so forth), had purely mechanistic views of mankind.
“To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call "soul” or "spirit," is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the "soul" or the "spirit" ceases likewise.” (Source)
Most of us consider Tesla a visionary before his time; but surprisingly Tesla says in his own words:
“My enemies have been so successful in portraying me as a poet and a visionary," said Tesla, "that I must put out something commercial without delay." (Source)
Was he joking? Was he truly a pure scientist? Would his experiments eventually lead him to harnessing spiritual force? Would Tesla have found the “God” particle?
The bottom-line is Tesla certainly bridged the gap between science and spirit; whether he acknowledged this or not.
Maybe he didn’t believe in life-after-death, but his inventions surely have kept him very much alive-after-death.
2009 UFO Crash Retrieval Conference
2009 UFO Crash Retrieval Conference
7th Annual
November 6th-8th, 2009
REGISTER TODAY FOR THE 2009 UFO CRASH RETRIEVAL CONFERENCE IN LAS VEGAS, NV!!!!
Registration for the UFO Conference is $189.
The price of the banquet is $69.
Last year's banquet sold out so please register early.
The first 50 people to register for both days of the UFO Conference will receive a free copy of the conference proceeding ($35 value).
It happened before Roswell. It happened before Mount Rainier. There was hard evidence obtained. And it relates to John F. Kennedy. Do you know the story of the Maury Island crash retrieval?
The Maury Island Crash Retrieval: The JFK/UFO Connection
The Maury Island incident involved the sighting of a circle of UFOs and the retrieval of material from the central craft in 1947. It preceded the Roswell event by a month and Kenneth Arnold's Mount Rainier sightings by three days. One of its principle witnesses, Fred Crisman, was subpoenaed in 1968 as part of New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK assassination. Crisman had retained what was recovered from the Maury Island UFO ostensibly until he turned it over to Air Force investigators, who subsequently died in a plane crash attempting to return it to Hamilton Air Force base on San Francisco bay. The UFO material was never recovered from the plane crash site and investigators recommended that any future such retrievals be processed through the Army's Foreign Technologies division, where Phil Corso later said the Roswell debris had been processed.
Questions arise as to whether Crisman gave the Maury Island material to the investigators in the first place and/or whether he had a hand in sabotaging their plane. Further questions remain about whether his continued possession of the crash debris gave him an opportunity, via threat of disclosure, to operate in intelligence circles, perhaps leading up to the JFK assassination. Garrison suspected Crisman as the infamous grassy knoll assassin. Crisman's name as such a suspect came up independently in a famous samizdat document of the assassination entitled the Torbitt Document, as one of the well-known tramps arrested in the railyard at Dealey Plaza.
This talk reviews various aspects of the case, including presentation of the Zapruder film (demonstrating where Crisman may have shot from) and Garrison's appearance on the Tonight Show with the tramps photo, discussing also more surprising aspects, including Garrison's contention that Crisman worked as an assassin for elements of the aerospace industry distraught over JFK's defense contract awards. It reviews JFK's last speech, on the TFX tactical fighter, the controversy of its contracting and how it subsequently lead to secret military development in Pine gap, Australia. The talk also looks at Lee Oswald's role as an agent connected to the U2 program and Area 51. And it reviews Crisman's life as a right wing radio talk show host in Tacoma, plus his contention that the TV show The Invaders was based on his life. For this conference, the talk would emphasize the crash debris retrieval and its role in known but only dimly understood aspects of covert government operation.
Kenn Thomas is a university archivist, researcher and author of over a dozen books on various conspiracy topics, including NASA, Nazis & JFK; Maury Island UFO, about possible John F. Kennedyassassination-connected personality Fred Crisman; and The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro, about the Inslaw affair. Thomas calls his research interest "parapolitics," the study of conspiracies of all colors -- from alien abductions and the Illuminati, to the John F. Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks. New Yorker called his work "on the cutting edge" of conspiracy. His work has become proverbial enough that Baseball Prospectus described conspiratorial activity in that sport as having "enough fishy behavior to keep Kenn Thomas swarming for years." Thomas latest book, co-edited with Adam Parfrey, entitled Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century, is available from the publisher, Feral House, online at feralhouse.com. Thomas' web site appears at steamshovelpress.com and he can be reached for lecture appearances at editor@steamshovelpress.com.
Did you miss last year's conference? Would you like to see it in the comfort of your own home? Visit our Online Store now to order Proceedings, DVDs, and Documentaries affiliated with all six previous conferences!
7th Annual
November 6th-8th, 2009
REGISTER TODAY FOR THE 2009 UFO CRASH RETRIEVAL CONFERENCE IN LAS VEGAS, NV!!!!
Registration for the UFO Conference is $189.
The price of the banquet is $69.
Last year's banquet sold out so please register early.
The first 50 people to register for both days of the UFO Conference will receive a free copy of the conference proceeding ($35 value).
It happened before Roswell. It happened before Mount Rainier. There was hard evidence obtained. And it relates to John F. Kennedy. Do you know the story of the Maury Island crash retrieval?
The Maury Island Crash Retrieval: The JFK/UFO Connection
The Maury Island incident involved the sighting of a circle of UFOs and the retrieval of material from the central craft in 1947. It preceded the Roswell event by a month and Kenneth Arnold's Mount Rainier sightings by three days. One of its principle witnesses, Fred Crisman, was subpoenaed in 1968 as part of New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK assassination. Crisman had retained what was recovered from the Maury Island UFO ostensibly until he turned it over to Air Force investigators, who subsequently died in a plane crash attempting to return it to Hamilton Air Force base on San Francisco bay. The UFO material was never recovered from the plane crash site and investigators recommended that any future such retrievals be processed through the Army's Foreign Technologies division, where Phil Corso later said the Roswell debris had been processed.
Questions arise as to whether Crisman gave the Maury Island material to the investigators in the first place and/or whether he had a hand in sabotaging their plane. Further questions remain about whether his continued possession of the crash debris gave him an opportunity, via threat of disclosure, to operate in intelligence circles, perhaps leading up to the JFK assassination. Garrison suspected Crisman as the infamous grassy knoll assassin. Crisman's name as such a suspect came up independently in a famous samizdat document of the assassination entitled the Torbitt Document, as one of the well-known tramps arrested in the railyard at Dealey Plaza.
This talk reviews various aspects of the case, including presentation of the Zapruder film (demonstrating where Crisman may have shot from) and Garrison's appearance on the Tonight Show with the tramps photo, discussing also more surprising aspects, including Garrison's contention that Crisman worked as an assassin for elements of the aerospace industry distraught over JFK's defense contract awards. It reviews JFK's last speech, on the TFX tactical fighter, the controversy of its contracting and how it subsequently lead to secret military development in Pine gap, Australia. The talk also looks at Lee Oswald's role as an agent connected to the U2 program and Area 51. And it reviews Crisman's life as a right wing radio talk show host in Tacoma, plus his contention that the TV show The Invaders was based on his life. For this conference, the talk would emphasize the crash debris retrieval and its role in known but only dimly understood aspects of covert government operation.
Kenn Thomas is a university archivist, researcher and author of over a dozen books on various conspiracy topics, including NASA, Nazis & JFK; Maury Island UFO, about possible John F. Kennedyassassination-connected personality Fred Crisman; and The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro, about the Inslaw affair. Thomas calls his research interest "parapolitics," the study of conspiracies of all colors -- from alien abductions and the Illuminati, to the John F. Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks. New Yorker called his work "on the cutting edge" of conspiracy. His work has become proverbial enough that Baseball Prospectus described conspiratorial activity in that sport as having "enough fishy behavior to keep Kenn Thomas swarming for years." Thomas latest book, co-edited with Adam Parfrey, entitled Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century, is available from the publisher, Feral House, online at feralhouse.com. Thomas' web site appears at steamshovelpress.com and he can be reached for lecture appearances at editor@steamshovelpress.com.
Did you miss last year's conference? Would you like to see it in the comfort of your own home? Visit our Online Store now to order Proceedings, DVDs, and Documentaries affiliated with all six previous conferences!
An Imperfect Pitcher’s Perfect Game
http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2009/07/23/the-count-an-imperfect-pitchers-perfect-game/The Daily Fix
The Journal's all-purpose sports report.
July 23, 2009
The Count: An Imperfect Pitcher’s Perfect Game
By Carl Bialik
Mark Buehrle was a very unlikely candidate to throw a perfect game Thursday.
That’s no knock against Buehrle, a fine pitcher who threw a no-hitter two years ago and twice took a no-hitter into the seventh inning only to see it broken up. (The other five pitchers to throw a perfect game and at least one other no-hitter are all either in the Hall of Fame or, in the case of Randy Johnson, going to be.) In seven of the last nine seasons his earned-run average has been more than 20% better than the league average, after adjusting for ballparks. He also has more wins than any other active pitcher under age 31.
But Buehrle on Thursday was facing the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that ranks second in the majors in on-base percentage. Suppose each Ray batter in the lineup had his team’s overall OBP for each at bat against Buehrle — 0.353. Then the chance a league-average pitcher would retire all 27 of them was about one in 130,000.
Buehrle is better than league-average in many categories, but he hardly excelled in those that are strong indicators of pitchers most likely to throw no-hitters. Before Thursday, he’d given up 8.8 hits in every nine innings, compared to a majors-average of 8.9. He ranked 19th among 87 qualifying starters in walks plus hits per innings pitched. Just 64% of his pitches were strikes — good for 29th among starters. (In the perfect game, that edged up to just 66% of his pitches.) And he ranked 70th out of 87 in strikeouts per nine innings, with 5.03. He had six against the Rays, meaning Tampa Bay was 0 for 21 on balls they hit into play. In the ninth inning, one of those was converted into an out thanks to an amazing catch. All perfect games require some luck and great fielding; this one seems to have required more than most.
Henderson and Rice together forever
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/wires/07/23/2010.ap.bbo.hall.of.fame.adv25.1338/
Thursday July 23, 2009
Henderson and Rice together forever
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. (AP) - Rickey Henderson knew what was expected every time he batted. So, too, did Jim Rice.
"Some way, I was going to scratch to get on base to steal that base,'' Henderson said. "I steal that base, my day was good. My pride and joy was coming across the plate.''
Said Rice: "Believe me, I wasn't paid to walk. I was paid to try to do some damage.''
Each player - Henderson, the quintessential leadoff man with an infectious smile, and Rice, the consummate power hitter with an icy glare - inflicted more than his share of damage on opponents, and they will be duly recognized for their considerable career accomplishments Sunday when they are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The pair will be the first inductees to primarily play left field since Boston's Carl Yastrzemski went into the Hall in 1989.
Former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon, elected posthumously by the Veterans Committee, also will be inducted, while former Yankees star and longtime broadcaster Tony Kubek and writer Nick Peters will be honored as winners of the Frick and Spink awards, respectively.
"As a kid, you grow up playing the game, and you never really know what you can achieve,'' Henderson said.
A member of nine teams during his 25-year career, the fun-loving Henderson achieved more than most. He holds the all-time records for stolen bases in a season (130) and career (1,406), for runs scored (2,295) and for leading off a game with a home run (81).
"Competing against myself - I think that's what made me the player that I became,'' Henderson said. "I had a lot of desire to be a winner and play the game to the fullest.''
Born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958, Henderson moved with his family to California when he was 7 and became a three-sport star at Oakland Technical High School. Football was his forte and he received numerous scholarship offers to play college ball, turning them down for a shot at baseball.
Henderson was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the fourth round in 1976. After excelling in the minors for three seasons (at Modesto, in 1977, he led the California League with a then-record 95 steals and became just the fourth professional player to steal seven bases in one game), Henderson made his major league debut with Oakland in late June 1979. He still led the club that season with 33 steals.
When Oakland owner Charlie Finley hired Billy Martin as manager in 1980, Henderson had the perfect partner in crime. "Billyball'' - the aggressive attack Martin relished - helped catapult Henderson to stardom.
The speedy Henderson set the American League season steals record with 100 in only his second year, joining Maury Wills and Lou Brock as the only major league players of the modern era to steal 100 or more bases a season.
"I went out there and put it together, but it wasn't just me,'' said Henderson, who eclipsed the AL record of 96 set by Ty Cobb in 1915. "Billy helped teach me how to win. He had a strategy and we worked together and achieved that. There was no doubt I was gone when you told me to go.''
Henderson quickly evolved into perhaps the most dangerous player in baseball, seemingly always able to make something from nothing. After leading the AL in hits during the strike-shortened 1981 season, the "Man of Steal'' used his trademark headfirst slides to break Brock's single-season steals record with 130 in 1982.
After the 1984 season, Henderson was traded to the New York Yankees and soon was reunited with Martin after Yogi Berra was fired as manager.
Henderson hit 24 homers and batted .314 with a league-leading 80 stolen bases in 1985, and his 146 runs scored were the most since Ted Williams had 150 in 1949.
The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Henderson gained at the plate by shrinking into a tight crouch, dramatically cutting his strike zone and confounding pitchers like no other player.
"Rickey just made it impossible not to be distracted by him,'' said Tony La Russa, who managed Henderson at Oakland and dreaded managing against him.
Just the 44th player elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility, Henderson retired with 2,190 career walks (128 more than Babe Ruth), and although Barry Bonds has since eclipsed that total, Henderson still holds the record for most unintentional walks with 2,129. What is most amazing is that 796 of those free passes - or 37 percent - came while leading off an inning, something every opposing pitcher and catcher desperately wanted to avoid.
"I had a strategy of my strike zone and how can I beat a pitcher, and I think I was more patient,'' said Henderson, who broke Cobb's record of 2,246 career runs and Zack Wheat's record of 2,328 career games in left field. "I loved battling against a pitcher.''
The flamboyant Henderson, who during his career frequently referred to himself in the third person and often was accused of showboating on the field with his trash talk and snatch catch - he said it was simply "Rickey being Rickey'' - also liked being paid well for his services. That led him to develop another of his fortes - leading off games with a home run.
"I'm killing myself. I was stealing all the bases, and when you had to go to arbitration they said, 'You know, only the big boys make the money,''' Henderson said. "So I got to try and figure out how to hit a home run, too.''
He learned. In 1990, Henderson matched his career high with 28 homers. He also stole 65 bases and led the majors with a .439 on-base percentage, winning AL MVP honors.
Hitting homers was second nature to Rice, who played his entire career for the Boston Red Sox. Playing at a time when offensive numbers paled in comparison to the past two decades, the so-called steroid era, Rice batted .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBIs from 1974-89. He was voted to eight All-Star teams and finished in the top five in AL MVP voting six times, winning the award in 1978 when he batted .315 with 213 hits, 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage.
The numbers get even more impressive.
Rice drove in 100 or more runs eight times, batted over .300 seven times, and topped 200 hits four times. And he's the only player in major league history with at least 35 homers and 200 hits in three consecutive seasons (1977-79).
That it took until his final year of eligibility probably rankled every time a new class was announced. If there ever was any bitterness, though, it has long since vanished.
"You let bygones be bygones,'' the 56-year-old Rice said. "Yeah, I wish I could have gone in on the first ballot or the second, not the last. But I'm in and some guys are still out. You cherish what you have. You cherish that you're in an elite category of guys that played the game one way - hard.
"There are a lot of guys that I started with my first year in rookie ball - about 60 guys - and only one made it to the big leagues.''
Henderson says he has one regret - that he didn't retire sooner.
"You got to wait five years to go into the Hall of Fame,'' he said. "If I would have thought about it, and just went on and got them five years up early, then I'd been a little younger. Then I could have came back after I went into the Hall of Fame, but I waited too long.''
Thursday July 23, 2009
Henderson and Rice together forever
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. (AP) - Rickey Henderson knew what was expected every time he batted. So, too, did Jim Rice.
"Some way, I was going to scratch to get on base to steal that base,'' Henderson said. "I steal that base, my day was good. My pride and joy was coming across the plate.''
Said Rice: "Believe me, I wasn't paid to walk. I was paid to try to do some damage.''
Each player - Henderson, the quintessential leadoff man with an infectious smile, and Rice, the consummate power hitter with an icy glare - inflicted more than his share of damage on opponents, and they will be duly recognized for their considerable career accomplishments Sunday when they are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The pair will be the first inductees to primarily play left field since Boston's Carl Yastrzemski went into the Hall in 1989.
Former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon, elected posthumously by the Veterans Committee, also will be inducted, while former Yankees star and longtime broadcaster Tony Kubek and writer Nick Peters will be honored as winners of the Frick and Spink awards, respectively.
"As a kid, you grow up playing the game, and you never really know what you can achieve,'' Henderson said.
A member of nine teams during his 25-year career, the fun-loving Henderson achieved more than most. He holds the all-time records for stolen bases in a season (130) and career (1,406), for runs scored (2,295) and for leading off a game with a home run (81).
"Competing against myself - I think that's what made me the player that I became,'' Henderson said. "I had a lot of desire to be a winner and play the game to the fullest.''
Born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958, Henderson moved with his family to California when he was 7 and became a three-sport star at Oakland Technical High School. Football was his forte and he received numerous scholarship offers to play college ball, turning them down for a shot at baseball.
Henderson was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the fourth round in 1976. After excelling in the minors for three seasons (at Modesto, in 1977, he led the California League with a then-record 95 steals and became just the fourth professional player to steal seven bases in one game), Henderson made his major league debut with Oakland in late June 1979. He still led the club that season with 33 steals.
When Oakland owner Charlie Finley hired Billy Martin as manager in 1980, Henderson had the perfect partner in crime. "Billyball'' - the aggressive attack Martin relished - helped catapult Henderson to stardom.
The speedy Henderson set the American League season steals record with 100 in only his second year, joining Maury Wills and Lou Brock as the only major league players of the modern era to steal 100 or more bases a season.
"I went out there and put it together, but it wasn't just me,'' said Henderson, who eclipsed the AL record of 96 set by Ty Cobb in 1915. "Billy helped teach me how to win. He had a strategy and we worked together and achieved that. There was no doubt I was gone when you told me to go.''
Henderson quickly evolved into perhaps the most dangerous player in baseball, seemingly always able to make something from nothing. After leading the AL in hits during the strike-shortened 1981 season, the "Man of Steal'' used his trademark headfirst slides to break Brock's single-season steals record with 130 in 1982.
After the 1984 season, Henderson was traded to the New York Yankees and soon was reunited with Martin after Yogi Berra was fired as manager.
Henderson hit 24 homers and batted .314 with a league-leading 80 stolen bases in 1985, and his 146 runs scored were the most since Ted Williams had 150 in 1949.
The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Henderson gained at the plate by shrinking into a tight crouch, dramatically cutting his strike zone and confounding pitchers like no other player.
"Rickey just made it impossible not to be distracted by him,'' said Tony La Russa, who managed Henderson at Oakland and dreaded managing against him.
Just the 44th player elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility, Henderson retired with 2,190 career walks (128 more than Babe Ruth), and although Barry Bonds has since eclipsed that total, Henderson still holds the record for most unintentional walks with 2,129. What is most amazing is that 796 of those free passes - or 37 percent - came while leading off an inning, something every opposing pitcher and catcher desperately wanted to avoid.
"I had a strategy of my strike zone and how can I beat a pitcher, and I think I was more patient,'' said Henderson, who broke Cobb's record of 2,246 career runs and Zack Wheat's record of 2,328 career games in left field. "I loved battling against a pitcher.''
The flamboyant Henderson, who during his career frequently referred to himself in the third person and often was accused of showboating on the field with his trash talk and snatch catch - he said it was simply "Rickey being Rickey'' - also liked being paid well for his services. That led him to develop another of his fortes - leading off games with a home run.
"I'm killing myself. I was stealing all the bases, and when you had to go to arbitration they said, 'You know, only the big boys make the money,''' Henderson said. "So I got to try and figure out how to hit a home run, too.''
He learned. In 1990, Henderson matched his career high with 28 homers. He also stole 65 bases and led the majors with a .439 on-base percentage, winning AL MVP honors.
Hitting homers was second nature to Rice, who played his entire career for the Boston Red Sox. Playing at a time when offensive numbers paled in comparison to the past two decades, the so-called steroid era, Rice batted .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBIs from 1974-89. He was voted to eight All-Star teams and finished in the top five in AL MVP voting six times, winning the award in 1978 when he batted .315 with 213 hits, 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage.
The numbers get even more impressive.
Rice drove in 100 or more runs eight times, batted over .300 seven times, and topped 200 hits four times. And he's the only player in major league history with at least 35 homers and 200 hits in three consecutive seasons (1977-79).
That it took until his final year of eligibility probably rankled every time a new class was announced. If there ever was any bitterness, though, it has long since vanished.
"You let bygones be bygones,'' the 56-year-old Rice said. "Yeah, I wish I could have gone in on the first ballot or the second, not the last. But I'm in and some guys are still out. You cherish what you have. You cherish that you're in an elite category of guys that played the game one way - hard.
"There are a lot of guys that I started with my first year in rookie ball - about 60 guys - and only one made it to the big leagues.''
Henderson says he has one regret - that he didn't retire sooner.
"You got to wait five years to go into the Hall of Fame,'' he said. "If I would have thought about it, and just went on and got them five years up early, then I'd been a little younger. Then I could have came back after I went into the Hall of Fame, but I waited too long.''
LeBron's attempt to hide college kid's dunk
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/phil_taylor/07/23/lebron.tape/LeBron's attempt to hide college kid's dunk disturbingly revealing
Phil Taylor
7-23-9
Story Highlights
Nike officials confiscated tape of college player's dunk on LeBron James
Videos of the summer camp dunk revealed a fairly ordinary basketball play
LeBron's ungracious playoff exit and effort to hide tape may reveal growing ego
That was it? Seriously?
Given all the hype and secrecy and video-snatching tactics that surrounded it, you expected the world premiere of LeBron James Getting Dunked On to be something truly amazing, the type of vicious throwdown that makes you bug your eyes out and grab the person next to you in that All-Star weekend, you-better-hold-me-up-'cause-that-slam-was-so-nasty-I-just-might-pass-out kind of way. If the video of a little-known college player, Jordan Crawford of Xavier, jamming over James earlier this month was so embarrassing that LBJ or his Nike minions or both felt the need to confiscate the footage from one of the fans who happened to record it, surely this must have been a dunk for the ages.
The kid must have really posterized the King, you were thinking. He must have tied James' headband in a knot with the force of it. He must have finished a Sudoku as he soared over LeBron's head. He must have dissed LBJ's puppet commercials on the way to the rim. Something. Why else would they have gone to such trouble to try to ensure that the evidence would never leave the gym?
But no, it was just a run-of-the-mill dunk, the kind you might see in any high-level pick-up game. Crawford drove the middle and took off, with James leaving his man along the baseline to come and help. The King got there a split second too late to make the block, with Crawford finishing the flush just beyond his outstretched hand. There was some hooting and hollering from the handful of fans in the stands, but it died down soon enough.
And that's what would have happened with the public reaction if James and/or Nike hadn't tried to keep the footage from getting out -- it would have died down just as quickly. It's not completely clear whether James directed the Nike reps to confiscate the video or whether the idea came from the company, but in any case, he certainly made no objection. However it came about, they were dead wrong in their handling of it; they should have been shrewd enough to let matters play out naturally. Instead, they made everyone so curious that when footage finally hit the Internet on Wednesday -- apparently the Nike reps didn't realize that the fan they strong-armed wasn't the only one recording the play for posterity -- the entire basketball world was eager to take a look.
So the attempt to suppress the evidence was a miscalculation by James, which wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't his second misstep in recent weeks. The great dunk cover-up comes on the heels of his rather ungracious exit from the playoffs in late May, when he drew criticism for leaving the court after the Cavs' elimination without bothering to shake a single Orlando player's hand. Neither of these is a major offense, of course, but taken together, they do point to a troubling possibility. Could it be that LBJ, who had until now shown such unerring public relations instincts, is beginning to take himself too seriously?
Some diva tendencies are starting to show, first pouting after a big loss and now trying to suppress video that shows him as something less than a superman for about five seconds. It's a little like an actress who won't allow herself to be photographed unless her makeup is on and the lighting is perfect. It would be a shame to see James, who has been so appealing in part because he has seemed so natural and down-to-earth, turn into the kind of celebrity athlete who becomes so self-absorbed he can't handle defeat with grace or so image conscious he tries to micro-manage the flow of information about him that reaches the public.
As unfair as it may be to LBJ, we can't help think about what Michael Jordan would have done in the same situation. His Airness wouldn't have destroyed the dunking footage, he would have destroyed the dunker. He would have focused on outplaying Crawford so mercilessly for the rest of the game, and every game the youngster had the misfortune to play against him thereafter, that Crawford would rue the day he ever learned to dunk. Jordan's legacy was not that he never came up short, it was how ruthlessly he exacted revenge on those rare occasions that someone did get the better of him.
James would be wise to follow Jordan's lead -- among MJ's many talents, after all, was the ability to remain utterly likable without appearing to try too hard. It appeared that James had figured out how to do the same, but he seems to be in need of a refresher course, or at least a reminder that presenting yourself as a sore loser or a thin-skinned star is no way to keep the public on your side.
The occasional embarrassing moment on the court can't damage LeBron's reputation, but his own overreaction can. That much, James needs to realize, is a slam dunk.
A fun trip to Seattle's Lebowski Fest
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/090722
July 22, 2009A fun trip to Seattle's Lebowski Fest
By Jim Caple
Page 2
I'm sorry to disappoint fans of the film "The Big Lebowski," but the real Dude was never that much into bowling. His sport of choice, which he revealed to me in an interview earlier this week, was running. Yes, the man who was the inspiration for "quite possibly the laziest [man] in Los Angeles County" and in whom "casualness runs deep" was a dedicated runner, who said he often did six miles a day over regular routes throughout Seattle's northern neighborhoods."Well," Jeff (The Dude) Dowd said in his defense, "you had to be in shape to drink all those White Russians and make love to all those women."
Another disappointment -- The Dude didn't drink White Russians. Well, Dowd did, but only briefly -- he said it was more like a flavor of the month. But he really is called The Dude, and has been since the sixth grade.
The Dude was part of the Seattle Seven -- a group of people from the University of Washington charged with conspiring to incite a riot during a 1970 Vietnam War protest. But the marmot, the scissors-wielding nihilists, the iron lung, the faked kidnapping, the bowling, and the smart, incredibly funny script? That's all a product of the writing/directing team of Ethan and Joel Coen. (Although Dowd said he did provide some inspiration for The Dude's dialogue by saying the expletive starting with an "F" a lot.)
A writer, producer and movie rep, Dowd said he met the Coens when the brothers were fighting to get their first movie, "Blood Simple," released in 1984. Taken with his colorful personality, they later used him as the basis for the lead role in "The Big Lebowski," arguably one of the funniest comedies of the past 20 years. The film revolves around mistaken identity, a million-dollar ransom, hired thugs, a conniving businessman, an Oriental rug, nihilists, pornographers, a paranoid Vietnam vet, friendship and, of course, bowling.
''Those two guys make movies that are an homage to genres and 'Lebowski' obviously is very much a Raymond Chandler, classic L.A. crime story put together with a buddy movie and injected with lots of nitrous oxide and acid," Dowd said. "They called me up and said they were doing this movie and had cast it with Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. And I'm like 'Uh oh,' worried because I'm on the cusp, and it could go either way, with Jeff Bridges or Goodman [playing me]."
Not to worry. Goodman played Walter Sobchak, while Bridges played The Dude -- the bathrobe and pajama-wearing, White Russian-drinking "hero," who wants nothing more than to drive around, bowl, experience the occasional acid flashback and get back his living room rug ("It really tied the room together'') amid a chaos of outrageous characters and plot lines. The movie flopped commercially when it opened in 1998, though it did pick up the coveted Russian Board of Film Critics award for ''Best Foreign Film." As with "It's a Wonderful Life," however, audiences came to embrace it in ensuing years, turning it into a cult classic that spawned a book ("I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski") and a nationwide Lebowski Fest. Fans pay up to $20 a head to watch the movie, enter trivia and costume contests, and bowl while wearing pajamas and robes.
At the Seattle fest this week, hundreds of fans filled a bowling alley near a suburban shopping mall. Every lane and lounge area was packed with people dressed as characters from "Lebowski." There were dozens of guys dressed as The Dude in bathrobes, just as many dressed as Walter in khaki hunting vests and shorts, guys in outrageous velvet jumpsuits, large-busted women in Valkyrien helmets, and even a guy in a homemade marmot costume. It was like a "Star Trek" convention, but instead of slightly pathetic Trekkies speaking in Romulan, you had guys laughing, drinking White Russians and spouting movie lines ("This isn't 'Nam, Smokey. This is bowling. There are rules.") while bowling.
It's a little frightening how much this guy looks like Walter.In other words, it was like most nights in a bowling alley, but also with nihilists in red skinsuits.
Not counting the person who brought the iron lung, no one topped Scott Glancy, who was a dead ringer for Walter, complete with the shorts, vest, stylized crew cut, dog tags and yellow-tinted shooting glasses. Aside from the glasses and dog tags, it wasn't really a costume. "This is how I dress," he said. "My mother called me after the movie came out and asked, 'Why do they have John Goodman dressed like you?'"
Glancy, 43, calls bowling "shockingly important" to "Lebowski," but Dowd said the bowling scenes were merely meant to provide a location where you could have the characters talk with the illusion of action. "Not only does The Dude not bowl in the movie, bowling is just a background," Dowd said. "There's no tournament. There's a big scene about the tournament coming up where Jesus is warning them about what he's going to do in the tournament, but there's no payoff. We never see the tournament. Walter talks about how important the tournament is but we never see a big-game 'Hoosiers' type moment."
Whatever the importance of bowling to "Lebowski," it's a movie that rewards with repeat viewings. I found it mildly amusing when it first came out, but uncontrollably funny during a midnight showing at a local art house a few months ago. And no, no substances, controlled or otherwise, influenced my second reaction. That is how a lot of people react to a second viewing, including Dowd and, he says, Jeff Bridges.
Dowd believes this is because people went with initial expectations of what the movie would be like, and were slightly put off by what it was. "It's much more of a Ethan and Joel mosaic than a traditional narrative plot movie, though there is some of that in there," he said. "Then we go in there with a different expectation the second time and we realize it's really a brilliant satirical movie you can see many, many times."
Of course, that's just like, his opinion, man.
"This is not some little 'Lebowski 'cult," Dowd insisted. "There are a million people watching the movie right now in the United States. Well, tons of them. It plays across demographic and age lines. It plays Democrat and Republican. It plays young and old. It plays pretty much [to] all races, men and women and obviously stoners and college kids. This is the most popular movie in the U.S. Army. It's not 'Top Gun' or 'The Green Berets.' If you go over and poll guys in Iraq, I guarantee you the top movie is 'The Big Lebowski.' They may have the big movie of the moment, but the movie they watch most? 'The Big Lebowski.' You ask any sports team? 'Big Lebowski.' Any band? 'Big Lebowski.'"
There he is, Jeff Dowd himself, surrounded by Jesus lookalikes from the film.I don't know if I've seen too many baseball teams watching "Lebowski" in the clubhouse (their loss), but to call Dowd on this would be very un-Dude.
Besides, he's right. The movie is very popular and touches everyone, usually in the funny bone. Joe Germano, a marine biologist from Bellevue who attended the bowling party dressed as the white-suited pornographer Jackie Treehorn, says he brings the movie with him on his frequent assignments at sea. "It keeps the guys from going crazy," he said. "It's become a philosophy of life. Not to take things too seriously."
Dowd told me stories about Republican families that watch the movie together every Christmas to prevent old wounds from being ripped open after dinner, and of the Wall Street-area paramedic who told him at the New York Lebowski Fest that the movie saved his life after 9/11 because it allowed him to laugh again.
"It's pretty hard to watch 'Lebowski' without feeling better than when you went in," Dowd said. "It might be like freebase [cocaine] and the feeling runs out in 10 minutes, or it may last for a few hours or a day. But it's also a bonding thing as you can see in there.
"And that's a wonderful thing to be in some way part of -- to bring a little bit of joy into people's lives for a few hours."
The Dude abides, and I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that.
With the recession, the deficit, the mess in Afghanistan and the Middle East, terrorism, global warming and the spiraling cost of health care, it's good knowing "The Big Lebowski" is out there, via Netflix and available on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.
Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
How the "Public Option" Was Sold
http://www.truthout.org/072309E
Bait and Switch: How the "Public Option" Was Sold
Monday 20 July 2009
Kip Sullivan, Physicians for a National Health Program
Political science Professor Jacob Hacker, who first dreamed up the "public option" health plan, originally envisioned a much more expansive program than the one being debated currently in Congress.
The people who brought us the "public option" began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the "public option" resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you've got one thing for sale when in fact you're selling something very different.
When the "public option" campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge "Medicare-like" program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation's largest health insurer, public or private. But today "public option" advocates sing the praises of tiny "public options" contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public options" described in the Democrats' legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the "public options" cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the "public option" movement haven't told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It's high time they did.
The Bait
"Public option" refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, "dreamed up" by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous "Medicare-like" program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.
Hacker claimed the program, which he called "Medicare Plus" in 2001 and "Health Care for America Plan" in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient - large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead. (Medicare is the nation's largest health insurance program, public or private. It pays doctors and hospitals about 20 percent less than the insurance industry does, and its administrative costs account for only 2 percent of its expenditures compared with 20 percent for the insurance industry.)
Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population. These predictions were confirmed by the Lewin Group, a very mainstream consulting firm. In its report on Hacker's 2001 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Medicare Plus" program would enroll 113 million people (46 percent of the non-elderly) and cut the number of uninsured to 5 million. In its report on Hacker's 2007 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Health Care for America Plan" would enroll 129 million people (50 percent of the nonelderly population) and cut the uninsured to 2 million.
Until last year, Hacker and his allies were not the least bit shy about highlighting the enormous size of Hacker's proposed public program. For example, in his 2001 paper Hacker stated:
[A]pproximately 50 to 70 percent of the non-elderly population would be enrolled in Medicare Plus.... Put more simply, the plan would be very large.... [C]ritics will resurface whatever the size of the public plan. But this is an area where an intuitive and widely held notion - that displacement of employment-based coverage should be avoided at all costs - is fundamentally at odds with good public policy. A large public plan should be embraced, not avoided. It is, in fact, key to fulfilling the goals of this proposal. (page 17)
In his 2007 paper, Hacker stated:
For millions of Americans who are now uninsured or lack ... affordable work place coverage, the Health Care for America Plan would be an extremely attractive option. Through it, roughly half of non-elderly Americans would have access to a good public insurance plan.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies. (page 5)
Hacker's papers and the Lewin Group's analyses of them have been cited by numerous "public option" advocates. For example, when Hacker released his 2007 paper, Campaign for America's Future (CAF) published a press release praising it and drawing attention to the large size of Hacker's proposed public program. The release, entitled "Activists and experts hail Health Care for America plan," stated:
Detailed micro-simulation estimates suggest that roughly half of non-elderly Americans would remain in workplace health insurance, with the other half enrolled in Health Care for America.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies.... Because Medicare and Health Care for America would bargain jointly for lower prices ..., they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs.
When the Lewin Group released its 2008 analysis of Hacker's 2007 paper, CAF's Roger Hickey wrote in the Huffington Post, "efficiencies achievable ... through Hacker's public health insurance program" would save so much money that the US could "cover everyone" for no more than we spend now.
The Switch
Now let's compare the "single national health insurance pool covering nearly half the population" that Hacker and other "public option" advocates enthusiastically championed with the "public option" proposed by Democrats in Congress, and then let's inquire what Hacker and company said about it.
As readers of this blog no doubt know, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and three House committee chairman working jointly, published draft health care "reform" bills in June. (The third committee with bill-writing authority, the Senate Finance Committee, has yet to produce a bill.) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public option" proposed in the House "tri-committee" bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The "public option" proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the "public option."
Here is what the CBO had to say about the HELP committee bill:
The new draft also includes provisions regarding a "public plan," but those provisions did not have a substantial effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately negotiated rates - and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. (page 3)
Obviously the "public option" in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 17 million people left uninsured) and the "public option" in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 34 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the "public option" originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left uninsured). Have we heard the Democrats in Congress who drafted these provisions utter a word about how different their "public options" are from the large Medicare-like program that Hacker proposed and his allies publicized? What have Professor Hacker and his allies had to say?
In public comments about the Democrats' "public option" provisions, the leading lights of the "public option" movement imply that Hacker's model is what Congress is debating. Sometimes they come right out and praise the Democrats' version as "robust" and "strong." But I cannot find a single example of a a statement by a "public option" advocate warning the public of the vast difference between Hacker's original elephantine, "Medicare-like" program and the Democrats' mouse version.
For example, on June 23, Hacker testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that "the draft legislation prepared by [the] special tri-committee promises enormous progress." He went on to enumerate all the benefits of a "public option." Yet the House tri-committee proposal bore no resemblance to the public plan he described in his papers and that the Lewin Group analyzed. Later, when Kaiser Health News asked Hacker in a July 6 interview why "your signature idea - a public plan - has become central to the health care reform debate," Hacker again praised his "public plan" proposal and offered no hint that the "public option" so "central to the debate" was very different from the one he originally proposed.
Ditto for Hacker's allies. Representatives of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the organization most responsible for popularizing the "public option," repeatedly describe the House and Senate HELP committee bills as "strong" or "robust," always without any justification for this claim, and have repeatedly failed to warn the public that the "public options" they promote today are mere shadows of the "public options" they endorsed in the past. On July 15, the day the HELP committee passed its bill, Jason Rosenbaum blogged for HCAN:
The Senate HELP Committee has just referred a bill to the floor of the Senate with a strong public option.
Searching the websites of the organizations that serve on HCAN's steering committee - AFSCME, Democracy for America, Moveon.org and SEIU, for example - one will find not a shred of information that would help the reader comprehend how small and ineffective the "public options" proposed in the Democrats' bills are, nor how different these are from the one Hacker originally proposed. Yet these groups continue to urge their members and the public to "tell Congress to support a public option."
Hacker's Original Model Compared With the Democrats' Mouse Model
It has become fashionable among advocates of a "public option" to trash the expertise and the motives of the Congressional Budget Office. But the CBO's characterization of the "public option" proposed in the Democrats' legislation is entirely reasonable. This becomes apparent the moment we compare Hacker's blueprint for his original "Medicare Plus" and "Health Care for America" programs with the "blueprints" (if tabula rasas can be called "blueprints") contained in the Senate HELP Committee and House bills.
Hacker's papers laid out these five criteria that he and the Lewin Group said were critical to the success of the "public option":
The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his public program);
Subsidies to individuals to buy insurance would be substantial, and only PO enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);
The PO and its subsidies had to be available to all nonelderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);
The PO had to be given authority to use Medicare's provider reimbursement rates; and
The insurance industry had to be required to offer the same minimum level of benefits the PO had to offer.
Hacker predicted, and both of the Lewin Group reports concluded, that if these specifications were met Hacker's plan would enjoy all three of Medicare's advantages - it would be huge, it would have low overhead costs, and it would pay providers less than the insurance industry did. As a result, the "public option" would be able to set its premiums below those of the insurance industry and seize nearly half the non-elderly market from the insurance industry. According to the Lewin Group's 2008 report, Hacker's version of the "public option" would, as of 2007:
Enroll 129 million enrollees (or 50 percent of the non-elderly);
Have overhead costs equal to 3 percent of expenditures;
Pay hospitals 26 percent less and doctors 17 percent less than the insurance industry (but these discounts would be offset to some degree by increases in payments to providers treating former Medicaid enrollees); and,
Set its premiums 23 below those of the average insurance company.
I question some of Hacker's and the Lewin Group's assumptions, including their assumption that any public program that has to sell health insurance in competition with insurance companies could keep its overhead costs anywhere near those of Medicare (Medicare is a single-payer program that has no competition), especially during the early years when the public program will be scrambling to sign up enrollees. A public program will have to hire a sales force and advertise. It will have to open offices. It will have to negotiate rates, and perhaps contracts, with thousands of hospitals and hundreds of thousands of clinics, chemical treatment facilities, rehab units, home health agencies, etc. Or it will have to contract with someone to do all that. But I have little doubt that if a public program were to open with a large enough customer base, and it had the advantage of a law requiring that only its customers receive substantial subsidies, it could do what the Lewin Group said it could do.
Now let us compare Hacker's original model with the mousey "public options" proposed by the Senate HELP Committee and the House. Of Hacker's five criteria, only one is met by these bills! Both proposals require the insurance industry to cover the same benefits the "public option" must cover. None of the other four criteria are met. The "public option" is not pre-populated, the subsidies to employers and to individuals go to the "public option" and the insurance industry, employees of large employers cannot buy insurance from the "public option" in the first few years after the plan opens for business and maybe never (that decision will be made by whoever is President around 2015), and the "public option" is not authorized to use Medicare's provider payment rates. (The House bill comes the closest to authorizing use of Medicare's rates; it authorizes Medicare's rates plus 5 percent).
Is it any wonder the CBO concluded the Democrats' "public option" will be a tiny little creature incapable of doing much of anything? More curious is that CBO gave the House "public option" any credit at all (you will recall CBO said it would enroll maybe 10 million people). The CBO should have asked, Can the "public option" - as presented in either bill - survive?
Put Yourself in the "Public Option" Director's Shoes
To see why the "public option" proposed by congressional Democrats remains at great risk of stillbirth, let's engage in a frustrating thought experiment. Let's imagine Congress has enacted the House version (it is not quite as weak as the HELP Committee model and thus gives us the greatest opportunity in our thought experiment to imagine a scenario in which the "public option" actually survives its start-up phase). Let us imagine furthermore that you have been foolish enough to apply for the job of executive director of the new "public option," and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the federal agency within which the program will be housed) decided to hire you. It's your first day on the job.
You know the House bill did not create a ready-made pool of enrollees for you to work with the way the 1965 Medicare law created a ready-made pool of seniors prior to the day Medicare commenced operations. You realize, in other words, that you represent not a single soul, much less tens of millions of enrollees. You will have to build a pool of enrollees from scratch. You also know the House bill authorized some start-up money for you, so you'll be able to hire some staff, including sales people if you choose. You can also open offices around the country, and advertise if you think it necessary. But you know you can't pay out too much money getting the "public option" started because the House bill requires that you pay back whatever start-up costs you incur within ten years. In other words, you may hire enough people and open enough offices and buy enough advertising to create a critical mass of enrollees nationwide, but you must do it quickly so that your start-up costs don't sink the "public option" during its first decade.
The only other feature in the House bill that appears to give you any advantage over the insurance industry is the provision requiring you to use Medicare's rates plus 5 percent, which essentially means you are authorized to pay providers 15 percent less than the insurance industry pays on average. But the House bill also says providers are free to refuse to participate in the plan you run.
So what do you do? Let's say you open offices in dozens or hundreds of cities, you hire a sales force to fan out across the country to sign up customers, you advertise on radio and TV to get potential customers (employers and individuals) to call your new sales force to inquire about the new "public option" insurance policy. What happens when potential customers ask your salespeople two obvious questions: what will the premium be and which doctors they can see? What do your employees say? They can't say anything. They haven't talked to any clinics or hospitals about participating at the 15-percent-below-industry-average payment rate, so they have no idea which providers if any will agree to participate. They also have no idea what the "public option" premium will be because they don't know whether providers will accept the low rates the plan is authorized to pay. And they have no idea about several other factors that will affect the premiums, including how much overhead the "public option" will rack up before it reaches a state of viability, or who the "public option" will be insuring - healthy people, sick people, or people of average health status.
So, let's say you redeploy your sales force. Now instead of talking to potential customers, you direct them to focus on providers first. But when your salespeople call on doctors and hospital administrators and ask them if they'll agree to take enrollees at below-average payment rates, providers ask how many people the "public option" will enroll in their area. Providers explain to your salespeople that they are already giving huge discounts, some as high as 30 to 40 percent off their customary charge, to the largest insurers in their area and they are not eager to do that for the "public option" unless the plan will have such a large share of the market in their area that it will deliver many patients to them. If the "public option" cannot do that, providers tell your salespeople, they will not agree to accept below-average payment rates.
In other words, you find that the "public option" is at the mercy of the private insurance market, not the other way around.
This thought experiment illustrates for you the mind-numbing chicken-and-egg problem created by any "public option" project that does not meet Hacker's criteria, most notably, the criterion requiring pre-population of the "public option." If the pre-population criterion isn't met, the poor chump who has to create the "public option" is essentially being asked to solve a problem that is as difficult as describing the sound of one hand clapping. You need both hands to clap.
How Did the Mouse Replace the Elephant?
How did the "Medicare Plus" proposal of 2001 (when Hacker first proposed it) get transformed into the tiny "public options" contained in the Democrats' 2009 legislation? The answer is that somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass. Did the leading "public option" advocates realize this early in the campaign? Or midway through the campaign when the insurance industry began to attack the "public option"? Or late in the campaign when they found it difficult to persuade members of Congress to support Hacker's original model? Whatever the answer, will they find it in their hearts to tell their followers their original strategy was wrong?
I suspect the answer is different for different actors within the "public option" movement. Hacker surely knew what was in his original proposal and surely knows now that the Democrats' bills don't reflect his original proposal. Hacker and others familiar with his original proposal were probably betrayed by the process. As the "public option" concept became famous and edged its way toward the centers of power, they couldn't find the courage to resist the transformation of the original proposal into the mouse model.
For other actors within the "public option" movement, ignorance of Hacker's original proposal and of health policy in general may have led them to rely on more knowledgeable leaders in the movement. Their error, in other words, was to trust the wrong people and, as the "public option" came under attack, to cave in to group think. This error was facilitated by the "public option" movement's decision to avoid mentioning any details of the "public option" whenever possible.
What Next?
Those of us in the American single-payer movement must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the "public option" that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.
The first mistake was to think that a "public option" that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market (as opposed to one that took over the entire market) could substantially reduce health care costs and thereby make universal coverage politically feasible. Any proposal that leaves in place a multiple-payer system - even a multiple-payer system with a large government-run program in the middle of it - is going to save very little money. Even if Hacker's original Health Care for America Plan had taken over half the non-elderly market and then reached homeostasis (something Hacker swore up and down it would do), the savings would have been relatively small. The reason for that is twofold. First, any insurance program, public or private, that has to compete with other insurers is going to have overhead costs substantially higher than Medicare's. (It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low.) Second, the multiple-payer system Hacker would leave in place would continue to impose unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers.
The second mistake the "public option" movement made was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a "public option" more gently than a single-payer. Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as "comparative effectiveness research" as the equivalent of "a government takeover of the health care system." It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek "socialism!" at the sight of the "public option," even the mouse model proposed by the Democrats.
The bait-and-switch strategy adopted by the "public option" movement has put the Democrats in a terrible quandary. Seduced by the false advertising about the potency of the "public option" to lower costs, Democrats have raised public expectations for reform to unprecedented levels. Failing to meet those expectations during the 2009 session of Congress, which is inevitable if the Democrats continue to promote legislation like the bills released in June, is going to have unpleasant consequences. Is there no way out of this quandary?
Conventional wisdom holds that if the Democrats don't pass a health care reform bill by December, they will have to wait till 2013 to try again. But if the "public option" movement were to join forces with the single-payer movement, the two movements could prove the conventional wisdom wrong. This won't happen, obviously, if the "public option" movement fails to perceive the reasons it failed.
It is conceivable the "public option" movement could decide the bait-and-switch strategy was wrong and that their only error was not to stick with Hacker's original model. It should be obvious now that that would also be a tactical blunder. We have plenty of evidence now that conservatives will react to the mousey version of the "public option" as if it were "a stalking horse for single-payer." We can predict with complete certainty they will treat Hacker's original version as something even closer to single-payer. If a proposal is going to be abused as if it were single-payer, why not actually propose a single-payer? At least then, when a particular session of Congress comes and goes and we haven't enacted a single-payer system, we will have educated the public about the benefits of a single-payer and have further strengthened the single-payer movement.
To sum up, "public option" advocates must choose between continuing to promote the "public option" and seeing their hopes for cost containment and universal coverage go up in smoke for another four years, and throwing their considerable influence behind single-payer legislation. At this late date in the 2009 session, it is unlikely that a single-payer bill could be passed even if unity within the universal coverage movement could be achieved. But if the "public option" wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.
--------
Kip Sullivan belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Bait and Switch: How the "Public Option" Was Sold
Monday 20 July 2009
Kip Sullivan, Physicians for a National Health Program
Political science Professor Jacob Hacker, who first dreamed up the "public option" health plan, originally envisioned a much more expansive program than the one being debated currently in Congress.
The people who brought us the "public option" began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the "public option" resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you've got one thing for sale when in fact you're selling something very different.
When the "public option" campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge "Medicare-like" program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation's largest health insurer, public or private. But today "public option" advocates sing the praises of tiny "public options" contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public options" described in the Democrats' legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the "public options" cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the "public option" movement haven't told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It's high time they did.
The Bait
"Public option" refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, "dreamed up" by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous "Medicare-like" program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.
Hacker claimed the program, which he called "Medicare Plus" in 2001 and "Health Care for America Plan" in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient - large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead. (Medicare is the nation's largest health insurance program, public or private. It pays doctors and hospitals about 20 percent less than the insurance industry does, and its administrative costs account for only 2 percent of its expenditures compared with 20 percent for the insurance industry.)
Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population. These predictions were confirmed by the Lewin Group, a very mainstream consulting firm. In its report on Hacker's 2001 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Medicare Plus" program would enroll 113 million people (46 percent of the non-elderly) and cut the number of uninsured to 5 million. In its report on Hacker's 2007 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker's "Health Care for America Plan" would enroll 129 million people (50 percent of the nonelderly population) and cut the uninsured to 2 million.
Until last year, Hacker and his allies were not the least bit shy about highlighting the enormous size of Hacker's proposed public program. For example, in his 2001 paper Hacker stated:
[A]pproximately 50 to 70 percent of the non-elderly population would be enrolled in Medicare Plus.... Put more simply, the plan would be very large.... [C]ritics will resurface whatever the size of the public plan. But this is an area where an intuitive and widely held notion - that displacement of employment-based coverage should be avoided at all costs - is fundamentally at odds with good public policy. A large public plan should be embraced, not avoided. It is, in fact, key to fulfilling the goals of this proposal. (page 17)
In his 2007 paper, Hacker stated:
For millions of Americans who are now uninsured or lack ... affordable work place coverage, the Health Care for America Plan would be an extremely attractive option. Through it, roughly half of non-elderly Americans would have access to a good public insurance plan.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies. (page 5)
Hacker's papers and the Lewin Group's analyses of them have been cited by numerous "public option" advocates. For example, when Hacker released his 2007 paper, Campaign for America's Future (CAF) published a press release praising it and drawing attention to the large size of Hacker's proposed public program. The release, entitled "Activists and experts hail Health Care for America plan," stated:
Detailed micro-simulation estimates suggest that roughly half of non-elderly Americans would remain in workplace health insurance, with the other half enrolled in Health Care for America.... A single national insurance pool covering nearly half the population would create huge administrative efficiencies.... Because Medicare and Health Care for America would bargain jointly for lower prices ..., they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs.
When the Lewin Group released its 2008 analysis of Hacker's 2007 paper, CAF's Roger Hickey wrote in the Huffington Post, "efficiencies achievable ... through Hacker's public health insurance program" would save so much money that the US could "cover everyone" for no more than we spend now.
The Switch
Now let's compare the "single national health insurance pool covering nearly half the population" that Hacker and other "public option" advocates enthusiastically championed with the "public option" proposed by Democrats in Congress, and then let's inquire what Hacker and company said about it.
As readers of this blog no doubt know, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and three House committee chairman working jointly, published draft health care "reform" bills in June. (The third committee with bill-writing authority, the Senate Finance Committee, has yet to produce a bill.) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public option" proposed in the House "tri-committee" bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The "public option" proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the "public option."
Here is what the CBO had to say about the HELP committee bill:
The new draft also includes provisions regarding a "public plan," but those provisions did not have a substantial effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately negotiated rates - and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. (page 3)
Obviously the "public option" in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 17 million people left uninsured) and the "public option" in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 34 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the "public option" originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left uninsured). Have we heard the Democrats in Congress who drafted these provisions utter a word about how different their "public options" are from the large Medicare-like program that Hacker proposed and his allies publicized? What have Professor Hacker and his allies had to say?
In public comments about the Democrats' "public option" provisions, the leading lights of the "public option" movement imply that Hacker's model is what Congress is debating. Sometimes they come right out and praise the Democrats' version as "robust" and "strong." But I cannot find a single example of a a statement by a "public option" advocate warning the public of the vast difference between Hacker's original elephantine, "Medicare-like" program and the Democrats' mouse version.
For example, on June 23, Hacker testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that "the draft legislation prepared by [the] special tri-committee promises enormous progress." He went on to enumerate all the benefits of a "public option." Yet the House tri-committee proposal bore no resemblance to the public plan he described in his papers and that the Lewin Group analyzed. Later, when Kaiser Health News asked Hacker in a July 6 interview why "your signature idea - a public plan - has become central to the health care reform debate," Hacker again praised his "public plan" proposal and offered no hint that the "public option" so "central to the debate" was very different from the one he originally proposed.
Ditto for Hacker's allies. Representatives of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the organization most responsible for popularizing the "public option," repeatedly describe the House and Senate HELP committee bills as "strong" or "robust," always without any justification for this claim, and have repeatedly failed to warn the public that the "public options" they promote today are mere shadows of the "public options" they endorsed in the past. On July 15, the day the HELP committee passed its bill, Jason Rosenbaum blogged for HCAN:
The Senate HELP Committee has just referred a bill to the floor of the Senate with a strong public option.
Searching the websites of the organizations that serve on HCAN's steering committee - AFSCME, Democracy for America, Moveon.org and SEIU, for example - one will find not a shred of information that would help the reader comprehend how small and ineffective the "public options" proposed in the Democrats' bills are, nor how different these are from the one Hacker originally proposed. Yet these groups continue to urge their members and the public to "tell Congress to support a public option."
Hacker's Original Model Compared With the Democrats' Mouse Model
It has become fashionable among advocates of a "public option" to trash the expertise and the motives of the Congressional Budget Office. But the CBO's characterization of the "public option" proposed in the Democrats' legislation is entirely reasonable. This becomes apparent the moment we compare Hacker's blueprint for his original "Medicare Plus" and "Health Care for America" programs with the "blueprints" (if tabula rasas can be called "blueprints") contained in the Senate HELP Committee and House bills.
Hacker's papers laid out these five criteria that he and the Lewin Group said were critical to the success of the "public option":
The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his public program);
Subsidies to individuals to buy insurance would be substantial, and only PO enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);
The PO and its subsidies had to be available to all nonelderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);
The PO had to be given authority to use Medicare's provider reimbursement rates; and
The insurance industry had to be required to offer the same minimum level of benefits the PO had to offer.
Hacker predicted, and both of the Lewin Group reports concluded, that if these specifications were met Hacker's plan would enjoy all three of Medicare's advantages - it would be huge, it would have low overhead costs, and it would pay providers less than the insurance industry did. As a result, the "public option" would be able to set its premiums below those of the insurance industry and seize nearly half the non-elderly market from the insurance industry. According to the Lewin Group's 2008 report, Hacker's version of the "public option" would, as of 2007:
Enroll 129 million enrollees (or 50 percent of the non-elderly);
Have overhead costs equal to 3 percent of expenditures;
Pay hospitals 26 percent less and doctors 17 percent less than the insurance industry (but these discounts would be offset to some degree by increases in payments to providers treating former Medicaid enrollees); and,
Set its premiums 23 below those of the average insurance company.
I question some of Hacker's and the Lewin Group's assumptions, including their assumption that any public program that has to sell health insurance in competition with insurance companies could keep its overhead costs anywhere near those of Medicare (Medicare is a single-payer program that has no competition), especially during the early years when the public program will be scrambling to sign up enrollees. A public program will have to hire a sales force and advertise. It will have to open offices. It will have to negotiate rates, and perhaps contracts, with thousands of hospitals and hundreds of thousands of clinics, chemical treatment facilities, rehab units, home health agencies, etc. Or it will have to contract with someone to do all that. But I have little doubt that if a public program were to open with a large enough customer base, and it had the advantage of a law requiring that only its customers receive substantial subsidies, it could do what the Lewin Group said it could do.
Now let us compare Hacker's original model with the mousey "public options" proposed by the Senate HELP Committee and the House. Of Hacker's five criteria, only one is met by these bills! Both proposals require the insurance industry to cover the same benefits the "public option" must cover. None of the other four criteria are met. The "public option" is not pre-populated, the subsidies to employers and to individuals go to the "public option" and the insurance industry, employees of large employers cannot buy insurance from the "public option" in the first few years after the plan opens for business and maybe never (that decision will be made by whoever is President around 2015), and the "public option" is not authorized to use Medicare's provider payment rates. (The House bill comes the closest to authorizing use of Medicare's rates; it authorizes Medicare's rates plus 5 percent).
Is it any wonder the CBO concluded the Democrats' "public option" will be a tiny little creature incapable of doing much of anything? More curious is that CBO gave the House "public option" any credit at all (you will recall CBO said it would enroll maybe 10 million people). The CBO should have asked, Can the "public option" - as presented in either bill - survive?
Put Yourself in the "Public Option" Director's Shoes
To see why the "public option" proposed by congressional Democrats remains at great risk of stillbirth, let's engage in a frustrating thought experiment. Let's imagine Congress has enacted the House version (it is not quite as weak as the HELP Committee model and thus gives us the greatest opportunity in our thought experiment to imagine a scenario in which the "public option" actually survives its start-up phase). Let us imagine furthermore that you have been foolish enough to apply for the job of executive director of the new "public option," and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (the federal agency within which the program will be housed) decided to hire you. It's your first day on the job.
You know the House bill did not create a ready-made pool of enrollees for you to work with the way the 1965 Medicare law created a ready-made pool of seniors prior to the day Medicare commenced operations. You realize, in other words, that you represent not a single soul, much less tens of millions of enrollees. You will have to build a pool of enrollees from scratch. You also know the House bill authorized some start-up money for you, so you'll be able to hire some staff, including sales people if you choose. You can also open offices around the country, and advertise if you think it necessary. But you know you can't pay out too much money getting the "public option" started because the House bill requires that you pay back whatever start-up costs you incur within ten years. In other words, you may hire enough people and open enough offices and buy enough advertising to create a critical mass of enrollees nationwide, but you must do it quickly so that your start-up costs don't sink the "public option" during its first decade.
The only other feature in the House bill that appears to give you any advantage over the insurance industry is the provision requiring you to use Medicare's rates plus 5 percent, which essentially means you are authorized to pay providers 15 percent less than the insurance industry pays on average. But the House bill also says providers are free to refuse to participate in the plan you run.
So what do you do? Let's say you open offices in dozens or hundreds of cities, you hire a sales force to fan out across the country to sign up customers, you advertise on radio and TV to get potential customers (employers and individuals) to call your new sales force to inquire about the new "public option" insurance policy. What happens when potential customers ask your salespeople two obvious questions: what will the premium be and which doctors they can see? What do your employees say? They can't say anything. They haven't talked to any clinics or hospitals about participating at the 15-percent-below-industry-average payment rate, so they have no idea which providers if any will agree to participate. They also have no idea what the "public option" premium will be because they don't know whether providers will accept the low rates the plan is authorized to pay. And they have no idea about several other factors that will affect the premiums, including how much overhead the "public option" will rack up before it reaches a state of viability, or who the "public option" will be insuring - healthy people, sick people, or people of average health status.
So, let's say you redeploy your sales force. Now instead of talking to potential customers, you direct them to focus on providers first. But when your salespeople call on doctors and hospital administrators and ask them if they'll agree to take enrollees at below-average payment rates, providers ask how many people the "public option" will enroll in their area. Providers explain to your salespeople that they are already giving huge discounts, some as high as 30 to 40 percent off their customary charge, to the largest insurers in their area and they are not eager to do that for the "public option" unless the plan will have such a large share of the market in their area that it will deliver many patients to them. If the "public option" cannot do that, providers tell your salespeople, they will not agree to accept below-average payment rates.
In other words, you find that the "public option" is at the mercy of the private insurance market, not the other way around.
This thought experiment illustrates for you the mind-numbing chicken-and-egg problem created by any "public option" project that does not meet Hacker's criteria, most notably, the criterion requiring pre-population of the "public option." If the pre-population criterion isn't met, the poor chump who has to create the "public option" is essentially being asked to solve a problem that is as difficult as describing the sound of one hand clapping. You need both hands to clap.
How Did the Mouse Replace the Elephant?
How did the "Medicare Plus" proposal of 2001 (when Hacker first proposed it) get transformed into the tiny "public options" contained in the Democrats' 2009 legislation? The answer is that somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass. Did the leading "public option" advocates realize this early in the campaign? Or midway through the campaign when the insurance industry began to attack the "public option"? Or late in the campaign when they found it difficult to persuade members of Congress to support Hacker's original model? Whatever the answer, will they find it in their hearts to tell their followers their original strategy was wrong?
I suspect the answer is different for different actors within the "public option" movement. Hacker surely knew what was in his original proposal and surely knows now that the Democrats' bills don't reflect his original proposal. Hacker and others familiar with his original proposal were probably betrayed by the process. As the "public option" concept became famous and edged its way toward the centers of power, they couldn't find the courage to resist the transformation of the original proposal into the mouse model.
For other actors within the "public option" movement, ignorance of Hacker's original proposal and of health policy in general may have led them to rely on more knowledgeable leaders in the movement. Their error, in other words, was to trust the wrong people and, as the "public option" came under attack, to cave in to group think. This error was facilitated by the "public option" movement's decision to avoid mentioning any details of the "public option" whenever possible.
What Next?
Those of us in the American single-payer movement must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the "public option" that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.
The first mistake was to think that a "public option" that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market (as opposed to one that took over the entire market) could substantially reduce health care costs and thereby make universal coverage politically feasible. Any proposal that leaves in place a multiple-payer system - even a multiple-payer system with a large government-run program in the middle of it - is going to save very little money. Even if Hacker's original Health Care for America Plan had taken over half the non-elderly market and then reached homeostasis (something Hacker swore up and down it would do), the savings would have been relatively small. The reason for that is twofold. First, any insurance program, public or private, that has to compete with other insurers is going to have overhead costs substantially higher than Medicare's. (It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low.) Second, the multiple-payer system Hacker would leave in place would continue to impose unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers.
The second mistake the "public option" movement made was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a "public option" more gently than a single-payer. Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as "comparative effectiveness research" as the equivalent of "a government takeover of the health care system." It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek "socialism!" at the sight of the "public option," even the mouse model proposed by the Democrats.
The bait-and-switch strategy adopted by the "public option" movement has put the Democrats in a terrible quandary. Seduced by the false advertising about the potency of the "public option" to lower costs, Democrats have raised public expectations for reform to unprecedented levels. Failing to meet those expectations during the 2009 session of Congress, which is inevitable if the Democrats continue to promote legislation like the bills released in June, is going to have unpleasant consequences. Is there no way out of this quandary?
Conventional wisdom holds that if the Democrats don't pass a health care reform bill by December, they will have to wait till 2013 to try again. But if the "public option" movement were to join forces with the single-payer movement, the two movements could prove the conventional wisdom wrong. This won't happen, obviously, if the "public option" movement fails to perceive the reasons it failed.
It is conceivable the "public option" movement could decide the bait-and-switch strategy was wrong and that their only error was not to stick with Hacker's original model. It should be obvious now that that would also be a tactical blunder. We have plenty of evidence now that conservatives will react to the mousey version of the "public option" as if it were "a stalking horse for single-payer." We can predict with complete certainty they will treat Hacker's original version as something even closer to single-payer. If a proposal is going to be abused as if it were single-payer, why not actually propose a single-payer? At least then, when a particular session of Congress comes and goes and we haven't enacted a single-payer system, we will have educated the public about the benefits of a single-payer and have further strengthened the single-payer movement.
To sum up, "public option" advocates must choose between continuing to promote the "public option" and seeing their hopes for cost containment and universal coverage go up in smoke for another four years, and throwing their considerable influence behind single-payer legislation. At this late date in the 2009 session, it is unlikely that a single-payer bill could be passed even if unity within the universal coverage movement could be achieved. But if the "public option" wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline.
--------
Kip Sullivan belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Is Obama Health Care Plan Better Than Nothing?
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing
Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?
Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama's left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?
Wed, 07/22/2009
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you're inside or outside the matrix.
Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan is at last making its way through Congress. It's being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.
Under the Obama plan, we're told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can't afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a “public option.” This “public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president's backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000 a year.
The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that's reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.
That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.
What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama's left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama's way or the Republicans' way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.
But bubbles are delicate things. Keeping this one intact requires so many vital topics to be avoided, so many inquiring eyes to be averted, so many fruitful conversations to be squelched that it's hard to see how the president, the bipartisan establishment and the corporate media can pull it all off.
The real Obama Plan: doesn't cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.
The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,
“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.
“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”
According to a peer reviewed 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine, 62% of the nation's 727,167 non-business bankruptcies were triggered by unpayable medical bills in 2007. Most of these had health insurance when they fell ill or were injured, but with loopholes, exclusions, high deductibles and co-payments, or were simply dropped when they got sick. In 2008 that figure was 66% of 934,000 personal bankruptcies and in 2009 it could approach 70% of 1.1 million bankruptcies. And 18,000 Americans die each year because medical care is unaffordable or unavailable. Waiting till 2013 means millions of families will be financially ruined and tens of thousands will die unnecessarily.
If the Johnson administration with no computers back in the sixties could implement Medicare for 45 million seniors in under a year, why does it take three and a half years in the 21st century to cover some, but not all, of America's fifty million uninsured? And why does the Obama Plan make us wait till after the next presidential election? Politicians usually do popular things and run for election on the resulting wave of approval. Delaying what ought to be the good news of universal and affordable health care for all Americans till two elections down the road is a strong indication that they know the good news really ain't all that good. And it's not.
Inside the matrix of TV, the corporate media and on much of the internet, discussion of the Obama plan's timeline, the human cost of another three years delay, and the comparison with Medicare’s 11 month rollout back in the days before computers are almost impossible to find. We can only wonder why.
The Obama plan is about health insurance, not health care.
As BAR has been reporting since January 2007, the Obama plan is not a health care plan at all, it is a health insurance plan. Based largely upon the failed model in place in Massachusetts since 2006, the Obama plan will require employers to provide coverage or pay a special tax. Everybody not covered by an employer will be required to purchase insurance under penalty of law, in much the same manner as you're currently required to buy car insurance.
“In my state,” testified Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School last month before Congress, “beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines.”
As in Massachusetts, the health insurance plans people are forced to buy will cost a lot and won't cover much. In a July 20 National Journal article Dr. David Himmelstein says,
“Nearly every day that he is in the clinic, Himmelstein says, he sees a patient who has problems paying for care "despite this reform.' Some of them had free care before the 2006 law took effect but are now expected to handle co-payments. If you're not poor enough to get a subsidy, say you're making $30,000 a year, you're required to buy a policy that costs about $5,000 a year for the premium and has a $2,000 deductible before it pays for anything. For substantial numbers of people, it's effectively not coverage,' Himmelstein said. The policy he described is about the cheapest Massachusetts plan available, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program report, which Himmelstein co-wrote.”
A family of four making under $24,000 a year in Massachusetts gets its insurance premium free, but is still expected to cough up deductibles and co-payments and live with loopholes and exclusions that often deny care to those who need it. And in both the Massachusetts and Obama plans, funds to pay those premiums come out of the budgets of programs like Medicaid that already pay for care for the poorest Ameicans.
The Obama plan's “public option” is a bait-and-switch scam
A July 21 pnhp.org article titled “Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold” outlines how the public option is neither public, nor an option.
“Public option” refers to a proposal... that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today...
“Hacker (its author) claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead...
“Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population.”
The White House is committed to twisting arms in the both houses of Congress and reconciling the two versions of Democratic bills to emerge from the House and Senate. What emerges will be the Obama plan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate version of the Democrats' pending health care legislation leaves 33 million uninsured and omits the public option altogether. The House version includes a “public option” estimated to cover only 10-12 million people, a number far too small for it to create price pressure on private insurance companies, while leaving 16 or 17 million uninsured. Instead of setting prices for health care, it will be forced to pay whatever tthe private insurers already pay, and perhaps more.
As private insurers use their marketing muscle to recruit younger, healthier people who'll pay for but not use their benefits, the public option will be a dumping ground for the customers they don't want... the middle-aged, the poor, those with pre-existing conditions. And of course the Obama plan's “public option' will be managed by contractors from the private insurance industry.
Private insurers spend a third of every health care dollar on non-health related things like bonuses, denial machinery, advertising, lobbying and bad investments. Medicare spends 2 or 3% on administrative overhead. Bush's “enhanced Medicare” administered by private insurance contractors, spends about 11% on overhead. That's about what we should expect from the Obama public option. So much for change.
So far, discipline is holding. Nobody in corporate media, the administration, or among Democrats in Washington has gotten round to telling us that the public option has been eviscerated. But its powerful appeal and the awesome power of the word “public” are offered by Obama supporters as the central reasons to shut up, clap harder, and get behind the president on this.
Taxing the rich, paying for health care. How the Obama Plan stacks up against single payer.
Along with being funded by cuts in Medicaid, the Obama plan is supposed to be funded by taxing those who make $300,000 or more per year. That's not a bad thing. The wealthy don't pay nearly enough taxes. But the US already spends more on health care than anyplace else on the planet while leaving a greater portion of its population uninsured than anybody.
The Obama plan will not contain costs. It will subsidize the insurance vampires well into the next decade. On the other hand, single payer would eliminate the private insurance industry altogether. In many advanced industrial countries, most of the practices private insurers follow here, such as cherry picking healthy patients while dumping and denying sick ones, are illegal. Why can we do that?
Single payer, according to a study by the California Nurses Association would eliminate 550,000 jobs in private insurance while creating 3.2 million new ones in actual health care. It would be responsible for $100 billion in wages annually and a source of immense tax revenues for local governments.
So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?
The Obama plan seems calculated to buy time for private insurers, to end the health care discussion for a decade or more without solving the health care problem, do so in a way that discredits the very idea of everybody in- nobody out health care. It will leave tens of millions uninsured, a hundred million or more underinsured, and the same parasitic private interests in charge of the American health care system that run it now.
The Obama plan as it now stands requires us to let another 18,000 die for each of the next three years and allow more than a million additional families to be bankrupted by medical expenses before we can judge whether or not the plan is working. It's easy to imagine Obama partisans telling us in mid 2013 that it's still too early to be sure.
The Kucinich amendment, which allows the few states wealthy enough to try it the liberty to fashion their own single payer regimes is intended to attract progressives and single payer votes in Congress without breaking the bubble. By itself, it should not be a reason to support this bill.. The wealthiest state in the union is probably California, and it's handing out IOUs instead of salaries this month. It's hard to see what would be lost if this health care bill went down in flames, and we started over again next year.
Can he get away with it?
Maybe. Maybe not. If the corporate media and the president can keep discussion of the devilish details to a minimum, if they can silence, co-opt and intimidate the forces to Obama's left --- if they can keep most of the public inside their bubble of fake reality, Barack Obama may achieve his goal of thwarting the reform that most of the American people want --- an everybody in, nobody out single payer health care system on the model of Canada or Australia, or Medicare for All. It won't be close, it won't be easy, and with nothing to be gained, progressives shouldn't make it any easier.
Since the president's success depends mostly on keeping people silent and in the dark, he will probably be unable to mobilize the 13 million phone numbers and email addresses collected during the recent presidential campaign, and now held by OFA, his campaign arm. If an organizing call went out to them, too many would try to read the bill and discuss the options, and such a discussion could easily get out of hand. When OFA called house meetings on health care last December, the most frequently advanced question was why we couldn't or shouldn't get a single payer health care system.
Single payer isn't dead yet. It's very much alive among Barack Obama's own supporters. To succeed, he has to bury it alive, to keep them in the bubble, in the dark and quiet, or clapping so loudly they cannot hear themselves or each other think. It's not over.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at BAR, and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com
Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?
Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama's left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?
Wed, 07/22/2009
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you're inside or outside the matrix.
Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan is at last making its way through Congress. It's being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.
Under the Obama plan, we're told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can't afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a “public option.” This “public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president's backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000 a year.
The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that's reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.
That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.
What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama's left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama's way or the Republicans' way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.
But bubbles are delicate things. Keeping this one intact requires so many vital topics to be avoided, so many inquiring eyes to be averted, so many fruitful conversations to be squelched that it's hard to see how the president, the bipartisan establishment and the corporate media can pull it all off.
The real Obama Plan: doesn't cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.
The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,
“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.
“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”
According to a peer reviewed 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine, 62% of the nation's 727,167 non-business bankruptcies were triggered by unpayable medical bills in 2007. Most of these had health insurance when they fell ill or were injured, but with loopholes, exclusions, high deductibles and co-payments, or were simply dropped when they got sick. In 2008 that figure was 66% of 934,000 personal bankruptcies and in 2009 it could approach 70% of 1.1 million bankruptcies. And 18,000 Americans die each year because medical care is unaffordable or unavailable. Waiting till 2013 means millions of families will be financially ruined and tens of thousands will die unnecessarily.
If the Johnson administration with no computers back in the sixties could implement Medicare for 45 million seniors in under a year, why does it take three and a half years in the 21st century to cover some, but not all, of America's fifty million uninsured? And why does the Obama Plan make us wait till after the next presidential election? Politicians usually do popular things and run for election on the resulting wave of approval. Delaying what ought to be the good news of universal and affordable health care for all Americans till two elections down the road is a strong indication that they know the good news really ain't all that good. And it's not.
Inside the matrix of TV, the corporate media and on much of the internet, discussion of the Obama plan's timeline, the human cost of another three years delay, and the comparison with Medicare’s 11 month rollout back in the days before computers are almost impossible to find. We can only wonder why.
The Obama plan is about health insurance, not health care.
As BAR has been reporting since January 2007, the Obama plan is not a health care plan at all, it is a health insurance plan. Based largely upon the failed model in place in Massachusetts since 2006, the Obama plan will require employers to provide coverage or pay a special tax. Everybody not covered by an employer will be required to purchase insurance under penalty of law, in much the same manner as you're currently required to buy car insurance.
“In my state,” testified Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School last month before Congress, “beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines.”
As in Massachusetts, the health insurance plans people are forced to buy will cost a lot and won't cover much. In a July 20 National Journal article Dr. David Himmelstein says,
“Nearly every day that he is in the clinic, Himmelstein says, he sees a patient who has problems paying for care "despite this reform.' Some of them had free care before the 2006 law took effect but are now expected to handle co-payments. If you're not poor enough to get a subsidy, say you're making $30,000 a year, you're required to buy a policy that costs about $5,000 a year for the premium and has a $2,000 deductible before it pays for anything. For substantial numbers of people, it's effectively not coverage,' Himmelstein said. The policy he described is about the cheapest Massachusetts plan available, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program report, which Himmelstein co-wrote.”
A family of four making under $24,000 a year in Massachusetts gets its insurance premium free, but is still expected to cough up deductibles and co-payments and live with loopholes and exclusions that often deny care to those who need it. And in both the Massachusetts and Obama plans, funds to pay those premiums come out of the budgets of programs like Medicaid that already pay for care for the poorest Ameicans.
The Obama plan's “public option” is a bait-and-switch scam
A July 21 pnhp.org article titled “Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold” outlines how the public option is neither public, nor an option.
“Public option” refers to a proposal... that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today...
“Hacker (its author) claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead...
“Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population.”
The White House is committed to twisting arms in the both houses of Congress and reconciling the two versions of Democratic bills to emerge from the House and Senate. What emerges will be the Obama plan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate version of the Democrats' pending health care legislation leaves 33 million uninsured and omits the public option altogether. The House version includes a “public option” estimated to cover only 10-12 million people, a number far too small for it to create price pressure on private insurance companies, while leaving 16 or 17 million uninsured. Instead of setting prices for health care, it will be forced to pay whatever tthe private insurers already pay, and perhaps more.
As private insurers use their marketing muscle to recruit younger, healthier people who'll pay for but not use their benefits, the public option will be a dumping ground for the customers they don't want... the middle-aged, the poor, those with pre-existing conditions. And of course the Obama plan's “public option' will be managed by contractors from the private insurance industry.
Private insurers spend a third of every health care dollar on non-health related things like bonuses, denial machinery, advertising, lobbying and bad investments. Medicare spends 2 or 3% on administrative overhead. Bush's “enhanced Medicare” administered by private insurance contractors, spends about 11% on overhead. That's about what we should expect from the Obama public option. So much for change.
So far, discipline is holding. Nobody in corporate media, the administration, or among Democrats in Washington has gotten round to telling us that the public option has been eviscerated. But its powerful appeal and the awesome power of the word “public” are offered by Obama supporters as the central reasons to shut up, clap harder, and get behind the president on this.
Taxing the rich, paying for health care. How the Obama Plan stacks up against single payer.
Along with being funded by cuts in Medicaid, the Obama plan is supposed to be funded by taxing those who make $300,000 or more per year. That's not a bad thing. The wealthy don't pay nearly enough taxes. But the US already spends more on health care than anyplace else on the planet while leaving a greater portion of its population uninsured than anybody.
The Obama plan will not contain costs. It will subsidize the insurance vampires well into the next decade. On the other hand, single payer would eliminate the private insurance industry altogether. In many advanced industrial countries, most of the practices private insurers follow here, such as cherry picking healthy patients while dumping and denying sick ones, are illegal. Why can we do that?
Single payer, according to a study by the California Nurses Association would eliminate 550,000 jobs in private insurance while creating 3.2 million new ones in actual health care. It would be responsible for $100 billion in wages annually and a source of immense tax revenues for local governments.
So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?
The Obama plan seems calculated to buy time for private insurers, to end the health care discussion for a decade or more without solving the health care problem, do so in a way that discredits the very idea of everybody in- nobody out health care. It will leave tens of millions uninsured, a hundred million or more underinsured, and the same parasitic private interests in charge of the American health care system that run it now.
The Obama plan as it now stands requires us to let another 18,000 die for each of the next three years and allow more than a million additional families to be bankrupted by medical expenses before we can judge whether or not the plan is working. It's easy to imagine Obama partisans telling us in mid 2013 that it's still too early to be sure.
The Kucinich amendment, which allows the few states wealthy enough to try it the liberty to fashion their own single payer regimes is intended to attract progressives and single payer votes in Congress without breaking the bubble. By itself, it should not be a reason to support this bill.. The wealthiest state in the union is probably California, and it's handing out IOUs instead of salaries this month. It's hard to see what would be lost if this health care bill went down in flames, and we started over again next year.
Can he get away with it?
Maybe. Maybe not. If the corporate media and the president can keep discussion of the devilish details to a minimum, if they can silence, co-opt and intimidate the forces to Obama's left --- if they can keep most of the public inside their bubble of fake reality, Barack Obama may achieve his goal of thwarting the reform that most of the American people want --- an everybody in, nobody out single payer health care system on the model of Canada or Australia, or Medicare for All. It won't be close, it won't be easy, and with nothing to be gained, progressives shouldn't make it any easier.
Since the president's success depends mostly on keeping people silent and in the dark, he will probably be unable to mobilize the 13 million phone numbers and email addresses collected during the recent presidential campaign, and now held by OFA, his campaign arm. If an organizing call went out to them, too many would try to read the bill and discuss the options, and such a discussion could easily get out of hand. When OFA called house meetings on health care last December, the most frequently advanced question was why we couldn't or shouldn't get a single payer health care system.
Single payer isn't dead yet. It's very much alive among Barack Obama's own supporters. To succeed, he has to bury it alive, to keep them in the bubble, in the dark and quiet, or clapping so loudly they cannot hear themselves or each other think. It's not over.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at BAR, and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com
Secret Identity
http://www.secret-identity.net/preview.html
Secret Identity:The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster
On Sale April 1, 2009. Hardcover. 160 pages.
CRAIG YOE has been called "the freaking Indiana Jones of comics" and a "twisted archivist of the ridiculous and the sublime." Publishers Weekly, while they call his work "brilliant" and Yoe "a madman/ visionary," say he is "ruining America's youth."
Secret Identity showcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics—Superman's co-creator Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after trying to reclaim the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called Nights of Horror, sold under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Supreme Court. A murder trial, juvenile delinquency, anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham, and the neo-Nazi Brooklyn Thrill Killers gang all figure into this sensational story.
The discovery of this artwork and the story behind it by historian Craig Yoe reveals the "secret identity" of this revered comics creator, and is sure to change the way we look at Shuster and his creations—Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Jimmy Olsen—forever.
Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/05/eighteen-challenges-in-contemporary-literature/
Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature
By Bruce Sterling
May 30, 2009
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.
5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.
6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.
7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.
8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.
9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader’s relationship to belle-lettres.
10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.
11. Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.
12. Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.
13. “Convergence culture” obliterating former distinctions between media; books becoming one minor aspect of huge tweet/ blog/ comics/ games / soundtrack/ television / cinema / ancillary-merchandise pro-fan franchises.
14. Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.
15. Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.
16. Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.
17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.
18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.
Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature
By Bruce Sterling
May 30, 2009
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.
5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.
6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.
7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.
8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.
9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader’s relationship to belle-lettres.
10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.
11. Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.
12. Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.
13. “Convergence culture” obliterating former distinctions between media; books becoming one minor aspect of huge tweet/ blog/ comics/ games / soundtrack/ television / cinema / ancillary-merchandise pro-fan franchises.
14. Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.
15. Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.
16. Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.
17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.
18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.
Barnes & Noble Makes a Big Splash Into E-books
http://www.pcworld.com/article/168724/barnes_and_noble_makes_a_big_splash_into_ebooks.html
Barnes & Noble Makes a Big Splash Into E-books
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
Jul 20, 2009
Barnes & Noble, which calls itself the world's largest bookseller, has given hints that e-books will play an important role in the company's future strategy. Today, we get the first insights to Barnes' digital strategy with the company's two-prong announcement of the Barnes & Noble eBookstore and its e-book reader plans -- including the company's partnership with Plastic Logic to produce an e-book device.
The eBookstore, launched today, offers 700,000 titles according to Barnes & Nobles' press release, but in a conference call after the release went out, Barnes & Noble clarified that it includes Google's 500,000 free public domain books as part of that number. That means for now, Amazon's Kindle store has the edge: It offers more than 300,000 titles. As on Amazon's Kindle store, the Barnes & Noble eBookstore will offer new releases and bestsellers at $9.99. Barnes says it expects its selection to increase to over one million titles over the course of the next year, including e-books from established publishers, independent direct-to-e-book publishers, and Google.
When asked about how quickly Barnes & Noble planned to grow its portion of the eBookstore (excluding Google offerings), William J. Lynch, President of BN.com, reiterated "We're committed to offering Barnes & Noble consumers every title available in digital format."
Barnes & Noble's eBookstore will support only EPub, the free and open e-book standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum. Books will have DRM, and will be downloadable to your device as well as digitally stored in Your Library. According to Lynch, you can download books to multiple devices; Barnes & Noble offers its latest eReader software across a number of device platforms, including mobile phones (iPhone, Blackberry) and PC and Mac computers, and as part of today's announcement, noted that the eBookstore will be available across all device platforms via the eReader software (acquired earlier this year from Fictionwise).
If you lose your cell phone or your hard drive fails, no worries: Barnes & Noble makes it easy to access your books digitally. "We have on record proof that you purchased the file, so you can download as many times as you need to," explains Lynch.
In addition to the eBookstore, Barnes & Noble discussed its partnership with Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic's eReader digital book reader is due out in early 2010. The Barnes & Noble eBookstore will be the exclusive storefront for the eReader; the company declined to discuss any other level of cooperation between the two companies, though it would not be surprising for Barnes & Noble to sell the eReader in its stores. "We have over 77 million readers who go through our stores," noted Lynch.
Even without knowing the device's price, the integrated Barnes & Noble eBookstore means that Barnes & Noble and Plastic have reached a powerful combination so far only seen from Amazon in the nascent e-book reader market. The Plastic Logic eReader device will be 8.5 by 11 inches, with a wireless connection -- making it a direct threat to Amazon's Kindle DX (also about the size of a sheet of paper, with wireless, and integrated Amazon Kindle bookstore). The on-device bookstore integration is a critical component of the puzzle: With it, an e-book reader offers the ease and immediacy of a digital shopping and acquisition experience, in addition to the convenience of an electronic book. Without an integrated storefront, an e-book reader is a static, lifeless device.
Barnes & Noble Makes a Big Splash Into E-books
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
Jul 20, 2009
Barnes & Noble, which calls itself the world's largest bookseller, has given hints that e-books will play an important role in the company's future strategy. Today, we get the first insights to Barnes' digital strategy with the company's two-prong announcement of the Barnes & Noble eBookstore and its e-book reader plans -- including the company's partnership with Plastic Logic to produce an e-book device.
The eBookstore, launched today, offers 700,000 titles according to Barnes & Nobles' press release, but in a conference call after the release went out, Barnes & Noble clarified that it includes Google's 500,000 free public domain books as part of that number. That means for now, Amazon's Kindle store has the edge: It offers more than 300,000 titles. As on Amazon's Kindle store, the Barnes & Noble eBookstore will offer new releases and bestsellers at $9.99. Barnes says it expects its selection to increase to over one million titles over the course of the next year, including e-books from established publishers, independent direct-to-e-book publishers, and Google.
When asked about how quickly Barnes & Noble planned to grow its portion of the eBookstore (excluding Google offerings), William J. Lynch, President of BN.com, reiterated "We're committed to offering Barnes & Noble consumers every title available in digital format."
Barnes & Noble's eBookstore will support only EPub, the free and open e-book standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum. Books will have DRM, and will be downloadable to your device as well as digitally stored in Your Library. According to Lynch, you can download books to multiple devices; Barnes & Noble offers its latest eReader software across a number of device platforms, including mobile phones (iPhone, Blackberry) and PC and Mac computers, and as part of today's announcement, noted that the eBookstore will be available across all device platforms via the eReader software (acquired earlier this year from Fictionwise).
If you lose your cell phone or your hard drive fails, no worries: Barnes & Noble makes it easy to access your books digitally. "We have on record proof that you purchased the file, so you can download as many times as you need to," explains Lynch.
In addition to the eBookstore, Barnes & Noble discussed its partnership with Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic's eReader digital book reader is due out in early 2010. The Barnes & Noble eBookstore will be the exclusive storefront for the eReader; the company declined to discuss any other level of cooperation between the two companies, though it would not be surprising for Barnes & Noble to sell the eReader in its stores. "We have over 77 million readers who go through our stores," noted Lynch.
Even without knowing the device's price, the integrated Barnes & Noble eBookstore means that Barnes & Noble and Plastic have reached a powerful combination so far only seen from Amazon in the nascent e-book reader market. The Plastic Logic eReader device will be 8.5 by 11 inches, with a wireless connection -- making it a direct threat to Amazon's Kindle DX (also about the size of a sheet of paper, with wireless, and integrated Amazon Kindle bookstore). The on-device bookstore integration is a critical component of the puzzle: With it, an e-book reader offers the ease and immediacy of a digital shopping and acquisition experience, in addition to the convenience of an electronic book. Without an integrated storefront, an e-book reader is a static, lifeless device.
Famous Taco Bell Chihuahua Dead at 15
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534415,00.htmlFamous Taco Bell Chihuahua Dead at 15
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The famous Taco Bell Spokesdog – who charmed audiences with the catchphrase “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” – has died.
Gidget, the 15-year-old Chihuaha, suffered a fatal stroke Tuesday night, according to a report from People magazine.
The “mostly-retired” canine also appeared in the film “Legally Blonde 2,” starring as Bruiser’s mom. In addition, she appeared in a commercial for the ‘90s edition of Trivial Pursuit.
When she wasn’t starring in films and commercials, Gidget enjoyed taking hikes, sunning her fur and sleeping for 23 hours, her trainer Sue Chipperton told People.
“She made so many people happy,” Chipperton said. “Gidget always knew where the camera was.”
Miles Davis Quintet Skateboards
http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/miles_davis_quintet_skateboards/Miles Davis Quintet Skateboards
Posted by Tara McGinley
07.20.2009
Topics:
Art
Music
Tags:
skateboard
Miles Davis
Ian Johnson
Ian Johnson designed this jaw-dropping series of skateboards for Western Edition. The skateboards depict the 1959 lineup of the Miles Davis Quintet, the group who played on the classic album “Kind of Blue.”
The Happy Meal Turns 30
http://www.parentdish.com/2009/07/20/the-happy-meal-turns-30
The Happy Meal Turns 30
by Brett Singer
Jul 20th 2009
Categories: Eating & nutrition, In the news, Mealtime
The McDonald's Happy Meal is turning 30. Introduced in 1979, this staple of kid-friendly fast-food is now as recognizable as the McDonald's brand itself. The idea of the Happy Meal is so simple: A hamburger, fries and soda served in a cardboard box with a small toy. But it's not the box -- or the food -- that makes the Happy Meal iconic. It's the toys.
The Happy Meal toys are, of course, a stroke of marketing genius. Kids -- and the occasional adult -- will buy meal after meal in an effort to collect all of the toys in a series. And while this results in a lot of plastic Transformers in the back of Mom's car, in some cases, all those Happy Meals pay off: Some of the toys have become collectibles. The most popular Happy Meal item was the Teenie Beanie Babies. According to ABC News, McDonald's sold 100 million Happy Meals featuring the Ty stuffed toy in 1997, sparking "a national craze."
And there's money in Happy Meal toys, too, at least for some people: 11-year-old Luke Underwood of Notts, England, sold his Happy Meal toy collection at auction this spring for $11,000. That's a lot of French fries!
The toys in a Happy Meal aren't necessarily meant to be collectors items, though; they're intended for kids to play with, and carefully screened for safety. But while the toys aren't harmful, what about the food?
The meals offered in the modern Happy Meal are more balanced than those offered in 1979. Now parents can choose Chicken McNuggets instead of a burger, or apples with caramel dipping sauce instead of french fries. Cindy Good, McDonald's director of nutrition, tells ABC News that while the 1979 Happy Meal had 600 calories, today's "most popular Happy Meal [consists of] four-piece chicken McNuggets, apple dippers low fat caramel dip and 1 percent low fat milk," which totals just 375 calories. Not bad for an every-so-often take-out treat.
Brett Singer is the editor-in-chief of DaddyTips.com. You can follow his tweets at Twitter.com/brettsinger.
The Happy Meal Turns 30
by Brett Singer
Jul 20th 2009
Categories: Eating & nutrition, In the news, Mealtime
The McDonald's Happy Meal is turning 30. Introduced in 1979, this staple of kid-friendly fast-food is now as recognizable as the McDonald's brand itself. The idea of the Happy Meal is so simple: A hamburger, fries and soda served in a cardboard box with a small toy. But it's not the box -- or the food -- that makes the Happy Meal iconic. It's the toys.
The Happy Meal toys are, of course, a stroke of marketing genius. Kids -- and the occasional adult -- will buy meal after meal in an effort to collect all of the toys in a series. And while this results in a lot of plastic Transformers in the back of Mom's car, in some cases, all those Happy Meals pay off: Some of the toys have become collectibles. The most popular Happy Meal item was the Teenie Beanie Babies. According to ABC News, McDonald's sold 100 million Happy Meals featuring the Ty stuffed toy in 1997, sparking "a national craze."
And there's money in Happy Meal toys, too, at least for some people: 11-year-old Luke Underwood of Notts, England, sold his Happy Meal toy collection at auction this spring for $11,000. That's a lot of French fries!
The toys in a Happy Meal aren't necessarily meant to be collectors items, though; they're intended for kids to play with, and carefully screened for safety. But while the toys aren't harmful, what about the food?
The meals offered in the modern Happy Meal are more balanced than those offered in 1979. Now parents can choose Chicken McNuggets instead of a burger, or apples with caramel dipping sauce instead of french fries. Cindy Good, McDonald's director of nutrition, tells ABC News that while the 1979 Happy Meal had 600 calories, today's "most popular Happy Meal [consists of] four-piece chicken McNuggets, apple dippers low fat caramel dip and 1 percent low fat milk," which totals just 375 calories. Not bad for an every-so-often take-out treat.
Brett Singer is the editor-in-chief of DaddyTips.com. You can follow his tweets at Twitter.com/brettsinger.
Helped by a Big Name, Letterman Bounces Back
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/media/17late.htmlHelped by a Big Name, Letterman Bounces Back
By BILL CARTER
July 16, 2009
Is David Letterman back?
If not all the way, he certainly seems to be getting there. Mr. Letterman, CBS’s late-night star, scored an impressive win last week as his audience topped that of NBC’s “Tonight Show” and its new host, Conan O’Brien, during that show’s least-viewed week since total viewers have been measured.
And Mr. Letterman trumped his win with a show that became a television event Wednesday night as Paul McCartney returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater 45 years after the Beatles’ American TV debut and performed a concert on the marquee in front of a crowd of about 4,000.
On Wednesday, Mr. Letterman had 4.4 million viewers, to 2.5 million for Mr. O’Brien. ABC’s late-night entry, “Nightline,” also experiencing a resurgence, drew four million.
Mr. O’Brien continues to have the strongest of the shows among younger viewers that many advertisers prefer, though his margins in that area have shrunk in recent weeks. He has dropped to third place more regularly in total viewers, not a place where “Tonight” has often landed.
Last week, Mr. O’Brien attracted 2.8 million viewers, below the previous low for “Tonight,” 3.3 million, which Mr. O’Brien set in his third week. Mr. Letterman had 3.7 million. “Nightline,” helped by coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial, was the winner with 3.8 million. (“Nightline” benefits by being measured for half an hour versus an hour for the other shows.)
The “Tonight” numbers represented a steep drop from those scored by Jay Leno a year ago in the same week. Mr. Leno’s “Tonight” show had 4.6 million viewers, meaning Mr. O’Brien’s show has fallen by 38 percent.
The story among younger viewers, especially those 18 to 34, continues to be much better for Mr. O’Brien. He was up 26 percent in that group from Mr. Leno last year, though down 7 percent among viewers 18 to 49.
Mr. Letterman has been closing the gap a bit among younger viewers and last week managed a virtual tie with Mr. O’Brien among viewers 25 to 54, the first time he has done that since Mr. O’Brien’s arrival.
Guests have played a hand; Mr. O’Brien could hardly match Mr. McCartney (his guest was Dana Carvey) and ratings for NBC’s 10 p.m. time period, which can help or hurt late-night shows, were especially weak Wednesday night.
But one NBC late-night executive, who asked not to be identified when analyzing the network’s competitive situation, said of Mr. Letterman, “Dave is definitely on his game; Conan has to respond.”
In the Emmy nominations announced Wednesday, Mr. Letterman’s show secured five nominations. Mr. O’Brien’s show had one. (Mr. Leno’s had none.)
Wednesday’s show with Mr. McCartney was exciting even for the host. Mr. Letterman said in an e-mail comment: “Given the history of the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Theater, it’s humbling just to have him on the show. And for him to play in front of thousands in front of our theater was beyond generous and very special for us.”
Mr. McCartney made the suggestion to perform outdoors, an executive from the Letterman show said.
Mr. Letterman had leaned toward having Mr. McCartney sing on the same stage where the Beatles first appeared in America in 1964. But the singer said he would perform only if he could make it an event.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 17, 2009, on page B7 of the New York edition.
Silvio Berlusconi 'sex tapes' released
From The Konformist continuing series: "Why Silvio Berlusconi Is the Coolest World Leader":
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6724839.ece
From The Times July 23, 2009
Silvio Berlusconi 'sex tapes' released
Josephine McKenna in Rome
The saga of Silvio Berlusconi and the call girl took another twist yesterday with the release of a tape allegedly recorded while the pair were having sex and then discussing his performance.
In the third series of tapes and transcripts published this week by the left-leaning weekly L’Espresso, the woman, Patrizia D’Addario, apparently flatters the 72-year-old Prime Minister, adding: “You know how long it has been since I had sex like I had with you tonight ... It’s several months, since I broke up with my boyfriend ... Is this normal?”
A voice said to be that of Mr Berlusconi credits his performance as “a family thing”, then advises Ms D’Addario, 42, on sexual practices.
The tapes deepened the political outrage in Italy. Massimo Donadi, parliamentary leader of the left-wing Italy of Values party, called the Prime Minister’s behaviour “morally reprehensible”. Dario Franceschini, leader of the main centre-left opposition, said Mr Berlusconi was trapped in his own reality show.
The tapes, the third instalment of Mr Berlusconi’s encounter with Ms D’Addario, released over the past three days, left Italy wondering what would come next. There was no comment from Mr Berlusconi’s office. The previous day he had tried to shrug off the scandal by saying: “I’m no saint.”
After recordings in which Mr Berlusconi apparently asks Ms D’Addario to “wait for him in the big bed”, yesterday’s tapes took the listener inside the bedroom as the couple had intimate relations. He apparently tells her: “You should have sex with yourself — you should touch yourself often.”
In another tape, dated October 5, 2008, also released yesterday, the Prime Minister is allegedly heard showing Ms D’Addario around his Sardinian holiday home, Villa Certosa, where he has been known to invite attractive young women for parties.
On a tour of his 120-hectare (300 acre) property, Mr Berlusconi is recorded showing Ms D’Addario a lake that has swans. He tells her that 30 Phoenician tombs dating back to 300BC were found there.
Speaking on a video on the website of the Italian daily La Repubblica, owned by the Espresso group, Mr Franceschini, the Democratic Party leader, said: “There are many leaders, also from the centre Right, that keep a very clear division between their political and personal life. He instead chose to combine his public and private life from the very beginning. He now remains a prisoner of the same reality show.” The date of the alleged bedroom encounter was not given but Ms D’Addario was said to have been hired by Gianpaolo Tarantini, a businessman under investigation for corruption and abetting prostitution, to go to the Prime Minister’s residence in Rome twice in mid-October and on the night of November 4 last year.
In tapes and transcripts published earlier, Ms D’Addario was purportedly heard discussing her appointment in October with Mr Tarantini. He said that Mr Berlusconi would not be “taking you like an escort — he will be taking you as a friend of mine that I brought along” and that the Prime Minister did not use condoms.
Last night Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers said that they might sue.
At a meeting of his centre-right People of Freedom party, the Prime Minister said in an apparent reference to the tapes: “We let people keep their mobile phones because, at least when I am there, no inelegant situations can arise.” He has not denied that the woman went to his house but has said he did not know she was an escort.
The transcript included this exchange:
PD A young man would have come in a second.. I mean he would have come... Young men usually have a lot of pressure.
SB But if you will you allow me... (muffled) I believe it is a family thing.
PD What?
SB Having an orgasm.
PD You know how long it has been since I had sex like I had with you tonight. It’s several months, since I broke with my boyfriend. Is this normal?
SB May I? You should have sex with yourself. You should touch yourself often.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6724839.ece
From The Times July 23, 2009
Silvio Berlusconi 'sex tapes' released
Josephine McKenna in Rome
The saga of Silvio Berlusconi and the call girl took another twist yesterday with the release of a tape allegedly recorded while the pair were having sex and then discussing his performance.
In the third series of tapes and transcripts published this week by the left-leaning weekly L’Espresso, the woman, Patrizia D’Addario, apparently flatters the 72-year-old Prime Minister, adding: “You know how long it has been since I had sex like I had with you tonight ... It’s several months, since I broke up with my boyfriend ... Is this normal?”
A voice said to be that of Mr Berlusconi credits his performance as “a family thing”, then advises Ms D’Addario, 42, on sexual practices.
The tapes deepened the political outrage in Italy. Massimo Donadi, parliamentary leader of the left-wing Italy of Values party, called the Prime Minister’s behaviour “morally reprehensible”. Dario Franceschini, leader of the main centre-left opposition, said Mr Berlusconi was trapped in his own reality show.
The tapes, the third instalment of Mr Berlusconi’s encounter with Ms D’Addario, released over the past three days, left Italy wondering what would come next. There was no comment from Mr Berlusconi’s office. The previous day he had tried to shrug off the scandal by saying: “I’m no saint.”
After recordings in which Mr Berlusconi apparently asks Ms D’Addario to “wait for him in the big bed”, yesterday’s tapes took the listener inside the bedroom as the couple had intimate relations. He apparently tells her: “You should have sex with yourself — you should touch yourself often.”
In another tape, dated October 5, 2008, also released yesterday, the Prime Minister is allegedly heard showing Ms D’Addario around his Sardinian holiday home, Villa Certosa, where he has been known to invite attractive young women for parties.
On a tour of his 120-hectare (300 acre) property, Mr Berlusconi is recorded showing Ms D’Addario a lake that has swans. He tells her that 30 Phoenician tombs dating back to 300BC were found there.
Speaking on a video on the website of the Italian daily La Repubblica, owned by the Espresso group, Mr Franceschini, the Democratic Party leader, said: “There are many leaders, also from the centre Right, that keep a very clear division between their political and personal life. He instead chose to combine his public and private life from the very beginning. He now remains a prisoner of the same reality show.” The date of the alleged bedroom encounter was not given but Ms D’Addario was said to have been hired by Gianpaolo Tarantini, a businessman under investigation for corruption and abetting prostitution, to go to the Prime Minister’s residence in Rome twice in mid-October and on the night of November 4 last year.
In tapes and transcripts published earlier, Ms D’Addario was purportedly heard discussing her appointment in October with Mr Tarantini. He said that Mr Berlusconi would not be “taking you like an escort — he will be taking you as a friend of mine that I brought along” and that the Prime Minister did not use condoms.
Last night Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers said that they might sue.
At a meeting of his centre-right People of Freedom party, the Prime Minister said in an apparent reference to the tapes: “We let people keep their mobile phones because, at least when I am there, no inelegant situations can arise.” He has not denied that the woman went to his house but has said he did not know she was an escort.
The transcript included this exchange:
PD A young man would have come in a second.. I mean he would have come... Young men usually have a lot of pressure.
SB But if you will you allow me... (muffled) I believe it is a family thing.
PD What?
SB Having an orgasm.
PD You know how long it has been since I had sex like I had with you tonight. It’s several months, since I broke with my boyfriend. Is this normal?
SB May I? You should have sex with yourself. You should touch yourself often.
The Shadow Over Santa Susana Book Signing
http://www.laluzdejesus.com/shows/previousshows/2009/Events/Shadow%20Over%20Santa%20Susana/Shadow_Santa_Susana_Signing.htmLA LUZ de JESUS GALLERY
presents
The Shadow Over Santa Susana
by Adam Gorightly
Lecture and Book Signing,
Live Musical Performance
& Look-a-like Contest with Prizes!
Mike Marinacci, author of "Mysterious California," will also read the forward he penned for Mr. Gorightly's book.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
6 - 9 PM
Black Magic, Mind Control and The Manson Family.
To mark the 40Th anniversary of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, we have arranged for an in-store lecture and book signing by Adam Gorightly to celebrate this new, special edition publication of "The Shadow Over Santa Susana" from Creation Books.
This new edition has over 200 RARE PHOTOS.
This very special event will also include a musical set by the band, The Flying Sorcerers, which will include the song Flowers & Blood, co-written by Adam Gorightly about the Manson family to commemorate the publication of this book.
A look-a-like contest will be open to all in attendance with prizes awarded for the best
Manson, Squeaky and Sexy Sadie likenesses.
The title "The Shadow Over Santa Susana" is an updated version of the wild story of Charles Manson and the Family. Author Adam Gorightly's massive exposé on the late 1960's convergence between the Love-Ins of the "Hippie" counter culture," the so called Hollywood "Beautiful People," and the apocalyptic presence of one Charles Manson. Gorightly not only takes you deep into the starstruck city of Los Angles, through the desolate, desert landscape of Death Valley, and the inner workings of the "Family," but also deep into the creepy-crawls of Charlie's world and mind. "The Shadow Over Santa Susana" is the most well-balanced account of what transpired, more so than even Bugliosi's classic "Helter Skelter," which is told from a dry, prosecutoral perspective. "The Shadow Over Santa Susana" retains the necessary, factual attention to detail while interjecting a sense of the insider, underground perspective. It is much more contemporary and far more exhaustive than any previously attempted work on this subject -bar none!
It is superlatively definitive. Reserve your copy today!
This event at La Luz de Jesus Gallery on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 will be quite memorable and historic given that this event takes place on the exact day of the 40th anniversary of the Tate / LaBianca murders -and in the same Los Feliz neighborhood, no less!
For further information contact us at (323) 663-0122
or E-mail us at sales@soapplant.com
Felix Cane, Pole Dancer News
Felix Cane: Zumanity on the Tonight Show, Miss Pole Dance World 2009
Zumanity on the Tonight ShowIn case you wasn't aware, Zumanity (the Cirque du Soleil show I'm in) recently performed my entire act on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian. This was a huge boost for Zumanity as the Tonight Show is watch by millions of people around the US and the world.
I have embedded the video from the show on my website for everyone to enjoy:
http://www.felixpoledancing.com.au/videos/tonight-show-zumanity-felix.php
*
Miss Pole Dance World 2009http://www.felixpoledancing.com.au/news/2009/04/miss-pole-dance-world-2009/
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wow! What an amazing experience this competition turned out to be. I will try to cover as much as I can starting with my arrival in Kingston, Jamaica…I arrived at 7pm on Sunday 19th of May very tired and very stressed about my visa. My appointment with the US Embassy was scheduled for 12pm on the following Monday morning.
Being stuck in Mexico for the week before leaving to go to Jamaica meant that I had not had time to organize a costume for the competition. So I had brought with me some glue, stick on gems, a pair or fish-nets, a halterneck bra and some hot-pants. That Sunday night was spent frantically trying to fashion a beautiful costume out of some old knickers!! Please view the photos and let me know what you think!
The next day the visa was approved and after that I travelled up to Runaway Bay just next to Ocho Rios and checked into Hendonism III. Right from the minute I stepped onto the property all my stresses and worries evaporated in the Jamaican sun. It was amazing! The wonderful people at Pole Passion made me feel so welcome and it was so wonderful to be surrounded by pole enthusiasts from all over the world.
I met the most fantastic people and made some beautiful new friends. All of the competetors had almost a week before the competition to get to know each other and exchange tips and tricks. I had an absolute blast.
Then the night of the Miss Pole Dance World competition everyone was really nervous – I could feel my heart pounding in my shoes! Luckily I had Chris there to calm me down and reassure me that I wouldn’t all of a sudden forget how to pole dance or fall off the pole and onto my head! The girls were amazing!! What a talented bunch we are. There were a million new moves and such fantastic creativity and strength. I didn’t envy the judges at all that night it would have been such a hard job.
They took their sweet time to announce the winners and by the time they got to first place I was nearly dying with nerves! When they announced my name I almost fell over I was so thrilled!
I want to thank Pole Passion, Hendonism III, Bobbi’s Pole Studio and my wonderful Christopher for supporting me and for making the Miss Pole Dance World competition possible.
All my love
XXXXXXX
Felix
Contact
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/felix.cane
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/felixpoledancing
“My Hell in an Israeli Jail"
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/%E2%80%9Cmy-hell-israeli-jail%E2%80%9D-israel-prison-population-90-percent-black-africans
“My Hell in an Israeli Jail”: Israel Prison Population 90 Percent Black Africans
It should come as no surprise that a settler state based on the rule of one ethnic group would be steeped in racist public policies. But the sheer scope of Israel's institutional oppression of Africans shocked human rights activists imprisoned for attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. “The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison,” said a Black British activist. “The prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.”
07/21/2009
by Voice Online, UK
“Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli government.”
Black British filmmaker Ishmahil Blagrove has launched an outspoken attack against the “racist” Israeli government after being abducted from the high seas and imprisoned for seven days.
Jamaica-born Blagrove, who lives in West London, was one of six British nationals taking part in a mercy mission to Gaza who were seized from the vessel Spirit of Humanity on June 30 by Israeli military forces.
The ship, which Blagrove says was illegally boarded in international waters, was bringing a cargo of medicines, children’s toys and reconstruction materials to the devastated people of Gaza.
“I’m not concerned with the time that I spent in jail because I am now free, however, there are still thousands of people being persecuted as we speak,” said Blagrove.
“I went on the voyage to deliver medical aid, toys and film a documentary about Palestinians living in Gaza post the 22-day bombing last year however, I was unable to fulfill my mission and have now returned with a bigger story to tell. Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli governmentand the world needs to know.”
Sailing from Larnaca, Cyprus, with a crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, those on board included Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
“We were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships.”
Blagrove told how Israeli warships surrounded their vessel threatening to open fire if they did not turn back.
“We were 18 miles of the coast of Gaza and 23 miles outside the international water boundaries. The Israelis made contact with us via radio at approximately 1.30 am. Our ship had been given security clearance by the port authorities in Cyprus so we posed no threat, yet the Israeli government insisted that we aborted our journey.
“When we refused to be intimidated, they jammed our instrumentation and blocked our GPS, radar, and navigation systems, putting our lives at risk.
“Before we knew it we were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships and helicopters were also flying over our heads. They stormed our ship and took us against our will to Ashdod Port in Israel.
“They confiscated and destroyed all our equipment including all our medical aid and toys and eventually we were all taken to Ramla High Security Prison where we were imprisoned.”
“Most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans.”
Describing his experience inside Ramla, Blagrove said: “Without insulting the memory of those that have survived the Nazi concentration camps, the prison we were kept in can only be described in that manor. But most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans. I was absolutely dumbfounded!
“Israel operates under a right-wing racist government that discriminates anyone that is non-Jewish.
“The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison. The next day 300 more Africans were taken in and the prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.
“There were Africans from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia and so on. The prison population in Israel is 90 percent black, which is why I was so welcomed by fellow inmates. There are thousands upon thousands of Africans inside the Israeli prisons.
“I was told atrocious stories. Real harrowing tales and countless inmates that have been transferred from one prison to the other informed me and that every prison is the same and the government is refusing to send them back to their own country.”
“I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison.”
Haunted by the conditions of the prison, he said: “I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others. We were constantly being barked at and threatened with physical abuse. If you disobey, prisoners are stripped naked and put inside a hole with no lights or heating. We were seen as sub-human.
“In the corner of the room there was a white plastic bag full of single slices of bread, which was our breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were lucky they occasional gave us a cup of yoghurt to share.
“The toilets are two tubes and to pass your waste you have to aim and squat. The smell was indescribable because it was a mixture of sweat, urine and feces.”
Explaining that the government officials tried to force him to sign documents in Hebrew, which is illegal as all prisoners must be able to understand what they are consenting too, Blagrove said: “My fellow passengers and I were only kept for seven days because they knew the world was watching.”
“I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others.”
Quoting Martin Luther King, Blagrove stated: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I want people to realize that social injustice is an international struggle and one man’s suffering in any region around the world cannot be ignored by others.
The filmmaker, who is currently make a documentary about African roots in Cuba, added: “The Israeli government has been very clever in stopping the truth being told about their regime because whenever anybody speaks out they are instantly labeled anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish.
“I challenge anybody to go and investigate the crimes against humanity inside Israeli prisons and the people of Gaza.”
“I am disturbed that the mainstream British media, and in particular the BBC, has chosen to ignore what is taking place in Israel.
“If we had been kidnapped by Iranians it would have been front page on every newspaper and David Milliband would have made a public statement including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.
“There is a conspiracy of silence to protect Israel from the crimes it commits. The biggest lie ever told is that Israel is defending themselves from Palestinians who are trying to kill them. Until people broaden their minds and really unearth the truth this problem will not go away.”
“My Hell in an Israeli Jail”: Israel Prison Population 90 Percent Black Africans
It should come as no surprise that a settler state based on the rule of one ethnic group would be steeped in racist public policies. But the sheer scope of Israel's institutional oppression of Africans shocked human rights activists imprisoned for attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. “The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison,” said a Black British activist. “The prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.”
07/21/2009
by Voice Online, UK
“Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli government.”
Black British filmmaker Ishmahil Blagrove has launched an outspoken attack against the “racist” Israeli government after being abducted from the high seas and imprisoned for seven days.
Jamaica-born Blagrove, who lives in West London, was one of six British nationals taking part in a mercy mission to Gaza who were seized from the vessel Spirit of Humanity on June 30 by Israeli military forces.
The ship, which Blagrove says was illegally boarded in international waters, was bringing a cargo of medicines, children’s toys and reconstruction materials to the devastated people of Gaza.
“I’m not concerned with the time that I spent in jail because I am now free, however, there are still thousands of people being persecuted as we speak,” said Blagrove.
“I went on the voyage to deliver medical aid, toys and film a documentary about Palestinians living in Gaza post the 22-day bombing last year however, I was unable to fulfill my mission and have now returned with a bigger story to tell. Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli governmentand the world needs to know.”
Sailing from Larnaca, Cyprus, with a crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, those on board included Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
“We were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships.”
Blagrove told how Israeli warships surrounded their vessel threatening to open fire if they did not turn back.
“We were 18 miles of the coast of Gaza and 23 miles outside the international water boundaries. The Israelis made contact with us via radio at approximately 1.30 am. Our ship had been given security clearance by the port authorities in Cyprus so we posed no threat, yet the Israeli government insisted that we aborted our journey.
“When we refused to be intimidated, they jammed our instrumentation and blocked our GPS, radar, and navigation systems, putting our lives at risk.
“Before we knew it we were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships and helicopters were also flying over our heads. They stormed our ship and took us against our will to Ashdod Port in Israel.
“They confiscated and destroyed all our equipment including all our medical aid and toys and eventually we were all taken to Ramla High Security Prison where we were imprisoned.”
“Most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans.”
Describing his experience inside Ramla, Blagrove said: “Without insulting the memory of those that have survived the Nazi concentration camps, the prison we were kept in can only be described in that manor. But most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans. I was absolutely dumbfounded!
“Israel operates under a right-wing racist government that discriminates anyone that is non-Jewish.
“The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison. The next day 300 more Africans were taken in and the prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.
“There were Africans from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia and so on. The prison population in Israel is 90 percent black, which is why I was so welcomed by fellow inmates. There are thousands upon thousands of Africans inside the Israeli prisons.
“I was told atrocious stories. Real harrowing tales and countless inmates that have been transferred from one prison to the other informed me and that every prison is the same and the government is refusing to send them back to their own country.”
“I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison.”
Haunted by the conditions of the prison, he said: “I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others. We were constantly being barked at and threatened with physical abuse. If you disobey, prisoners are stripped naked and put inside a hole with no lights or heating. We were seen as sub-human.
“In the corner of the room there was a white plastic bag full of single slices of bread, which was our breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were lucky they occasional gave us a cup of yoghurt to share.
“The toilets are two tubes and to pass your waste you have to aim and squat. The smell was indescribable because it was a mixture of sweat, urine and feces.”
Explaining that the government officials tried to force him to sign documents in Hebrew, which is illegal as all prisoners must be able to understand what they are consenting too, Blagrove said: “My fellow passengers and I were only kept for seven days because they knew the world was watching.”
“I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others.”
Quoting Martin Luther King, Blagrove stated: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I want people to realize that social injustice is an international struggle and one man’s suffering in any region around the world cannot be ignored by others.
The filmmaker, who is currently make a documentary about African roots in Cuba, added: “The Israeli government has been very clever in stopping the truth being told about their regime because whenever anybody speaks out they are instantly labeled anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish.
“I challenge anybody to go and investigate the crimes against humanity inside Israeli prisons and the people of Gaza.”
“I am disturbed that the mainstream British media, and in particular the BBC, has chosen to ignore what is taking place in Israel.
“If we had been kidnapped by Iranians it would have been front page on every newspaper and David Milliband would have made a public statement including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.
“There is a conspiracy of silence to protect Israel from the crimes it commits. The biggest lie ever told is that Israel is defending themselves from Palestinians who are trying to kill them. Until people broaden their minds and really unearth the truth this problem will not go away.”
Websites...
Thanks to Rense.com and others for the following...
http://www.physicaladdictions.com
Physical Addictions,
The premium resource of natural, sports nutrition, body building supplements and fat burners. We carry everything you need for fitness, weight lifting and muscle building. Since 1989, Physical Addictions takes pride delivering the highest quality products, fastest service (orders ship same day) and lowest prices in the nutritional, athletic and dietary supplement industry.
*
http://www.projectgreenlife.com
Dear Friend and Fellow Traveler ... Welcome!
We at Project GreenLife are so pleased that you have come to our site.
First and foremost we want you to know we love what we do. For some, this means being on the front-lines every day, receiving calls and answering your questions that facilitate you taking control of your health and wellness.
*
http://www.bigjohnson.com 
Welcome to Big Johnson. The official site of the world famous Big Johnson T-Shirt.
http://www.physicaladdictions.com
Physical Addictions,
The premium resource of natural, sports nutrition, body building supplements and fat burners. We carry everything you need for fitness, weight lifting and muscle building. Since 1989, Physical Addictions takes pride delivering the highest quality products, fastest service (orders ship same day) and lowest prices in the nutritional, athletic and dietary supplement industry.
*
http://www.projectgreenlife.com
Dear Friend and Fellow Traveler ... Welcome!
We at Project GreenLife are so pleased that you have come to our site.
First and foremost we want you to know we love what we do. For some, this means being on the front-lines every day, receiving calls and answering your questions that facilitate you taking control of your health and wellness.
*
http://www.bigjohnson.com 
Welcome to Big Johnson. The official site of the world famous Big Johnson T-Shirt.
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored
http://theoggblog.com/?p=111
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored by New York Times
Jul 17th, 2009 by Chuck Ogg.
The situation is getting worse in Honduras. US representatives Bill Delahunt, José Serrano and Jim McGovern are pushing a resolution condemning the coup.
But you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times.
In fact, the story no longer merits front-page headlines. If you dig deeper, you discover that the chief negotiator said Thursday a series of compromises had been achieved between the two “camps” claiming the right to rule Honduras. We are given a sense of optimism with the caution that tensions remain high and conflicts remain–particularly about who will be president. But this agreement is presented as progress. Still they repeat the lies of the coup leaders “fears” about President Zelaya seeking another term and subvert the Constitution. And in the name of “objectivity,” the criminal gang of coup leaders are referred to by the more clinical term “de facto government.”
To it’s credit the New York Times reported correctly the CID-Gallup poll showing Zelaya remains more popular than his installed replacement, with, 46 percent of Hondurans hold a favorable opinion of Zelaya, compared to 30 percent for Micheletti.” Apparently many did not, according to FAIR’s Counterspin, reporting instead figuresd skewed the opposite direction.
But missing from all such news sources have the most serious developments. According to the School of the Americas Watch, the situation has been getting worse, with the “The Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH)” publishing a report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations.”
Fortunately Zelaya’s supporters are not limited to Honduras, they exist here in the United States as well. The House resolution 630 condemns “the June 28 military coup in Honduras, led by graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC).”
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored by New York Times
Jul 17th, 2009 by Chuck Ogg.
The situation is getting worse in Honduras. US representatives Bill Delahunt, José Serrano and Jim McGovern are pushing a resolution condemning the coup.
But you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times.
In fact, the story no longer merits front-page headlines. If you dig deeper, you discover that the chief negotiator said Thursday a series of compromises had been achieved between the two “camps” claiming the right to rule Honduras. We are given a sense of optimism with the caution that tensions remain high and conflicts remain–particularly about who will be president. But this agreement is presented as progress. Still they repeat the lies of the coup leaders “fears” about President Zelaya seeking another term and subvert the Constitution. And in the name of “objectivity,” the criminal gang of coup leaders are referred to by the more clinical term “de facto government.”
To it’s credit the New York Times reported correctly the CID-Gallup poll showing Zelaya remains more popular than his installed replacement, with, 46 percent of Hondurans hold a favorable opinion of Zelaya, compared to 30 percent for Micheletti.” Apparently many did not, according to FAIR’s Counterspin, reporting instead figuresd skewed the opposite direction.
But missing from all such news sources have the most serious developments. According to the School of the Americas Watch, the situation has been getting worse, with the “The Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH)” publishing a report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations.”
Fortunately Zelaya’s supporters are not limited to Honduras, they exist here in the United States as well. The House resolution 630 condemns “the June 28 military coup in Honduras, led by graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC).”
Project Censored Needs Your Support
Project Censored and Media Freedom Foundation need your continuing support to document important news stories from independent media ignored by the mainstream corporate media in the US.
Because of Project Censored’s work millions of people are aware of the massive death rates of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan (Story #1, 2009) and the continuing undermining of American civil liberties (Story #1, 2008). You will soon see the emerging stories for the Censored 2010 yearbook. The list includes how $3.2 billion was spent on lobbying Congress in 2008, and how the Obama administration, despite contrary campaign promises, is continuing much of the same global military agenda we saw the last eight years.
Eight years ago the Project Censored team formed the Media Freedom Foundation (MFF) to serve as a 501-c-3 non-profit corporation for the perpetuation of Project Censored’s work. The Board of Directors of Media Freedom Foundation recently held a quarterly board meeting and set out plans to continue to prioritize fund raising for Project Censored at Sonoma State University, and to also support the creation of Media Freedom International with affiliate Colleges/Universities all over the world modeled after Project Censored.
We will soon be launching the new Media Freedom International (MFI) website http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/ that will feature daily news validated by college/university research teams. You may already be aware of our daily Validated Independents News (VIN) feeds on our website from nineteen trustworthy news sources http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources. Or just click on the PNN button, which can also be accessed from the PC homepage http://projectcensored.org to see daily VIN news.
We are already producing a weekly VIN radio news program airing on the Flashpoints program on KPFA and numerous other stations every Friday at 5:00 P.M. PST.
We would like to personally ask each one of you to consider making a special gift of support. Our collective efforts require us to raise $50,000 per year through donor appeals, and special fund raising events. Your continuing support is needed to make our 34th year a success and continue this work for freedom of information.
We now have over $7000 received towards our $25,000 summer fund drive goal . You can donate and watch our progress towards that goal on-line at http://projectcensored.org. If we are able to raise $25,000 twice a year from you, our supporters, with our other resources—book royalties, special events, speaking fees, direct Censored yearbook sales, web advertising & sales, instructional related activities fees, and the occasional foundation grant—we will be able to sustain and expand our work for years to come.
Please consider making a special gift to support this important work in difficult times. Any amount is perfectly fine. Our average donation is $30. But for this special fund drive anyone gifting $100 or more, will receive an autographed copy of Censored 2010 by the end of the summer signed to you by the editors, Mickey Huff and myself. A free media with open public information brings back the old saying of the 1960s—Power to the People. We know you agree.
Sincerely,
Peter Phillips and Project Censored 2009
Because of Project Censored’s work millions of people are aware of the massive death rates of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan (Story #1, 2009) and the continuing undermining of American civil liberties (Story #1, 2008). You will soon see the emerging stories for the Censored 2010 yearbook. The list includes how $3.2 billion was spent on lobbying Congress in 2008, and how the Obama administration, despite contrary campaign promises, is continuing much of the same global military agenda we saw the last eight years.
Eight years ago the Project Censored team formed the Media Freedom Foundation (MFF) to serve as a 501-c-3 non-profit corporation for the perpetuation of Project Censored’s work. The Board of Directors of Media Freedom Foundation recently held a quarterly board meeting and set out plans to continue to prioritize fund raising for Project Censored at Sonoma State University, and to also support the creation of Media Freedom International with affiliate Colleges/Universities all over the world modeled after Project Censored.
We will soon be launching the new Media Freedom International (MFI) website http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/ that will feature daily news validated by college/university research teams. You may already be aware of our daily Validated Independents News (VIN) feeds on our website from nineteen trustworthy news sources http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources. Or just click on the PNN button, which can also be accessed from the PC homepage http://projectcensored.org to see daily VIN news.
We are already producing a weekly VIN radio news program airing on the Flashpoints program on KPFA and numerous other stations every Friday at 5:00 P.M. PST.
We would like to personally ask each one of you to consider making a special gift of support. Our collective efforts require us to raise $50,000 per year through donor appeals, and special fund raising events. Your continuing support is needed to make our 34th year a success and continue this work for freedom of information.
We now have over $7000 received towards our $25,000 summer fund drive goal . You can donate and watch our progress towards that goal on-line at http://projectcensored.org. If we are able to raise $25,000 twice a year from you, our supporters, with our other resources—book royalties, special events, speaking fees, direct Censored yearbook sales, web advertising & sales, instructional related activities fees, and the occasional foundation grant—we will be able to sustain and expand our work for years to come.
Please consider making a special gift to support this important work in difficult times. Any amount is perfectly fine. Our average donation is $30. But for this special fund drive anyone gifting $100 or more, will receive an autographed copy of Censored 2010 by the end of the summer signed to you by the editors, Mickey Huff and myself. A free media with open public information brings back the old saying of the 1960s—Power to the People. We know you agree.
Sincerely,
Peter Phillips and Project Censored 2009
Obama press conference
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/obam-j23.shtml
Obama press conference: Evasions and lies on plan to slash health care for workers
By Patrick Martin
23 July 2009
President Obama’s press conference Wednesday night was an hour-long effort to conceal from the American people the sweeping impact of the cuts in medical benefits that will be imposed in his administration’s planned restructuring of the US health care system.
With major health care bills proceeding through both the House and the Senate, and the White House engaged in detailed negotiations with congressional Democrats and Republicans, Obama focused his opening statement on the issue and nearly every question from the White House press corps followed suit.
The opening statement made only one mention of the 47 million people now without health insurance, and did not repeat Obama’s election campaign promises of universal coverage. Instead, he spoke almost exclusively about the need to slash spending on medical care, particularly on the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs which underwrite health care for the elderly, the disabled and the poor.
“The biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid,” he said. “So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit.”
“I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it,” he added, pointing to a plan to “create an independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare on an annual basis.”
As always is the case in a US presidential press conference, Obama was addressing two basic audiences—the ruling elite and the general population. But rarely have the messages being delivered been so fundamentally at odds. Obama combined vague promises of improvements in health care for the American people with direct pledges to the financial aristocracy that his plan would cut health care spending.
Obama repeatedly stressed that his number one priority was to slash spending on medical care, both by corporate America and by the federal government. At one point he declared that unless costs are reduced, “Medicare and Medicaid will break the federal budget.” No such considerations have restrained his administration’s open-ended bailout of Wall Street—at a direct cost of $4.7 trillion, with another $19 trillion in guarantees—or the spending of trillions on continuing and escalating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To working people, Obama offered examples of the abuses inflicted by private insurance companies—cutting off benefits, arbitrary rate increases, refusal to pay for life-saving procedures—making a show of sympathy with the victims of medicine-for-profit, even as he pushes ahead with plans to make these conditions even worse.
In response to reporters’ questions about the sacrifices he was prepared to ask of ordinary people, Obama was careful to disguise the real implications of the measures now being prepared. One reporter asked if he would support a list of cost-cutting measures—fewer tests, fewer choices, less end-of-life care. Obama evaded the issue with a glib phrase, saying he would ask people only to “give up paying for things that don’t make you healthier.”
Another reporter asked the US president to detail “specifically what kind of pain and sacrifice” he was prepared to demand of current or future Medicare beneficiaries. Here Obama simply lied, saying that he “won’t reduce Medicare benefits” but would “make delivery more efficient.”
The final questioner along these lines asked Obama to guarantee that under the public insurance option proposed as part of his plan the government would not reduce benefits or coverage for anyone. Obama first made a diversion, defending the public option against Republican criticism and citing record insurance company profits. Then he gave an evasive answer, saying he “can’t guarantee there will be no changes in the health care delivery system.”
Given the opportunity to promise there would be no reductions in benefits or coverage under his health care plan, Obama refused to do so—a much clearer indication of the real direction of government policy than all his pretended empathy for working class families facing the loss of jobs, health insurance and their homes.
At one point, asked about his bottom-line requirements for a health care bill, Obama said that he would not sign a bill that increased the federal deficit or failed to cut health care costs. He made no such pledge to reject a bill that failed to cover the uninsured or imposed cuts in the availability of medical procedures, tests or drugs.
Obama said that he did not want the additional tax revenues required under his plan to be “completely shouldered” by middle-class families, an indication that a substantial portion of the costs will be imposed on working families.
No reporter, in line with the general media coverage of the health care issue, raised the simple fact that it is impossible to combine expanded benefits and drastically reduced spending, or improve health care for masses of people on the basis of a plan supported by the giant pharmaceutical and insurance companies. In fact, Obama’s drive to restructure health care represents a frontal assault on the social conditions of the working class.
His talk about eliminating “inefficiencies” and cutting the “quantity but not the quality” of health care can only mean, within the framework of a for-profit health care system based on the capitalist market, an attack on both the quantity and quality of health care for broad masses of people.
The dimensions of the coming assault are suggested by two figures cited by Obama. He pointed to the projected $7.1 trillion in federal deficits over the next decade, declaring that his health care plan was an essential part of cutting that deficit. And he noted that the annual average cost of health care in the United States was $6,500 more per person than in other industrialized countries—a gap that puts American corporations at a disadvantage against their international rivals.
The class character of Obama health care plan is demonstrated by the process through which the plan has been put together.
The last few days have seen extensive press reporting on the millions in campaign contributions from the health profiteers to leading congressional Democrats like Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. At the same time, the Obama administration has refused to release the names of top health care company CEOs and lobbyists who have been visiting the White House to ensure the legislation is drafted to their satisfaction.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, health care companies gave a staggering $170 million to congressional candidates in 2007 and 2008 combined, 54 percent of that total to Democrats. This spending spree is accelerating. According to the Washington Post, “The industry already set records from January to March, when health care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day.”
The horror stories about insurance company abuses cited by Obama in his press conference could be multiplied endlessly. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands die needless deaths every year and millions are condemned to suffering because the health care system is driven not by human needs, but by the profit interests of drug and medical equipment manufacturers, hospital chains and insurance companies.
It is precisely these corporate interests that are working in close collaboration with the White House and Congress to write the Obama health care plan, whose aim is precisely to deny tests, medicines, procedures and treatments to working class people and restructure the health care system more directly and openly along class lines. The outcome will be cut-rate, third-class class care for the vast majority, while the affluent few will have access to the best care available.
Obama press conference: Evasions and lies on plan to slash health care for workers
By Patrick Martin
23 July 2009
President Obama’s press conference Wednesday night was an hour-long effort to conceal from the American people the sweeping impact of the cuts in medical benefits that will be imposed in his administration’s planned restructuring of the US health care system.
With major health care bills proceeding through both the House and the Senate, and the White House engaged in detailed negotiations with congressional Democrats and Republicans, Obama focused his opening statement on the issue and nearly every question from the White House press corps followed suit.
The opening statement made only one mention of the 47 million people now without health insurance, and did not repeat Obama’s election campaign promises of universal coverage. Instead, he spoke almost exclusively about the need to slash spending on medical care, particularly on the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs which underwrite health care for the elderly, the disabled and the poor.
“The biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid,” he said. “So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit.”
“I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it,” he added, pointing to a plan to “create an independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare on an annual basis.”
As always is the case in a US presidential press conference, Obama was addressing two basic audiences—the ruling elite and the general population. But rarely have the messages being delivered been so fundamentally at odds. Obama combined vague promises of improvements in health care for the American people with direct pledges to the financial aristocracy that his plan would cut health care spending.
Obama repeatedly stressed that his number one priority was to slash spending on medical care, both by corporate America and by the federal government. At one point he declared that unless costs are reduced, “Medicare and Medicaid will break the federal budget.” No such considerations have restrained his administration’s open-ended bailout of Wall Street—at a direct cost of $4.7 trillion, with another $19 trillion in guarantees—or the spending of trillions on continuing and escalating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To working people, Obama offered examples of the abuses inflicted by private insurance companies—cutting off benefits, arbitrary rate increases, refusal to pay for life-saving procedures—making a show of sympathy with the victims of medicine-for-profit, even as he pushes ahead with plans to make these conditions even worse.
In response to reporters’ questions about the sacrifices he was prepared to ask of ordinary people, Obama was careful to disguise the real implications of the measures now being prepared. One reporter asked if he would support a list of cost-cutting measures—fewer tests, fewer choices, less end-of-life care. Obama evaded the issue with a glib phrase, saying he would ask people only to “give up paying for things that don’t make you healthier.”
Another reporter asked the US president to detail “specifically what kind of pain and sacrifice” he was prepared to demand of current or future Medicare beneficiaries. Here Obama simply lied, saying that he “won’t reduce Medicare benefits” but would “make delivery more efficient.”
The final questioner along these lines asked Obama to guarantee that under the public insurance option proposed as part of his plan the government would not reduce benefits or coverage for anyone. Obama first made a diversion, defending the public option against Republican criticism and citing record insurance company profits. Then he gave an evasive answer, saying he “can’t guarantee there will be no changes in the health care delivery system.”
Given the opportunity to promise there would be no reductions in benefits or coverage under his health care plan, Obama refused to do so—a much clearer indication of the real direction of government policy than all his pretended empathy for working class families facing the loss of jobs, health insurance and their homes.
At one point, asked about his bottom-line requirements for a health care bill, Obama said that he would not sign a bill that increased the federal deficit or failed to cut health care costs. He made no such pledge to reject a bill that failed to cover the uninsured or imposed cuts in the availability of medical procedures, tests or drugs.
Obama said that he did not want the additional tax revenues required under his plan to be “completely shouldered” by middle-class families, an indication that a substantial portion of the costs will be imposed on working families.
No reporter, in line with the general media coverage of the health care issue, raised the simple fact that it is impossible to combine expanded benefits and drastically reduced spending, or improve health care for masses of people on the basis of a plan supported by the giant pharmaceutical and insurance companies. In fact, Obama’s drive to restructure health care represents a frontal assault on the social conditions of the working class.
His talk about eliminating “inefficiencies” and cutting the “quantity but not the quality” of health care can only mean, within the framework of a for-profit health care system based on the capitalist market, an attack on both the quantity and quality of health care for broad masses of people.
The dimensions of the coming assault are suggested by two figures cited by Obama. He pointed to the projected $7.1 trillion in federal deficits over the next decade, declaring that his health care plan was an essential part of cutting that deficit. And he noted that the annual average cost of health care in the United States was $6,500 more per person than in other industrialized countries—a gap that puts American corporations at a disadvantage against their international rivals.
The class character of Obama health care plan is demonstrated by the process through which the plan has been put together.
The last few days have seen extensive press reporting on the millions in campaign contributions from the health profiteers to leading congressional Democrats like Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus. At the same time, the Obama administration has refused to release the names of top health care company CEOs and lobbyists who have been visiting the White House to ensure the legislation is drafted to their satisfaction.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, health care companies gave a staggering $170 million to congressional candidates in 2007 and 2008 combined, 54 percent of that total to Democrats. This spending spree is accelerating. According to the Washington Post, “The industry already set records from January to March, when health care firms and their lobbyists spent money at the rate of $1.4 million a day.”
The horror stories about insurance company abuses cited by Obama in his press conference could be multiplied endlessly. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands die needless deaths every year and millions are condemned to suffering because the health care system is driven not by human needs, but by the profit interests of drug and medical equipment manufacturers, hospital chains and insurance companies.
It is precisely these corporate interests that are working in close collaboration with the White House and Congress to write the Obama health care plan, whose aim is precisely to deny tests, medicines, procedures and treatments to working class people and restructure the health care system more directly and openly along class lines. The outcome will be cut-rate, third-class class care for the vast majority, while the affluent few will have access to the best care available.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/look_out_are_you_about_to_join_the_white_underclass/
Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
Richard Metzger
07.20.2009
Topics:
Heroes
Tags:
Konformist
Alternet
Joe Bageant
Robert Sterling
Konformist editor Robert Sterling turned me on to the writing of Joe Bageant in early 2005. I spent an entire snowed-in weekend in Northern, NJ reading the various essays on his blog, laughing my ass off and nodding my head in total agreement. Writing about working class issues from more or less a Marxist bent—a huge plus in my book—and with wonderful wit and trenchant analysis, has gained Joe Baegent quite a following. You’d have to have seen life from many different angles and traveled a lot to have such a wise perspective on things. The guy is just brilliant, a national treasure. He’s also the author of a book, “Deer Hunting with Jesus.”
This weekend I read Joe’s article, “Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?” on the always great Alternet blog and I was thrilled that someone said this out loud:
More than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers are poor, compared five percent in Sweden and Finland, where no stigma is attached and substantial public resources are applied to child health and development. But research done in Europe shows that even if U.S. women had a zero rate of single motherhood, poverty among American women would still be higher than in European and other socially advanced nations.
Armchair sociologist that I am, I have a theory about this: Millions of American women are in poverty because they are paid poverty wages. I could be wrong, I often am, but there seems to be a connection between poverty and money. I started developing this theory when I was in a Melbourne, Australia hotel and learned from a single mother hotel housekeeper there that she made $19 an hour, had government assisted childcare and was going to college at night toward becoming a medical technician. Hmmm. Over here we tell single mothers, “Get a six dollar an hour job or get married bitch! Workfare, baby, workfare.”
I grew up in a union family in West Virginia back when the unions really meant something in the lives of the members’ families. We had great health care and I was able to have special glasses and contact lenses to correct my astigmatism. My sister got low cost braces for her teeth. That hardly happens anymore for American families.
The lives of working people in his country have become so degraded that there is a real anger rising in the American people. People are sick of being shit on by the elites. Not everyone who is poor is so dumb that they vote a straight Republican party ticket, wave tea bags around and think Sarah Palin is terrific. A lot has changed in the past decade or so with almost everyone having access to the Internet and being able to read political views outside of what they’d hear about in their local church or get on Fox News. People are educating themselves. They’re starting to figure out why they are being ground down by life —and by whom—and they’re getting really pissed off. It’s about time.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141405
Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com
July 18, 2009
"White underclass" is a term I've used often in my writing, and most American readers seem to know what I mean. They've got eyes and live in the same nation I do. But in a sudden burst of journalistic responsibility, I decided that if I am going to throw around the word underclass, then I should offer some clearer, perhaps more scientific definition.
So I started writing this with a pile of published research papers before me. Now they are in the trash can by my side. Looking down on them, I can see the gobbledygook titles, the stuff of which government policy and political platforms are made. They run together in slurry of the language of our society's commissars: Concerning-Prevalence-Growth-and-Dynamics-Concentrated Urban Poverty Areas- block-level vs. tract-level segregation-800-tract-tables-urban abstracts-Defining-and-Measuring-the-Underclass-from-The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management-statistical-summary-of…
What I find is that nobody in social science seems to agree on the term, or, being firmly placed in the true white middle class themselves, even agree if such a thing as a white underclass exists. You can't smell the rabble from the putting green. To others, some blacks for example, the term white underclass is an oxymoron, or maybe yet another new white social code word to be deciphered. I can't blame them for their wariness. You have to be an American to even get these code words. For instance, for all practical purposes and to most Americans, regardless of race, the term "middle class" means "white." Plain and simple. We all know that, even members of the "black middle class."
Middle class also has implications of people's occupations, usually white collar occupations, though it also includes some of the ever thinning ranks of blue-collar workers. But this comes down to describing human beings solely in terms of their jobs in the capitalist labor marketplace, and assumptions about income and whether one takes their daily shower before they go to work or after they come home. By that definition, anyone of working age who doesn't have a steady job of the right type, for whatever reason, is in some sort of "economic underclass." In other words, they are the people that middle class folks feel should damned well be working, if they are over age 18 and have a pulse. ("If I gotta do time in this meaningless workhouse of a nation, you do too!") This underclass includes any people of color seen on the street at midday during the week, single mothers, and paraplegics too, now that the middle class is paying taxes for handicap parking spaces and wheelchair access to the public shitters.
Another way we define underclass is as "losers." People who cannot talk, think, or act like middle class professional and managerial workers, people who cannot even be posers. There is absolutely no excuse for these people. We've got television 24/7 to show'em how to behave. They could learn to act like the blue collar workers we see on the endless reruns of The King of Queens (an American sitcom about a parcel service delivery truck driver.). They could at least be funny and amiable fer godz sake.
From reading the studies, I can see that social scientists dislike plural nouns, and thus shun the word losers. So they call this the "educational underclass." Either way, it comes down to folks too wooly and uncurried for office water cooler society. Nobody is denying that they all should have jobs, of course, just nowhere near the water cooler.
Yes, eight to eighty, crippled blind or crazy, Americans generally agree that every man or woman in America should have a full-time job, except those women who manage to snag a wealthy man. They are exempt, as are the middle class commissariat's own beer guzzling spawn keeping the pizza delivery and the all-night video arcade businesses thriving in college towns across the republic.
Then you've got your moral underclass. Like the rest of us, they come in two major varieties -- male and female. Females who don't bother to get married before they have babies (the non-technical term is "welfare sluts"), and men who have things more serious on their national police state blotters than a parking ticket. "Non-mainstreamers," in socio-demographic speak. Many of these are men who say, "Screw it, I ain't gonna even bother to work my ass off and be treated like dirt for six bucks an hour. I'd rather shoot pool." Me too.
The unwed mothers come in two varieties. There are those who decide they want children, but are choosy about the husband that traditionally comes with the deal. And there are those who are so young and naive due to cultural circumstance and environment they do not know what this country does to, not for, single mothers. They often find themselves working at least part time (workfare), yet permanently institutionalized into poverty by our social services industry, instead of being lifted out of it. More than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers are poor, compared five percent in Sweden and Finland, where no stigma is attached and substantial public resources are applied to child health and development. But research done in Europe shows that even if U.S. women had a zero rate of single motherhood, poverty among American women would still be higher than in European and other socially advanced nations.
Armchair sociologist that I am, I have a theory about this: Millions of American women are in poverty because they are paid poverty wages. I could be wrong, I often am, but there seems to be a connection between poverty and money. I started developing this theory when I was in a Melbourne, Australia hotel and learned from a single mother hotel housekeeper there that she made $19 an hour, had government assisted childcare and was going to college at night toward becoming a medical technician. Hmmm Over here we tell single mothers, "Get a six dollar an hour job or get married bitch! Workfare, baby, workfare." Then too, contrary to the American middle class belief system, out-of-wedlock babies are increasing at all levels of white American society. Even more contrary to popularly held notions, as many of these children turn out to be as well adjusted people as do children of the middle class. But for damned sure poorer in most cases.
And finally we have simple snottiness as a line of underclass demarcation -- one's manner of physical gesture or accent. Believe me from personal experience, a Southern accent in America is no ticket to the top. But even with a Southern accent, if you talk like a college grad, don't wear bib overhauls or gang banger gear, and appear to know where South America is on a map, Americans will deem you middle class. Actually, if you smile a lot, and sound like any sort of white customer service type, it will fly. It's called having the appropriate social and cultural skill set. Yeah, right, appropriate to be hired as a telemarketer so you can piss people off by interrupting their dinner hour.
But even if you gather aluminum cans from dumpsters for a living, with effort, you can "pass" like light skinned black folks used to do in this country. As testimony to this, I, who am a high school dropout with a Southern accent, have successfully managed entire magazine publishing groups for a living. (The secret is balls). If I'd been black or Hispanic though, I'd have been distributing the urinal cakes in the rest rooms at night. So yes, there is a slight edge to whiteness, though not nearly as much as minorities assume. Still, you gotta make the most of that little edge.
In the end, race, gender or sexual preference are just moving parts of the class machine, with middle class perceptions setting the standard. You can indeed be black or queer, but with the properly buffed patina of white middle class mojo you can make it to the top, or near to the top of the heap (in America, proximity to the top of our cultural garbage heap is everything. All the rest of us are mere consumer refuse, as the Michael Jackson Morbidity Festival demonstrated. You can even be celebrated as an icon of diversity if you act white and middle class enough. Obama is Harvard white guy enough, Ellen DeGeneres is going strong ten years after coming out, gay Congressman Barney Franks still gets reelected. They've all got white middle class mojo. Al Sharpton on the other hand, has cootie mojo. (Tip for Al: They need golf cart drivers at the Congressional Country Club. A year of that and you'd know all you need to know about the white mojo shtick. Because you can watch Obama play golf there).
When it comes to the underclass, there is no arguing that some people are members because they are so damned uneducated they cannot count their toes or read well enough to fill out a job app, the causes of which are too deep and tangled to go into at the moment. Others just don't care to do the smiling grammatically correct wimp assed customer service zombie thing. They prefer swinging a bigger hammer than that -- doing real work, like America used to do. And doing it without kissing ass, which is why they are called the "permanently jobless." As sociologist Christopher Jencks points out, "There is no absolute standard dictating what people need to know in order to get along in society. There is however, an absolute rule that you get along better if you know what the elite knows than if you do not." He also cautions that "the term underclass combines so many different meanings that social scientists must use it with extreme care."
Which is fine. But I'm no social scientist. If in my travels and experience in American life I see that tens of millions of Americans being screwed silly by a handful of chiselers at the top, or if I see one percent of Americans earning as much annually as the bottom 45 percent of Americans, then that 45 percent is an underclass. When I see a 70 year old man on his second pacemaker limping through Wal-mart as a "greeter" so he can pay at least something on last winter's heating bill this month, then he is part of an underclass. When I see the humiliated single mom waitress tugging downward on the ridiculously short red plastic skirt she must wear at the Hooter's type joint so her crotch won't show, she's part of an underclass of humiliated and socially oppressed people. Screw the hairsplitting about who qualifies as underclass and what color they are. Just fix it. Or reap the consequences.
We're finally starting to hear a little discussion about the white underclass in this country. Mainly because so many middle class folks are terrified of falling into it. Frankly, I hope they do. We've got room for them. All the lousy, humiliating jobs have not yet been outsourced. The Devil still has plenty for them to do down here.
Call all of this anecdotal evidence. You won't be the first. I was on a National Public Radio show last year with a couple of political consultants, demographers as I remember. One, a lady, was obviously part of the Democratic political syndicate, the other was part of the Republican political mob. The Democratic expert said dismissively of my remarks, "Well! Some people here seem to believe anecdotal evidence is relevant." Meaning me. I held my tongue. But what I wanted to say was this:
Sister, most of us live anecdotal lives in an anecdotal world. We survive by our wits and observations, some casual, others vital to our sustenance. That plus daily experience, be it good bad or ugly as the ass end of a razorback hog. And what we see happening to us and others around us is what we know as life, the on-the-ground stuff we must deal with or be dealt out of the game. There's no time for rigorous scientific analysis. Nor need. We can see the guy next door who's drinking himself to death because, "I never did have a good job, just heavy labor, but now I'm all busted up, got no insurance and no job and it looks like I'll never have another one and I've got four more years to go before Social Security." He doesn't need scientific proof. He doesn't need another job either. He needs a cold beer, a soft armchair, some Tylenol PM and a modest guarantee of security for the rest of his life. Freedom from fear and toil and illness.
And furthermore, Sister, we cannot see much evidence that other, more elite people's scientific analysis of our lives has ever benefited us much. When you're fucked, you know it. You don't need scientific verification.
I wanted to say that on the radio. But I didn't. The little white guy mojo voice in my head told me not to. So I just laughed good naturedly. Like any other good American.
May God forgive me.
With ironic gratitude to Christopher Jencks of the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University.
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his website.
© 2009 JoeBageant.com All rights reserved.
Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
Richard Metzger
07.20.2009
Topics:
Heroes
Tags:
Konformist
Alternet
Joe Bageant
Robert Sterling
Konformist editor Robert Sterling turned me on to the writing of Joe Bageant in early 2005. I spent an entire snowed-in weekend in Northern, NJ reading the various essays on his blog, laughing my ass off and nodding my head in total agreement. Writing about working class issues from more or less a Marxist bent—a huge plus in my book—and with wonderful wit and trenchant analysis, has gained Joe Baegent quite a following. You’d have to have seen life from many different angles and traveled a lot to have such a wise perspective on things. The guy is just brilliant, a national treasure. He’s also the author of a book, “Deer Hunting with Jesus.”
This weekend I read Joe’s article, “Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?” on the always great Alternet blog and I was thrilled that someone said this out loud:
More than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers are poor, compared five percent in Sweden and Finland, where no stigma is attached and substantial public resources are applied to child health and development. But research done in Europe shows that even if U.S. women had a zero rate of single motherhood, poverty among American women would still be higher than in European and other socially advanced nations.
Armchair sociologist that I am, I have a theory about this: Millions of American women are in poverty because they are paid poverty wages. I could be wrong, I often am, but there seems to be a connection between poverty and money. I started developing this theory when I was in a Melbourne, Australia hotel and learned from a single mother hotel housekeeper there that she made $19 an hour, had government assisted childcare and was going to college at night toward becoming a medical technician. Hmmm. Over here we tell single mothers, “Get a six dollar an hour job or get married bitch! Workfare, baby, workfare.”
I grew up in a union family in West Virginia back when the unions really meant something in the lives of the members’ families. We had great health care and I was able to have special glasses and contact lenses to correct my astigmatism. My sister got low cost braces for her teeth. That hardly happens anymore for American families.
The lives of working people in his country have become so degraded that there is a real anger rising in the American people. People are sick of being shit on by the elites. Not everyone who is poor is so dumb that they vote a straight Republican party ticket, wave tea bags around and think Sarah Palin is terrific. A lot has changed in the past decade or so with almost everyone having access to the Internet and being able to read political views outside of what they’d hear about in their local church or get on Fox News. People are educating themselves. They’re starting to figure out why they are being ground down by life —and by whom—and they’re getting really pissed off. It’s about time.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141405
Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com
July 18, 2009
"White underclass" is a term I've used often in my writing, and most American readers seem to know what I mean. They've got eyes and live in the same nation I do. But in a sudden burst of journalistic responsibility, I decided that if I am going to throw around the word underclass, then I should offer some clearer, perhaps more scientific definition.
So I started writing this with a pile of published research papers before me. Now they are in the trash can by my side. Looking down on them, I can see the gobbledygook titles, the stuff of which government policy and political platforms are made. They run together in slurry of the language of our society's commissars: Concerning-Prevalence-Growth-and-Dynamics-Concentrated Urban Poverty Areas- block-level vs. tract-level segregation-800-tract-tables-urban abstracts-Defining-and-Measuring-the-Underclass-from-The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management-statistical-summary-of…
What I find is that nobody in social science seems to agree on the term, or, being firmly placed in the true white middle class themselves, even agree if such a thing as a white underclass exists. You can't smell the rabble from the putting green. To others, some blacks for example, the term white underclass is an oxymoron, or maybe yet another new white social code word to be deciphered. I can't blame them for their wariness. You have to be an American to even get these code words. For instance, for all practical purposes and to most Americans, regardless of race, the term "middle class" means "white." Plain and simple. We all know that, even members of the "black middle class."
Middle class also has implications of people's occupations, usually white collar occupations, though it also includes some of the ever thinning ranks of blue-collar workers. But this comes down to describing human beings solely in terms of their jobs in the capitalist labor marketplace, and assumptions about income and whether one takes their daily shower before they go to work or after they come home. By that definition, anyone of working age who doesn't have a steady job of the right type, for whatever reason, is in some sort of "economic underclass." In other words, they are the people that middle class folks feel should damned well be working, if they are over age 18 and have a pulse. ("If I gotta do time in this meaningless workhouse of a nation, you do too!") This underclass includes any people of color seen on the street at midday during the week, single mothers, and paraplegics too, now that the middle class is paying taxes for handicap parking spaces and wheelchair access to the public shitters.
Another way we define underclass is as "losers." People who cannot talk, think, or act like middle class professional and managerial workers, people who cannot even be posers. There is absolutely no excuse for these people. We've got television 24/7 to show'em how to behave. They could learn to act like the blue collar workers we see on the endless reruns of The King of Queens (an American sitcom about a parcel service delivery truck driver.). They could at least be funny and amiable fer godz sake.
From reading the studies, I can see that social scientists dislike plural nouns, and thus shun the word losers. So they call this the "educational underclass." Either way, it comes down to folks too wooly and uncurried for office water cooler society. Nobody is denying that they all should have jobs, of course, just nowhere near the water cooler.
Yes, eight to eighty, crippled blind or crazy, Americans generally agree that every man or woman in America should have a full-time job, except those women who manage to snag a wealthy man. They are exempt, as are the middle class commissariat's own beer guzzling spawn keeping the pizza delivery and the all-night video arcade businesses thriving in college towns across the republic.
Then you've got your moral underclass. Like the rest of us, they come in two major varieties -- male and female. Females who don't bother to get married before they have babies (the non-technical term is "welfare sluts"), and men who have things more serious on their national police state blotters than a parking ticket. "Non-mainstreamers," in socio-demographic speak. Many of these are men who say, "Screw it, I ain't gonna even bother to work my ass off and be treated like dirt for six bucks an hour. I'd rather shoot pool." Me too.
The unwed mothers come in two varieties. There are those who decide they want children, but are choosy about the husband that traditionally comes with the deal. And there are those who are so young and naive due to cultural circumstance and environment they do not know what this country does to, not for, single mothers. They often find themselves working at least part time (workfare), yet permanently institutionalized into poverty by our social services industry, instead of being lifted out of it. More than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers are poor, compared five percent in Sweden and Finland, where no stigma is attached and substantial public resources are applied to child health and development. But research done in Europe shows that even if U.S. women had a zero rate of single motherhood, poverty among American women would still be higher than in European and other socially advanced nations.
Armchair sociologist that I am, I have a theory about this: Millions of American women are in poverty because they are paid poverty wages. I could be wrong, I often am, but there seems to be a connection between poverty and money. I started developing this theory when I was in a Melbourne, Australia hotel and learned from a single mother hotel housekeeper there that she made $19 an hour, had government assisted childcare and was going to college at night toward becoming a medical technician. Hmmm Over here we tell single mothers, "Get a six dollar an hour job or get married bitch! Workfare, baby, workfare." Then too, contrary to the American middle class belief system, out-of-wedlock babies are increasing at all levels of white American society. Even more contrary to popularly held notions, as many of these children turn out to be as well adjusted people as do children of the middle class. But for damned sure poorer in most cases.
And finally we have simple snottiness as a line of underclass demarcation -- one's manner of physical gesture or accent. Believe me from personal experience, a Southern accent in America is no ticket to the top. But even with a Southern accent, if you talk like a college grad, don't wear bib overhauls or gang banger gear, and appear to know where South America is on a map, Americans will deem you middle class. Actually, if you smile a lot, and sound like any sort of white customer service type, it will fly. It's called having the appropriate social and cultural skill set. Yeah, right, appropriate to be hired as a telemarketer so you can piss people off by interrupting their dinner hour.
But even if you gather aluminum cans from dumpsters for a living, with effort, you can "pass" like light skinned black folks used to do in this country. As testimony to this, I, who am a high school dropout with a Southern accent, have successfully managed entire magazine publishing groups for a living. (The secret is balls). If I'd been black or Hispanic though, I'd have been distributing the urinal cakes in the rest rooms at night. So yes, there is a slight edge to whiteness, though not nearly as much as minorities assume. Still, you gotta make the most of that little edge.
In the end, race, gender or sexual preference are just moving parts of the class machine, with middle class perceptions setting the standard. You can indeed be black or queer, but with the properly buffed patina of white middle class mojo you can make it to the top, or near to the top of the heap (in America, proximity to the top of our cultural garbage heap is everything. All the rest of us are mere consumer refuse, as the Michael Jackson Morbidity Festival demonstrated. You can even be celebrated as an icon of diversity if you act white and middle class enough. Obama is Harvard white guy enough, Ellen DeGeneres is going strong ten years after coming out, gay Congressman Barney Franks still gets reelected. They've all got white middle class mojo. Al Sharpton on the other hand, has cootie mojo. (Tip for Al: They need golf cart drivers at the Congressional Country Club. A year of that and you'd know all you need to know about the white mojo shtick. Because you can watch Obama play golf there).
When it comes to the underclass, there is no arguing that some people are members because they are so damned uneducated they cannot count their toes or read well enough to fill out a job app, the causes of which are too deep and tangled to go into at the moment. Others just don't care to do the smiling grammatically correct wimp assed customer service zombie thing. They prefer swinging a bigger hammer than that -- doing real work, like America used to do. And doing it without kissing ass, which is why they are called the "permanently jobless." As sociologist Christopher Jencks points out, "There is no absolute standard dictating what people need to know in order to get along in society. There is however, an absolute rule that you get along better if you know what the elite knows than if you do not." He also cautions that "the term underclass combines so many different meanings that social scientists must use it with extreme care."
Which is fine. But I'm no social scientist. If in my travels and experience in American life I see that tens of millions of Americans being screwed silly by a handful of chiselers at the top, or if I see one percent of Americans earning as much annually as the bottom 45 percent of Americans, then that 45 percent is an underclass. When I see a 70 year old man on his second pacemaker limping through Wal-mart as a "greeter" so he can pay at least something on last winter's heating bill this month, then he is part of an underclass. When I see the humiliated single mom waitress tugging downward on the ridiculously short red plastic skirt she must wear at the Hooter's type joint so her crotch won't show, she's part of an underclass of humiliated and socially oppressed people. Screw the hairsplitting about who qualifies as underclass and what color they are. Just fix it. Or reap the consequences.
We're finally starting to hear a little discussion about the white underclass in this country. Mainly because so many middle class folks are terrified of falling into it. Frankly, I hope they do. We've got room for them. All the lousy, humiliating jobs have not yet been outsourced. The Devil still has plenty for them to do down here.
Call all of this anecdotal evidence. You won't be the first. I was on a National Public Radio show last year with a couple of political consultants, demographers as I remember. One, a lady, was obviously part of the Democratic political syndicate, the other was part of the Republican political mob. The Democratic expert said dismissively of my remarks, "Well! Some people here seem to believe anecdotal evidence is relevant." Meaning me. I held my tongue. But what I wanted to say was this:
Sister, most of us live anecdotal lives in an anecdotal world. We survive by our wits and observations, some casual, others vital to our sustenance. That plus daily experience, be it good bad or ugly as the ass end of a razorback hog. And what we see happening to us and others around us is what we know as life, the on-the-ground stuff we must deal with or be dealt out of the game. There's no time for rigorous scientific analysis. Nor need. We can see the guy next door who's drinking himself to death because, "I never did have a good job, just heavy labor, but now I'm all busted up, got no insurance and no job and it looks like I'll never have another one and I've got four more years to go before Social Security." He doesn't need scientific proof. He doesn't need another job either. He needs a cold beer, a soft armchair, some Tylenol PM and a modest guarantee of security for the rest of his life. Freedom from fear and toil and illness.
And furthermore, Sister, we cannot see much evidence that other, more elite people's scientific analysis of our lives has ever benefited us much. When you're fucked, you know it. You don't need scientific verification.
I wanted to say that on the radio. But I didn't. The little white guy mojo voice in my head told me not to. So I just laughed good naturedly. Like any other good American.
May God forgive me.
With ironic gratitude to Christopher Jencks of the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University.
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his website.
© 2009 JoeBageant.com All rights reserved.
ON BURLESQUE
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/08/on-burlesque-essay/ON BURLESQUE
Tiara the Merch Girl
Depending on who you ask, burlesque can either be a tool to poke fun at the Establishment by bringing them down to the “low-brow”, or a way to bask in vintage 1940s and 1950s glamour. It’s a growing art form with plenty of enthusiasts jumping in for a chance to shake, shimmy, and show off. However, with its overwhelmingly White presence, how does it deal with performers and fans from culturally diverse backgrounds?
I’m Tiara, a Malaysian of Bangladeshi heritage currently based in Brisbane, Australia. I started getting into burlesque in January and have recently debuted to the public as Tiara the Merch Girl (after being said Merch Girl at Brisbane’s Burlesque Ball). I also seem to be one of the very few Asian (or at the very least non-White) burlesque people in the area; the only other person I know of is Maiden Chyna, who is as new as me. I got into burlesque as I love performing and was intrigued at the possibility of expressing myself and my sexuality in ways that I was never able to when I was in Malaysia. I’ve seen fallen in love with the sheer creativity, talent, and humour that has come from burlesque performers around the world.
In my burlesque adventures I have noticed a distinct lack of resources, information, or even talent from culturally diverse backgrounds. As it is, there are hardly any growing organised scenes outside the UK, USA, and Australia, with small pockets in New Zealand, Canada, Scandinavia, and Western Europe. While they do exist, they tend to either be overlooked or exoticised. How does race and culture play out in burlesque, and its sibling subcultures such as rockabilly and pinup?
What Is Burlesque?
The word ‘burlesque’ is commonly thought to have derived from the Spanish word burla and the Italian burlesco, which literally means ‘to send up’. The original burlesques, first popularised in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales but more prominent in the 18th and 19th centuries, were a form of musical or theatrical comedy that parodied classical opera and theatre pieces in bawdy and risque ways. It was also a means for satirising current political and social issues amongst the middle and working classes. Burlesque travelled to the US in the 19th/early 20th centuries, originally as part of vaudeville and variety shows, but eventually forming into a subgenre that heavily incorporated theatrics, striptease, and elaborate sets and costumes.
Currently there are two main genres of burlesque - the Traditional (Classical/British) burlesque, which is more comedic and satirical, and the American burlesque-striptease, which strongly involves glamour and sexuality. There are also subgroups and crossovers with other subcultures and art forms - gorelesque (which is more horror and Gothic-based), acrobatics and other circus skills, modelling, pole dance, and so on. While individual burlesque performances are as varied and diverse as the people that do them, there seems to be a few common elements in modern/neo-burlesque:
* “Horrible prettiness” (from the book of the same name by Robert Clyde Allen), referring to the subversion of gender roles and beauty norms by having non-conventional-looking women dress up in a often-feminine and glamourous manner, but acting rowdy, bawdy, and sometimes uncouth - like “one of the boys”
* Careful and clever use of music, props, and costuming to evoke a mood or theme
* Telling a story or making a joke through performance
* A light, fun, relaxed attitude that’s willing to send itself up
* Flamboyancy and the willingness to go to grotesque extremes with looks and behaviour
In places like Australia, burlesque performers tend to cross genres and styles; many performers come from some other artistic background and incorporate that into their performances. While there are still divisions over style - Parodic vs Pretty - they’re generally subtle and many performers play around with both main genres. There are also many enthusiasts that get involved in burlesque as a means of expressing their sexuality and body awareness, particularly amongst those that don’t fit traditional beauty standards or that come from more restrictive backgrounds. There are also many male burlesquers, or “boylesquers”, many of whom also work with drag and subverting gender norms. The burlesque scene seems to be more open than most in terms of age and looks; many established performers and new entrants are in their 30s and 40s, with not as much pressure to “stay youthful” as in other arts.
Burlesque Around the World
Burlesque in its “native” style doesn’t really exist outside the US and UK; indeed, the scenes in other countries tend to adopt American and British aesthetics and creative norms. However, the idea of using performance art as means of expressing sexuality, having flamboyant fun, or mocking the upper classes is one that is strongly evident in many other traditional and cultural art forms. For instance, many burlesquers look to Bollywood and bellydance culture as a means of inspiration, with their striking costumes and strong use of music and dance to tell stories, while the Indonesian dangdut scene has often courted controversy for being “pornographic” mainly due to the relatively-revealing costumes and gyrating.
There seems to be a thriving burlesque scene in Japan, with troupes such as Murasaki Babydoll getting standing ovations in major conventions like San Francisco’s Tease-o-Rama and the launch of the Tokyo branch of Dr Sketchy’s, an “anti-art school” franchise created by American illustrator and fine artist Molly Crabapple that incorporates live drawing classes with burlesque/alternative performers as models.
Singapore also has a Dr Sketchy’s branch ( and just recently hosted Australian performer Kelly Ann Doll in residence, making her the first burlesque performer in the country. Singapore does have a strong comedy and variety scene, with comedians such as Hossan Leong and Kumar, and Japan’s multitudes of variety TV and game shows with bizarre and humorous skits make it a strong starting point for Asian burlesque.
China has also started its foray into the burlesque world, with the opening of burlesque and cabaret club Chinatown in Shanghai. It was formed by New York producer couple Amelia Kallman and Norman Gosney, who wanted to bring a touch of ’30s Hollywood glamour to China. Despite its location and rich cultural heritage (the venue used to be a Buddhist temple), the acts are still very American; the girls in the resident multicultural troupe Chinatown Dolls have names like Miss Sassafrass Sassypants and Miss Ruby Tuesday, and English performances make up most of the acts. The inclusion of Chinese culture seems to be limited to a couple of Chinese acts and songs (including a Chinese calendar girl act), a poster of Chairman Mao on the wall, and local MCs making fun of the expats - their core audience. Are they concerned by China’s censorship to not incorporate more of Chinese culture beyond the superficial, or have they just not considered it thoroughly?
In some countries, such as my native Malaysia, it can be very difficult to satirise socio-political issues without getting in trouble with the law. While ’50s American performers such as Gypsy Rose Lee were frequently arrested over indecency charges, Malaysian productions and media have come under fire and controversy for being subversive or for “threatening national security”. (An example of this is the 2001 public production of The Vagina Monologues in Kuala Lumpur, where the performers were nearly locked up for discussing vaginas and women’s sexuality openly.) Therefore, it can be quite difficult to pull off burlesque in those areas: either you’re charged for public stripping or you’re charged for mocking the government - or, as the New Year’s Eve Paul’s Place incident shows, you could be charged for “black metal”.
There’s also the association made between burlesque, stripping, and sex work - they are not necessarily related but often get conflated with each other. While not all burlesque involves stripping - and indeed it never started out that way - modern mainstream burlesque, especially that of Dita von Teese, have made the assumption that performers need to be bare to be authentic. The question of whether or not to strip is still a matter of debate amongst burlesque performers and enthusiasts, many of whom are tired of the dismissal of burlesque (both by outsiders and within) as just “fancy stripping for the middle class” and ignore the rich artistic legacy and creativity available. The idea of women being loud, brash, open, and dominating in the public eye, especially around men - the “horrible prettieness” alluded to by Allen - also runs counter to a lot of traditional cultural norms, which stress on politeness, being demure, and modesty. It’s not surprising, then, that people who were raised in particular cultures may not be immediately drawn to burlesque; they may consider it too much like sex work instead of a flexible and diverse art form that can include as much sexuality as they wish.
Personally I would love to bring burlesque to Malaysia; there’s definitely talent for it, with seasoned comedians, theater performers, and dancers, and the creative people in Malaysia are also people passionate about social issues - such as singer/writer Shanon Shah, who is also active with Sisters in Islam and LGBT rights in Malaysia. Malaysia also has very rick traditions of culture, arts, and social commentary, and it would be very interesting to see how the Malaysian public interprets burlesque for self-expression. The trick now is to pull it off without landing everyone in jail or being accused of hosting “promiscuous sex parties” with Satanists! It takes careful navigation of laws on decency, subversion, and public speech; just the act of organising and hosting a burlesque show in Malaysia could be a lot more political than the content of many contemporary acts.
Burlesque and Cultural Expression
Despite the existence of burlesque groups outside the US and UK, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of variance in terms of cultural diversity and expression. As demonstrated by Shanghai’s Chinatown club, the burlesque presence overseas is still deeply steeped in 1930s-1950s British/American aesthetics - glamour, corsets, spangles, feathers, Moulin Rouge can-can dresses. The challenge seems to be balancing your assertion of your cultural identity (however much you want to) without turning into something exotic or a token.
There are quite a number of culturally diverse burlesque performers in the US, many of whom are inspired by the iconic Josephine Baker, the first African-American to star in a major motion picture and integrate a concert hall, as well as a strong player in the Civil Rights movement and the French Resistance during World War II. Contemporary performers such as Brown Girls Burlesque and Vixen Noir also do a lot of work in encouraging women of colour (and queer women of colour, in Vixen Noir’s case) to explore burlesque and express their sexuality through performance.
What I find interesting, but also a little bit troubling, is that quite a number of performers from culturally diverse backgrounds use their colour or race as their main means of identification. There are quite a few black performers with “Coco” or “Cocoa” in the name, or make some reference to being dark: Honey Cocoa Bordeauxx, Coco Framboise, CoCo La Creme, Miss Coco Lectric, Foxy Tann. The Shanghai Pearl and Tomahawk Tassels use their cultural heritage as a selling point. Some characters, like Alotta Boutte, are obviously tongue-in-cheek references, but does it become problematic when their image is built up on exotic stereotypes, such as Mimi RedLips’s Geisha and Harajuku acts? How about when it’s part of a homage to your heritage, such as Coco Lectric’s Indian Doll?
How about when other performers incorporate elements of cultures that are not their own? Every cultural stereotype has been part of a burlesque act one way or another - from walking like an Egyptian to being a Twisted Gypsy . My burlesque teacher, long-time Australian veteran dancer Lena Marlene, has a Buddhist burlesque act based around fire (her signature prop) and saffron yellow robes. She took up Comparative Religion in university and personally enjoys subverting religions of all kinds. Some others, like Scarlet O’Gasm, have used religious iconography to make political statements - she performed at an event commemorating Obama’s election as President with a routine involving a burqa.
Since burlesque is largely about making the sacred profane, and has never really been known for being politically correct, are all cultures fair game to any performer that wants them? Where do you draw the line between respectful inspiration and appropriation - especially when the cultures often appropriated are heavily underrepresented in burlesque? Is using common stereotypes and cultural iconography mocking the use of such stereotypes in popular culture, or does it just add to the stereotyping? Do culturally diverse performers have an obligation to involve their cultural background into their burlesque character and performances, or can they get away with being neutral?
Burlesque and I
Questions of appropriation are especially difficult for me given my multicultural background. Despite coming from Bangladeshi heritage, I know hardly anything about the culture or lifestyle; I have only been back in Bangladesh for short holidays and am generally considered a foreigner even amongst my relatives. I was born and raised in Malaysia, which itself has a melting pot culture that often borrows from Malay, Chinese, Indian, European, and various other cultures; however, as a ultra-minority I never felt liked I “belonged” anywhere, and indeed I’m very iconoclastic even amongst my peers. Things became more complicated when I moved to Australia in 2006 - what do I say when people ask where I’m from? What culture am I supposed to align myself with?
I have quite a few ideas for routines and acts, many of which involve cultural elements I was exposed to in my lifetime - traditional dances, props like the kuda kepang, songs, even advertising and other tropes of pop culture. However, a lot of these elements aren’t really “native” to me in a sense - they’re Malaysian, sometimes very specific to Chinese or Malay culture. Yet I don’t feel comfortable incorporating anything Bengali or Bangladeshi - I don’t know enough to make the best use of Bengali culture. Burlesque is a way for me to express my thoughts and experiences creatively, and a lot of that involves my upbringing and heritage. What can I incorporate fairly, and what is off limits?
The routine for my public burlesque debut, at Brisbane’s Cabaret Burlesque competition in June, is directly based upon my Muslim upbringing. It was originally a cheeky idea - what if you did a reverse strip (putting clothes on instead of off) and transformed into a Muslim woman? It’s not something anyone’s done before, and the twist would be funny at the very least. Building up the routine, especially the choice of song, transformed it into a meditation on how Muslim women are also sensual and sexual beings in touch with their bodies, despite the assumptions made by their veils and headcoverings. The choice of song, Deeyah’s “Pashto Lullaby (Lori)“, was significant in many ways - besides setting the tone for the act, it also echoed Deeyah’s personal clashes with Islamic fundamentalists over her video for “What Will It Be?“, a feminist Muslim anthem that depicts a woman in a burqa stripping off to a bikini before jumping into a pool.
I was rather nervous performing this act for many reasons: it was very personal and heartfelt, but because it was also a lot slower and more sombre than typical burlesque acts I was worried I would lose the audience out of boredom. I am usually a very restless person, but the act required careful focus and stillness - something I had to work on a lot. I was also worried that Islamic extremists would come across my act and condemn my family and I to hell - if it happened to Deeyah it could happen to me!
To my surprise and delight, the audience absolutely loved my act. It achieved what I wanted: it made them think about their own assumptions regarding Muslim women and those who wear the veil. Many people connected with the act and felt it was beautiful, heartfelt, moving, inspirational. I moved my teacher to teachers and received many hugs and kudos from the audience and beyond. And I didn’t even get a death threat! The response was overwhelmingly positive and humbling; I’m glad I took the opportunity to tell my truth through an art form that I loved.
Do other burlesque performers from culturally diverse backgrounds get to express their truth too, whether about their cultural identity or otherwise? How much of a “cultural ambassador” do such performers need to be to be taken seriously? Are culturally diverse performers participating in cultural appropriation when they dress up in traditional burlesque attire - a throwback to Victorian and French cabaret - or play around with cultural artifacts? If burlesque is so accepting of people from various backgrounds, looks, ages, and so on, why are there still so few performers of colour? How can the burlesque world be more open and accepting of performers from other cultural backgrounds, and incorporate them - not just their stereotypes - into their creative world?
40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2009-07-16-nasamoon_N.htm
40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
7-16-9
Forty years ago Monday, Neil Armstrong made his "giant leap for mankind." Since that triumphant moment, astronauts in the U.S. space program have gone no farther.
The first footsteps on the moon — made by Armstrong on July 20, 1969, on the mission known as Apollo 11— came 3½ years before the last ones. Since then, astronauts have been stuck close to the Earth, mostly circling a few hundred miles overhead in a spacecraft that's little more than a glorified cargo truck.
So now what?
That question preoccupies NASA and worries the Obama administration. The president said in March that NASA is beset by "a sense of drift." Even some of the men who once walked on the moon are divided on how to proceed. Options could include going back to the moon, landing on an asteroid, shooting for Mars or even ending human exploration of space altogether.
Former president George W. Bush tried to give NASA a sense of purpose, ordering the agency in 2004 to retire the space shuttle and return humans to the moon. The public yawned. Bush never publicly mentioned the plan again and didn't add much to NASA's budget for it.
NASA is still trying to carry out Bush's goals, but the effort is in doubt. At the White House's request, a panel of independent space experts is giving NASA's human spaceflight program a top-to-bottom review. The panel, which will make recommendations at the end of the summer, could tell Obama that NASA is on track. Or, it could send the agency back to the drawing board.
No matter what the panel decides, the federal deficit and competition from programs such as health care mean that NASA is unlikely to get enough money to do anything truly ambitious. Already Obama's proposed budget for 2010 shows that the administration plans to slash funding later this decade for the rocket and spacecraft needed to take astronauts back to the moon.
If that stands, it's a "an absolutely going-out-of-business budget," says former NASA official Scott Pace, now at George Washington University.
Many space historians and even NASA veterans agree that the glory days of Apollo — which spawned countless songs, movies and books — can't be recaptured. Gone is the vast budget for building spaceships. Gone is the Cold War with the Soviet Union, which unified the nation and lent urgency to the effort to put an American on the moon.
"The Apollo program was such a success because it did have complete support," Aaron Cohen, a top Apollo official, said last month at an MIT symposium on the 40th anniversary of man's first step on the moon. "This may be very difficult to achieve in the near future."
America "is a different place" now than during Apollo, says Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., head of the House Science and Technology Committee. "We were in a space race with the Soviet Union. (Apollo) was about geopolitics, not space exploration."
All the same, polls regularly show that Americans have a warm feeling for the human spaceflight program and don't want it to end. That means figuring out what astronauts should do next. Should they forge outward into the solar system, despite the huge cost and a soaring deficit? And if so, where?
The decision is not just technical, says David Mindell, who directs MIT's Department of Science, Technology and Society.
"It's emotional and it's political, because human spaceflight is primarily a symbolic activity," he says. "If you really are looking strictly (at the) technical, you wouldn't be sending people."
Some possible destinations for human space explorers include:
The moon
Yes, America has been there. That doesn't mean it's not worth going back, say scientists and an astronaut who's been to the lunar surface. Humans went to the moon six times from 1969 to 1972, spending fewer than 13 days there. Lunar advocates say that's hardly time enough to plumb the moon's mysteries.
Sending humans back to the moon could help unlock the secrets of the early solar system, says Jack Burns, a University of Colorado astronomer. The forces that shaped the Earth have not scarred the lunar surface, making the moon a pristine record of how planets formed, he says.
Burns scoffs at the idea that because Americans have landed on the moon, there's no reason to go back. "It's like Thomas Jefferson sending Lewis and Clark to the West, and … people saying, 'We're done, we don't need to go there anymore,' " he says.
NASA's plans for the moon include not just short, Apollo-style stopovers but eventually a moon base. The agency hopes to send the astronauts back to the moon around 2020.
Operating a moon base would allow astronauts to practice living on another planet, NASA's Jeff Hanley says. Crews would need that experience before pressing on to Mars, the long-term goal of most space enthusiasts.
"The fastest way to get to Mars is through the moon," says Harrison Schmitt, who in 1972 was one of the last two men on the moon. "We need to learn how to work in deep space again. That's what the moon does for us."
An asteroid
It may sound crazy, but preliminary NASA studies indicate it's possible to send humans to visit asteroids, huge chunks of rock and gravel that orbit the sun.
Telescopes have spotted at least nine asteroids that astronauts could reach using the spaceship and giant rocket NASA is designing to return humans to the moon, says the space agency's Rob Landis, who headed a study of such missions. Total travel time would be 90 to 180 days, he says. That's much longer than the six-day round trip to the moon but much shorter than the one-year round trip to Mars.
Asteroids, unlike the moon, have negligible gravity, so a spaceship could fly to an asteroid and just pull up next to it. Then an astronaut could clamber out and explore. Going to the moon requires not just a spaceship but an expensive lander, one equipped with rockets so it could blast off from the lunar surface.
There's a big incentive to learn more about asteroids: They could wipe out humanity. A wallop from even a medium-size asteroid could unleash as much energy as a large nuclear bomb, NASA says. Many scientists blame a collision with a huge asteroid for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Asteroids also are of interest because they're loaded with minerals that could be useful for space crews headed into the solar system, says Russell "Rusty" Schweickart, who flew on the 1969 Apollo 9 mission that tested the lunar module.
"Asteroids are a combination of long-term resource, potential threat and great scientific interest," he says. "In my mind, (that) sells a heck of a lot better to the general public than going back to the moon."
Mars
Scientists have debated the existence of life on Mars for more than a century. Mars boosters say it's time to settle the arguments by sending humans to the Red Planet. Humans would learn "whether we're … in a living universe, where life is common, or a dead universe," says Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, a group dedicated to Mars exploration.
In all the vast universe, the Earth is the only place known to support life. Mars may be the next best place to nurture living things. It's not only the most Earth-like planet but also has stores of water, as confirmed by a NASA robot last year.
Two of Apollo 11's three crewmembers are Mars partisans. "As celestial bodies go, the moon is not a particularly interesting place, but Mars is," Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins said in a statement from NASA.
A return to the moon is "not very attractive," says Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man on the moon. "After 50 years, do we want to be known for returning to the moon?"
He favors human colonization of Mars. He envisions crews testing their skills and spaceships on Phobos, a Mars moon, before pushing on to the Red Planet.
A Mars trip may seem far-fetched, but such a mission was proposed by the first President Bush in 1989. The idea went nowhere then, but the younger President Bush's 2004 plan for NASA also included the goal of sending humans to Mars.
NASA took that directive so seriously that its engineers started work on a giant rocket so powerful it could launch spacecraft not just to the moon but also to Mars. Work on the rocket is on hold while the Obama administration sorts out its plans for space.
Nowhere
Even some strong supporters of space exploration say the best place to send America's astronauts would be nowhere at all.
Opponents of human spaceflight say robots can do the job just as well as astronauts, pose no safety worries and work cheaply. Sending humans into space isn't worth it, they say.
"The cost and risks are just too high," says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, who wants NASA's manned program to be phased out.
Human space exploration also has run into trouble in Congress. In its spending bill for 2008, lawmakers ordered NASA not to spend any money to study sending humans to Mars.
"Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank says he doesn't want to end the astronaut program but doesn't want to send humans to Mars or the moon. He'd restrict astronauts to tasks robots can't handle, such as the recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope by a seven-astronaut team.
Opposition to NASA's astronaut program stretches across the political spectrum. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology last year that NASA should get out of the business of sending humans to space to make way for private space entrepreneurs.
For NASA, the most opposition may be from the people who pay the bills: the public. In a 2005 USA TODAY poll, 58% opposed spending money on a human mission to Mars.
Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says "I hope it doesn't come to that, but I'm afraid it might."
40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
7-16-9
Forty years ago Monday, Neil Armstrong made his "giant leap for mankind." Since that triumphant moment, astronauts in the U.S. space program have gone no farther.
The first footsteps on the moon — made by Armstrong on July 20, 1969, on the mission known as Apollo 11— came 3½ years before the last ones. Since then, astronauts have been stuck close to the Earth, mostly circling a few hundred miles overhead in a spacecraft that's little more than a glorified cargo truck.
So now what?
That question preoccupies NASA and worries the Obama administration. The president said in March that NASA is beset by "a sense of drift." Even some of the men who once walked on the moon are divided on how to proceed. Options could include going back to the moon, landing on an asteroid, shooting for Mars or even ending human exploration of space altogether.
Former president George W. Bush tried to give NASA a sense of purpose, ordering the agency in 2004 to retire the space shuttle and return humans to the moon. The public yawned. Bush never publicly mentioned the plan again and didn't add much to NASA's budget for it.
NASA is still trying to carry out Bush's goals, but the effort is in doubt. At the White House's request, a panel of independent space experts is giving NASA's human spaceflight program a top-to-bottom review. The panel, which will make recommendations at the end of the summer, could tell Obama that NASA is on track. Or, it could send the agency back to the drawing board.
No matter what the panel decides, the federal deficit and competition from programs such as health care mean that NASA is unlikely to get enough money to do anything truly ambitious. Already Obama's proposed budget for 2010 shows that the administration plans to slash funding later this decade for the rocket and spacecraft needed to take astronauts back to the moon.
If that stands, it's a "an absolutely going-out-of-business budget," says former NASA official Scott Pace, now at George Washington University.
Many space historians and even NASA veterans agree that the glory days of Apollo — which spawned countless songs, movies and books — can't be recaptured. Gone is the vast budget for building spaceships. Gone is the Cold War with the Soviet Union, which unified the nation and lent urgency to the effort to put an American on the moon.
"The Apollo program was such a success because it did have complete support," Aaron Cohen, a top Apollo official, said last month at an MIT symposium on the 40th anniversary of man's first step on the moon. "This may be very difficult to achieve in the near future."
America "is a different place" now than during Apollo, says Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., head of the House Science and Technology Committee. "We were in a space race with the Soviet Union. (Apollo) was about geopolitics, not space exploration."
All the same, polls regularly show that Americans have a warm feeling for the human spaceflight program and don't want it to end. That means figuring out what astronauts should do next. Should they forge outward into the solar system, despite the huge cost and a soaring deficit? And if so, where?
The decision is not just technical, says David Mindell, who directs MIT's Department of Science, Technology and Society.
"It's emotional and it's political, because human spaceflight is primarily a symbolic activity," he says. "If you really are looking strictly (at the) technical, you wouldn't be sending people."
Some possible destinations for human space explorers include:
The moon
Yes, America has been there. That doesn't mean it's not worth going back, say scientists and an astronaut who's been to the lunar surface. Humans went to the moon six times from 1969 to 1972, spending fewer than 13 days there. Lunar advocates say that's hardly time enough to plumb the moon's mysteries.
Sending humans back to the moon could help unlock the secrets of the early solar system, says Jack Burns, a University of Colorado astronomer. The forces that shaped the Earth have not scarred the lunar surface, making the moon a pristine record of how planets formed, he says.
Burns scoffs at the idea that because Americans have landed on the moon, there's no reason to go back. "It's like Thomas Jefferson sending Lewis and Clark to the West, and … people saying, 'We're done, we don't need to go there anymore,' " he says.
NASA's plans for the moon include not just short, Apollo-style stopovers but eventually a moon base. The agency hopes to send the astronauts back to the moon around 2020.
Operating a moon base would allow astronauts to practice living on another planet, NASA's Jeff Hanley says. Crews would need that experience before pressing on to Mars, the long-term goal of most space enthusiasts.
"The fastest way to get to Mars is through the moon," says Harrison Schmitt, who in 1972 was one of the last two men on the moon. "We need to learn how to work in deep space again. That's what the moon does for us."
An asteroid
It may sound crazy, but preliminary NASA studies indicate it's possible to send humans to visit asteroids, huge chunks of rock and gravel that orbit the sun.
Telescopes have spotted at least nine asteroids that astronauts could reach using the spaceship and giant rocket NASA is designing to return humans to the moon, says the space agency's Rob Landis, who headed a study of such missions. Total travel time would be 90 to 180 days, he says. That's much longer than the six-day round trip to the moon but much shorter than the one-year round trip to Mars.
Asteroids, unlike the moon, have negligible gravity, so a spaceship could fly to an asteroid and just pull up next to it. Then an astronaut could clamber out and explore. Going to the moon requires not just a spaceship but an expensive lander, one equipped with rockets so it could blast off from the lunar surface.
There's a big incentive to learn more about asteroids: They could wipe out humanity. A wallop from even a medium-size asteroid could unleash as much energy as a large nuclear bomb, NASA says. Many scientists blame a collision with a huge asteroid for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Asteroids also are of interest because they're loaded with minerals that could be useful for space crews headed into the solar system, says Russell "Rusty" Schweickart, who flew on the 1969 Apollo 9 mission that tested the lunar module.
"Asteroids are a combination of long-term resource, potential threat and great scientific interest," he says. "In my mind, (that) sells a heck of a lot better to the general public than going back to the moon."
Mars
Scientists have debated the existence of life on Mars for more than a century. Mars boosters say it's time to settle the arguments by sending humans to the Red Planet. Humans would learn "whether we're … in a living universe, where life is common, or a dead universe," says Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, a group dedicated to Mars exploration.
In all the vast universe, the Earth is the only place known to support life. Mars may be the next best place to nurture living things. It's not only the most Earth-like planet but also has stores of water, as confirmed by a NASA robot last year.
Two of Apollo 11's three crewmembers are Mars partisans. "As celestial bodies go, the moon is not a particularly interesting place, but Mars is," Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins said in a statement from NASA.
A return to the moon is "not very attractive," says Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man on the moon. "After 50 years, do we want to be known for returning to the moon?"
He favors human colonization of Mars. He envisions crews testing their skills and spaceships on Phobos, a Mars moon, before pushing on to the Red Planet.
A Mars trip may seem far-fetched, but such a mission was proposed by the first President Bush in 1989. The idea went nowhere then, but the younger President Bush's 2004 plan for NASA also included the goal of sending humans to Mars.
NASA took that directive so seriously that its engineers started work on a giant rocket so powerful it could launch spacecraft not just to the moon but also to Mars. Work on the rocket is on hold while the Obama administration sorts out its plans for space.
Nowhere
Even some strong supporters of space exploration say the best place to send America's astronauts would be nowhere at all.
Opponents of human spaceflight say robots can do the job just as well as astronauts, pose no safety worries and work cheaply. Sending humans into space isn't worth it, they say.
"The cost and risks are just too high," says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, who wants NASA's manned program to be phased out.
Human space exploration also has run into trouble in Congress. In its spending bill for 2008, lawmakers ordered NASA not to spend any money to study sending humans to Mars.
"Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank says he doesn't want to end the astronaut program but doesn't want to send humans to Mars or the moon. He'd restrict astronauts to tasks robots can't handle, such as the recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope by a seven-astronaut team.
Opposition to NASA's astronaut program stretches across the political spectrum. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology last year that NASA should get out of the business of sending humans to space to make way for private space entrepreneurs.
For NASA, the most opposition may be from the people who pay the bills: the public. In a 2005 USA TODAY poll, 58% opposed spending money on a human mission to Mars.
Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says "I hope it doesn't come to that, but I'm afraid it might."
Buzz Aldrin: First Man (to Pee) on the Moon
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090720-apollo-11-buzz-aldrin-pee.html
Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin: First Man (to Pee) on the Moon
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
July 20, 2009
Buzz Aldrin may not have been the first man on the moon, but the Apollo 11 astronaut has another historic first under his belt, so to speak: first person to pee on the moon.
Marking the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing this month, the U.S. astronaut reflects on his moonwalk, his embrace of Twitter, his hopes for the future—and that hallowed lunar leak, accomplished on the Apollo 11 lander's ladder, into a special bag in his space suit.
"Everyone has their firsts on the moon, and that one hasn't been disputed by anybody," he said in the 2007 Apollo-program documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.
It's also undisputed that Aldrin was the second man to moonwalk—about 15 minutes after Neil Armstrong—though he's still a bit embarrassed about his fumbling attempt to reboard Apollo 11's Eagle lander.
"I jumped what I thought was going to be enough to get up to the bottom rung of the ladder, and I didn't jump hard enough the first time, so I had to go back and do it again," Aldrin told National Geographic News.
Of course it wasn't all bumbling and bathroom breaks.
Asked about his initial impressions of the moon, Aldrin rhapsodized over the "magnificent desolation" of the lunar surface and the "velvet luminosity" of the sky.
And in the book Moon Shot, Apollo astronauts Alan Shepard and Donald "Deke" Slayton write that Aldrin told them he was buoyant and full of goose pimples as he stepped onto the moon.
But don't push him too hard for deep thoughts.
Reflecting on decades of being asked "What was it like?", he said, "I guess after 40 years I still don't know what they're looking for or what they want to hear."
Just don't expect any romanticizing: "Ladies do that. Guys don't, especially if they're fighter pilots"—as Aldrin was for 21 years.
"I've never wanted to manufacture something after the fact. I still don't know if it was fantastic, far out, or what."
Despite his self-professed stoicism, Aldrin is indulging in the lighter side of his moon milestone—and embracing new technologies—to reach out to younger generations.
The astronaut said he pulled himself up from a post-Apollo 11 period of alcoholism and depression and decided he could share his experiences for a greater good.
"Do you continue to descend into an abyss? Or do you try to make a difference with what you know best?" he remembered thinking.
To Aldrin, making a difference includes getting his message out any way he can—gamely sitting down with fictional talk show host Ali G, rapping alongside Snoop Dogg, and working with science teachers through his nonprofit educational ShareSpace Foundation.
He's even been adapting to post-space age modes of communication.
"People communicate in Twittering ways," he said, referring to the micro-blogging Web site Twitter. "I've learned how to do that."
More than 111,000 people follow Aldrin's tweets, which most recently have been about the ongoing tour for his new memoir, Magnificent Desolation.
"Did a lot of interviews today including a website called Boingboing.net. I guess they're a gadget site. It's a new one to me. BUZZ," he wrote last week.
And just what is Aldrin's message?
Mostly, he said, he wants his Apollo 11 experiences to encourage Americans to shoot for the moon again, metaphorically speaking.
"America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars—and beyond."
Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin: First Man (to Pee) on the Moon
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
July 20, 2009
Buzz Aldrin may not have been the first man on the moon, but the Apollo 11 astronaut has another historic first under his belt, so to speak: first person to pee on the moon.
Marking the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing this month, the U.S. astronaut reflects on his moonwalk, his embrace of Twitter, his hopes for the future—and that hallowed lunar leak, accomplished on the Apollo 11 lander's ladder, into a special bag in his space suit.
"Everyone has their firsts on the moon, and that one hasn't been disputed by anybody," he said in the 2007 Apollo-program documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.
It's also undisputed that Aldrin was the second man to moonwalk—about 15 minutes after Neil Armstrong—though he's still a bit embarrassed about his fumbling attempt to reboard Apollo 11's Eagle lander.
"I jumped what I thought was going to be enough to get up to the bottom rung of the ladder, and I didn't jump hard enough the first time, so I had to go back and do it again," Aldrin told National Geographic News.
Of course it wasn't all bumbling and bathroom breaks.
Asked about his initial impressions of the moon, Aldrin rhapsodized over the "magnificent desolation" of the lunar surface and the "velvet luminosity" of the sky.
And in the book Moon Shot, Apollo astronauts Alan Shepard and Donald "Deke" Slayton write that Aldrin told them he was buoyant and full of goose pimples as he stepped onto the moon.
But don't push him too hard for deep thoughts.
Reflecting on decades of being asked "What was it like?", he said, "I guess after 40 years I still don't know what they're looking for or what they want to hear."
Just don't expect any romanticizing: "Ladies do that. Guys don't, especially if they're fighter pilots"—as Aldrin was for 21 years.
"I've never wanted to manufacture something after the fact. I still don't know if it was fantastic, far out, or what."
Despite his self-professed stoicism, Aldrin is indulging in the lighter side of his moon milestone—and embracing new technologies—to reach out to younger generations.
The astronaut said he pulled himself up from a post-Apollo 11 period of alcoholism and depression and decided he could share his experiences for a greater good.
"Do you continue to descend into an abyss? Or do you try to make a difference with what you know best?" he remembered thinking.
To Aldrin, making a difference includes getting his message out any way he can—gamely sitting down with fictional talk show host Ali G, rapping alongside Snoop Dogg, and working with science teachers through his nonprofit educational ShareSpace Foundation.
He's even been adapting to post-space age modes of communication.
"People communicate in Twittering ways," he said, referring to the micro-blogging Web site Twitter. "I've learned how to do that."
More than 111,000 people follow Aldrin's tweets, which most recently have been about the ongoing tour for his new memoir, Magnificent Desolation.
"Did a lot of interviews today including a website called Boingboing.net. I guess they're a gadget site. It's a new one to me. BUZZ," he wrote last week.
And just what is Aldrin's message?
Mostly, he said, he wants his Apollo 11 experiences to encourage Americans to shoot for the moon again, metaphorically speaking.
"America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars—and beyond."
Moon astronauts urge Mars mission
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158519.stm
Monday, 20 July 2009
Moon astronauts urge Mars mission
Neil Armstrong: 'The ultimate peaceful competition'
Two of the astronauts who took part in the first Moon landing 40 years ago have called for renewed efforts to send a manned mission to Mars.
At a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins said Mars instead of the Moon should be the focus of exploration.
Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, said the race to get to the Moon had been the ultimate peaceful contest.
He said it was an "exceptional national investment" for the US and ex-USSR.
The trio spoke at an event at Washington DC's National Air and Space Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of their mission.
Mr Armstrong told the audience: "It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR.
"I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion.
"Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides."
Fellow astronaut Mr Aldrin spoke of the inspiration provided by then-President John F Kennedy which led to the "betterment of America, and ultimately the ending of the Cold War".
"Apollo 11 is a symbol of what a great nation and a great people can do if we work hard, work together and have strong leaders with vision and determination," he said.
But he also pushed for a mission to Mars: "The best way to honour and remember all those who were part of the Apollo programme is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration."
Mr Collins, who circled the Moon alone while Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin walked on it, said Mars was more interesting than the Moon.
"Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favourite as a kid and it still is today."
He urged further exploration, saying: "I worry that the current emphasis on returning to the Moon will cause us to become ensnared in a technological briar patch needlessly delaying for decades the exploration of Mars - a much more worthwhile destination."
The US space agency's currently stated aim is to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. But that vision is under review, along with the space vehicles that would get them there.
Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.
Another rocket, Ares V, would have the capability to launch heavy payloads - service and cargo modules - that would be needed to service Moon missions.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Moon astronauts urge Mars mission
Neil Armstrong: 'The ultimate peaceful competition'
Two of the astronauts who took part in the first Moon landing 40 years ago have called for renewed efforts to send a manned mission to Mars.
At a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins said Mars instead of the Moon should be the focus of exploration.
Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, said the race to get to the Moon had been the ultimate peaceful contest.
He said it was an "exceptional national investment" for the US and ex-USSR.
The trio spoke at an event at Washington DC's National Air and Space Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of their mission.
Mr Armstrong told the audience: "It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR.
"I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion.
"Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides."
Fellow astronaut Mr Aldrin spoke of the inspiration provided by then-President John F Kennedy which led to the "betterment of America, and ultimately the ending of the Cold War".
"Apollo 11 is a symbol of what a great nation and a great people can do if we work hard, work together and have strong leaders with vision and determination," he said.
But he also pushed for a mission to Mars: "The best way to honour and remember all those who were part of the Apollo programme is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration."
Mr Collins, who circled the Moon alone while Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin walked on it, said Mars was more interesting than the Moon.
"Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favourite as a kid and it still is today."
He urged further exploration, saying: "I worry that the current emphasis on returning to the Moon will cause us to become ensnared in a technological briar patch needlessly delaying for decades the exploration of Mars - a much more worthwhile destination."
The US space agency's currently stated aim is to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. But that vision is under review, along with the space vehicles that would get them there.
Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.
Another rocket, Ares V, would have the capability to launch heavy payloads - service and cargo modules - that would be needed to service Moon missions.
Why go back to the Moon?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8158347.stmSunday, 19 July 2009
Why go back to the Moon?
Apollo barely scratched the surface of the Moon
By Richard Hollingham
Six flags, 12 sets of dusty footprints and 382 kg of rock; all at a cost (at 1960s prices) of some $20bn.
The Apollo Moon landings were a remarkable technical, scientific and political achievement and their 40th anniversary is undoubtedly a cause for celebration.
I've been privileged enough to interview seven of the men who walked on the Moon and I'm enjoying this Apollo nostalgia-fest as much as anyone.
One phrase though always sticks in my mind, and it came from the last man on the Moon, Gene Cernan. He asked: "When are we going back?"
Perhaps now, the more important question is: why are we going back?
Unfinished business
One thing that often gets forgotten in any assessment of Apollo tends to be the science. As well as gathering all that rock, every lunar mission carried scientific experiments.
"Apollo has a wonderful scientific legacy," said Greg Schmidt, the deputy director of Nasa's Lunar Science Institute.
"The samples that Apollo brought back are still being analysed and we're still learning new things from these.
"They were absolutely crucial in enabling us to understand a lot about the Moon. After Apollo, we came up with the hypothesis that's currently accepted of the Moon's formation: how the Moon was formed by the impact with the Earth of a Mars-sized object, out of which came the Moon."
But Apollo barely scratched the lunar surface and, from a purely scientific point of view, there's a lot we don't know about the Moon.
It's far more than a dead lump of rock, with its complex geology and regular Moonquakes. Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, for instance, wants to know what lies beneath the dust.
He's keen to see a network of seismic instruments to investigate the Moon's interior geology.
"We had a seismic network which the Apollo astronauts set up 40 years ago but that only gave us a tantalising hint of knowledge," Spudis told the BBC.
"Ideally, what you want is a global network of seismometers on the Moon."
That word "tantalising" is one you'll hear a lot from lunar geologists - although we can see the Moon every night, we still don't know what it's made of and have yet to prove categorically how it got there.
Other scientists are eager to study lunar impacts - working out how often the Moon gets hit by lumps of space rock will help us assess how much at risk we are on Earth.
So here's the plan: over the next few years, a series of missions is planned to return to the Moon.
The first are up there now: Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and LCROSS - a mission designed to slam into the Moon's surface so scientists can study the resulting plume of debris.
After that would come MoonLite - an ambitious UK mission being developed to fire penetrators into the surface. A few years later, there'll be robots and finally, by 2020 or so, humans.
Data collected by LRO could help in the selection of future landing sites
If that's all to happen, quite apart from the political commitments, there are going to need to be a great deal of technical developments.
Take MoonLite, for example. It consists of a lunar orbiting spacecraft and a series of missiles, or penetrators, which will be fired into the Moon to create a global network of seismic monitoring stations.
The penetrators themselves are based on military missile technology - a classic example of "swords into ploughshares". But getting them to land in the right place, the right way up - and still work, is a complex undertaking.
Quite apart from its goal to investigate lunar geology (which is perhaps a worthy enough ambition in itself), the mission necessitates developing a communications system, electronics and guidance systems. These will, argue MoonLite's backers, provide technology benefits, jobs and commercial opportunities.
Sir Martin Sweeting speaks for the mission's prime contractors, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL): "Certainly from experience, the challenge of space throws up benefits which get spun back down into other areas of our more everyday existence," he said. "This is, in the longer term, a commercial opportunity."
To boldy go
However, I'm unapologetic in my belief that the primary reason we should go back to the Moon is because, as humans, it's what we do.
We explore, we investigate and ultimately, we establish a foothold.
The exploration of the Moon is maybe best compared with the expeditions to Antarctica.
They are both uncompromising, extreme environments that, at first, would appear to have little to offer to human advancement.
As it's turned out, Antarctica has proved to be vital for scientific discovery.
It has taught us about our atmosphere, oceans and climate. 18th and 19th century explorers were desperate to discover that last continent - in the 21st century the Moon provides an even greater challenge.
Many of these missions, including MoonLite, are far from assured. And there is no shortage of people suggesting we're better spending money elsewhere. But who can fail to be inspired when they look up at the Moon on a clear night?
Perhaps the most important thing about this anniversary is not that we've been to the Moon, it's that we're now going back.
Richard Hollingham is a freelance science write and broadcaster. He presents Give Me The MoonLite on BBC on Radio 4 on Monday 20 July at 2100 BST. He also presents two Discovery programmes about the Moon, starting on Wednesday 22 July on BBC World Service. All the programmes will also be available as podcasts.
My moon-landing jam session
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-11-pink-floyd-session
My moon-landing jam session
David Gilmour
The Guardian
Thursday 2 July 2009
We [Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.
The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I've never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead - it's a nice, atmospheric, spacey, 12-bar blues.
I also remember at the time being in my flat in London, gazing up at the moon, and thinking, "There are actually people standing up there right now." It brought it home to me powerfully, that you could be looking up at the moon and there would be people standing on it.
At the time, Pink Floyd had been doing rather well. For a while, the band had been somewhat erratic and its reputation was sinking. I joined in 1968, 18 months before the moon landing. By then we were beginning to climb back up again.
It was fantastic to be thinking that we were in there making up a piece of music, while the astronauts were standing on the moon. It doesn't seem conceivable that that would happen on the BBC nowadays.
It didn't have a significant impact on our later work. I think at the time Roger [Waters], our lyricist, was looking more into going inwards, going into the inner space of the human mind and condition. And I think that was sort of the end of our exploration into outer space.
We didn't make any songs out of the jam session. We did, on occasions, do music live that would be a jam session of some sort; that would have some structure which we would organise ourselves. And I've heard documentaries where I recognise my music. It's very odd to be watching a documentary and to hear something that you know is yourself, but you have no recognition of when you did it or how. I've never forgotten Moonhead, though.
After all, it's not hard to remember exactly where I was.
• Moonhead was broadcast at 10pm on 20 July 1969.
My moon-landing jam session
David Gilmour
The Guardian
Thursday 2 July 2009
We [Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.
The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I've never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead - it's a nice, atmospheric, spacey, 12-bar blues.
I also remember at the time being in my flat in London, gazing up at the moon, and thinking, "There are actually people standing up there right now." It brought it home to me powerfully, that you could be looking up at the moon and there would be people standing on it.
At the time, Pink Floyd had been doing rather well. For a while, the band had been somewhat erratic and its reputation was sinking. I joined in 1968, 18 months before the moon landing. By then we were beginning to climb back up again.
It was fantastic to be thinking that we were in there making up a piece of music, while the astronauts were standing on the moon. It doesn't seem conceivable that that would happen on the BBC nowadays.
It didn't have a significant impact on our later work. I think at the time Roger [Waters], our lyricist, was looking more into going inwards, going into the inner space of the human mind and condition. And I think that was sort of the end of our exploration into outer space.
We didn't make any songs out of the jam session. We did, on occasions, do music live that would be a jam session of some sort; that would have some structure which we would organise ourselves. And I've heard documentaries where I recognise my music. It's very odd to be watching a documentary and to hear something that you know is yourself, but you have no recognition of when you did it or how. I've never forgotten Moonhead, though.
After all, it's not hard to remember exactly where I was.
• Moonhead was broadcast at 10pm on 20 July 1969.
Apollo 11 hoax
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5851435/Apollo-11-hoax-one-in-four-people-do-not-believe-in-moon-landing.htmlApollo 11 hoax: one in four people do not believe in moon landing
A quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were a hoax.
17 Jul 2009
Eleven of the 1009 people surveyed thought Buzz Lightyear was the first person on the Moon.
The Toy Story film character was named alongside Louis Armstrong. Eight of those taking part thought the late jazz musician made the first moon walk.
Not quite three quarters correctly answered that Neil Armstrong took the first step onto the Moon.
Eleven per cent of people polled thought the Apollo programme was a recent as the 1980s, with just 68 per cent knowing that the first moon landing took place in 1969.
A total of 44 per cent considered the missions to be a waste of money.
The survey was conducted for E&T magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Editor in chief Dickon Ross said: "The Apollo moon landing is mankind's most outstanding engineering event so it's deeply worrying that such a large number of people should think the first moon walk never happened and that the public's belief in the legitimacy of science and technology seems to be declining over time."
Conspiracy theorists have pointed to a number of flaws in the pictures and footage from the Apollo missions as proof that the moon landings were staged.
For instance, the US flag planted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was said to be waving in a breeze, which should not have been possible on the airless moon.
Nasa's response was that the flag waved a little when deployed due to residual momentum from contact with the astronauts, not because of windy weather.
Alleged light and shadow anomalies were the result of the highly reflective surface of the Moon and the wide-angle cameras used by the astronauts, said the space agency.
Another question mark over the lack of dust kicked up by the lunar module was explained by the fact that the craft's rocket exhaust fired out sideways rather than straight down.
Leading space scientist Professor John Zarnecki, from the Open University, said: "I think it would have been a far greater achievement to have mocked the whole thing up AND to have kept it quiet for four decades.
"If one in four Britons today don't believe the moon landings ever happened, then I'm afraid that says a lot about one in four Britons. And what it says isn't very complimentary."
He pointed out that moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts were very similar to those returned by a series of unmanned Soviet probes.
Veteran astronomer Sir Patrick Moore said about those who believe the moon landings were a hoax: "If ignorance is bliss they must be very happy."
10 Reasons Why Moon Landing Was Awesome
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/10-reasons-the-apollo-11-moon-landing-was-awesome/
10 Reasons Why Apollo 11 Moon Landing Was Awesome
By Curtis Silver July 21, 2009
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Forty years ago mission commander Neil A. Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. walked on the moon while command module pilot Michael Collins orbited above. Today however, marks the 40th anniversary of the day people really reacted to what just happened. As with all major events in time, there is always a day of reflection. I’d like to honor that day of reflection with my top 10 thoughts about the Apollo 11 moon landing.
It was a comeback victory in the space race against the Soviets
I’d even say, we made the Soviets look like chumps. We won the space race by putting a man on the moon. Sure, the Soviets were there first, having bounced their Luna 2 spacecraft off the moon 10 years earlier, but we left our footprints there. The Cold War may have lasted another 15 years or so after that, but it gave us the confidence to make movies like Red Dawn. It also showed the world what could be achieved by democracy over communism. From my father, who was in the Navy at the time:
I was at sea when the landing occurred; I didn’t even know about it until we hit our next port of call, which was Barcelona. I can tell you that the Spanish people were very excited about the landing; they mostly thought it was a wonderful occurrence and congratulated us sailors for the event. They also thought we must be very proud to have beaten the Russians to the moon. At the time, Spain was under the control of the fascist dictatorship government of Francisco Franco.
Gave the conspiracy theorists something to talk about for the next century
Even though anyone with a high-powered telescope and laser system (don’t you have one?) can see the reflections off the equipment left on the moon, the conspiracy theorists still think the whole thing was staged, on the basis that we haven’t gone back. If we should have faked anything in the late ’60s, it should have been Vietnam.
It felt great to be an American
The ’60s were a tumultuous time in American history. Civil rights, Vietnam, Kennedy and the Cold War — all made for a stressful time and American values were put to the test. But when we landed on the moon, everyone in America put all that aside, if only for a couple days. As stated by my cousin KV:
I was at a Little League party, watching the moon landing after our last game of the season. There was a 7 Eleven across the street, so the mom got all of us Coke slurpees, which had just been invented recently. I sat there watching Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon while I took a taste of my first Coke slurpee. I remember thinking how great it is to be American.
Made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin legends in their own time
That’s hard to achieve these day, with nothing happening as spectacular as walking on the moon. When you think space you think of Armstrong and Aldrin. When you look up at the moon you think about those images, no matter how old or young you are. Those images of them walking on the moon are an iconic piece of American history that every child will remember until the day when we’re all enslaved in the Matrix.
Proved that the moon was not made of cheese
There were a lot of excited scientists when we landed on the moon — they knew that it would lead to research projects and glorious spoonfuls of moon rocks. Since then, experiments in space and on objects from space — especially moon items, have been at the forefront of our exploration. After beating the Soviets (since that was the driving force for going there in the first place) the science has taken over and a lot has been discovered about our moon, science that is still relevant today.<
Kennedy was right
He was shot and killed while in office, and there is no greater legacy attributed to John F. Kennedy than his promise to put a man on the moon. Less than six years after his death, we did just that. And we brought them back safely, just like Kennedy promised.
First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
It turned science fiction into reality
For years, many great science fiction novels and the pages of Analog magazine theorized about what it was like on the moon. Adventures took place there, colonies were built and the moon was a place of fantasy. Not anymore. The day after we landed on the moon, science fiction writers around the globe not only celebrated the fact, but started looking for more far-fetched places for alien detective stories — like Mars. If we hadn’t landed on the moon, Total Recall may have never been as cool as it was.
Gave our kids something to aspire to
The Cold War was a bummer. The kids growing up in the 1960s were tired of hiding under their desks for nuclear bomb drills and were feeling depressed by society. Being told they could grow up to be president didn’t sound that great anymore after Kennedy’s assassination. Growing up to be Mickey Mantle was the next best option, but that only brought thoughts of liver damage. Then we set foot on the moon, and now you could grow up to be an astronaut. How fantastic is that? Can you imagine the wonder on a child’s face sitting in front of the television as Armstrong bounded along the moon’s surface?
It validated NASA’s existence
NASA was under a lot of pressure from the government and from the American public to do something spectacular. When Kennedy promised a moon landing, the scrutiny was even harsher. NASA had no choice but to land us on the moon as quickly as possible. When it did, it achieved at least 40 years of grants and funding; only now is it coming under scrutiny again.
We actually sent a spacecraft to the moon and landed on it
The Apollo 11 mission astronauts trained hard for countless hours for this mission. NASA spent millions of dollars on building a spacecraft with the specifications needed to land on the moon. They didn’t have a moon to test it on first — this was the test. Sure, they could simulate the landing, but nothing is better than the real thing. The science, the engineering, the planning and training that went into this project was the first of its kind. We landed men on the moon. Think of how amazing that actually is and the hundreds of people it took to do it. Forty years ago today, every single one of those people watched the moon landing again on the evening news and reflected on the part that they played in putting a man on the moon. This is a virtual toast to every single one of them. Let’s not have it be another 40 years before we are back there, building a mini-mall.
10 Reasons Why Apollo 11 Moon Landing Was Awesome
By Curtis Silver July 21, 2009
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Forty years ago mission commander Neil A. Armstrong and lunar module pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. walked on the moon while command module pilot Michael Collins orbited above. Today however, marks the 40th anniversary of the day people really reacted to what just happened. As with all major events in time, there is always a day of reflection. I’d like to honor that day of reflection with my top 10 thoughts about the Apollo 11 moon landing.
It was a comeback victory in the space race against the Soviets
I’d even say, we made the Soviets look like chumps. We won the space race by putting a man on the moon. Sure, the Soviets were there first, having bounced their Luna 2 spacecraft off the moon 10 years earlier, but we left our footprints there. The Cold War may have lasted another 15 years or so after that, but it gave us the confidence to make movies like Red Dawn. It also showed the world what could be achieved by democracy over communism. From my father, who was in the Navy at the time:
I was at sea when the landing occurred; I didn’t even know about it until we hit our next port of call, which was Barcelona. I can tell you that the Spanish people were very excited about the landing; they mostly thought it was a wonderful occurrence and congratulated us sailors for the event. They also thought we must be very proud to have beaten the Russians to the moon. At the time, Spain was under the control of the fascist dictatorship government of Francisco Franco.
Gave the conspiracy theorists something to talk about for the next century
Even though anyone with a high-powered telescope and laser system (don’t you have one?) can see the reflections off the equipment left on the moon, the conspiracy theorists still think the whole thing was staged, on the basis that we haven’t gone back. If we should have faked anything in the late ’60s, it should have been Vietnam.
It felt great to be an American
The ’60s were a tumultuous time in American history. Civil rights, Vietnam, Kennedy and the Cold War — all made for a stressful time and American values were put to the test. But when we landed on the moon, everyone in America put all that aside, if only for a couple days. As stated by my cousin KV:
I was at a Little League party, watching the moon landing after our last game of the season. There was a 7 Eleven across the street, so the mom got all of us Coke slurpees, which had just been invented recently. I sat there watching Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon while I took a taste of my first Coke slurpee. I remember thinking how great it is to be American.
Made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin legends in their own time
That’s hard to achieve these day, with nothing happening as spectacular as walking on the moon. When you think space you think of Armstrong and Aldrin. When you look up at the moon you think about those images, no matter how old or young you are. Those images of them walking on the moon are an iconic piece of American history that every child will remember until the day when we’re all enslaved in the Matrix.
Proved that the moon was not made of cheese
There were a lot of excited scientists when we landed on the moon — they knew that it would lead to research projects and glorious spoonfuls of moon rocks. Since then, experiments in space and on objects from space — especially moon items, have been at the forefront of our exploration. After beating the Soviets (since that was the driving force for going there in the first place) the science has taken over and a lot has been discovered about our moon, science that is still relevant today.<
Kennedy was right
He was shot and killed while in office, and there is no greater legacy attributed to John F. Kennedy than his promise to put a man on the moon. Less than six years after his death, we did just that. And we brought them back safely, just like Kennedy promised.
First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
It turned science fiction into reality
For years, many great science fiction novels and the pages of Analog magazine theorized about what it was like on the moon. Adventures took place there, colonies were built and the moon was a place of fantasy. Not anymore. The day after we landed on the moon, science fiction writers around the globe not only celebrated the fact, but started looking for more far-fetched places for alien detective stories — like Mars. If we hadn’t landed on the moon, Total Recall may have never been as cool as it was.
Gave our kids something to aspire to
The Cold War was a bummer. The kids growing up in the 1960s were tired of hiding under their desks for nuclear bomb drills and were feeling depressed by society. Being told they could grow up to be president didn’t sound that great anymore after Kennedy’s assassination. Growing up to be Mickey Mantle was the next best option, but that only brought thoughts of liver damage. Then we set foot on the moon, and now you could grow up to be an astronaut. How fantastic is that? Can you imagine the wonder on a child’s face sitting in front of the television as Armstrong bounded along the moon’s surface?
It validated NASA’s existence
NASA was under a lot of pressure from the government and from the American public to do something spectacular. When Kennedy promised a moon landing, the scrutiny was even harsher. NASA had no choice but to land us on the moon as quickly as possible. When it did, it achieved at least 40 years of grants and funding; only now is it coming under scrutiny again.
We actually sent a spacecraft to the moon and landed on it
The Apollo 11 mission astronauts trained hard for countless hours for this mission. NASA spent millions of dollars on building a spacecraft with the specifications needed to land on the moon. They didn’t have a moon to test it on first — this was the test. Sure, they could simulate the landing, but nothing is better than the real thing. The science, the engineering, the planning and training that went into this project was the first of its kind. We landed men on the moon. Think of how amazing that actually is and the hundreds of people it took to do it. Forty years ago today, every single one of those people watched the moon landing again on the evening news and reflected on the part that they played in putting a man on the moon. This is a virtual toast to every single one of them. Let’s not have it be another 40 years before we are back there, building a mini-mall.
US bank bailout to cost $23.7 trillion
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/tarp-j22.shtml
US bank bailout to cost $23.7 trillion
By Andre Damon
22 July 2009
The federal government’s bailout of Wall Street may cost $23.7 trillion, according to a statement given to Congress Monday by the lead overseer of the Treasury's bailout program. Neil Barofsky, special inspector-general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said that the US Treasury’s bailout program was fraught with “conflicts of interest,” “collusion vulnerabilities” and deliberate obfuscation of what banks are doing with the money they received from the government. He noted that there are 35 major fraud investigations related to the bailout, and that a substantial section of banks did not use their bailout funds to make new loans.
The Treasury immediately denounced Barofsky's findings, claiming the figure of $23 trillion failed to adequately account for repayments on the government loans, which it claimed might actually earn the government money.
Barofsky's report reads more like a police dossier on a money laundering operation than a report on the activities of a government agency. He notes that the Treasury—the branch of government responsible for overseeing a large part of the bailout—has repeatedly opposed calls for more transparency and stricter reporting standards, including those from his office.
The report notes, “TARP has become a program in which taxpayers (i) are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, (ii) have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and (iii) will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested.”
The report notes that in the nine months since the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, “the US Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) has created 12 separate programs involving Government and private funds of up to almost $3 trillion.”
Besides the Treasury's activities, the US government as a whole has created “dozens” of programs, whose “support could reach up to $23.7 trillion.”
While the Treasury has been allocated $700,000 by Congress, the report notes that the Treasury's total potential obligations—arising from the fact that the government has guaranteed banks’ debt in case of losses—totals somewhere between $2.3 and 2.8 trillion. The original Troubled Asset Relief Program has splintered into a dozen programs, including a $218 billion capital injection program known as the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), direct bailouts of individual firms like AIG, and two major asset repurchasing programs, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), both of which have potential obligations of up to a trillion dollars.
Barofsky noted that one of his initial recommendations was that the “Treasury require all TARP recipients to report on the actual use of TARP funds.... Treasury has declined to adopt this recommendation, calling any such reporting ‘meaningless.’”
The Treasury’s argument, as pointed out by the report, is preposterous. Banks can easily be made to disclose how additional funds affected their decision-making. The Treasury’s obdurance in not insisting that banks disclose what they do with the money is to cover-up the fact that a large number of banks have contracted their lending, raised fees and interest rates on consumer loans, and pursued policies that run dramatically against the needs of society.
In fact, the report found that, of the 300 banks surveyed, 20 percent did not increase their lending after receiving funds, but directed the additional bailout money to other purposes. The report further notes that the Special Investigator’s office is currently investigating 35 cases of fraud and corruption in relation to the TARP program.
Barofsky further noted the Treasury has denied appeals to begin reporting the values of its bailout asset holdings, both in relation to the TARP and PPIP. In the case of the government’s toxic asset buyup program, the report states that this method is explicitly counter to the program’s goals, since “price discovery” for “illiquid secruities” was one of the justifications for pushing through the program.
The report notes that “conflicts of interest and collusion vulnerabilities were inherent in the design of PPIP” from its inception, because the businesses assigned to value illiquid assets would in many cases be the same ones receiving federal subsidies, resulting in an incentive to overvalue securities.
The report repeats allegations that the “Treasury is using TARP to pick winners and losers and that, by granting certain firms the PPIF manager status, it is benefitting a chosen few at the expense of the dozens of firms that were rejected, of the market as a whole, and of the American taxpayer.”
None of this is an accident. It is well documatend that politically connected banks and investment firms, such as Goldman Sachs, have utilized the bailout to drive out their competitors and consolidate their monopoly over the financial system.
Moreover, the government is using the program’s lack of transparency to hide the fact that it is giving banks a free pass now they have returned to profitability. Another oversight body for the TARP, the Congressional Oversight Panel, found this month that the government was receiving only sixty cents on the dollar from banks seeking to repay their loans to the government.
The report’s estimate of the bailout’s total cost, $23 trillion, is in itself mind-boggling. It amounts to 1.7 times the total Gross Domestic Product of the whole United States. In other words, the product of more than a year’s labor for all American workers is being directly transferred to the banks. To put this figure in perspective, the government’s total outlay for discretionary spending, which includes education, food and nutrition programs and housing and urban development, is less than a trillion a year.
This massive transfer of wealth entails the immiseration and impoverishment of the great majority of society. The bank bailout program is widely reviled, and the bankers who benefited are seen as no better than criminals. All of this has explosive implications. It is in tacit recognition of this fact, and in desire to make the Treasury’s theiving less blatant, that the document warns that the Treasury’s actions “could put in jeopardy the fragile trust the American people have in TARP and, by extension, their Government.”
The bank bailout was designed from the start to enrich the financial elite at the expense of everyone else while masking as relief for the economic crisis . The program’s favoritism, conflicts of interest, and massive loopholes are not a rough patch in an otherwise sound program, but are essential to its very aim. The whole thing is a crime of historic proportions.
US bank bailout to cost $23.7 trillion
By Andre Damon
22 July 2009
The federal government’s bailout of Wall Street may cost $23.7 trillion, according to a statement given to Congress Monday by the lead overseer of the Treasury's bailout program. Neil Barofsky, special inspector-general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said that the US Treasury’s bailout program was fraught with “conflicts of interest,” “collusion vulnerabilities” and deliberate obfuscation of what banks are doing with the money they received from the government. He noted that there are 35 major fraud investigations related to the bailout, and that a substantial section of banks did not use their bailout funds to make new loans.
The Treasury immediately denounced Barofsky's findings, claiming the figure of $23 trillion failed to adequately account for repayments on the government loans, which it claimed might actually earn the government money.
Barofsky's report reads more like a police dossier on a money laundering operation than a report on the activities of a government agency. He notes that the Treasury—the branch of government responsible for overseeing a large part of the bailout—has repeatedly opposed calls for more transparency and stricter reporting standards, including those from his office.
The report notes, “TARP has become a program in which taxpayers (i) are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, (ii) have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and (iii) will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested.”
The report notes that in the nine months since the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, “the US Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) has created 12 separate programs involving Government and private funds of up to almost $3 trillion.”
Besides the Treasury's activities, the US government as a whole has created “dozens” of programs, whose “support could reach up to $23.7 trillion.”
While the Treasury has been allocated $700,000 by Congress, the report notes that the Treasury's total potential obligations—arising from the fact that the government has guaranteed banks’ debt in case of losses—totals somewhere between $2.3 and 2.8 trillion. The original Troubled Asset Relief Program has splintered into a dozen programs, including a $218 billion capital injection program known as the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), direct bailouts of individual firms like AIG, and two major asset repurchasing programs, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), both of which have potential obligations of up to a trillion dollars.
Barofsky noted that one of his initial recommendations was that the “Treasury require all TARP recipients to report on the actual use of TARP funds.... Treasury has declined to adopt this recommendation, calling any such reporting ‘meaningless.’”
The Treasury’s argument, as pointed out by the report, is preposterous. Banks can easily be made to disclose how additional funds affected their decision-making. The Treasury’s obdurance in not insisting that banks disclose what they do with the money is to cover-up the fact that a large number of banks have contracted their lending, raised fees and interest rates on consumer loans, and pursued policies that run dramatically against the needs of society.
In fact, the report found that, of the 300 banks surveyed, 20 percent did not increase their lending after receiving funds, but directed the additional bailout money to other purposes. The report further notes that the Special Investigator’s office is currently investigating 35 cases of fraud and corruption in relation to the TARP program.
Barofsky further noted the Treasury has denied appeals to begin reporting the values of its bailout asset holdings, both in relation to the TARP and PPIP. In the case of the government’s toxic asset buyup program, the report states that this method is explicitly counter to the program’s goals, since “price discovery” for “illiquid secruities” was one of the justifications for pushing through the program.
The report notes that “conflicts of interest and collusion vulnerabilities were inherent in the design of PPIP” from its inception, because the businesses assigned to value illiquid assets would in many cases be the same ones receiving federal subsidies, resulting in an incentive to overvalue securities.
The report repeats allegations that the “Treasury is using TARP to pick winners and losers and that, by granting certain firms the PPIF manager status, it is benefitting a chosen few at the expense of the dozens of firms that were rejected, of the market as a whole, and of the American taxpayer.”
None of this is an accident. It is well documatend that politically connected banks and investment firms, such as Goldman Sachs, have utilized the bailout to drive out their competitors and consolidate their monopoly over the financial system.
Moreover, the government is using the program’s lack of transparency to hide the fact that it is giving banks a free pass now they have returned to profitability. Another oversight body for the TARP, the Congressional Oversight Panel, found this month that the government was receiving only sixty cents on the dollar from banks seeking to repay their loans to the government.
The report’s estimate of the bailout’s total cost, $23 trillion, is in itself mind-boggling. It amounts to 1.7 times the total Gross Domestic Product of the whole United States. In other words, the product of more than a year’s labor for all American workers is being directly transferred to the banks. To put this figure in perspective, the government’s total outlay for discretionary spending, which includes education, food and nutrition programs and housing and urban development, is less than a trillion a year.
This massive transfer of wealth entails the immiseration and impoverishment of the great majority of society. The bank bailout program is widely reviled, and the bankers who benefited are seen as no better than criminals. All of this has explosive implications. It is in tacit recognition of this fact, and in desire to make the Treasury’s theiving less blatant, that the document warns that the Treasury’s actions “could put in jeopardy the fragile trust the American people have in TARP and, by extension, their Government.”
The bank bailout was designed from the start to enrich the financial elite at the expense of everyone else while masking as relief for the economic crisis . The program’s favoritism, conflicts of interest, and massive loopholes are not a rough patch in an otherwise sound program, but are essential to its very aim. The whole thing is a crime of historic proportions.
Gates chastises officer after authorities drop charge
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/charges_to_be_d.html
Gates chastises officer after authorities agree to drop criminal charge
July 21, 2009
Police led Henry Louis Gates Jr. away in handcuffs after his arrest on Thursday at his home in Cambridge.
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. chastised a Cambridge police officer today and demanded an apology after authorities agreed to drop a disorderly conduct charge against the renowned African-American scholar.
Gates accused the officer who arrested him at his Cambridge home of having a "broad imagination" when he summarized last Thursday's confrontation in police reports, and he denied making several inflammatory remarks.
“I believe the police officer should apologize to me for what he knows he did that was wrong,” Gates said in a phone interview from his other home in Martha’s Vineyard. “If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling … That’s what I do for a living.”
Gates, 58, was handcuffed and booked last Thursday following a police investigation into a suspected burglary at his Ware Street home near Harvard Square. A passerby spotted Gates and his driver, who had dropped him off from the airport, trying to push the front door open and called the police. The door had been jammed. Police responded and arrested Gates after they said he became belligerent.
Earlier today, the Middlesex district attorney's office announced plans to drop criminal charges against Gates. The City of Cambridge and the police department recommended today that prosecutors not pursue charges in a joint statement from authorities and Gates that called the confrontation "regrettable and unfortunate."
"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department," the statement said. "All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances."
Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons said in a statement that the controversy illustrated "that Cambridge must continue finding ways to address matters of race and class in a frank, honest, and productive manner."
The imbroglio elicited reactions from across the country about race relations and profiling. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said today on MSNBC that even though "we've elected an African-American president … these kinds of profiling do, in fact, take place."
"We're a long way from putting this issue behind us," said Clyburn, a Democrat and former chairman of Congressional Black Caucus.
This afternoon in an interview, Gates said he never yelled at the officer other than to demand his name and badge number, which he said the officer refused to give. The officer, Sergeant James Crowley, said in the police report that he did state his name. He also said Gates unleashed a verbal tirade, calling him racist, telling him that he did not know who he was messing with, and threatening to speak to his “mama” outside.
“The police report is full of this man’s broad imagination,” Gates said in response to a question on whether he had said any of the quotes in the report. “I said, ‘Are you not giving me your name and badge number because I’m a black man in America?’ . . . He treated my request with scorn. . . I was suffering from a bronchial infection. I couldn’t have yelled. . . I don’t walk around calling white people racist.”
Gates continued, “I’m outraged. I shouldn’t have been treated this way but it makes me so keenly aware of how many people every day experience abuses in the criminal justice system ... No citizen should tolerate that kind of poor behavior by an officer of the law. . . This is really about justice for the least amongst us.”
Because of his arrest, Gates said he plans to make racial profiling and prison reform central intellectual and political issues he wants to explore. He’s also considering a new documentary on racial profiling.
“Because of the capricious whim of one disturbed person . . . I am now a black man with a prison record,” Gates said. “You can look at my mug shot on the Internet.”
Gates chastises officer after authorities agree to drop criminal charge
July 21, 2009
Police led Henry Louis Gates Jr. away in handcuffs after his arrest on Thursday at his home in Cambridge.
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. chastised a Cambridge police officer today and demanded an apology after authorities agreed to drop a disorderly conduct charge against the renowned African-American scholar.
Gates accused the officer who arrested him at his Cambridge home of having a "broad imagination" when he summarized last Thursday's confrontation in police reports, and he denied making several inflammatory remarks.
“I believe the police officer should apologize to me for what he knows he did that was wrong,” Gates said in a phone interview from his other home in Martha’s Vineyard. “If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling … That’s what I do for a living.”
Gates, 58, was handcuffed and booked last Thursday following a police investigation into a suspected burglary at his Ware Street home near Harvard Square. A passerby spotted Gates and his driver, who had dropped him off from the airport, trying to push the front door open and called the police. The door had been jammed. Police responded and arrested Gates after they said he became belligerent.
Earlier today, the Middlesex district attorney's office announced plans to drop criminal charges against Gates. The City of Cambridge and the police department recommended today that prosecutors not pursue charges in a joint statement from authorities and Gates that called the confrontation "regrettable and unfortunate."
"This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department," the statement said. "All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances."
Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons said in a statement that the controversy illustrated "that Cambridge must continue finding ways to address matters of race and class in a frank, honest, and productive manner."
The imbroglio elicited reactions from across the country about race relations and profiling. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said today on MSNBC that even though "we've elected an African-American president … these kinds of profiling do, in fact, take place."
"We're a long way from putting this issue behind us," said Clyburn, a Democrat and former chairman of Congressional Black Caucus.
This afternoon in an interview, Gates said he never yelled at the officer other than to demand his name and badge number, which he said the officer refused to give. The officer, Sergeant James Crowley, said in the police report that he did state his name. He also said Gates unleashed a verbal tirade, calling him racist, telling him that he did not know who he was messing with, and threatening to speak to his “mama” outside.
“The police report is full of this man’s broad imagination,” Gates said in response to a question on whether he had said any of the quotes in the report. “I said, ‘Are you not giving me your name and badge number because I’m a black man in America?’ . . . He treated my request with scorn. . . I was suffering from a bronchial infection. I couldn’t have yelled. . . I don’t walk around calling white people racist.”
Gates continued, “I’m outraged. I shouldn’t have been treated this way but it makes me so keenly aware of how many people every day experience abuses in the criminal justice system ... No citizen should tolerate that kind of poor behavior by an officer of the law. . . This is really about justice for the least amongst us.”
Because of his arrest, Gates said he plans to make racial profiling and prison reform central intellectual and political issues he wants to explore. He’s also considering a new documentary on racial profiling.
“Because of the capricious whim of one disturbed person . . . I am now a black man with a prison record,” Gates said. “You can look at my mug shot on the Internet.”
CONSPIRACY THEORY WITH JESSE VENTURA
Jerry E. Smith
7-21-9
He’s undertaken some of the most dangerous missions in the world as a Navy SEAL. He’s body-slammed giants in the wrestling ring as a WWE superstar. He’s even conquered politics as the governor of Minnesota. Now, Jesse Ventura is about to face his greatest challenge yet: uncovering the most compelling, modern-day conspiracy theories. CONSPIRACY THEORY is produced by A. Smith & Co. Productions (Hell’s Kitchen, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, Kitchen Nightmares, Trading Spaces) and will appear on truTV (formerly CourtTV) in the fall 2009 season line-up.
Ventura will travel the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory's validity.
"Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces," truTV said in a statement.
"I've been a mayor, I've been a governor," Ventura said. "Now, I get to be a detective and seek the truth." A pilot for the show, on 9/11, was shot in October. Several episodes have since been taped, including one with Jerry E. Smith on the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which is expected to air in November 2009.
"Jesse is a savvy, high-energy and highly intellectual person," TruTV executive vice president Marc Juris said in a statement. "Above all, he's someone who is as real as they come." - Richard Huff
Ventura, a former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor, hosted a weekly talk show that lasted two months on MSNBC in 2003. He was also a TV commentator for the XFL, an alternative football league that folded after airing for one season on NBC in 2000. Elected governor in 1998, he did not run for re-election in 2002. The former Navy Seal has been extremely vocal in his support for the 9/11 Truth Movement. Ventura spoke passionately on the subject in front of 10,000 strong and millions watching on C-Span during an appearance at Ron Paul's Rally For The Republic.
During an appearance on the Alex Jones show, Ventura hit out at a now entrenched culture that "cannot handle the truth" when it comes to the events of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the devastation that has been wrought on the economy and the "failed political leadership" of the last administration.
TruTv currently reaches 91 million U.S. households, meaning Ventura’s show could potentially reach millions of viewers.
7-21-9
He’s undertaken some of the most dangerous missions in the world as a Navy SEAL. He’s body-slammed giants in the wrestling ring as a WWE superstar. He’s even conquered politics as the governor of Minnesota. Now, Jesse Ventura is about to face his greatest challenge yet: uncovering the most compelling, modern-day conspiracy theories. CONSPIRACY THEORY is produced by A. Smith & Co. Productions (Hell’s Kitchen, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, Kitchen Nightmares, Trading Spaces) and will appear on truTV (formerly CourtTV) in the fall 2009 season line-up.
Ventura will travel the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory's validity.
"Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces," truTV said in a statement.
"I've been a mayor, I've been a governor," Ventura said. "Now, I get to be a detective and seek the truth." A pilot for the show, on 9/11, was shot in October. Several episodes have since been taped, including one with Jerry E. Smith on the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which is expected to air in November 2009.
"Jesse is a savvy, high-energy and highly intellectual person," TruTV executive vice president Marc Juris said in a statement. "Above all, he's someone who is as real as they come." - Richard Huff
Ventura, a former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor, hosted a weekly talk show that lasted two months on MSNBC in 2003. He was also a TV commentator for the XFL, an alternative football league that folded after airing for one season on NBC in 2000. Elected governor in 1998, he did not run for re-election in 2002. The former Navy Seal has been extremely vocal in his support for the 9/11 Truth Movement. Ventura spoke passionately on the subject in front of 10,000 strong and millions watching on C-Span during an appearance at Ron Paul's Rally For The Republic.
During an appearance on the Alex Jones show, Ventura hit out at a now entrenched culture that "cannot handle the truth" when it comes to the events of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the devastation that has been wrought on the economy and the "failed political leadership" of the last administration.
TruTv currently reaches 91 million U.S. households, meaning Ventura’s show could potentially reach millions of viewers.
The Gospel According to Acharya S
http://stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel.htmlNow available from Stellar House Publishing!
The hard-copy paperback edition you can hold in your hands!
The Gospel According to Acharya S
"The most truthful piece of spiritual writing I've ever read!"
"I just read your essay titled, 'What is God?' and I'd like to tell you that I found it the most truthful piece of spiritual writing I have ever read. So concise, a real stimulation unhindered by myth, parable and occult symbolism."
Steve R., Australia
Prologue
When I first wrote these essays in the early 90s, those who read them thought they were revolutionary--and unpublishable. The publishing industry back then was such that if you did not have a publisher of significance-and there were relatively few--you could expect to sell a handful of copies and to remain obscure and unknown. Writers were at the mercy of overburdened editors and their massive slush piles. Once the internet became fairly popular, however, revolutionary writings such as these found a home, as did eventually also the world of small publishing using print-on-demand. The internet is the great equalizer, as self-published or small publisher books compete side by side with the big-name companies, and a controversial book like this one becomes a feasible project. What you are holding, therefore, is something that would have been difficult if not impossible to create and propagate just a couple of decades ago. In the future, with the push for censorship as concerns religious cults, such a book may again become nonviable, banned and burned. In this regard, read it while you can, before it is put on the Index of the next Inquisition!
What Is God?
Is God a giant man in the sky? Does God exist?
Belief in God
Is belief in God is righteous, or ignorance of truth?
Praising the Lord
Does God need to be praised? Does He need to be worshipped?
Egotists on Earth
Should spiritual leaders be worshipped? Is God the ultimate egotist?
Speaking for God
Does anyone speak for God? Who?
God's Word
Is the Bible God's Word? Is there a Holy Land?
On Being Religious
Is being religious righteous and moral?
On a Wing and a Prayer
Does prayer really work? What is prayer?
Born in Sin?
What is sin? Are we all born in sin?
Eternal Life for Everyone?
Are we all immortal? Is everyone God?
Holy Days
Are holidays really holy? Did God establish them? Are they set in stone?
The Origins of Good and Evil
What are the origins of good and evil? Is there a good god and an evil devil?
The Devil is Divine
Where did the Devil come from? Who created the Devil and evil? Was it God or man?
Prophecy or Blueprint?
Is the Bible a book of prophecy? Have biblical prophecies been fulfilled?
Is Cannibalism a Religious Experience?
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him." Jesus Christ
What is a Cult?
Is a cult a religion? Is the Catholic Church a cult? Is the IRS?
Is God a Transsexual?
"God" was once "Goddess." Did He have a sex change?
Abusing Women is Not Religion
Is abusing women "religion?" Women the world over are beaten, tortured and killed in the name of religion.
A Question of Free Will
Do we have free will? Must we give our will to God? If we do, is it really "free?"
Celebration of Life
What is the purpose in life? Let us celebrate our existence.
A Truly Sacred Scripture
What is a "sacred scripture" or a "holy text?"
Epilogue
"The Gospel According to Acharya S has over 130 illustrations!"
"This 'Purple Bible' is the antidote to the world's insanity-producing 'holy scriptures!'"
Be sure to check out all the great excerpts below--and remember, the book is fully illustrated, with inline illustrations right next to the text!
At 204 pages, this 5x8 book is an easy read-and the perfect size for toting around.
"Grab your copy of the 'Purple Bible' today!
"Get your copy of The Gospel According to Acharya S through this site and receive a brand new, specially created ebook bonus free -
Acharya's Religion 101!"
"Yes, I want to order The Gospel According to Acharya S right now!"
(Be sure to check your mail/bulk/spam folders for a return receipt!)
Sorry - no Canadian/International Orders at this time!
International orders try: Barnes & Noble or Amazon
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Prologue
What is meant by "Gospel?"
Armageddon Sick of It!
An "Atheist" Here to Destroy?
What is God?
"God" is the Life Force
The Cosmic Mind
True Spirituality
"God" has No Form or Gender
The Ego, Consciousness and Enlightenment
Perceiving the Divine
GOD IS BORG-RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
Belief in God
Belief Proves Nothing - Truth Must Be Known
Belief Causes Turmoil
Praising the Lord
Is Kissing Arse a Religious Experience?
Is God a Megalomaniac?
God is a Murderous Tyrant!
God is a Deranged Crackpot
Enlightened Behavior
Egotists on Earth
Surrendering to the Master
Many "Masters" are but Egotists
Speaking for God
Omnipresence has No Spokespeople
Disagree, Go to Hell
Everybody Speaks for "God"
God's Word
Books are Written by MEN
Superior? Chosen? Arrogant! Conceited!
Is God a Jewish or Arab Man?
There are No "Chosen" People or "Superior" Races
On Being Religious
Do Pompous Pride and Religiosity Go Together?
Being a Zombie is Not a Religious Experience
On a Wing and a Prayer
Is Begging a Religious Experience?
Does God Like Begging?
We are Buddhas, Not Beggars
Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?
What is "True Prayer?"
Is God a Sadist?
Born in Sin?
The Sin of Adam
Sinners or Not?
Eternal Life for Everyone?
Divine Qualities are Not Restricted to the Divine
Join the Crowd-Everyone is God
Uncle Harry is Immortal!
Holy Days
Look to the Stars - "Religion" is Based on Astrotheology
The Origins of Good and Evil
Narrow Perceptions Represent Bigotry
True Wisdom can be Found Anywhere, Not Just in Some Old Book
"Religions" are Recycled Myths
Abraham is Brahma? Moses is Dionysus?
God and the Devil are One
"Evil" is Subjective
Horus and Set-Sound Familiar?
The Devil is Divine
The Origin of Evil
How Religions are Made
The Origin of the Words "Devil" and "Demon"
In God's Name-Not the Devil's
Prophecy or Blueprint?
The Bible
A Blueprint for Destruction
Israel - God Gets His Favorite Vacation Spot Back
Was Chernobyl a Can of Worms?
The Mark of the Beast & 666-an Evil Conspiracy?
Since When is Building a Building "Fulfillment of Prophecy?"
Peace on Earth Requires Clarity of Perception, Not Belief
Is Cannibalism a Religious Experience?
The Eucharist
Jewish Ritual Sacrifice
Cannibalism in the Bible
Murderous Rampages
Moral Behavior of God’s "Chosen"
The "Good" Patriarchs
What Does God Do with All the Foreskins?
The Good Book - Does it Produce Morality?
Is the New Testament Exempt from Moral Turpitude?
What is a Cult?
The Definition of Cult
Governmental Bodies Guilty of "Religious Veneration?"
The Catholic Church is More of a Cult than the Moonies
Mainstream Groups Use Cultlike Brainwashing Techniques
Isolate and Conquer
Rome Fiddles While the World Burns
"Cult" is Often Simply Name-Calling
Is God a Transsexual?
Believers are No More Religious than Nonbelievers
When God was a Woman
Nothing New Under the Sun
No Proof that "Great Spirit" is a Man
"Holy War" is Not Holy
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Abusing Women is Not Religion
"Religions" Represent Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Torture
Burning Women is Not Sacred
Genital Mutilation is Not Holy
Ankles are a Sexual Turn-on?!
There is Nothing Religious About Depravity
"God" is Not a Man-Get It?!!
A Question of Free Will
Obey Your Masters!
Slaves of Allah
Is God Negligent?
Celebration of Life
When are Human Beings at Their Best?
Humans Can Be Radiant and Superb
A Truly Sacred Scripture
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Pass the crab legs!
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/pass-crab-legs/Pass the crab legs!
A writer spends far too much time at all-you-can eateries and discovers that the Las Vegas buffet scene is—wait for it—not bad
E.C. Gladstone
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
The Flamingo Las Vegas “Chuck Wagon” Buffet, 1954.
It seemed like a simple idea, really. As a blogger for a popular travel website (not the one with the lawn ornament), I get to experience everything new, cool, lavish and exotic that Las Vegas has to offer. But not every visitor is going to make reservations at Guy Savoy followed by VIP-circle seats for Le Rêve, especially these days. More likely than not, they’ll make a date with the Bellagio fountains, get two-for-one tix to see a magician and (you can bet) eat at a buffet.
Ah, the venerated Las Vegas buffet, innovation of El Rancho’s Beldon Katleman, who figured a $1 buffet (about $10 in today’s money, FYI) was a great way to get gamblers into the casino and get them eating fast so they had more time to lose money. More than 60 years later, buffets remain one of the third rails of Las Vegas resorts (the other is free valet parking)—you can’t touch ’em. Sure, there are a few properties without serve-yourself smorgasbords—but that’s only the exception that proves the rule. Even when Steve Wynn opened his namesake 5-star resort, he reserved valuable real estate for an all-you-can-eatery (it’s one of the most expensive, and yet still gets them lined up).
So rating the buffets seemed like a no-brainer. After all, there are only two or three that really struggle for the top spot (and they’re mostly in properties Wynn built). But nothing seems so hotly contested among visitors and locals alike. Travelers might admit their experiences are anecdotal, but residents are un-budge-able in their opinions. If one swears Spice Market (Planet Hollywood) is the best, then it is. Or Bayside (Mandalay Bay). Or Rio’s extensive Carnival World Buffet. During the recent Bon Appetit-sponsored Uncork’d festival, even some star chefs got in a tussle on the topic.
But there are also as many buffet priorities as there are selections. Some eaters care only about the prime rib. Some rate by salads or sushi. Some focus on the desserts. But most of all, what matter are the shrimp and crab legs—how big, how much, how fresh. Every local outlet (including this one) has readers’ polls, and somehow they all pick different winners. So I came to realize this wasn’t something I could phone in. I had to check them out. All of them. Well, at least, most of them. God help me.
Admittedly, I took some shortcuts. If I couldn’t find anybody praising a particular buffet (even the publicists!), I wasn’t bothering. If I’d wandered into a particular buffet in recent years and remembered the intestinal aftermath more than the food, I wasn’t subjecting myself again. And I wasn’t including the special Sunday brunches (or theme nights) that some properties feature—because in that territory, the long-standing go-to pretty much remains the exclusive, expensive Sterling Brunch at Bally’s (still quite good—and perhaps worth the price if you intend to get pickled with Perrier-Jouet while pigging out), unless you’re a hipster—then, as the Weekly’s Vegas’ Best issue pointed out, you want to be seen at Simon.
Unsurprisingly, the economic downturn has affected our buffets less than probably any other food destinations. Bellagio Buffet GM Mark Huston, who shared a laugh with me over the crab-leg frenzy, said he’s only seen about a 5-10 percent loss in business this year. I suggested he keep that to himself, lest he get beat up by other restaurateurs on the Strip. One can imagine, in a restaurant town like Las Vegas, that being a manager or chef (Bellagio’s is the overqualified Edmund Wong) at even one of the best buffets brings a mixture of professional pride and humility. On one hand, you feed a statistically massive number of people on a relatively solid quality level. On the other … visualize 60 percent of your patrons bingeing on steamed crab legs and shrimp topped off with chocolate ice cream, while you’re offering them lobster risotto (Spice Market, Rio), oxtail stew (Main Street Station) and flan (Le Village, Paris).
I, of course, was more intrigued by the peculiar than the predictable. But novelty, as they say down at Archie McPhee, has a way of wearing off. Sure, Morgan Spurlock ate only McDonald’s for a month while making his 2004 documentary Super Size Me. Sure, Anthony Bourdain has gulped down anything from seal eyes to warthog rectum for his globe-roaming No Reservations TV show. But this was nearly the equivalent of going into a restaurant and saying “bring me the whole menu.” Sixteen times over. Bellagio, just for example, offers 70 items on an average meal. Cravings (Mirage) must have more (they are certainly trying: you can get a gyro with your gyoza there now). Rio’s Carnival World claims more than 100 (no, I did not count). And as my deadline approached, I was forced to even visit two buffets on some nights. Those were truly moments when I considered bulimia as a career move.
KNPR/KLAS food critic John Curtas openly laughed at the folly of my task, when I had to forsake fine dining with him to do some “research.” The derision turned almost instantly to pity.
Or horror, in the case of Weekly contributor Jack Colton—at least judging by his face when he agreed to accompany me on an outing, only to see the growing intensity of my pursuit. I can only imagine what thoughts passed through the minds of the bussers who had to clear dish after dish from the table, with half-eaten small samples of anything that intrigued (I counted as many as 10 plates at some sittings). Perhaps they thought I had oral ADD. I’m not one to waste food, but after the first five or six outings, it became impossible to maintain equilibrium without taking the smallest reasonable samples. The urge to take a second bite became the sign of anything exceptional.
Colton, like many Vegas natives, has formative memories tied to certain buffets, but also feels they all suffer from what he calls “flavor tax.” That is, most of the food has somehow had the savor subtracted. And he’s right. A bountiful variety of often bland food really is impressive only in its mediocrity. Don’t ask me how the relatively “legendary” Le Village at Paris manages to make lamb loin, or for that matter, coq au vin, almost flavorless. Don’t ask me why the sushi is far superior at Bellagio than it is at Rio Village Seafood—but the latter has some of the best meats.
Still almost every place had at least one thing to recommend it, often quite unexpectedly. The Hilton had great fresh guacamole. Golden Nugget had very good collard greens. Palace Station’s rustic mashed potatoes were as good as they get. Spice Market at Planet Hollywood, in a holdover from Aladdin days, had good Middle Eastern mezza and kebobs.
One thing I discovered in my omnivorous odyssey is that price and quality really bear little relation. Breakfast at the Ports O’Call at Gold Coast ($5.95) is likely to be just about as satisfying as it is at Carnival World at the Rio next door ($12.99). Local-luring Seasons at Silverton Lodge or the nine (nine!) Stations Feasts may offer less variety, but really, most buffet content breaks down to a bit of Mexican, a bit of Italian and a bit of Asian—and frankly, they do them as well as (in some cases, better than) the Strip hot spots.
Value-hunting offers its own dangers, though: several properties offer buffets at impossibly low prices. Palace Station’s clearly makes its $7.99 dinner work by just offering a limited sampling: burgers, tacos, pasta, pizza, salad and a few other things, almost everything perfectly acceptable. But others clearly skimp on the quality—so much so that it makes me wonder if the term “Vegas buffet” shouldn’t have some government or industry A.O.C. oversight, like champagne or European chocolate.
The Plaza Downtown has an array of gourmet ambitions that truly must be seen to be believed, and a colorful clientele to match. It is well worth the price of admission ($9.99) if you have nothing more than some chewy lo mein. But for another “classic” Strip property that charges $8.99 at dinner, I suggest prospective diners consider how much they really enjoyed high school, and if they really want to relive the cafeteria one more time.
There are other double-down-style deals, too: MGM Grand and Excalibur offer all-day passes for those who want to challenge the “stays in Vegas” maxim. Other properties have weekend upgrades and theme nights: You pay more, you get more. The thought of Bellagio’s weekend dinner—$35.95 for venison, Kobe beef (I suspect American Wagyu) and more—brought an involuntary tear to my eye. Not sure if it was a tear of joy or terror.
When another friend admired a prime rib at an unrelated meal, and I immediately offered that it actually wasn’t as good as the slab at Village Seafood or Cravings, I knew I had fallen down the rabbit hole. I knew far more about the subject than one man should.
A bored statistician could set up a quadrant graph charting price vs. selection vs. quality and come up with some interesting facts on our feudal food service. An ecologist could do a sustainability study about the effect of Las Vegas alone on the population of the ocean floors. A climatician could even estimate the size of the ozone layer hole directly connected to the methane excreted by the cows raised to produce our beef. But as Ronald Reagan once said so grandly, facts are stupid things. In these dark and difficult times, some sort of stand must be made for that most American of pastimes: shameless overindulgence. And I am nothing if not a proud American. Now, please pass the Lipitor.
*Prices mentioned are often those offered for players’ club members. Subject to change and nothing to do with us, okay?
Cabo Wabo in Planet Hollywood
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/luxe-life/2009/jul/17/sammy-hagar-prepares-open-cabo-wabo-planet-hollywo
July 17, 2009Sammy Hagar prepares to open Cabo Wabo in Planet Hollywood
By Robin Leach
It’s now been officially confirmed! As Vegas DeLuxe first reported, rocker Sammy Hagar is bringing his Cabo Wabo Cantina this fall to center Strip, replacing Trader Vic’s in Planet Hollywood. It will be a two-level, 15,000-square-foot nightclub and restaurant -- and, as Sammy himself says, he’s ready to rock Las Vegas Cabo-style!
“It will be a hard rockin’ dining and nightlife experience,” Sammy commented. “Just as Cabo Wabo Cantina transformed Cabo San Lucas from a sleepy Mexican town into a major tourism and party destination, this new Vegas offshoot will have the same vibrancy and laid-back attitude. We’ll have live music and coastal Mexican fare served up as an all-day, all-night party at a price that won’t break the budget.”
The interior of Cabo Wabo.
Obviously, Cabo Wabo will be laced with Sammy's favorite spirit, tequila, with an array of margaritas! “I am ecstatic to finally introduce Las Vegas to the Cabo Wabo lifestyle,” said its Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and founder. “The cantina’s fun-loving, fiesta atmosphere will bring a rock and roll vibe to the heart of the Strip like people have never seen before.”
Cabo Wabo Cantina in Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile will be the flagship U.S. location. The original opened in Cabo San Lucas nearly 20 years ago.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.
— From Vegas Deluxe
The Creole Julep
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/creole-julep/The Creole Julep
Created by Maksym Pazuniak, Rambla/Cure, New Orleans
Xania Woodman
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
The 2009 Official Cocktail of Tales of the Cocktail was served up amid a gentle, passing Louisiana rainstorm last Wednesday as founder Ann Tuennerman kicked off the event outside New Orleans’ Monteleone Hotel.
Ingredients:
2.25 oz. Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum
0.5 oz. Rhum Clement Creole Shrubb
0.25 oz. Captain Morgan 100 rum
2 dashes each, Fee Brothers peach and Angostura bitters
8-10 mint leaves
1 Demerara sugar cube
Method:
Muddle sugar, Rhum Clement and bitters in a 10-ounce tall glass. Add mint and press. Add cracked ice, then Cruzan and Captain Morgan; stir. Garnish with a mint sprig.
E-mail cocktails@gmgvegas.com to submit your bar or nightclub’s signature drinks!
Man vs hot thai
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/man-vs-hot-thai/Man vs hot thai
The Weekly’s Brett McAfee tries Lotus of Siam’s Level-10 spiciness. That’s not a dry heat, people.
Las Vegas Weekly Staff
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
The Weekly‘s Brett McAfee goes up against Lotus of Siam’s level-10 spiciness, bite by mouth-searing bite.
Weekly reporter Brett McAfee likes Sriracha. A lot. He puts it on everything, and not a dainty daub either. McAfee lays on the spicy garlic chili sauce thick; he says he hardly even tastes the stuff anymore.
Still, when McAfee volunteered to take on legendary local Thai restaurant Lotus of Siam's level-10 spice, we were a bit concerned. Lotus uses Thai chilis, bird chilis and the granddaddy of spice, habañero peppers, to spice up the authentic Thai cuisine that has earned them accolades from places like Gourmet magazine and Food and Wine and visits from famous Strip chefs like Mario Batali and Joël Robuchon. When we asked the restaurant's staff to dish out their spiciest stuff for our Food Issue challenge, we were met with skepticism. "We'll send out a five first," they told us.
The five was delicious. The restaurant's popular crispy rice appetizer with sour sausage balances the spice of tiny bird chilis with sour meat and cilantro for an addictive mix that is easily enjoyed despite the smoldering heat. McAfee, snacked with confidence. If this was five, 10 should be totally doable, delicious even.
But the 10s take things up a notch, or five. Habañeros feature prominently in some of these dishes, and the peppers are so spicy that Lotus flash freezes them, so the chefs won't be stung by their hot oil when they chop them to heat up certain dishes.
For a full understanding of McAfee's response to Lotus' level 10, view the photo gallery or watch the video of his fiery food challenge at the URL above. Or perhaps this will sum it up best. After McAfee had finished his tastings, wiped his brow and succumbed to a glass of water, Lotus' staff had this to say: "You're a tough one."
Anatomy of a dish: The Fat Elvis
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/anatomy-dish-fat-elvis/Anatomy of a dish: The Fat Elvis
Sarah Feldberg
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
RM Seafood’s dessert The Fat Elvis combines chocolate, banana and bacon inside a deep-fried egg roll with delicious results.
Food can trigger all sorts of reactions in people—joy, disgust, curiosity, comfort. When Rick Moonen of RM Seafood handed over his pastry department to Executive Chef Adam Sobel in February, he wanted to create something specific that went way past tasting good. He wanted nostalgia.
“Rick wanted things to evoke more of a childhood memory,” explains Sobel. Well, if you palled around with Elvis during his heyday, welcome to your tasty trip down memory lane: the Fat Elvis.
A take-off on Elvis’ supposedly favorite sandwich of peanut butter, bacon, banana and honey, the Fat Elvis switches the peanut butter and honey for chocolate and wraps it all inside a deep-fried egg roll served with a passion fruit caramel sauce that could easily pass for duck sauce.
The unusual pairing of bacon and dessert has elicited a mix of reactions in guests who’ve decided to sit down with Elvis, but Sobel says he isn’t doing anything particularly revolutionary. “Smokiness with chocolate, that goes back to 2,000 years ago in Mexico.”
Man vs. big food
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/man-vs-big-food/
Man vs. big foodThe verdict’s in: NASCAR Cafe’s Bunyanesque entrees and not-so-subtle roller coaster are more fun with a sexy woman nearby
E.C. Gladstone
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
Elliott Kleven attempts to eat the B3 burrito at the NASCAR Cafe at the Sahara. The burrito weighs six pounds and has only a handful of conquerors.
What can i tell you? the signs said “Come Get Pounded.” Naturally, I had to invite Laura Croft.
Oh stop. Laura, Playboy’s Miss July 2008 (and becoming even better known as “Holly Madison’s roommate”), talks about loving greasy food and roller coasters so much you’d think she was sponsored by the Tomboys Against Anorexia lobby. Seeing NASCAR Café’s boldfaced ads, with lines like “Our BLT is Heart-Stopping” and “The B3 Burrito/It’s Child Size. Literally,” you could hardly criticize my eagerness to give the girl what she wanted. A lot of it.
Because, even in a town where one-upmanship is a given, the Sahara’s eatery-cum-amusement experience tops them all. Huge finish-it-and-it’s-free foods have been around for decades in the world of novelty nutrition, but one would think, in the face of America’s government-acknowledged obesity epidemic, that they might be fading.
Nuh-uh. Sure, the Plaza hotel has retired its legendary 9-pound burger. But the Peppermill still delivers its eight-to-10-egg omelets. Hash House A Go-Go griddles weapons-grade pancakes. Napoli Pizza offers a healthy 30-inch pie. And in the ever-changing big-burger contests, deal in Cheeburger Cheeburger (20-ounce) and Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Angioplasty (32-ounce). For sure there are others.
But none holds a candle to the NASCAR Café’s mega-menu. Yes, they have a 2-by-4 burger (two meats, four cheeses) made with two half-pound ground rounds. And a BLT with a full pound (post-cooking weight, mind you) of bacon. And a 180-ounce beer tower. But nothing tops the B3 6-pound burrito. This is a serious contest: Clean your plate solo in 90 minutes, and you get not only a winner’s T-shirt (guess what size it comes in?) but also—heh-heh—two unlimited ride passes to Speed, that roller-coaster thingy that sticks out of the front of the building.
All these are the brainchildren of one dangerous man, Sahara’s Tim Emert (a Certified Executive Chef, thank you very much), who can’t quite explain how he landed on six pounds, but estimates the calorie count as somewhere in the 8,000-9,000 range ... or about a week’s worth for your average thinspo. The one he and an assistant made us (yes, it takes two) was roughly the 250th. To date, four people have won the challenge.
“NASCAR fans really love to eat,” said Emert, straight-faced. “So we figured, ‘Eh, let’s give ’em something to eat.’”
Was Laura up to taking on the whole burrito? Perhaps, especially with understudy eater Keltie Colleen (one of Peepshow’s three little piglets) … before Emert brought out all the other items, too, and then his top-selling appetizer sampler, sporting a toasted sourdough ball filled with spinach artichoke dip, Italian sausages, jalapeno-cream cheese poppers, hot wings, mozzarella sticks, chicken tenders and onion rings, atop their signature curly fries. “I drank a cup of pickle juice, cheese whiz, somebody’s loogie, egg, guacamole and beer for a hundred dollars once,” says Croft, unconcerned about testing her impossibly flat stomach.
“This is obscene,” Emert admits—though not a bit apologetically.
To my surprise, the food wasn’t just big, but actually not bad. The burrito’s top round beef was stewed slowly with peppers and spices. The Angus burger was solid but savory … the BLT (which took the biggest hit in our blitzkrieg) had crisp lettuce, ripe red tomatoes and thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon perfectly cooked to that decisive moment between chewy and crisp. The Italian sausage on the sampler plate was good enough for mama’s Bolognese.
But the pièce de resistance was the pound of chipotle-seasoned curly fries topped with chocolate and pineapple. Yeah, let the expletives fly. Then try them. Chef Tim may be, as Keltie called him, an off-season Santa. But clearly there’s a bit of Satan in the man. And Satan has discovered a taste fusion that is … well, kinda sexy. It would work better with crushed instead of chunk pineapple, but that’s nit-picking. “That burrito is so five minutes ago,” said Keltie, digging in with a vengeance.
We of course finished our afternoon—as alcohol, insulin and lipids coursed through our arteries like a microbial biker gang—with a necessary spin on Speed, the ride best described as a roller coaster on ADD. The way Speed shoots off instead of slowly climbing, you don’t have time to panic. But my stomach sure gave me a big “WTF?” as we got aboard. It ended, honestly, too fast to cause hurlage. Another round and I would’ve been there for sure. Laura admitted to feeling badly—but only about not eating more. She confessed to pulling her punches. “I have a nude photo shoot this weekend.”
Excuse me? Most women wouldn’t eat this way a month before a nude photo shoot. But 72 hours?! Clearly, Daisy Dukes-wearing, beer-loving, NASCAR- and UFC-endorsing Laura Croft was created in a frat basement laboratory by Spuds McKenzie’s evil med-student disciples. Either that, or cloned from Kelly LeBrock’s character in Weird Science. And though she was awarded the loser’s pink “weenie” T-shirt instead of the black B3 “winner” one on her way out, Croft was unflappable.
“I like weenies.”
Check. Please.
The B3 Burrito Proportions
Flour tortilla - 20 ounces
Rice - 18 ounces
Refried beans - 20 ounces
Cheese - 10 ounces
Lettuce - 6 ounces
Shredded meat - 12 ounces
Ranchero sauce - 5 ounces
Diced tomato - 2 ounces
Guacamole - 4 ounces
Sour cream - 6 ounces
The economy of dining remains strong
Robalini's Note: Las Vegas may be hurting more than most metropolitans right now, but one thing not hurting is the good eatings here...
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/economy-dining/
The economy of dining remains strong
Because even in a recession, people will always be hungry
Brock Radke
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
It’s been a long road, but dining on Vegas has never been better
“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires.” –Epicurus
Deliciousness breeds optimism. This is the best way to explain the ever-upbeat attitude of the quoted philosopher and his faithful Las Vegas following, for despite this epic recession and the lack of visitors dropping coin in our machines and at our restaurants, those who specialize in the creation and consumption of deliciousness insist things are looking good in this city.
Only the stodgiest observer will hesitate to call Vegas a great restaurant city. It is a food destination, one constructed in unique haste without the strongest foundation. Could it all come crumbling down in this economic free fall?
Nope.
“I don’t think it will affect it at all. It’s going to be a blip on the radar screen.” So says Elizabeth Blau, who has done as much as anyone to build Vegas’ culinary reputation. She is a partner in three restaurants here, runs her eponymous consulting firm and helped open Bellagio, the resort that took Vegas dining to new heights.
If she says we’re okay, we’re okay. Right?
Let’s retrace our steps. Up until about 1990, every hotel-casino had the same four restaurants: a buffet, a coffee shop, a steakhouse and a gourmet room. Around then, some national franchises arrived, like Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s steakhouses. In 1992, Wolfgang Puck brought Spago to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, starting the “first real celebrity-chef wave.” (This history lesson comes courtesy of John Curtas, who has been writing and talking about restaurants in Las Vegas longer than anyone else.) “After that, you’ve got Emeril coming to the MGM and many other things happening, and that was the case until Bellagio opened in ’98. That was the second wave, and it was a tidal wave. That begat Mandalay Bay, the Venetian and more.” Real restaurants, great restaurants were all over the Strip (and popping up off-Strip, too), and the tourists were literally eating it up. “Then in the last four years, the French chefs show up—Hubert Keller, Guy Savoy, Joel Robuchon,” Curtas says. “No place on Earth has the concentration of great restaurants and great chefs we have in three square miles. You can walk from place to place, where you’ve got maybe 30 of the greatest restaurants in the United States. You can’t get that in San Francisco or New York, or even London or Tokyo.”
So here we are, our great name being bandied about with those world-class cities, a haven for big names and a natural for the next season of Top Chef. Industry insiders and critics agree the growth can continue, although it might not be based on the trends of our past.
“It’s better now than it’s ever been, but the trend at this time is away from high-priced, expensive fine dining, toward far more reasonable casual dining,” says Robin Leach, now a longtime Las Vegan. “Visitors to Vegas are getting a better deal than in the recent past. Provided the restaurants learn not to gouge customers again and provide true value for their money, the customers will be there. This temporary, painful hiccup is not going to stop us from growing, and it’s not going to stop star chefs from coming in.”
Leach points to the planned arrival of Pierre Gagnaire at CityCenter’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, another multiple Michelin star-winning modern French chef to add to Vegas’ stable. Leach recently reported Gagnaire’s restaurant would open on December 5. Restaurants planned for the neighboring Aria resort include Bar Masa, from New York’s acclaimed Masayoshi Takayama; Sage, from Chicago’s famed Shawn McClain; and eateries from Vegas mainstays Michael Mina, Julian Serrano, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Sirio Maccioni.
So if we build it, somehow, the French masters and celebrity chefs, they will come. Still. But maybe not as much. Curtas estimates food and beverage is around 30 percent of gross revenue at big resorts these days. “Even with the recession, there’s 30 or 40 million people coming here,” he says. “I just wonder whether the super-high end will sustain itself. Are people still willing to pay $300 for dinner for two anymore? All these restaurants have to retrench and recalibrate their menus and price points, because people won’t pay like they did three years ago.”
But let’s not jump to conclusions. That doesn’t mean we’re all going to revert to the Vegas of old, where the drinks and steaks were comped, and the buffets were scary. Or does it?
Todd Clore might know. He might not be a celebrity outside of Henderson, but he’s a great chef with years of experience on and off the Strip. “From rumors I’m hearing, some of the hotels are going back to the way of old Vegas. It was unheard of to pay for food and beverage if you were a player then. A lot of that stuff has disappeared,” Clore says. “In the ’90s, all the corporations came in, and they had to make money. Food and beverage always was a loss leader for hotels. Now the gamblers are rethinking the value for their dollars. I believe a lot of them will find themselves going back to the past where there were more freebies for players.”
At his suburban stronghold, Todd’s Unique Dining, Clore is doing better than just holding on. “The effect [of the economy] is noticeable, but it’s a relatively small place, so I might lose three or four people every day instead of three or four hundred. But I’ve noticed it.” And he’s implemented some options to keep ’em coming in, but not at the expense of quality product. That’s one sacrifice Clore refuses to make. “My philosophy always has been the Strip never did justice to a local. We have a lot people that live here, and whether they dine at a buffet, a coffee shop or a nice restaurant, the choice is casino or out-of-casino. In this economy, when you’re not going out as much, would you rather spend it someplace that treats you like a decent human being?”
Blau believes keeping it real is the secret to survival, no matter the venue: “It’s authenticity. Whether you’re doing comfort food or fine dining, you have to be authentic and have a passion for what you’re doing. You’ve got to be best you can be. No shortcuts.”
One of Blau’s partners and a true celebrity chef who actually lives in Las Vegas, Kerry Simon, says Vegas’ past and the bumpy present make it hard to predict what direction the industry will take next. He’s worked with Steve Wynn and Vongerichten at Bellagio, just off the Strip at the Hard Rock and the Palms, and back on it at Luxor.
“Casinos can withstand certain things, and certain restaurants never have a hard time,” Simon says. “But I’m open to going back to what Vegas was, more approachable for everybody, because it seemed it was getting up there [price-wise]. Vegas should be more approachable. That’s where I’m at already. I want to be able to have people come and enjoy themselves.”
Easy for him to say; if there is a trend ready-made for today’s more casual food attitude, it’s a modern menu of nostalgic comfort cuisine, the combination of familiar tastes and upscale experience that Simon specializes in. You can find this vibe at his Palms Place restaurant, at Blau’s husband Kim Canteenwalla’s Society Café at Encore and at the new First Food and Bar at Palazzo, among others. “Look at what Rick Moonen is doing at [RM Seafood at] Mandalay Bay,” Curtas says. “He’s completely revamped the menu; everything is well-prepared with high-end ingredients, but fundamentally, it’s finger food. I call it gourmet bar food—chicken fingers, pork sliders, a tuna melt he just takes to another level … he’s a gourmet chef taking everyday food and making it sing, and everybody is on board. It’s not about Coquilles St. Jacques anymore. Only snobby critics like me still get into that kinda stuff.”
Leach, maybe the most famous restaurant snob in the world, takes it a step further. If there is a trend, he thinks it’s that Vegas food and beverage has become—or is becoming—far more realistic, far more dedicated to customer service, and acutely aware that high-end can exist as long as the top-tier diner is willing to pay.
For everyone else in the middle, it’s survival of the fittest. Some restaurants have closed. Others are opening. This analysis makes sense in any era of Vegas development, not just today’s doom-and-gloom climate.
“Vegas may have to go through another transformation, not in physical structure, but how tourists think and, especially on the Strip, how restaurants think,” says Clore. “There is the mentality of the single-transaction guest, the idea on the Strip that we don’t have to kill ourselves once they’re here. Now everyone should be thinking it’s not just important to get them in, but that they have to come see us, and we want them to visit us twice next time.”
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/jul/16/economy-dining/
The economy of dining remains strong
Because even in a recession, people will always be hungry
Brock Radke
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
It’s been a long road, but dining on Vegas has never been better
“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires.” –Epicurus
Deliciousness breeds optimism. This is the best way to explain the ever-upbeat attitude of the quoted philosopher and his faithful Las Vegas following, for despite this epic recession and the lack of visitors dropping coin in our machines and at our restaurants, those who specialize in the creation and consumption of deliciousness insist things are looking good in this city.
Only the stodgiest observer will hesitate to call Vegas a great restaurant city. It is a food destination, one constructed in unique haste without the strongest foundation. Could it all come crumbling down in this economic free fall?
Nope.
“I don’t think it will affect it at all. It’s going to be a blip on the radar screen.” So says Elizabeth Blau, who has done as much as anyone to build Vegas’ culinary reputation. She is a partner in three restaurants here, runs her eponymous consulting firm and helped open Bellagio, the resort that took Vegas dining to new heights.
If she says we’re okay, we’re okay. Right?
Let’s retrace our steps. Up until about 1990, every hotel-casino had the same four restaurants: a buffet, a coffee shop, a steakhouse and a gourmet room. Around then, some national franchises arrived, like Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s steakhouses. In 1992, Wolfgang Puck brought Spago to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, starting the “first real celebrity-chef wave.” (This history lesson comes courtesy of John Curtas, who has been writing and talking about restaurants in Las Vegas longer than anyone else.) “After that, you’ve got Emeril coming to the MGM and many other things happening, and that was the case until Bellagio opened in ’98. That was the second wave, and it was a tidal wave. That begat Mandalay Bay, the Venetian and more.” Real restaurants, great restaurants were all over the Strip (and popping up off-Strip, too), and the tourists were literally eating it up. “Then in the last four years, the French chefs show up—Hubert Keller, Guy Savoy, Joel Robuchon,” Curtas says. “No place on Earth has the concentration of great restaurants and great chefs we have in three square miles. You can walk from place to place, where you’ve got maybe 30 of the greatest restaurants in the United States. You can’t get that in San Francisco or New York, or even London or Tokyo.”
So here we are, our great name being bandied about with those world-class cities, a haven for big names and a natural for the next season of Top Chef. Industry insiders and critics agree the growth can continue, although it might not be based on the trends of our past.
“It’s better now than it’s ever been, but the trend at this time is away from high-priced, expensive fine dining, toward far more reasonable casual dining,” says Robin Leach, now a longtime Las Vegan. “Visitors to Vegas are getting a better deal than in the recent past. Provided the restaurants learn not to gouge customers again and provide true value for their money, the customers will be there. This temporary, painful hiccup is not going to stop us from growing, and it’s not going to stop star chefs from coming in.”
Leach points to the planned arrival of Pierre Gagnaire at CityCenter’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, another multiple Michelin star-winning modern French chef to add to Vegas’ stable. Leach recently reported Gagnaire’s restaurant would open on December 5. Restaurants planned for the neighboring Aria resort include Bar Masa, from New York’s acclaimed Masayoshi Takayama; Sage, from Chicago’s famed Shawn McClain; and eateries from Vegas mainstays Michael Mina, Julian Serrano, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Sirio Maccioni.
So if we build it, somehow, the French masters and celebrity chefs, they will come. Still. But maybe not as much. Curtas estimates food and beverage is around 30 percent of gross revenue at big resorts these days. “Even with the recession, there’s 30 or 40 million people coming here,” he says. “I just wonder whether the super-high end will sustain itself. Are people still willing to pay $300 for dinner for two anymore? All these restaurants have to retrench and recalibrate their menus and price points, because people won’t pay like they did three years ago.”
But let’s not jump to conclusions. That doesn’t mean we’re all going to revert to the Vegas of old, where the drinks and steaks were comped, and the buffets were scary. Or does it?
Todd Clore might know. He might not be a celebrity outside of Henderson, but he’s a great chef with years of experience on and off the Strip. “From rumors I’m hearing, some of the hotels are going back to the way of old Vegas. It was unheard of to pay for food and beverage if you were a player then. A lot of that stuff has disappeared,” Clore says. “In the ’90s, all the corporations came in, and they had to make money. Food and beverage always was a loss leader for hotels. Now the gamblers are rethinking the value for their dollars. I believe a lot of them will find themselves going back to the past where there were more freebies for players.”
At his suburban stronghold, Todd’s Unique Dining, Clore is doing better than just holding on. “The effect [of the economy] is noticeable, but it’s a relatively small place, so I might lose three or four people every day instead of three or four hundred. But I’ve noticed it.” And he’s implemented some options to keep ’em coming in, but not at the expense of quality product. That’s one sacrifice Clore refuses to make. “My philosophy always has been the Strip never did justice to a local. We have a lot people that live here, and whether they dine at a buffet, a coffee shop or a nice restaurant, the choice is casino or out-of-casino. In this economy, when you’re not going out as much, would you rather spend it someplace that treats you like a decent human being?”
Blau believes keeping it real is the secret to survival, no matter the venue: “It’s authenticity. Whether you’re doing comfort food or fine dining, you have to be authentic and have a passion for what you’re doing. You’ve got to be best you can be. No shortcuts.”
One of Blau’s partners and a true celebrity chef who actually lives in Las Vegas, Kerry Simon, says Vegas’ past and the bumpy present make it hard to predict what direction the industry will take next. He’s worked with Steve Wynn and Vongerichten at Bellagio, just off the Strip at the Hard Rock and the Palms, and back on it at Luxor.
“Casinos can withstand certain things, and certain restaurants never have a hard time,” Simon says. “But I’m open to going back to what Vegas was, more approachable for everybody, because it seemed it was getting up there [price-wise]. Vegas should be more approachable. That’s where I’m at already. I want to be able to have people come and enjoy themselves.”
Easy for him to say; if there is a trend ready-made for today’s more casual food attitude, it’s a modern menu of nostalgic comfort cuisine, the combination of familiar tastes and upscale experience that Simon specializes in. You can find this vibe at his Palms Place restaurant, at Blau’s husband Kim Canteenwalla’s Society Café at Encore and at the new First Food and Bar at Palazzo, among others. “Look at what Rick Moonen is doing at [RM Seafood at] Mandalay Bay,” Curtas says. “He’s completely revamped the menu; everything is well-prepared with high-end ingredients, but fundamentally, it’s finger food. I call it gourmet bar food—chicken fingers, pork sliders, a tuna melt he just takes to another level … he’s a gourmet chef taking everyday food and making it sing, and everybody is on board. It’s not about Coquilles St. Jacques anymore. Only snobby critics like me still get into that kinda stuff.”
Leach, maybe the most famous restaurant snob in the world, takes it a step further. If there is a trend, he thinks it’s that Vegas food and beverage has become—or is becoming—far more realistic, far more dedicated to customer service, and acutely aware that high-end can exist as long as the top-tier diner is willing to pay.
For everyone else in the middle, it’s survival of the fittest. Some restaurants have closed. Others are opening. This analysis makes sense in any era of Vegas development, not just today’s doom-and-gloom climate.
“Vegas may have to go through another transformation, not in physical structure, but how tourists think and, especially on the Strip, how restaurants think,” says Clore. “There is the mentality of the single-transaction guest, the idea on the Strip that we don’t have to kill ourselves once they’re here. Now everyone should be thinking it’s not just important to get them in, but that they have to come see us, and we want them to visit us twice next time.”
Beyond Life Inc: Talking with Douglas Rushkoff
http://www.realitysandwich.com/beyond_life_inc_talking_douglas_rushkoff
Beyond Life Inc: Talking with Douglas Rushkoff
Peggy Nelson
In his new book, Life Inc., media ecologist and author Douglas Rushkoff tells the story of how the corporation has made us over into its own image, how we have altered our reality to serve its needs, and how we can take it back. In this conversation, Douglas illuminates the Dark Ages, reveals why there's a God on our money, and explains what we're really buying into when we buy that mortgage. We have the code to open-source everything, he says. Time to go to work!
1. Vol Is Hungry, We Must Feed Vol
PN: The corporation is not a recent phenomenon; it goes back hundreds of years. What is the origin story of the corporation? Where did it come from, and what is it, exactly?
DR: The corporation is the result of two innovations: the creation of centralized currency, and the creation of the chartered monopoly. In the late 1300s the upper classes -- the aristocrats, the people who had been feudal lords -- were becoming less wealthy relative to real people. As the merchant class and people in towns were producing and doing, the relative wealth of the aristocracy was going down, and this was a problem; the aristocrats wanted to continue the system that had been working for them for the last 500 years wherein they didn't have to "do" anything to be rich. So they hit upon the idea of passively investing in other people's industries.
Suppose I am the monarch. I want to make money through your shipping company; how do I get you to let me invest? Well, I use what power I have as a monarch to write up a charter, which means I give you a monopoly in a certain area, and you give me 30% of the shares in the company. The chosen merchant avoids competition and gains protection from bankruptcy, while the king receives loyalty, because the merchants' monopolies are based on keeping him in power. He doesn't mind if a *few of the merchant class are as rich as he is, as long as he is able to get still richer as a result.
But this was not the promotion of free-market capitalism. It was the promotion of monopoly, non-market capitalism! It was locking into place a set of players and a set of systems that had nothing to do with the free market. And it changed the bias of these merchants away from innovation; in other words, from "how do I innovate and maintain my competitive edge" to "how do I extract wealth from the realm that I now control?"
Then they're going to be very conservative because they'll want to maintain what they have and not risk wrecking it.
Conservative in that sense, but rapacious in another. Say I'm now in charge of the Colonies. What I want to do is extract their wealth; I want to prevent the people who live in the Colonies from creating any value for themselves. If the colonists are going to grow cotton, that's fine, but they're going to use MY seeds, my agricultural tools, they're going to use everything from ME. If you are a farmer you're allowed to grow the cotton but you have to sell it to ME at my prices. You're not allowed to make fabric out of that cotton! Fabricating is creating value. And then you're going to -- what? You're going to make it into clothes? Those are clothes you could have bought from me! No, no, no, you must give all the cotton to me, I'll put it on my ship and bring it back to England, then the king's other chartered monopoly, the clothes manufacturer, will make it into clothes, and then I'll ship them back and sell them to you -- at a profit.
So it's all export crops?
Right. And anything else I will shoot you for.
And they did!
And they DID.
2. Single-handedly Rehabilitating the Middle Ages
So for about three centuries, the middle and merchant classes were doing really well. Towns that had been in shambles since the fall of the Roman Empire and had lived under strict feudalism were finally coming into their own. This all hinged on the use of local currencies -- grain receipts -- through which people transacted. They were what we would now call "demurrage" currencies that were earned into existence. Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with! They started investing in their infrastructure and their windmills and their water wheels; and also in their future in the form of cathedrals and other tourist attractions.
Are you saying these towns funded the cathedrals themselves? They didn't get money from Rome?
They did not. The Vatican and central Rome did NOT build the cathedrals. The funds came from local currency, which was very different than money as we use it now. It was based on grain, which lost value over time. The grain would slowly rot or get eaten by rats or cost money to store, so the money needed to be spent as quickly as possible before it became devalued. And when people spend and spend and spend a lot of money, you end up with an economy that grows very quickly.
Now unlike a capitalist economy where money is hoarded, with local currency, money is moving. The same dollar can end up being the salary for three people rather than just one. There was so much money circulating that they had to figure out what to do with it, how to reinvest it. Saving money was not an option, you couldn't just stick it in the bank and have it grow because it would not grow there, it would shrink. So they paid the workers really well and they shortened the work week to four and in some cases three days per week. And they invested in the future by way of infrastructure -- they started to build cathedrals. They couldn't build them all at once, but they took the long view -- with three generations of investment they could build an entire cathedral, and their great-grandchildren could live in a rich town! That's how the great cathedrals were built, like Chartres. Some historians actually term the late Middle Ages "The Age of Cathedrals."
They were the best-fed people in the history of Europe; women in England were taller than they are today, and men were taller than they have been at any point in time until the 1970s or 80s (with the recent growth spurt largely the result of hormones in the food supply). Life expectancy of course was still lower; they lacked modern medicine, but people were actually healthier and stronger and better back then, in ways that we don't admit.
That was right before the corporation and the original chartered monopolies were created, before central currency was created and local currencies were outlawed. When everything gets moved into the center, things began to change.
It seems like the Dark Ages were not perhaps so "dark?"
Yes, I think that's disinformation. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason why we celebrate the Renaissance as a high point of western culture is really a marketing campaign. It was a way for Renaissance monarchs and nation-states, and the industrial age powers that followed, to recast the end of one of the most vibrant human civilizations we've had, as a dark, plague-ridden, horrible time.
Historically, the plague arrived after the invention of the chartered corporation, and after central currency was mandated. Central currency became law, and 40 years later you get the plague. People got that poor that quickly. They were no longer allowed to use the land. It shifted from an abundance model to a scarcity model; from an economy based on annual grain production to one based on gold released by the king.
That's a totally different way of understanding money. Land was no longer a thing the peasants could grow stuff on, land became an investment, land became an asset class for the wealthy. Once it became an asset class they started Partitioning and Enclosure, which meant people weren't allowed to grow stuff on it, so subsistence farming was no longer a viable lifestyle. If you can't do subsistence farming you must find a job, so then you go into the city and volunteer to do unskilled labor in a proto-factory for some guy who wants the least-skilled, cheapest labor possible. You move your whole family to where the work is, into the squalor, where conditions are overcrowded and impoverished -- the perfect breeding ground for plague and death!
3. There Is A God, And He's On All The Money
The money that the king was releasing, what was that based on? The other currency was based on grain, it's a direct relationship to how much grain there is, and as the grain degrades, the currency degrades . . .
The king's currency? It was actually not even gold: king's currency was based in the king's imprimatur. It was coin of the realm because his face was stamped on it.
That's kind of abstract.
It is. And because people don't believe in that abstraction, because they're used to grain receipts being based in something real, precious metal was required for the king's currency -- silver, gold; they had to use something that was considered valuable so people would believe!
Fast-forward to the 1970s. After four or five centuries of people believing it, Nixon realized that people now DO believe, so the currency can be taken off the central metal and just be based on belief. That's when they started putting "In God We Trust" on paper money, when it was taken off the gold standard!
That hadn't always been on there?
No, it was on coins, but it wasn't on bills. Because finally, belief is all that's left.
4. Let's All Be Independent Together
How does idea of the individual fit into these other developments?
Corporatism, with its promotion of competition between individuals over scarce resources and money, laid the ground for individualism and for a heightened concept of the self. I'm a media ecologist, I look at media and society as an ecology in which changes in one area reflect changes in another. The notion of the individual was invented, re-invented, in the Renaissance. This is part of why it was a re-naissance, a re-birth of old ideas, the rebirth of Greek ideals. The the Greek notion of the individual, which was always "the individual in relationship to the state," the citizen, was recast as "the individual."
The first individual in Renaissance literature was Dr. Faustus, who represented the extreme limits of greed. This was the new man, not a citizen of the city-state but an individual who has his own perspective on the world. We get perspective painting in the Renaissance, which meant the individual was a self-sufficient being whose point of view is important; we get reading in the Renaissance, which meant that a man can sit alone in his study and have his own relationship to the Bible, instead of gathering in the town square or the church, having the Bible read to him by a priest, as part of a congregation. So on the one hand it was this beautiful celebration of individual consciousness and perspective, but on the other it was all in the context of a new economy, one in which individuals were in competition against one another for scarce jobs, scarce resources, scarce land, and scarce money.
Everyone is going to ask, but what about the artists? So: what about the artists?
Historians say that one of the great things about the Renaissance were the patrons who could patronize a great artist. But before the Renaissance you didn't need a "patron" in order to be an artist! You could actually live in a town and do some stuff and be a great artist. The Renaissance model of commerce and arts was not a pre-existing condition of the universe. Yes, the Vatican could commission some basilica to be painted, but . . . I'd be interested to see what Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo would have been like had they not been part of a centralized bureaucracy, but instead been independent little homespun artist guys. They might have been better artists, you never know.
So now we have individuals and corporations as we know them.
The king's currency, centralized currency, is monopoly currency; demurrage currencies were declared illegal by the king. Why? First, centralized currency is easier to tax. Second, the king could remove gold from the currency whenever he wanted, he could basically suck the value out of it at will. And finally, because this is a currency based in scarcity, everyone has to compete for it. It's a way to help people who have money be powerful just for having money -- not because of what they can spend, but because of what they can hold.
So money becomes a resource.
It becomes a resource in itself. Actually it's a resource once-removed, literally a derivative, the first derivative. Centralizing turns money from a representation of something real into a derivative asset class. We live in this derivatives-based economy today, it has trickled down to us in the form of central banking. Now most people believe that the way to fuel an economy is for a bank to inject money, and the way to start a business is by borrowing from the bank. The way that money comes into existence is it is literally lent into existence. But for every dollar that is lent into existence, for every dollar you earn, there's a negative on the balance sheet somewhere.
So there's debt right at the beginning?
It IS debt, the money we have IS debt. Here's how it works. You start a business by borrowing $100K from the bank. This means that you're going to have to pay back say, $200K or $300K to the bank in 10 years when your loan is up. Where does the other $200K come from? It comes from someone else who's borrowed $100K from the bank! And where are they going to get that? Either they go bankrupt, because they can't pay it back, or they borrow another $200K from the bank. And then that has to be paid back, plus interest. So now they've borrowed $300K total and might have $900K to pay back.
The money supply has to grow as a function of interest. The rate at which we do business and make profit is actually driven and determined by the debt structure of the company rather than supply and demand. This is what Adam Smith was actually talking about. Adam Smith was NOT a free market libertarian, he was not a corporate industrialist the way the Economist or the Wall Street Journal likes to paint him. Smith said that economies only work in scale, they only work locally. He was living in a world where everyone was a farmer, and he hated corporations as much as he hated central government, because he knew that an interest-based economy does not ultimately work. And that is because debt is not actually a product! There's nothing there. Nothing. Yet that's what it was made for. The debt-based economy was invented so that people with money could get richer by having money, that's what it's FOR. I'm not saying it's evil, it was an idea. But, it doesn't actually work. If the number of people who want to make money by having money gets so big that there are more people existing that way than actually producing anything, eventually the economy will collapse.
It sounds like a big Ponzi scheme.
It IS a Ponzi scheme! None of the companies we're looking at as companies are what they are, they're all just the names on debt. GM is a name on debt, Sony's a name on debt.
The New York Times . . .
. . . is a name on debt. They're all publically-listed, traded companies with these P/E ratios; there are the issued shares, and then there's the actual business: those two things aren't the same. The shares are actually more a drag on the system than they are an investment in the company. There's all this debt to pay back.
5. Corporations R Us
Debt has an emotional component as well, in the sense of, you're going to owe me, and you're going to owe me forever. So, better get busy!
Slowly over time, as corporations attempted to extract more and more value from people, both as workers and as consumers and ultimately as shareholders and investors in our own 401k plans, we all basically outsourced our lives. I outsource my job to a company. I outsource my consumption to a company, I go to Wal-Mart, I go to Costco. I outsource my investing and savings to companies, I give it to Citibank, instead of the local banker or my credit union or my restaurant or my children or my cathedral. All of our interactions have been mediated by corporations -- you don't work for me and I don't work for you.
Let's talk about different kinds of value. Right now we have money, we measure everything by the little green metric. But there are other kinds, we all know that, there are personal relationships, there are other ways of measuring value . . .
We have different ways of experiencing value, but it's really hard to measure those. I feel that in the current environment, what people could or should be valuing makes them nervous, makes them anxious.
What kind of stuff?
Sitting with a friend . . . OK, I'll sit with a friend as long as I have my Paxil or something, because it's almost like we've been acculturated to be desocialized.
We have been!
I can spend time with you because we're doing work, right?
Right, it's productive.
Productive -- and we can measure it on the tape! Is it still turning? [yes]
You're saying money is not value-neutral.
Not only is money not value-neutral, but our money is not money-neutral. Our currency is not the only money. There are other kinds of money, just like there are different kinds of media out there, and they all encourage different behaviors. Computers encourage certain kinds of behavior, television encourages certain kinds of behavior. A gold-based money encourages certain kinds of behavior, a centralized currency encourages certain kinds of behavior, and a demurrage local grain-based currency encourages certain other kinds of behavior. The kind of behavior that our money encourages, intentionally, by design, is: hoarding. This is currency that earns interest over time so you want to hoard it and not spend it. And that's OK if you need that tool.
But maybe that shouldn't be the only thing in the toolbox.
It's like we only have a hammer and it's really hard to put in screws. Centralized currency is really, really good for competition, it's really, really good for big companies. Wal-Mart and Citibank can get money more cheaply; the bigger you are, the closer you are to the storehouse. And the big guys don't want local currencies, they don't want bottom-up value creation, work-based money, money that is worked into existence instead of borrowed into existence, because that reduces their monopoly over the means of exchange.
The problem with defining ourselves by our jobs or socialism or by economic class is that we're not just our economics, we're not just our money.
Right, I create value, but the value I create for my community is not just say, as a baker. It's not just as a tailor. It's also as the guy who brings those funny jokes to the party, the guy who has that beautiful daughter . . .
And it's not just ONE thing and it's not measurable in just one way.
6. Home Sweet Home Depot
From the 1920s to the 1970s an iconography was developed that turned corporations into our heroes. Instead of me buying stuff from people I know, I actually trust the Quaker Oat Man more than you. This is the result of public relations campaigns, and the development of public relations as a profession.
Did the rise of PR just happen, or did they have to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control?
They had to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control. The significant points in the development of public relations were all at crisis moments. For example, labor movements; it's not just that labor was revolting but that people were seeing that labor was revolting. There was a need to re-fashion the stories so that people would think that labor activists were bad scary people, so that people would think they should move to the suburbs and insulate themselves from these throngs of laborers, from "the masses." Or to return to the Quaker Oats example, people used to look at long-distance-shipped factory products with distrust. Here's a plain brown box, it's being shipped from far away, why am I supposed to buy this instead of something from a person I've known all my life? A mass media is necessary to make you distrust your neighbor and transfer your trust to an abstract entity, the corporation, and believe it will usher in a better tomorrow and all that.
It got the most crafty after WWII when all the soldiers were coming home. FDR was in cahoots with the PR people. Traumatized vets were coming back from WWII, and everyone knew these guys were freaked out and fucked up. We had enough psychology and psychiatry by then to know that these guys were badly off, they knew how to use weapons, and -- this was bad! If the vets came back into the same labor movement that they left before WWII, it would have been all over. So the idea was that we should provide houses for these guys, make them feel good, and we get the creation of Levittown and other carefully planned developments designed with psychologists and social scientists. Let's put these vets in a house, let's celebrate the nuclear family.
So home becomes a thing, rather than a series of relationships?
The definition of home as people use the word now means "my house," rather than what it had been previously, which was "where I'm from.'" My home's New York, what's your home?
Right, your town.
Where are you from? Not that "structure." But they had to redefine home, and they used a lot of government money to do it. They created houses in neighborhoods specifically designed to isolate people from one another, and prevent men in particular from congregating and organizing -- there are no social halls, no beer halls in these developments. They wanted men to be busy with their front lawns, with three fruit trees in every garden, with home fix-it-up projects; for the women, the kitchen will be in the back where they can see the kids playing in the back yard.
So you don't see the neighbors going by. No front porch.
Everything's got to be individual, this was all planned! Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary. With that amount to pay back, he's got a stake in the system. True, he's on the short end of the stick of the interest economy, but in 30 years he could own his own home.
7. Freedom Isn't Free
Let's talk about technology. In terms of administering a shared goods-and-services system, the internet might be a good match. But it also seems that the internet, and machines and technology in general, can stand in place of actual relationships, and can be a stumbling block. How do you negotiate between those ideas?
The word that describes digital for me is discrete. For example, take sounds. With an actual sound, no matter how hard we zoom in, it's still a real thing. There's still more fidelity, more information to be found. If I scan or sample it, I've now translated that sound in the real world into a number. Something that was an event, in nature, in the world, is now a number. It's a derivative of reality. That number encapsulates as many metrics and as much information about the sound as I'm capable of including, and I can then make copies of the number and manipulate them. So there's greater choice in that way. But the only things the number can reproduce about that sound are the things I've told it to reproduce.
It only knows what it's supposed to measure.
The reproduction process also involves a sampling rate, which necessarily leaves stuff out. Even if the sampling rate is so good, so super-mp3, that it's beyond my conscious hearing, there is still space between the samples. Just like a fluorescent light; there's space between the flashes.
Now the question is, for all intents and purposes, is it the same, or not? I would argue that for many intents and purposes, it is the same, but for ALL intents and purposes, it is NOT. It is a re-creation of a thing, and an approximation, and without even getting spiritual and talking about prana and chi and everything else, there IS a difference.
In high school when I needed to do a research project, I would go to the library to find a book. I couldn't help but see the 20 other books on the shelf nearby, I had to read 20 spines before I found mine. And in reading those 20 spines I would see stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise, and I might get ideas for my paper randomly -- not by predetermined choice! I would see them by virtue of the fact that some librarian who was alive before me made a decision, by virtue of legacies and input and real life messiness. Whereas when I'm in the digital realm and I know the book I want, I type it into Google, and it's there. And nothing else.
This discrete freedom of choice sounds like a very controlled environment. I wonder how much real freedom that is?
Right, what are my range of choices? And who's giving me that range? People are utterly unaware of that. So when I look at technology I say well great, people have the ability to write online, but they don't, most of them, have the ability to program. In other words we can enter our text into the little blog box, but we aren't thinking about the biases built into a daily blog structure, which are towards short, daily thoughts, not introspective . . .
Or look at online communities. I'm going to become friends with another person who owns a 2004 red Mini with a sunroof, like mine, rather than with my neighbor who happens to have a different car; I'm going to look for that perfect affinity. But that's not a real relationship, that's my digital relationship, which is discrete! Discrete communities end up groping towards conformity of behavior really quickly.
That's why it's a consumer paradise, because it really does celebrate the idea of increasingly granular affinity groups, increasingly granular product choices.
8. The Derivative Life, An (Un)Reality Show
An over-arching theme I found in the book is how the common-sense stuff of our reality, the economy and money and shopping and working, is really science fiction; we don't live inside a "natural" economic structure -- we made it up.
It gets very much like Baudrillard in a way. We lived in a real world where we created value, and understood the value that we created as individuals and groups for one another. Then we systematically disconnected from the real world: from ourselves, from one another, and from the value we create, and reconnected to an artificial landscape of derivative value of working for corporations and false gods and all that. It is in some sense Baudrillard's three steps of life in the simulacra.
So by now, as Borges would say, we've mistaken the map for the territory. We've mistaken our jobs for work. We've mistaken our bank accounts for savings. We've mistaken our 401k investments for our future. We've mistaken our property for assets, and our assets for the world. We have these places where we live, then they become property that we own, then they become mortgages that we owe, then they become mortgage-backed loans that our pensions finance, then they become packages of debt, and so on and so on. We've been living in a world where the further up the chain of abstraction you operate, the wealthier you are.
9. The Way Out
So since this is a system we created, we can create something else?
Right, that's what open-source was supposed to be about. I believe that every realm of human experience and design is ultimately open-source if we choose for it to be. That's why I got interested in religion and money, because those seemed to be the two areas that people would not accept an open-source premise. Religion -- of course it isn't, those are sacred truths! But I would argue that Judaism was actually intended as an open-source religion. I've written a book about that, called Nothing Sacred, which was and still is controversial. Because if the Torah is open for interpretation, if it's this beautiful, myriad, hypertextual, hyperdimensional document that it is, then the whole thing is up for grabs: what happens to the real estate, the Israeli state?
Money of course is the other big area, it's still the one thing they won't let you print.
You've seen the dual currency idea from the Middle Ages coming back in certain places?
We've seen it coming back for 10 or 20 years now in places like Ithaca, New York, and Portland, Oregon; little places with alternative communities and hippies and weirdos and Grateful Dead parking lots and things like that. They could try local currency because people were weird enough to go for it.
More recently, after the economic downturn in Japan, dual currencies started to take hold in the non-"alternative" community. Everyone had time, but no one had money. Everyone was willing to work, but there were no companies they could work for. And since the only way we know how to work is to outsource our employment to a company, things looked bad.
One of the main needs people had was getting health care to their grandparents and great-grandparents who lived in towns far away. No one could afford home health care for them -- people to bathe them, walk them around, give them their shots, their IVs, their bedpans. So if you can't afford the service what can you do? What they did was set up a non-local complementary currency system where you would volunteer a certain number of hours of work to take care of an old person where you lived. You would acquire credits, and then someone who lived near your grandparents would take care of them for the credits you paid. There was no money involved! The currency was literally worked into existence. Even after the economy improved and people got their health insurance back, old people preferred the health care workers who were coming from the real people rather than the ones that came from the companies.
Now it's starting to hit places in the US where things are especially bad -- Detroit, Lansing, Cleveland -- these are towns that have resources in people, land, old factories. They have time, they have energy, but they don't have money and they don't have any corporate interest. So what can they do? Make a local currency, start doing things for each other. I'll fix your car, and you do something for me.
And it's easy! When I talk to economists, or when I talk to bankers, they all say, "well that doesn't work, you need a bank to go in and invest in a community for it to happen." Actually -- you don't. You don't need the bank.
Promoting bank-lent businesses is basically saying that you don't believe in sustainable business models yet. Any business that started with the bank is not a sustainable business model, because it's already in the debt/interest track. This is where Obama is still confused. He should say, "Look, I realize the economic crisis is real, there are mortgages and loans and we're going to work on that. But the more important thing right now is, rather than spending $5 trillion of your great-grandchildren's money on these bankers that screwed up, let's see how can we spend a teeny bit of money and reeducate communities about real economic development and sustainability."
To order the book, see when Douglas Rushkoff might be speaking in your area, and access videos, podcasts, and tons of other stuff, check the Life Inc. website.
Peggy Nelson is a new media artist and writer. Her work has appeared in Litkicks, Hilobrow.com, The Brattle Theater's Film Blog, and OtherZine, a journal about experimental, avant-garde, and outsider cinema.
Beyond Life Inc: Talking with Douglas Rushkoff
Peggy Nelson
In his new book, Life Inc., media ecologist and author Douglas Rushkoff tells the story of how the corporation has made us over into its own image, how we have altered our reality to serve its needs, and how we can take it back. In this conversation, Douglas illuminates the Dark Ages, reveals why there's a God on our money, and explains what we're really buying into when we buy that mortgage. We have the code to open-source everything, he says. Time to go to work!
1. Vol Is Hungry, We Must Feed Vol
PN: The corporation is not a recent phenomenon; it goes back hundreds of years. What is the origin story of the corporation? Where did it come from, and what is it, exactly?
DR: The corporation is the result of two innovations: the creation of centralized currency, and the creation of the chartered monopoly. In the late 1300s the upper classes -- the aristocrats, the people who had been feudal lords -- were becoming less wealthy relative to real people. As the merchant class and people in towns were producing and doing, the relative wealth of the aristocracy was going down, and this was a problem; the aristocrats wanted to continue the system that had been working for them for the last 500 years wherein they didn't have to "do" anything to be rich. So they hit upon the idea of passively investing in other people's industries.
Suppose I am the monarch. I want to make money through your shipping company; how do I get you to let me invest? Well, I use what power I have as a monarch to write up a charter, which means I give you a monopoly in a certain area, and you give me 30% of the shares in the company. The chosen merchant avoids competition and gains protection from bankruptcy, while the king receives loyalty, because the merchants' monopolies are based on keeping him in power. He doesn't mind if a *few of the merchant class are as rich as he is, as long as he is able to get still richer as a result.
But this was not the promotion of free-market capitalism. It was the promotion of monopoly, non-market capitalism! It was locking into place a set of players and a set of systems that had nothing to do with the free market. And it changed the bias of these merchants away from innovation; in other words, from "how do I innovate and maintain my competitive edge" to "how do I extract wealth from the realm that I now control?"
Then they're going to be very conservative because they'll want to maintain what they have and not risk wrecking it.
Conservative in that sense, but rapacious in another. Say I'm now in charge of the Colonies. What I want to do is extract their wealth; I want to prevent the people who live in the Colonies from creating any value for themselves. If the colonists are going to grow cotton, that's fine, but they're going to use MY seeds, my agricultural tools, they're going to use everything from ME. If you are a farmer you're allowed to grow the cotton but you have to sell it to ME at my prices. You're not allowed to make fabric out of that cotton! Fabricating is creating value. And then you're going to -- what? You're going to make it into clothes? Those are clothes you could have bought from me! No, no, no, you must give all the cotton to me, I'll put it on my ship and bring it back to England, then the king's other chartered monopoly, the clothes manufacturer, will make it into clothes, and then I'll ship them back and sell them to you -- at a profit.
So it's all export crops?
Right. And anything else I will shoot you for.
And they did!
And they DID.
2. Single-handedly Rehabilitating the Middle Ages
So for about three centuries, the middle and merchant classes were doing really well. Towns that had been in shambles since the fall of the Roman Empire and had lived under strict feudalism were finally coming into their own. This all hinged on the use of local currencies -- grain receipts -- through which people transacted. They were what we would now call "demurrage" currencies that were earned into existence. Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with! They started investing in their infrastructure and their windmills and their water wheels; and also in their future in the form of cathedrals and other tourist attractions.
Are you saying these towns funded the cathedrals themselves? They didn't get money from Rome?
They did not. The Vatican and central Rome did NOT build the cathedrals. The funds came from local currency, which was very different than money as we use it now. It was based on grain, which lost value over time. The grain would slowly rot or get eaten by rats or cost money to store, so the money needed to be spent as quickly as possible before it became devalued. And when people spend and spend and spend a lot of money, you end up with an economy that grows very quickly.
Now unlike a capitalist economy where money is hoarded, with local currency, money is moving. The same dollar can end up being the salary for three people rather than just one. There was so much money circulating that they had to figure out what to do with it, how to reinvest it. Saving money was not an option, you couldn't just stick it in the bank and have it grow because it would not grow there, it would shrink. So they paid the workers really well and they shortened the work week to four and in some cases three days per week. And they invested in the future by way of infrastructure -- they started to build cathedrals. They couldn't build them all at once, but they took the long view -- with three generations of investment they could build an entire cathedral, and their great-grandchildren could live in a rich town! That's how the great cathedrals were built, like Chartres. Some historians actually term the late Middle Ages "The Age of Cathedrals."
They were the best-fed people in the history of Europe; women in England were taller than they are today, and men were taller than they have been at any point in time until the 1970s or 80s (with the recent growth spurt largely the result of hormones in the food supply). Life expectancy of course was still lower; they lacked modern medicine, but people were actually healthier and stronger and better back then, in ways that we don't admit.
That was right before the corporation and the original chartered monopolies were created, before central currency was created and local currencies were outlawed. When everything gets moved into the center, things began to change.
It seems like the Dark Ages were not perhaps so "dark?"
Yes, I think that's disinformation. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason why we celebrate the Renaissance as a high point of western culture is really a marketing campaign. It was a way for Renaissance monarchs and nation-states, and the industrial age powers that followed, to recast the end of one of the most vibrant human civilizations we've had, as a dark, plague-ridden, horrible time.
Historically, the plague arrived after the invention of the chartered corporation, and after central currency was mandated. Central currency became law, and 40 years later you get the plague. People got that poor that quickly. They were no longer allowed to use the land. It shifted from an abundance model to a scarcity model; from an economy based on annual grain production to one based on gold released by the king.
That's a totally different way of understanding money. Land was no longer a thing the peasants could grow stuff on, land became an investment, land became an asset class for the wealthy. Once it became an asset class they started Partitioning and Enclosure, which meant people weren't allowed to grow stuff on it, so subsistence farming was no longer a viable lifestyle. If you can't do subsistence farming you must find a job, so then you go into the city and volunteer to do unskilled labor in a proto-factory for some guy who wants the least-skilled, cheapest labor possible. You move your whole family to where the work is, into the squalor, where conditions are overcrowded and impoverished -- the perfect breeding ground for plague and death!
3. There Is A God, And He's On All The Money
The money that the king was releasing, what was that based on? The other currency was based on grain, it's a direct relationship to how much grain there is, and as the grain degrades, the currency degrades . . .
The king's currency? It was actually not even gold: king's currency was based in the king's imprimatur. It was coin of the realm because his face was stamped on it.
That's kind of abstract.
It is. And because people don't believe in that abstraction, because they're used to grain receipts being based in something real, precious metal was required for the king's currency -- silver, gold; they had to use something that was considered valuable so people would believe!
Fast-forward to the 1970s. After four or five centuries of people believing it, Nixon realized that people now DO believe, so the currency can be taken off the central metal and just be based on belief. That's when they started putting "In God We Trust" on paper money, when it was taken off the gold standard!
That hadn't always been on there?
No, it was on coins, but it wasn't on bills. Because finally, belief is all that's left.
4. Let's All Be Independent Together
How does idea of the individual fit into these other developments?
Corporatism, with its promotion of competition between individuals over scarce resources and money, laid the ground for individualism and for a heightened concept of the self. I'm a media ecologist, I look at media and society as an ecology in which changes in one area reflect changes in another. The notion of the individual was invented, re-invented, in the Renaissance. This is part of why it was a re-naissance, a re-birth of old ideas, the rebirth of Greek ideals. The the Greek notion of the individual, which was always "the individual in relationship to the state," the citizen, was recast as "the individual."
The first individual in Renaissance literature was Dr. Faustus, who represented the extreme limits of greed. This was the new man, not a citizen of the city-state but an individual who has his own perspective on the world. We get perspective painting in the Renaissance, which meant the individual was a self-sufficient being whose point of view is important; we get reading in the Renaissance, which meant that a man can sit alone in his study and have his own relationship to the Bible, instead of gathering in the town square or the church, having the Bible read to him by a priest, as part of a congregation. So on the one hand it was this beautiful celebration of individual consciousness and perspective, but on the other it was all in the context of a new economy, one in which individuals were in competition against one another for scarce jobs, scarce resources, scarce land, and scarce money.
Everyone is going to ask, but what about the artists? So: what about the artists?
Historians say that one of the great things about the Renaissance were the patrons who could patronize a great artist. But before the Renaissance you didn't need a "patron" in order to be an artist! You could actually live in a town and do some stuff and be a great artist. The Renaissance model of commerce and arts was not a pre-existing condition of the universe. Yes, the Vatican could commission some basilica to be painted, but . . . I'd be interested to see what Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo would have been like had they not been part of a centralized bureaucracy, but instead been independent little homespun artist guys. They might have been better artists, you never know.
So now we have individuals and corporations as we know them.
The king's currency, centralized currency, is monopoly currency; demurrage currencies were declared illegal by the king. Why? First, centralized currency is easier to tax. Second, the king could remove gold from the currency whenever he wanted, he could basically suck the value out of it at will. And finally, because this is a currency based in scarcity, everyone has to compete for it. It's a way to help people who have money be powerful just for having money -- not because of what they can spend, but because of what they can hold.
So money becomes a resource.
It becomes a resource in itself. Actually it's a resource once-removed, literally a derivative, the first derivative. Centralizing turns money from a representation of something real into a derivative asset class. We live in this derivatives-based economy today, it has trickled down to us in the form of central banking. Now most people believe that the way to fuel an economy is for a bank to inject money, and the way to start a business is by borrowing from the bank. The way that money comes into existence is it is literally lent into existence. But for every dollar that is lent into existence, for every dollar you earn, there's a negative on the balance sheet somewhere.
So there's debt right at the beginning?
It IS debt, the money we have IS debt. Here's how it works. You start a business by borrowing $100K from the bank. This means that you're going to have to pay back say, $200K or $300K to the bank in 10 years when your loan is up. Where does the other $200K come from? It comes from someone else who's borrowed $100K from the bank! And where are they going to get that? Either they go bankrupt, because they can't pay it back, or they borrow another $200K from the bank. And then that has to be paid back, plus interest. So now they've borrowed $300K total and might have $900K to pay back.
The money supply has to grow as a function of interest. The rate at which we do business and make profit is actually driven and determined by the debt structure of the company rather than supply and demand. This is what Adam Smith was actually talking about. Adam Smith was NOT a free market libertarian, he was not a corporate industrialist the way the Economist or the Wall Street Journal likes to paint him. Smith said that economies only work in scale, they only work locally. He was living in a world where everyone was a farmer, and he hated corporations as much as he hated central government, because he knew that an interest-based economy does not ultimately work. And that is because debt is not actually a product! There's nothing there. Nothing. Yet that's what it was made for. The debt-based economy was invented so that people with money could get richer by having money, that's what it's FOR. I'm not saying it's evil, it was an idea. But, it doesn't actually work. If the number of people who want to make money by having money gets so big that there are more people existing that way than actually producing anything, eventually the economy will collapse.
It sounds like a big Ponzi scheme.
It IS a Ponzi scheme! None of the companies we're looking at as companies are what they are, they're all just the names on debt. GM is a name on debt, Sony's a name on debt.
The New York Times . . .
. . . is a name on debt. They're all publically-listed, traded companies with these P/E ratios; there are the issued shares, and then there's the actual business: those two things aren't the same. The shares are actually more a drag on the system than they are an investment in the company. There's all this debt to pay back.
5. Corporations R Us
Debt has an emotional component as well, in the sense of, you're going to owe me, and you're going to owe me forever. So, better get busy!
Slowly over time, as corporations attempted to extract more and more value from people, both as workers and as consumers and ultimately as shareholders and investors in our own 401k plans, we all basically outsourced our lives. I outsource my job to a company. I outsource my consumption to a company, I go to Wal-Mart, I go to Costco. I outsource my investing and savings to companies, I give it to Citibank, instead of the local banker or my credit union or my restaurant or my children or my cathedral. All of our interactions have been mediated by corporations -- you don't work for me and I don't work for you.
Let's talk about different kinds of value. Right now we have money, we measure everything by the little green metric. But there are other kinds, we all know that, there are personal relationships, there are other ways of measuring value . . .
We have different ways of experiencing value, but it's really hard to measure those. I feel that in the current environment, what people could or should be valuing makes them nervous, makes them anxious.
What kind of stuff?
Sitting with a friend . . . OK, I'll sit with a friend as long as I have my Paxil or something, because it's almost like we've been acculturated to be desocialized.
We have been!
I can spend time with you because we're doing work, right?
Right, it's productive.
Productive -- and we can measure it on the tape! Is it still turning? [yes]
You're saying money is not value-neutral.
Not only is money not value-neutral, but our money is not money-neutral. Our currency is not the only money. There are other kinds of money, just like there are different kinds of media out there, and they all encourage different behaviors. Computers encourage certain kinds of behavior, television encourages certain kinds of behavior. A gold-based money encourages certain kinds of behavior, a centralized currency encourages certain kinds of behavior, and a demurrage local grain-based currency encourages certain other kinds of behavior. The kind of behavior that our money encourages, intentionally, by design, is: hoarding. This is currency that earns interest over time so you want to hoard it and not spend it. And that's OK if you need that tool.
But maybe that shouldn't be the only thing in the toolbox.
It's like we only have a hammer and it's really hard to put in screws. Centralized currency is really, really good for competition, it's really, really good for big companies. Wal-Mart and Citibank can get money more cheaply; the bigger you are, the closer you are to the storehouse. And the big guys don't want local currencies, they don't want bottom-up value creation, work-based money, money that is worked into existence instead of borrowed into existence, because that reduces their monopoly over the means of exchange.
The problem with defining ourselves by our jobs or socialism or by economic class is that we're not just our economics, we're not just our money.
Right, I create value, but the value I create for my community is not just say, as a baker. It's not just as a tailor. It's also as the guy who brings those funny jokes to the party, the guy who has that beautiful daughter . . .
And it's not just ONE thing and it's not measurable in just one way.
6. Home Sweet Home Depot
From the 1920s to the 1970s an iconography was developed that turned corporations into our heroes. Instead of me buying stuff from people I know, I actually trust the Quaker Oat Man more than you. This is the result of public relations campaigns, and the development of public relations as a profession.
Did the rise of PR just happen, or did they have to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control?
They had to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control. The significant points in the development of public relations were all at crisis moments. For example, labor movements; it's not just that labor was revolting but that people were seeing that labor was revolting. There was a need to re-fashion the stories so that people would think that labor activists were bad scary people, so that people would think they should move to the suburbs and insulate themselves from these throngs of laborers, from "the masses." Or to return to the Quaker Oats example, people used to look at long-distance-shipped factory products with distrust. Here's a plain brown box, it's being shipped from far away, why am I supposed to buy this instead of something from a person I've known all my life? A mass media is necessary to make you distrust your neighbor and transfer your trust to an abstract entity, the corporation, and believe it will usher in a better tomorrow and all that.
It got the most crafty after WWII when all the soldiers were coming home. FDR was in cahoots with the PR people. Traumatized vets were coming back from WWII, and everyone knew these guys were freaked out and fucked up. We had enough psychology and psychiatry by then to know that these guys were badly off, they knew how to use weapons, and -- this was bad! If the vets came back into the same labor movement that they left before WWII, it would have been all over. So the idea was that we should provide houses for these guys, make them feel good, and we get the creation of Levittown and other carefully planned developments designed with psychologists and social scientists. Let's put these vets in a house, let's celebrate the nuclear family.
So home becomes a thing, rather than a series of relationships?
The definition of home as people use the word now means "my house," rather than what it had been previously, which was "where I'm from.'" My home's New York, what's your home?
Right, your town.
Where are you from? Not that "structure." But they had to redefine home, and they used a lot of government money to do it. They created houses in neighborhoods specifically designed to isolate people from one another, and prevent men in particular from congregating and organizing -- there are no social halls, no beer halls in these developments. They wanted men to be busy with their front lawns, with three fruit trees in every garden, with home fix-it-up projects; for the women, the kitchen will be in the back where they can see the kids playing in the back yard.
So you don't see the neighbors going by. No front porch.
Everything's got to be individual, this was all planned! Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary. With that amount to pay back, he's got a stake in the system. True, he's on the short end of the stick of the interest economy, but in 30 years he could own his own home.
7. Freedom Isn't Free
Let's talk about technology. In terms of administering a shared goods-and-services system, the internet might be a good match. But it also seems that the internet, and machines and technology in general, can stand in place of actual relationships, and can be a stumbling block. How do you negotiate between those ideas?
The word that describes digital for me is discrete. For example, take sounds. With an actual sound, no matter how hard we zoom in, it's still a real thing. There's still more fidelity, more information to be found. If I scan or sample it, I've now translated that sound in the real world into a number. Something that was an event, in nature, in the world, is now a number. It's a derivative of reality. That number encapsulates as many metrics and as much information about the sound as I'm capable of including, and I can then make copies of the number and manipulate them. So there's greater choice in that way. But the only things the number can reproduce about that sound are the things I've told it to reproduce.
It only knows what it's supposed to measure.
The reproduction process also involves a sampling rate, which necessarily leaves stuff out. Even if the sampling rate is so good, so super-mp3, that it's beyond my conscious hearing, there is still space between the samples. Just like a fluorescent light; there's space between the flashes.
Now the question is, for all intents and purposes, is it the same, or not? I would argue that for many intents and purposes, it is the same, but for ALL intents and purposes, it is NOT. It is a re-creation of a thing, and an approximation, and without even getting spiritual and talking about prana and chi and everything else, there IS a difference.
In high school when I needed to do a research project, I would go to the library to find a book. I couldn't help but see the 20 other books on the shelf nearby, I had to read 20 spines before I found mine. And in reading those 20 spines I would see stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise, and I might get ideas for my paper randomly -- not by predetermined choice! I would see them by virtue of the fact that some librarian who was alive before me made a decision, by virtue of legacies and input and real life messiness. Whereas when I'm in the digital realm and I know the book I want, I type it into Google, and it's there. And nothing else.
This discrete freedom of choice sounds like a very controlled environment. I wonder how much real freedom that is?
Right, what are my range of choices? And who's giving me that range? People are utterly unaware of that. So when I look at technology I say well great, people have the ability to write online, but they don't, most of them, have the ability to program. In other words we can enter our text into the little blog box, but we aren't thinking about the biases built into a daily blog structure, which are towards short, daily thoughts, not introspective . . .
Or look at online communities. I'm going to become friends with another person who owns a 2004 red Mini with a sunroof, like mine, rather than with my neighbor who happens to have a different car; I'm going to look for that perfect affinity. But that's not a real relationship, that's my digital relationship, which is discrete! Discrete communities end up groping towards conformity of behavior really quickly.
That's why it's a consumer paradise, because it really does celebrate the idea of increasingly granular affinity groups, increasingly granular product choices.
8. The Derivative Life, An (Un)Reality Show
An over-arching theme I found in the book is how the common-sense stuff of our reality, the economy and money and shopping and working, is really science fiction; we don't live inside a "natural" economic structure -- we made it up.
It gets very much like Baudrillard in a way. We lived in a real world where we created value, and understood the value that we created as individuals and groups for one another. Then we systematically disconnected from the real world: from ourselves, from one another, and from the value we create, and reconnected to an artificial landscape of derivative value of working for corporations and false gods and all that. It is in some sense Baudrillard's three steps of life in the simulacra.
So by now, as Borges would say, we've mistaken the map for the territory. We've mistaken our jobs for work. We've mistaken our bank accounts for savings. We've mistaken our 401k investments for our future. We've mistaken our property for assets, and our assets for the world. We have these places where we live, then they become property that we own, then they become mortgages that we owe, then they become mortgage-backed loans that our pensions finance, then they become packages of debt, and so on and so on. We've been living in a world where the further up the chain of abstraction you operate, the wealthier you are.
9. The Way Out
So since this is a system we created, we can create something else?
Right, that's what open-source was supposed to be about. I believe that every realm of human experience and design is ultimately open-source if we choose for it to be. That's why I got interested in religion and money, because those seemed to be the two areas that people would not accept an open-source premise. Religion -- of course it isn't, those are sacred truths! But I would argue that Judaism was actually intended as an open-source religion. I've written a book about that, called Nothing Sacred, which was and still is controversial. Because if the Torah is open for interpretation, if it's this beautiful, myriad, hypertextual, hyperdimensional document that it is, then the whole thing is up for grabs: what happens to the real estate, the Israeli state?
Money of course is the other big area, it's still the one thing they won't let you print.
You've seen the dual currency idea from the Middle Ages coming back in certain places?
We've seen it coming back for 10 or 20 years now in places like Ithaca, New York, and Portland, Oregon; little places with alternative communities and hippies and weirdos and Grateful Dead parking lots and things like that. They could try local currency because people were weird enough to go for it.
More recently, after the economic downturn in Japan, dual currencies started to take hold in the non-"alternative" community. Everyone had time, but no one had money. Everyone was willing to work, but there were no companies they could work for. And since the only way we know how to work is to outsource our employment to a company, things looked bad.
One of the main needs people had was getting health care to their grandparents and great-grandparents who lived in towns far away. No one could afford home health care for them -- people to bathe them, walk them around, give them their shots, their IVs, their bedpans. So if you can't afford the service what can you do? What they did was set up a non-local complementary currency system where you would volunteer a certain number of hours of work to take care of an old person where you lived. You would acquire credits, and then someone who lived near your grandparents would take care of them for the credits you paid. There was no money involved! The currency was literally worked into existence. Even after the economy improved and people got their health insurance back, old people preferred the health care workers who were coming from the real people rather than the ones that came from the companies.
Now it's starting to hit places in the US where things are especially bad -- Detroit, Lansing, Cleveland -- these are towns that have resources in people, land, old factories. They have time, they have energy, but they don't have money and they don't have any corporate interest. So what can they do? Make a local currency, start doing things for each other. I'll fix your car, and you do something for me.
And it's easy! When I talk to economists, or when I talk to bankers, they all say, "well that doesn't work, you need a bank to go in and invest in a community for it to happen." Actually -- you don't. You don't need the bank.
Promoting bank-lent businesses is basically saying that you don't believe in sustainable business models yet. Any business that started with the bank is not a sustainable business model, because it's already in the debt/interest track. This is where Obama is still confused. He should say, "Look, I realize the economic crisis is real, there are mortgages and loans and we're going to work on that. But the more important thing right now is, rather than spending $5 trillion of your great-grandchildren's money on these bankers that screwed up, let's see how can we spend a teeny bit of money and reeducate communities about real economic development and sustainability."
To order the book, see when Douglas Rushkoff might be speaking in your area, and access videos, podcasts, and tons of other stuff, check the Life Inc. website.
Peggy Nelson is a new media artist and writer. Her work has appeared in Litkicks, Hilobrow.com, The Brattle Theater's Film Blog, and OtherZine, a journal about experimental, avant-garde, and outsider cinema.
Jackson latest case of an artist with inner demons
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12846398Michael Jackson latest case of an artist with inner demons
By Tony Hicks
Contra Costa Times
07/17/2009
Michael Jackson's death is just another reminder of how artistic ability seems closely linked to eccentricity, often with detrimental results.
Drug use, strange public behavior, seclusion, violence, alcoholism, mental illness — all are factors in the lives of so many musicians, actors, writers and other creative artists whose work forms the basis of our pop culture. It raises questions about whether great artistic drive and substance abuse or other forms of mental troubles are somehow related.
"Scientists are discovering more all the time about brain chemistry and creativity," says sociologist and author B.J. Gallagher. "Highly creative people have more finely tuned nervous systems, which makes them high-strung and neurotic. Their brains are wired a little differently. They're more prone to ADD, bi-polar, depression and other difficult mental states. They turn to drugs, alcohol or activities to ease their pain."
The question then becomes how much do these issues affect their artistic drive, or are caused by it.
Would Ernest Hemingway have been the compelling, adventurous writer if he didn't struggle with inner demons? Would Kurt Cobain have written such vivid, introspective music without the personal struggles? Would John Belushi have created the endless stream of hilarious characters and comedy routines without drugs and alcohol? Would Jackson have written such electrifying music without his tortured early years resulting in an obsessive search for childhood as an adult? And was his apparently debilitating habit for prescription drugs part of this?
Looking for answers
It's not idle speculation. Doctors and scientists have long studied whether immersing oneself intensely in art can help bring on substance abuse and/or mental illness, or whether an artistic brain somehow is naturally pulled toward these kinds of problems.
"(Artists) have bigger appetites — an extra energy," says Eric Maisel, a Walnut Creek-based family therapist, creativity coach and author of more than 30 books, mostly focused on creativity. "They don't want to drive 60, they want to drive 100. That energy can go into eating a million peanuts, like Orson Welles, or into writing 'War and Peace.'"
Although there's no real way to determine what percentage of great artists have battled substance abuse, mental illness or other demons (for one thing, you'd have to do the impossible and define both "addiction" and "great art"), the idea of the tortured creative genius is far from just a stereotype.
"There are almost no non-addicted musicians who have created revolutionary change in music," says Doug Thorburn, an author of four books on alcohol and drug addiction. "Addiction usually comes first."
Plenty of examples back up Thorburn's assertion. For instance, the creative explosion of Jazz in the 1950s was lead by artists as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, all of whom had drug problems. Parker and Coltrane died relatively young after years of drug abuse stretching back to before they were famous.
By most accounts, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Jim Morrison, Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley, Eddie Van Halen, Cobain, Eminem, members of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Metallica, and many others who heavily influenced their art used drugs and/or alcohol regularly during their creative peak. In many cases, careers were derailed or interrupted or lives were cut short.
But what's debatable is how substance problems were related to the creative genius these artists displayed. And the situation's not universal. It's not clear that Elvis Presley, for example, used drugs until his later years. Although the Beatles were regular users during their later, most creative years, they didn't sample serious drugs until they'd already become the biggest band in the world. Jackson didn't fit the profile of an addict until he'd already changed pop music, although his eccentric lifestyle became an issue fairly early in his solo career.
For every Syd Barrett — the Pink Floyd singer, songwriter and musician whose career was rapidly fueled and destroyed by drug-induced mental illness — there were groundbreaking acts such as Prince, Madonna and U2 who did not have reputations for serious substance abuse or personal problems, even if they were eccentric.
"Creative people live in a heightened reality," says Gallagher. "The good times feel extra good and the bad times feel extra bad. However, there are plenty of creative people who find other, healthier ways to deal with their emotions."
Good with bad
For some artists, the bigger the success, the bigger the problems they face — less freedom, more demands and expectations, external pressures, media exposure. They become more public but, ironically, more isolated.
"Creative people manufacture big ideas; that has the effect of getting their words out there," Maisel says. "But the negative effect is pressure pushing them toward mania. They're also cutting themselves off from other people."
That isolation can fuel addiction and other mental issues, says Anne Paris, a psychologist and author, whose book "Standing at Water's Edge," is meant to help artists get into a creative flow.
"They need relationships with others," says Paris. "When people don't have that support to enter that state, they turn to drugs and alcohol to help immerse themselves (in their art). Ultimately, it's self-destructive. It takes them further away from creativity. Unfortunately for a lot of people, it turns into addiction."
Even for artists not prone to mental and substance-abuse troubles, celebrity itself can drive them there, especially when they don't meet expectations. "There's an emotional brutality," she says. "Having people reject your work is emotionally brutal."
Then there's the entertainment industry itself, which tends to forgive chemical abuse and bizarre behavior if the artist is successful enough.
Yes men
Then there are the enablers. As shown in Michael Jackson's case, having money and fame means more access to doctors and other people more than willing to give you what you want, even if it's bad for you. Officials in Los Angeles are probing several doctors who might have prescribed Jackson dangerous prescription drugs, although the case has not yet been termed a criminal investigation.
Enabling is almost expected in the entertainment world, says Eugene Foley, president of Foley Entertainment, a music industry consulting firm.
"In corporate America, the person would be encouraged to seek medical help. In the music industry, people often seem to accept someone's quirks and to not let it interfere with their work as best as possible. The stereotype of the crazy genius is commonplace."
Sometimes just the job of creating and performing can be hazardous.
"In people who are bi-polar, the creative process itself mimics depression," says Maisel. "You sink into your work, it gets harder and harder, then you're done and you're elated. When bands perform, there's tons of adrenaline for two hours. Then they have to eventually come down, and they do that through drugs, or drink, or sex ... whatever. There's a dozen reasons why creative people are more prone to addiction. The biggest is appetite. When there's a big appetite, it's hard to accept (normalcy)."
The biggest question perhaps is if anything can be done about the seeming connection artists/entertainers and self-destructive behavior.
The entertainment industry seems to have a better idea of how to protect its investments. Thanks to the spread of paparazzi culture, artists' signs of trouble come to light quickly, and there's a growing rehab industry to help people before they go the way of Coltrane, Parker, Morrison, Brian Jones and Cobain.
There are far more examples of artists successfully overcoming problems — the members of Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen, as well as Eminem, to name a few — so there's hope for those following in their troubled footsteps.
"I've seen people clean up their lives after (hitting bottom)," says Foley. "Once their addiction interfered with the creative process, that was the final straw. These particular folks needed their music much more than they needed to be drunk or high."
Tony Hicks can be reached at thicks@bayareanewsgroup.com.
J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1616461/20090717/index.jhtml
Jul 17 2009
'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
'No one knows anything about it,' writer happily reports, following years of high expectations.
By Eric Ditzian
With its big-budget CGI effects, high-powered celebrity stars and massive appeal, it can be easy to forget that the "Harry Potter" film franchise owes its existence to the mind — and the typewriter — of a formerly unemployed single mother and first-time author named J.K. Rowling.
With the sixth film in the series, "Half-Blood Prince," crossing the $100 million worldwide-box-office mark after only one day in theaters, ABC News aired a special look into a year in Rowling's life, during which she finished work on the final "Potter" installment, "Deathly Hallows," and began to think about her future writing career in a post-Harry world.
"I've helpfully made the note for myself, 'This will need very serious planning,' " she laughed while sitting down to finish — on a laptop, this time — the seventh book in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, in November 2006.
This would prove to be the final stretch of 17 years of writing the books, and after tapping away and scrolling through some last electronic pages, she said with just a hint of a smile, "Yeah, I think I've finished."
"Some people will loathe it," she added. "They'll absolutely loathe it. But the thing is, that's as it should be, because for some people to love it, others must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot. Some people won't be happy because what they wanted to happen hasn't happened. And to an extent, there's so much expectation from the hardcore fans, I'm not sure I could ever match up to it. I'm actually really, really happy with it."
Rowling then played Lily Allen's song "Smile," added page numbers and eventually printed the manuscript and hand-delivered it to her publisher at London's Heathrow Airport on January 12, 2007.
After an extensive editing process and a meticulous marketing campaign, "Deathly Hallows" was released across the world on July 21. In 24 hours, 8 million copies were sold in the United States alone — 7,000 books a minute, as ABC News noted. The film version will be split into two separate movies, the first part appearing in November 2010 and the second in July 2011.
But Rowling has already moved on to another writing project, she said, "a story that I describe as a political fairy tale. And it's for slightly younger children. So I think that will probably be the next thing that I finish. I'm not in a mad hurry to publish. I would like to take my time."
"I've lived with deadlines for 10 years," Rowling continued. "And I'm currently able to luxuriate in the fact that no one's really expecting it, no one knows anything about it. I feel I've gone right back to the beginning where I was on [first 'Potter' book] 'Philosopher's Stone,' when it was my private world, and I'd really like to enjoy that sole possession for a while."
Jul 17 2009
'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
'No one knows anything about it,' writer happily reports, following years of high expectations.
By Eric Ditzian
With its big-budget CGI effects, high-powered celebrity stars and massive appeal, it can be easy to forget that the "Harry Potter" film franchise owes its existence to the mind — and the typewriter — of a formerly unemployed single mother and first-time author named J.K. Rowling.
With the sixth film in the series, "Half-Blood Prince," crossing the $100 million worldwide-box-office mark after only one day in theaters, ABC News aired a special look into a year in Rowling's life, during which she finished work on the final "Potter" installment, "Deathly Hallows," and began to think about her future writing career in a post-Harry world.
"I've helpfully made the note for myself, 'This will need very serious planning,' " she laughed while sitting down to finish — on a laptop, this time — the seventh book in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, in November 2006.
This would prove to be the final stretch of 17 years of writing the books, and after tapping away and scrolling through some last electronic pages, she said with just a hint of a smile, "Yeah, I think I've finished."
"Some people will loathe it," she added. "They'll absolutely loathe it. But the thing is, that's as it should be, because for some people to love it, others must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot. Some people won't be happy because what they wanted to happen hasn't happened. And to an extent, there's so much expectation from the hardcore fans, I'm not sure I could ever match up to it. I'm actually really, really happy with it."
Rowling then played Lily Allen's song "Smile," added page numbers and eventually printed the manuscript and hand-delivered it to her publisher at London's Heathrow Airport on January 12, 2007.
After an extensive editing process and a meticulous marketing campaign, "Deathly Hallows" was released across the world on July 21. In 24 hours, 8 million copies were sold in the United States alone — 7,000 books a minute, as ABC News noted. The film version will be split into two separate movies, the first part appearing in November 2010 and the second in July 2011.
But Rowling has already moved on to another writing project, she said, "a story that I describe as a political fairy tale. And it's for slightly younger children. So I think that will probably be the next thing that I finish. I'm not in a mad hurry to publish. I would like to take my time."
"I've lived with deadlines for 10 years," Rowling continued. "And I'm currently able to luxuriate in the fact that no one's really expecting it, no one knows anything about it. I feel I've gone right back to the beginning where I was on [first 'Potter' book] 'Philosopher's Stone,' when it was my private world, and I'd really like to enjoy that sole possession for a while."
Amsterdam says "we are all gay"
http://www.gadling.com/2009/07/16/amsterdam-says-we-are-all-gay-begs-gays-to-visit-them
Amsterdam says "we are all gay" - begs gays to visit them
by Scott Carmichael
Jul 16th 2009
The Dutch tourist bureau is reaching out to American gays by trying to convince them that "everyone is gay in Amsterdam".
The bureau says that gays are one of the few remaining tourist groups with any disposable income left, and they are trying to paint Amsterdam as a very gay friendly city in the hope that they'll make the trip and spend their cash in the Dutch capital.
To deliver their message, they'll be inviting the gay community in the US to visit Amsterdam using TV commercials and magazine ads.
Gay TV channel "Here TV" is even planning to show a documentary about gay friendly Amsterdam.
Of course, the whole promotion could also have something to do with the fact that Amsterdam really isn't as gay friendly as it used to be, and that many other European cities have bypassed them.
Amsterdam says "we are all gay" - begs gays to visit them
by Scott Carmichael
Jul 16th 2009
The Dutch tourist bureau is reaching out to American gays by trying to convince them that "everyone is gay in Amsterdam".
The bureau says that gays are one of the few remaining tourist groups with any disposable income left, and they are trying to paint Amsterdam as a very gay friendly city in the hope that they'll make the trip and spend their cash in the Dutch capital.
To deliver their message, they'll be inviting the gay community in the US to visit Amsterdam using TV commercials and magazine ads.
Gay TV channel "Here TV" is even planning to show a documentary about gay friendly Amsterdam.
Of course, the whole promotion could also have something to do with the fact that Amsterdam really isn't as gay friendly as it used to be, and that many other European cities have bypassed them.
“WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE” VINYL TOYS
http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/where_the_wild_things_are_vinyl_toys/“WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE” VINYL TOYS
Richard Metzger
07.17.2009
First glimpse at the wonderful toys from Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are.” These look great. So does the trailer. I can’t wait to see it!
First three chapters of Jim Marrs' upcoming novel
NEW from disinformation® books:Read the first three chapters of Jim Marrs' upcoming novel
'The Sisterhood of the Rose' on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17206586/The-Sisterhood-of-the-Rose-Chapters-One-to-Three
Late in World War II, Adolf Hitler is about to achieve his greatest victory: the capture of Solomon's Treasure, the world's most sacred treasure trove, representing both gold and precious gems as well as ancient knowledge. He believes it will guarantee his dream of a thousand-year Reich.
Can Giselle Tchaikovsky, a young American woman who achieved fame as a teenage ballet dancer in the 1930s, stop Hitler's dream of world conquest? Can the secret Sisterhood she creates do anything against the Nazi juggernaut of men and machines? Will the Sisterhood bring about a resurgence of the feminine goddess aspect of humanity in time to spare the world this madman's holocaust?
The first novel from Marrs, this book follows his New York Times bestseller "The Rise of the Fourth Reich." He uses his factual research into the Nazis' fascination with the occult and their search for iconic treasures as a basis for the novel.
Read the first three chapters of Jim Marrs' new book 'The Sisterhood of the Rose' for FREE on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17206586/The-Sisterhood-of-the-Rose-Chapters-One-to-Three
Then find more chapters in the Scribd Store:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17206309/The-Sisterhood-of-the-Rose-Chapters-Four-and-Five
In stores November 2009, pre-order a copy today on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1934708291/disinformation
About Jim Marrs: A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Jim Marrs has worked as an investigative reporter for several newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Marrs' in-depth investigation of UFOs, "Alien Agenda," is the bestselling UFO book ever; "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy" was a New York Times bestseller, as was "Rule By Secrecy."
More ways to find disinformation®:
Newsletter: http://www.disinfo.com/catalog/news.php
Podcast: http://www.disinfo.com/podcasts
Twitter: http://twitter.com/disinfo
Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/disinfo
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/disinfo
How 'That's the way it is' became Cronkite's tag line
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/18/cronkite.thats.the.way.it.is/How 'That's the way it is' became Cronkite's tag line
Story Highlights
Legendary anchorman butted heads with CBS executives, producer says
"That's the way it is" was born after boss hated Cronkite's first sign-off
Anchor didn't like mixing news with opinion or commercial interests
He didn't even want to promote stories coming the next day, producer says
Sat July 18, 2009
(CNN) -- Throughout his career as a television anchorman, Walter Cronkite had a few memorable run-ins with other powerful figures at CBS News, one of his producers told CNN.
Walter Cronkite occasionally butted heads with executives at CBS News, his former producer says.
Sanford "Sandy" Socolow, who worked at CBS News for 32 years, more than four of them as Cronkite's producer, said Cronkite ran into trouble soon after he took over for Douglas Edwards in the "CBS Evening News" anchor chair.
"The first night up, he ended the show by saying, I'm paraphrasing, 'That's the news. Be sure to check your local newspapers tomorrow to get all the details on the headlines we are delivering to you.'"
That didn't fly.
"The suits -- as we used to call them -- went crazy," Socolow told CNN, referring to CBS executives. "From their perspective, Cronkite was sending people to read newspapers instead of watching the news. There was a storm."
CBS News President Richard Salant met with Cronkite, who initially resisted, then agreed to change his sign-off, Socolow said.
"In the absence of anything else, he came up with 'That's the way it is.'"
But that too ruffled feathers, Socolow said.
"Salant's attitude was, 'We're not telling them that's the way it is. We can't do that in 15 minutes,' which was the length of the show in those days. 'That's not the way it is.'"
Still, Cronkite persisted and that's the way it was from then on.
In 1960, in an attempt to emulate the success of NBC's "Huntley-Brinkley Report," CBS tried to make Cronkite and fellow broadcast legend Edward R. Murrow co-anchors at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
But "it just didn't work out," said Socolow, who was then producing for Cronkite. "There wasn't a particular chemistry there."
Though the two men were cordial, and it was Murrow who had brought Cronkite to CBS, "they were never drinking buddies," Socolow said.
In 1968, Cronkite returned from a visit to Vietnam disillusioned with America's role there. He told Salant what he thought but said he did not want to report his personal opinion on air, Socolow said. Only "after much haggling" did he agree to do so, and not on the regular newscast but on a 10 p.m. special.
"To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past," Cronkite told his audience. "To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion. ... It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."
Cronkite's reluctance to reveal his personal opinions about world events during a newscast was matched by his enthusiasm for keeping newscasts free of the influence of commercial interests. Watch the Cronkite Journalism School dean reflect on his legacy »
"He was a purist," Socolow said. "And, a lot of people would say, to a fault, if there can be a fault in such a definition."
For example, he said, around the time of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, in which a nuclear plant's core partially melted, the movie "China Syndrome" was released with a similar theme.
"I was so knocked out to its proximity to the events of the day, I arranged a screening for the entire staff of the 'Evening News,'" Socolow said.
Though Cronkite did not attend, "the next day, I go into him and say, 'You know this is really uncanny that this movie should be so close to the bone, and it's just stunning, a stunning coincidence, and I think we could make a story out of it.'
"He shouted at me, 'I'm not in the goddamn business of selling movie tickets.'"
Cronkite even disliked promoting pieces that were slated to run in the next day's newscast, Socolow said. "His attitude being, 'For God's sake, we don't know what tomorrow's news is going to be. How the hell can we take time away from reporting today's news by promoting a story for tomorrow?'"
Cronkite departed from the anchor chair voluntarily, Socolow said. "He wanted to retire as undefeated champ, and he made his views known."
But Salant, who was also planning to retire shortly, did not want to be the guy who oversaw Cronkite's exit.
"His ratings on the day he left the 'Evening News' were bigger than all three network newscasts together today," Socolow said. "He had an average rating of 27 million to 29 million viewers."
Salant pleaded with Cronkite to stay so that the decision on how to replace him would fall to someone else.
That someone else was Bill Leonard. "On the first day Leonard was in the saddle, Cronkite said, 'Listen, I want to go out as undefeated champion,'" Socolow said.
At the same time, then-correspondent Dan Rather's contract was ending and he was being courted by ABC News, Socolow said.
"The idea of losing Cronkite was enough to make people gag," he said. "On the other hand, there was the chance they'd lose Rather. What finally happened is Leonard took the opportunity to sign Rather to a contract that was so rich to keep him out of [ABC executive] Roone Arledge's hands that it had to go up to [CBS founder and Chairman] Bill Paley to get an OK on the contract."
But Cronkite's departure did not go as he had planned, according to his producer.
"The script on his last night said something like, unlike old soldiers who never die, he'll be back every once in a while on an irregular basis when something strikes his fancy -- a handshake deal he had with Bill Leonard," Socolow said. "A very loose deal."
But Leonard left the top job soon after, replaced by Van Gordon Sauter, who -- "in cahoots, I think you would have to say, with Dan Rather -- decided they did not want Cronkite on the air, for whatever reason."
After he left the anchor chair, Cronkite worked on occasional science and environment pieces on television, but after a few years he rarely appeared on CBS.
And That's the Way It Is, Sadly, Tonight...
http://www.brycezabel.com/newsviews/2009/07/walters-gone-1.htmlAnd That's the Way It Is, Sadly, Tonight...
Bryce Zabel
July 17, 2009
How sad that the "way it is" tonight is that Walter Cronkite is no longer with us. Even sadder that he didn't make it three more days so he could have appreciated just how much we appreciated him all over again as we talked about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and how he was our worldwide tour guide.
In 2003, when I was Chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences I had the rare honor of being able to introduce Walter Cronkite on the "live" primetime telecast. Everyone knew who he was -- that wasn't my job -- we brought him out by remembering his great work as a war correspondent and tying it in with the death of David Bloom. It went like this:
...I’m talking about the most personal news coverage ever seen during the Iraq war.
For the first time, on a mass scale, reporters – many of them TV reporters – were embedded with combat units, travelling with the soldiers, facing the same dangers, and reporting back home, often in real time, over satellites. We lost some of our own, too, including NBC’s David Bloom.
It was the immediacy of the TV pictures that made news by covering news. But there have been other brave reporters over the years, sending their coverage from the front lines to the home front, but none of them have been as distinguished through their careers in television as our next guest.
Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome one of America’s original embedded reporters going back to World War II – Mister Walter Cronkite!
I'm still blown away that I got to make that introduction to so famous a man as Walter Cronkite. He was 86 years old that year, frail, and his voice faltered a bit from what it had been in its prime, but he walked out there strong, made his speech and every single person in the audience paid rapt attention. It was Walter Cronkite and he had earned that level of respect from everybody there.
So we're sorry to see Walter go... He had a great life. He made ours better. He was so infinitely cool, even to the end.
Nicaragua's Vampire Problem
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1882094,00.htmlNicaragua's Vampire Problem
By Tim Rogers / Llano Grande
2 Friday, Feb. 27, 2009
A shrill scream from the next bedroom jolted Maria Felix Flores from her sleep shortly after midnight on the muggy, tropical night of Feb. 22. She dashed into the adjoining room to find her adult son Carlos and his wife Maria Josefa sitting upright in bed with the lights on, panicked by the sight of their blood-drenched sheets. (Read "Could There be Real Monster Bats?")
Their feet were sticky and warm with blood, but neither felt any pain and couldn't figure out the source of the gush. Flores, however, took one look at the messy scene and knew exactly what had happened: the vampires were back in her little Nicaraguan town.
After examining the two, Flores discovered both had been bitten on their toes; the clean incisions and the profuse bleeding were telltale signs of a vampire bat attack. The vampire's bite is quick and razor sharp, so the sleeping victim doesn't feel the incision; and the animal's saliva contains a strong anticoagulating agent that leaves the victim bleeding for hours after the bite.
Flores, who was bitten last year, thought her town's vampire problem had been solved when government vampire hunters wiped out a bat colony in 2008. But once again, this sleepy town is being haunted by the winged menaces.
"The vampires are dangerous. Of course we are scared," says her neighbor Alberdina del Carmen Reyes, whose rustic wood-plank shanty is filled with gaps big enough for the flying mammals to sneak through during the night. Reyes' 5-year-old granddaughter was attacked in her sleep several weeks ago and awoke to a similarly gory scene in her bed. "The government tells us to cover our beds with mosquito nets at night," says Reyes, "but we don't have the money to buy them." Many of the impoverished families in this countryside community of Llano Grande 2, Masaya, have similar vampire tales. The government reports that more than 70 people here have been bitten by vampires in the past year. (See the top 10 animal stories of 2008.)
Vampires normally feed on the blood of livestock. But when cattle populations are suddenly sold off or moved to greener pastures, the bats seek alternative sources of blood. So far, none of the human victims have tested positive for rabies. But the government isn't waiting for an outbreak to take action. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sent two of its seasoned vampire hunters to the community to catch the winged pests and wipe out their colony, discovered at the bottom of an abandoned 200-ft. well that no one ever thought to cap.
Nicaraguan animal veterinarians Jose Amador and Carlos Ivan Iglesias don't exactly fit the Hollywood role of the dashing Van Helsing, but their arrival in the village was treated like a celebrity event. As the two men set up their capture nets around the well, local residents greeted them with gifts of bread, plates of food, coffee and a liter of some unrecognizable brand of soda. As the town folk retreated to their homes, dusk gave way to night and only the outlines of the wind-blown palm trees could be seen swaying against the starry sky of the moonless night. Amador and Iglesias, whom I had been talking to moments earlier in the dark, were suddenly snoring in their hammocks. I sat in the back of pickup truck trying not to smell like vampire bait and hoping I wasn't in charge of the hunt.
"We got one!" Iglesias yelled 20 minutes later, before I even realized he was out of his hammock and inspecting the perimeter net. In an instant, Amador was at his side, and the two men — wearing thick fire gloves — untangled the aggressive baby vampire from the net, grabbing it carefully as it squealed and hissed madly, trying to bite its handlers through their gloves. The veterinarians applied a poisonous gel to the body of the captured vampire and released it, allowing the animal to return to its roost, where the other bats — up to dozens in the colony — would dutifully lick it clean, killing themselves in the process.
While biological warfare might seem an extreme measure to some animal-protection advocates, international bat expert Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International, says that's the best way to handle vampires. The problem, Tuttle says, is when people — motivated by fear, ignorance or both — target all bats for extermination by dynamiting caves, which causes enormous environmental damage and often kills thousand of beneficial bats that eat insects, pollinate flowers and even disperse seeds as part of natural reforestation. Blood feeders, on the other hand, are extremely rare — only three out of 1,100 species of bat are vampires, and all are found in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Confusion about bats is understandable, considering the scientists who named them were equally confused. According to vampire-bat expert Bill Schutt, a zoologist and author of the book Dark Banquet, about 10 species of bats were erroneously named "vampires," while the true blood feeders were given more innocuous-sounding Latin names. "Bats [with scientific names that include] Vampyrum, Vampyrops, Vampyrina, Vampyressa, Vampyriscus and Vampyrodes aren't sanguivores [blood feeders], while Desmodus, Diaemus and Diphylla are true vampires," he says.
But when people act on their ignorance and kill beneficial bats, they are really putting themselves at even greater risk from the real blood-feeding terrors of the night: mosquitoes. Many more people die each year from mosquito-born diseases than from bat-transmitted rabies. And as someone who's already had dengue fever, I'm much more afraid of getting bit by mosquitoes than vampires.
Apollo Sites Spotted by Lunar Scout
http://news.aol.com/article/apollo-landing-sites-spotted-by-lunar/577205
Apollo Sites Spotted by Lunar Scout
Space.com
7-17-9
(July 17) - For stubborn folks who still believe the Apollo astronauts never landed on the moon, NASA has new images — definitive proof — that clearly show the Apollo 11 lander that carried the first astronauts to the lunar surface 40 years ago.
The images were taken by NASA's first lunar scout in more than a decade, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. They show the Eagle lunar lander at Tranquility Base, where Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969. They were snapped between July 11 and 15 of this month and released by NASA on Friday.
The image does not reveal whether the U.S. flag planted there is still standing or not.
The Apollo 11 landing site wasn't the only one that the LRO's camera system (dubbed LROC) photographed: It also snapped pictures of the landing sites of the other five Apollo landings. (The remaining site, for Apollo 12, is expected to be photographed in the coming weeks.) The lunar modules for all of these sites imaged are visible as small dots; their shadows can also be seen. A few more details can be seen in the image of the Apollo 14 landing site, including scientific instruments and astronaut footprints.
"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill -- and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."
As LRO gradually descends to a lower orbit, the images will improve and provide closer looks at the lunar landing sites.
The images of these sites are expected to show scientists how the sites have changed since the astronauts trod across them, whether there are any new craters and how the leftover human artifacts have fared in the lunar environment.
About the size of a Mini Cooper car, the $504 million LRO probe, an orbiting satellite, launched toward the moon on June 18. The probe is expected to spend at least one year mapping the moon for future manned missions, as well as several more years conducting science surveys.
Some people have questioned whether NASA really went to the moon or if the whole thing was faked. No serious and level-headed historian, researcher or space industry analyst doubts the moon landings, however.
Apollo Sites Spotted by Lunar Scout
Space.com
7-17-9
(July 17) - For stubborn folks who still believe the Apollo astronauts never landed on the moon, NASA has new images — definitive proof — that clearly show the Apollo 11 lander that carried the first astronauts to the lunar surface 40 years ago.
The images were taken by NASA's first lunar scout in more than a decade, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. They show the Eagle lunar lander at Tranquility Base, where Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969. They were snapped between July 11 and 15 of this month and released by NASA on Friday.
The image does not reveal whether the U.S. flag planted there is still standing or not.
The Apollo 11 landing site wasn't the only one that the LRO's camera system (dubbed LROC) photographed: It also snapped pictures of the landing sites of the other five Apollo landings. (The remaining site, for Apollo 12, is expected to be photographed in the coming weeks.) The lunar modules for all of these sites imaged are visible as small dots; their shadows can also be seen. A few more details can be seen in the image of the Apollo 14 landing site, including scientific instruments and astronaut footprints.
"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill -- and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."
As LRO gradually descends to a lower orbit, the images will improve and provide closer looks at the lunar landing sites.
The images of these sites are expected to show scientists how the sites have changed since the astronauts trod across them, whether there are any new craters and how the leftover human artifacts have fared in the lunar environment.
About the size of a Mini Cooper car, the $504 million LRO probe, an orbiting satellite, launched toward the moon on June 18. The probe is expected to spend at least one year mapping the moon for future manned missions, as well as several more years conducting science surveys.
Some people have questioned whether NASA really went to the moon or if the whole thing was faked. No serious and level-headed historian, researcher or space industry analyst doubts the moon landings, however.
The Joy of Sachs
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17krugman.html
Op-Ed Columnist
The Joy of Sachs
By PAUL KRUGMAN
July 16, 2009
The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?
First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.
Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.
Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
Let’s start by talking about how Goldman makes money.
Over the past generation — ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years — the U.S. economy has been “financialized.” The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.
Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises — if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.
Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.
And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.
The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.
And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.
I won’t try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government’s assumption of A.I.G.’s liabilities. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.
You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.
Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn’t abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage — and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.
If these lobbying efforts succeed, we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers’ money — except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.
The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 17, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Joy of Sachs
By PAUL KRUGMAN
July 16, 2009
The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?
First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.
Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.
Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
Let’s start by talking about how Goldman makes money.
Over the past generation — ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years — the U.S. economy has been “financialized.” The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.
Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises — if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.
Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.
And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.
The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.
And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.
I won’t try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government’s assumption of A.I.G.’s liabilities. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.
You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.
Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn’t abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage — and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.
If these lobbying efforts succeed, we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers’ money — except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.
The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 17, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
Killer Human Eating Robots
"Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things... even a mobile gunship.""Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes 'human bodies,' the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips -- small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI."
Sure, the Pentagon definitely doesn't violate the Geneva Convention...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533382,00.html
Biomass-Eating Military Robot Is a Vegetarian, Company Says
Thursday, July 16, 2009
A steam-powered, biomass-eating military robot being designed for the Pentagon is a vegetarian, its maker says.
Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.
But, contrary to reports, including one that appeared on FOXNews.com, the EATR will not eat animal or human remains.
Dr. Bob Finkelstein, president of RTI and a cybernetics expert, said the EATR would be programmed to recognize specific fuel sources and avoid others.
“If it’s not on the menu, it’s not going to eat it,” Finkelstein said.
“There are certain signatures from different kinds of materials” that would distinguish vegetative biomass from other material."
RTI said Thursday in a press release:
"Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips -- small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI."
EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone, of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an "external combustion chamber" burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.
The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.
Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.
In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through "foraging," despite the obvious military purpose.
Liberty and Safety
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano6.1.1.html
Liberty and Safety
by Andrew P. Napolitano
July 17, 2009
For a professor of law at one of the country's best law schools who was once the go-to guy in the Justice Department whenever the Bush White House needed legal cover for its truly lawless ventures outside the Constitution, John Yoo has revealed a breathtaking ignorance of American values, history, and jurisprudence.
In his startling mea culpa, published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Professor Yoo confessed to advising President Bush that he possessed powers from some source other than the Constitution, that in the name of public safety he could cut down all laws written for the express purpose of restraining the President, and that Americans would expect no less than this so long as they were actually kept safe as a result of it.
He advanced the argument that since the President's first job is to keep us safe, he could disregard the 1978 FISA law as "obsolete" since it was written in an era when modern day non-state terrorism was not contemplated. By this unprecedented and perverse logic, one wonders if the President was told if he could disregard as obsolete any law that was inconvenient to his purposes; even the Supreme Law of the Land itself, which the Constitution declares itself to be.
The whole purpose of FISA was to abolish the Nixonian notion that "If the President does it, it's not illegal." While FISA's statutory reduction of the constitutionally-mandated standard for obtaining a judicial search warrant – from probable cause of crime to probable cause of foreign status – is itself of dubious constitutionality, nevertheless, it is and was at the time Professor Yoo was telling President Bush to disregard it, the "exclusive" lawful means for agents of the President to wiretap foreign persons present in the U.S. Moreover, the FISA court has become the President's rubber stamp by granting well over 99% of requested warrants.
It is not painless for one who loathes this law to defend it; but it was among the laws that the President and the Professor swore to uphold, it does force the executive branch to identify and specify who and what it wishes to pursue, and it presents at least a minimum of checking and balancing by forcing the President to go before a super-secret court (without an adversary present) and seek permission to violate the Fourth Amendment-guaranteed rights of the President's targets.
The time-is-of-the essence argument is nonsense. I once issued a search warrant in my gym shorts from my living room at 3 am, and I know of a former FISA court judge who did the same from his cell phone while riding a motorcycle. While neither of these situations is optimal, there are at least written records of what was done to whom and why; and that was a goal of the law which President Bush was told was obsolete.
The Framers never contemplated FISA, and I cannot conceive of Jefferson, Madison, or even Hamilton condoning it. But one thing we know the Framers would never condone is a government that refused to reside within the Constitution; "chained down" by it as Jefferson once said.
The Founders, unlike John Yoo and George Bush, feared a king who enforced only the laws he found convenient to his present needs, who dispatched his agents with their own self-generated search warrants to knock on any door and seize any thing they or the king wanted, and who claimed to be doing all this for safety's sake.
Cutting down the laws to get at the Devil is dangerous business. As Robert Bolt argued in A Man for All Seasons, the land is planted thick with laws. If you cut them down to get to the Devil, who could stand the wind that then would blow?
When President Lincoln and the Radical Republicans tried civilians in military tribunals in the North, hundreds of miles from battle, and in the South after the Civil War had ended, a unanimous Supreme Court stopped them. It declared that "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances."
President Bush argued frequently and forcefully that his first job was to keep us safe. He was wrong. The Constitution tells us that his sole job was to enforce the Constitution; and that means keeping us free. Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air; free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint; free to live with a government that obeyed its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is rejecting his oath to the American people.
Andrew P. Napolitano, who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book, coming in April, is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.
Liberty and Safety
by Andrew P. Napolitano
July 17, 2009
For a professor of law at one of the country's best law schools who was once the go-to guy in the Justice Department whenever the Bush White House needed legal cover for its truly lawless ventures outside the Constitution, John Yoo has revealed a breathtaking ignorance of American values, history, and jurisprudence.
In his startling mea culpa, published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Professor Yoo confessed to advising President Bush that he possessed powers from some source other than the Constitution, that in the name of public safety he could cut down all laws written for the express purpose of restraining the President, and that Americans would expect no less than this so long as they were actually kept safe as a result of it.
He advanced the argument that since the President's first job is to keep us safe, he could disregard the 1978 FISA law as "obsolete" since it was written in an era when modern day non-state terrorism was not contemplated. By this unprecedented and perverse logic, one wonders if the President was told if he could disregard as obsolete any law that was inconvenient to his purposes; even the Supreme Law of the Land itself, which the Constitution declares itself to be.
The whole purpose of FISA was to abolish the Nixonian notion that "If the President does it, it's not illegal." While FISA's statutory reduction of the constitutionally-mandated standard for obtaining a judicial search warrant – from probable cause of crime to probable cause of foreign status – is itself of dubious constitutionality, nevertheless, it is and was at the time Professor Yoo was telling President Bush to disregard it, the "exclusive" lawful means for agents of the President to wiretap foreign persons present in the U.S. Moreover, the FISA court has become the President's rubber stamp by granting well over 99% of requested warrants.
It is not painless for one who loathes this law to defend it; but it was among the laws that the President and the Professor swore to uphold, it does force the executive branch to identify and specify who and what it wishes to pursue, and it presents at least a minimum of checking and balancing by forcing the President to go before a super-secret court (without an adversary present) and seek permission to violate the Fourth Amendment-guaranteed rights of the President's targets.
The time-is-of-the essence argument is nonsense. I once issued a search warrant in my gym shorts from my living room at 3 am, and I know of a former FISA court judge who did the same from his cell phone while riding a motorcycle. While neither of these situations is optimal, there are at least written records of what was done to whom and why; and that was a goal of the law which President Bush was told was obsolete.
The Framers never contemplated FISA, and I cannot conceive of Jefferson, Madison, or even Hamilton condoning it. But one thing we know the Framers would never condone is a government that refused to reside within the Constitution; "chained down" by it as Jefferson once said.
The Founders, unlike John Yoo and George Bush, feared a king who enforced only the laws he found convenient to his present needs, who dispatched his agents with their own self-generated search warrants to knock on any door and seize any thing they or the king wanted, and who claimed to be doing all this for safety's sake.
Cutting down the laws to get at the Devil is dangerous business. As Robert Bolt argued in A Man for All Seasons, the land is planted thick with laws. If you cut them down to get to the Devil, who could stand the wind that then would blow?
When President Lincoln and the Radical Republicans tried civilians in military tribunals in the North, hundreds of miles from battle, and in the South after the Civil War had ended, a unanimous Supreme Court stopped them. It declared that "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances."
President Bush argued frequently and forcefully that his first job was to keep us safe. He was wrong. The Constitution tells us that his sole job was to enforce the Constitution; and that means keeping us free. Free from tyrants who sought and claimed power from thin air; free from prince-like federal agents who could behave without constitutional or legal restraint; free to live with a government that obeyed its own laws. Any president who keeps us safe but unfree is rejecting his oath to the American people.
Andrew P. Napolitano, who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book, coming in April, is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.
Harry and Louise are coming back to TV
Robalini's Note: That Harry & Louise are being used to push Obama's "health care" plan should scream that the plan is a bogus one. Unlike 1993, when the healthcare industry bashed the Clinton plan (which actually did promise universal care) the pharmaceutical industry sees this for what it is: a huge subsidy for big health without any promise of actual universal health coverage, no control on the money going to the health industry and little if any benefit to the people hurt by our current health system. In essence, the plan is a co-opting of people's anger at the current system (former right-wing congressman Billy Tauzin even uses Obama's mantra of "change") and promising an illusion of reform, a promise that will soon be quickly betrayed. Which, come to think of it, sums up the entire Obama agenda...http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/07/68494623/1
Jul 16, 2009
Harry and Louise are coming back to TV - for health care
Catalina Camia
Harry and Louise are back -- and they're switching sides.
The middle-class couple featured on TV ads that helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health care overhaul effort in 1993 will be starring in new commercials this weekend. Only this time, the couple will be going to bat for President Obama's version of a health-care fix.
The new ads are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and Families USA, a health care advocacy group. The multimillion-dollar campaign will run for at least three weeks, the groups say, and appear nationally on cable and network TV.
"The participation of Harry and Louise in this ad campaign clearly symbolizes how different the health reform debate is this year compared to the past," said Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA.
In the previous ads, Harry and Louise complained about health care costs and the complex nature of the Clinton plan.
Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman who heads the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America (known as PhRMA), says "this is a historic opportunity for change."
Five committees in Congress are working on legislation sought by President Obama, aimed at reducing health-care costs and getting more people health care coverage. The Senate health committee passed its version of a bill on Wednesday. Two House committees are starting work today on that chamber's bill, which includes a tax on upper-income people to help pay for it.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Rickey Done Lost His Number
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2204Rickey Done Lost His Number
by Todd Brendan Fahey
Finishing off my second pitcher at Grandma Gertie's--a lunch/beer joint in the hollow of Isla Vista, in the rich white student ghetto near UC Santa Barbara--I was feeling on the creeping side of wild, which experience has revealed to me is a good time to head home and load in a favorite CD...mebbe call it an early evening. But I was not afforded the luxury. Instead, I was beholden to score a goodly batch of psychedelics for a group of old friends promising to set me up with a brunette who knew of my needs.
What can I say? I'm a weak man, and the bone separating the space between my ears is abnormally thick and somehow fails to prevent me from bringing unnecessary harm into my life. So I traipsed through Dogshit Park, where I spotted a junky friend looking very much like he might benefit from the half-dozen Flexaril that I was willing to trade straight across for some information.
"Dun you ga no Codeens, mon?" he moaned, holding his back and scratching a grizzled beard, three years into the gray. He flashed a big con-man smile and fiddled with the knit beret that covered his afro. "Ah jess come from the VA, and it got me kind of strung out, mon, with all that aspirin bu'shit that dun nothin but gib me a stomach ache."
"Here, pop these all at once," I told him, ignoring his feeble complaint, and held out a palmful of outdated muscle-relaxant/painkillers left over from a full-contact softball tournament several years earlier.
He hoisted the remainder of a Mickey's Big Mouth and flushed three of the tablets down his throat, smiling, and wondered: "All right, brutha, what can I do you fo'? Yeh. I feel better in no time," he nodded. "You a good boy, know it? Been buyin' me beers for I dun know how long?"
"Four years," I answered, reflexively, remembering very clearly the first time I met Preston on a scary jaunt through Dogshit Park as a freshman, when the drugs had run dry in the dorm and the brave and desperate were forced to take a Walk on the Wild Side, as it were.
As a narcotic smile crept across Preston's face, I felt safe in asking the standard questions: "Seen any acid around?...Mushrooms, maybe?"
While most of my cronies were content to wallow with the worm at the bottom of a flagon of Mezcal, I felt the need to grapple with the Philosophies...unravel the kink in my frontal lobe, which made a young man with presumably Everything Going For Him feel compelled to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon in the company of known degenerates.
He scowled at me. "Mon, you know us niggahs dun mess with that shit."
I quickly reminded him of the drugs he had just swallowed, and the cases of beer and probably two hundred dollars I'd given him in close to half a decade, possibly out of guilt for being a Rich White College Kid, but more likely because a six-pack of Mickey's usually translated into something that I wanted. And I was willing to part with the change just to avoid having to switch connections--some of whom were a tad more...edgy than my friend, the Jamaican-American junky.
"Why you white boys dig them psy-kee-delics so much, anyway? They jess make me nervous. I get you some sticky-green ganja right now too-day!" And then he laughed. "But I guess you ain't hurtin' for that, neither, elst you'da come right out and ast for it."
"What's it gonna be, Preston?" I said, looking at my watch.
"Go see Rickey," he said. "He dun got none, but he know where it hide. Rickey the man."
I slipped Preston a slick, three-part handshake and headed out of Dogshit Park toward the Red Barn--some shag-house overhang, where Rickey was reportedly killing off a fresh pint of Jim Beam.
I was brimming with confidence at this point: Rickey was a toothless old darkey who owed me a couple dozen favors in the just shy of two years I had known him. His diet consisted of Jim Beam and popcorn; anything else, he claimed, would render him ill. He was totally dependant on the good nature of the local college students and grocery store hirelings, having entered the Korean War at age fifteen and then booted out at seventeen for something he never liked to talk about--without benefits or much of a future beyond walking the tracks from Philadelphia out West, where maybe he could at least shed a few pounds of clothes from his pack.
The last time I'd seen him, a brutally cold fog had crept through Santa Barbara, sending most of the Park People to local missions--a fate just south of shingles, where they were forced to get religion once a day and stay sober, or be tossed back into the weather like common farm animals. I would stop by to see Rickey after finishing the requisite round of pitchers with some college buddies on the six-year plan, and find him waiting like the family Dachshunds I have known over the years, smiling, knowing I was about to bring him an old coat or some mittens and fill his cirrhotic gullet with a major bag of popcorn, because I refused to contribute to the delinquency of an elderly black man whose whites of the eyes were now the shade of liver bile.
So I was feeling a bit wistful about seeing the old hobo and maybe feeding him--with or without the contraband. I was walking out of the park, when a bloated white drunk wearing three layers of clothing staggered to his feet and muttered: "Brother, whatcha need?"
I already had one foot in the crosswalk, but stopped short, not fully knowing why. "Acid," I said flatly.
"Blotter or 30cc?"
I stared at him for a few seconds, his moustache crusted with either morning's breakfast or the residue of it coming back up. "You can get liquid?" I mumbled.
"Man, you see this?" he snickered, a dry, rasping slur, fixing his two thumbs together to expose a small greenishblue dot on each. "Twenty years in Folsom, brother. If you're a narc, I'll...I can't go back to the joint," he said, staring at the sidewalk. "61-years old, brother. Another hitch would kill me."
"Nevermind that," I said. "What about the liquid? Where I come from, the stuff's just a myth."
"Heh heh," he cackled, "you don't know the Man. I spent time with the Man Himself."
I started to turn around and walk to the Red Barn and take my chances with Rickey.
"Leary, brother!," he yelled. "Ask him about Filthy Phil. You got wheels, we can be back seeing trees disappear inside an hour."
I had a tough decision at this point: Transport a stone-drunk convicted felon around town to hook up with a form of LSD I had only ever read about, coming supposedly from the High Priest Himself; or turn around and cross the street--forever burning that elusive bond of trust--and try to score with an equally-drunk old black man, who had probably experimented with nothing stronger than bourbon since 1971.
"Ahhhh," I moaned at the sky. "Why is this always so fucking difficult?"
He hopped into my car and immediately demanded that I pull over for a pack of non-filtered Camels and a bottle of Thunderbird, which I found myself paying for.
***
Two hours had elapsed since picking up Phil--most of which was spent driving fruitlessly around Santa Barbara and listening to stories of Tim Leary, and how the whole of Folsom Prison took him for a Mafia hit-man, as Dr. LSD had checked in under an assumed name, courtesy of the Federal Witness Protection Program, sporting an unnaturally deep tan and flashing a thousand-watt smile, courtesy of Sandoz Laboratories. The other few minutes were wiled away in the company of a Highway Patrol officer, after my cohort found it suddenly necessary to tip up and guzzle from his bottle of Thunderbird, just eighteen inches from the driver's side of a black and white.
I explained to the good officer that my Master's degree program in Transactional Psychology demanded that I spent some time with these people; get to know them...a matter of valuable Social Research. Yes. And, as I was instructed to study them in their natural foetid habitat, I let the poor drunkard slug off his bottle of gut-rot...but that I, officer, was as sober as a Baptist at Easter.
The cop seemed to understand, ordering Phil to pour the bottle into a curbside trash can--an act that pained him down to his rotten DNA.
As the cop sped off, Phil insisted that I drive to MacKenzie Park near La Cumbre Plaza, so that he could refuel and "make contact" with whomever might be toting this vial of Liquid Vision. When we got to the park, I saw two drunk blacks and a Mexican who stirred the contents of what would soon become dinner. The next few details remain hazy.
I smoked the dregs of a joint and, being neighborly, slugged down a half bottle of ripple, and then drove Phil and his two "partners" to Miratti's Liquors near the Fig Tree--another bastion of Santa Barbara homeless--to score an ounce of magic mushrooms. And was when Phil began verbally abusing his two friends in a manner that I thought might get him stabbed through the back of the passenger seat. When I tried to make peace between them, they broke up laughing.
"Ho ho...he's a kick," one of the black men howled. "Where'd you find this boy, there, Fi'thy?"
Phil leaned over and started to explain, when the other man cut in. "We calls ourselves niggahs 'cos we is. Means one's just lower'n a snake's belly," he nodded, smiling. "Filthy, here, is the biggest niggah of us all."
My brain was beginning to go soft. I skidded into Miratti's parking lot and fronted $75 for the hallucinogens, fully assured that they had been weighed, sealed and Quality Tested, whereby I could leave these beggars to their own meager devices and join up with the eight former college buddies who promised me a brunette of varied carnal persuasion.
Of course, it never came to pass.
After loitering around Miratti's, the police showed up and urged me to "keep clear of this kind of neighborhood, son...it's not safe."
I nodded, knowing a friendly piece of advice when I heard one. Besides, a half hour earlier, in my state of bilious rage, I'd begun using some fairly heavy racial epithets that I normally don't express aloud, and found myself on the business end of a Gerber mini-mag that I know could dice me into a fine pate in a matter of seconds. I licked my sodden wounds and headed back to Isla Vista, to see if Rickey might still be around.
Driving into the college town, I was forced to pull over by the numbing blare of a siren. I hung my head, resigned to spend an evening in the drunk tank, when the cop passed, followed closely by an ambulance. The street was crowded with gawking onlookers, so I slipped into the parking lot of Grandma Gertie's, where the shameful saga had begun earlier that afternoon.
Preston was sitting on a wooden table outside the sandwich shop. He smiled. "Got'ny mo' of them pills? They work real good on this back."
I shook my head, beginning to shudder with cold and a general guilty feeling. "What's all the heat about?"
"You dun know?" he frowned. "They try to wake him, but he don't move. You know how he get after too much whiskey. So they let him sleep it off. Only, he dun slept too long. Po' Rickey," Preston smiled. "I guess thas jess what happens to some niggahs."
Note:
Todd Brendan Fahey's collection of short stories, Dogshit Park & other atrocities, shall appear in print as another Far Gone Book in October 2009. $15.00/signed (excluding shipping). Contact: fargone@fargonebooks.com