Sunday, January 23, 2011
RIP Teena Marie
Farewell to Teena Marie, aka Lady T. Best known for the song "Lovergirl", she was both professionally and romantically involved with funk superstar Rick James. Their musical collaboration helped pave the way for her Latin-flavored, R&B sound. Many at first thought Marie was either Latina or African-American: in fact, she was caucasian, earning her the nickname "The Ivory Queen of Soul" from fans. Despite being a dance-music diva, her music rocked hard: her 1986 album Emerald City was named one of the ten greatest heavy metal albums of all time by noted rock critic Chuck Eddy in his book Stairway to Hell.
Holograms: The Future Is Soon?
Two recent stories from the London Telegraph indicate holographic technology may be a big thing on the horizon. One, a report on how holographic images may soon be able to be sent via telecommunications in real time: just like in the Star Wars movies. Meanwhile, Apple has patents to produce holographic images over movie, television and computer screens without the need for special glasses...
Star Wars 3D holograms 'close to reality'
Richard Alleyne
03 Nov 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8107899/Star-Wars-3D-holograms-close-to-reality.html
Apple patent reveals plans for holographic display
Richard Gray
26 Dec 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8224930/Apple-patent-reveals-plans-for-holographic-display.html
Star Wars 3D holograms 'close to reality'
Richard Alleyne
03 Nov 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8107899/Star-Wars-3D-holograms-close-to-reality.html
Apple patent reveals plans for holographic display
Richard Gray
26 Dec 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8224930/Apple-patent-reveals-plans-for-holographic-display.html
Oil of Oregano & Pomegranate Juice Kick Cancer's Ass
Courtesy of NaturalNews.com, oil of oregano and pomegranate juice are nutritious weapons in fighting cancer...
Oil of oregano fights harmful bacteria, cancer
Ethan A. Huff
Saturday, December 25, 2010
http://www.naturalnews.com/030833_oil_of_Oregano_cancer.html
Pomegranate juice components block cancer cell migration
S. L. Baker
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
http://www.naturalnews.com/030862_pomegranates_cancer_cells.html
Oil of oregano fights harmful bacteria, cancer
Ethan A. Huff
Saturday, December 25, 2010
http://www.naturalnews.com/030833_oil_of_Oregano_cancer.html
Pomegranate juice components block cancer cell migration
S. L. Baker
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
http://www.naturalnews.com/030862_pomegranates_cancer_cells.html
The National Film Registry 2010 Picks
The Library of Congress has made its annual picks for the 25 films added to the National Film Registry, and as always, it's an entertaining, eclectic mix. Here's this year's choices:
• "Airplane!" (1980)
• "All the President's Men" (1976)
• "The Bargain" (1914)
• "Cry of Jazz" (1959)
• "Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB" (1967)
• "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980)
• "The Exorcist (1973)
• "The Front Page" (1931)
• "Grey Gardens" (1976)
• "I Am Joaquin" (1969)
• "It's a Gift" (1934)
• "Let There Be Light" (1946)
• "Lonesome" (1928)
• "Make Way For Tomorrow" (1937)
• "Malcolm X" (1992)
• "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971)
• "Newark Athlete" (1891)
• "Our Lady of the Sphere" (1969)
• "The Pink Panther" (1964)
• "Preservation of the Sign Language" (1913)
• "Saturday Night Fever" (1977)
• "Study of a River" (1966)
• "Tarantella" (1940)
• "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1945)
• "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906)
Films selected to the National Film Registry
Tue Dec 28, 2010
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/films-selected-national-film-registry-ap
• "Airplane!" (1980)
• "All the President's Men" (1976)
• "The Bargain" (1914)
• "Cry of Jazz" (1959)
• "Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB" (1967)
• "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980)
• "The Exorcist (1973)
• "The Front Page" (1931)
• "Grey Gardens" (1976)
• "I Am Joaquin" (1969)
• "It's a Gift" (1934)
• "Let There Be Light" (1946)
• "Lonesome" (1928)
• "Make Way For Tomorrow" (1937)
• "Malcolm X" (1992)
• "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971)
• "Newark Athlete" (1891)
• "Our Lady of the Sphere" (1969)
• "The Pink Panther" (1964)
• "Preservation of the Sign Language" (1913)
• "Saturday Night Fever" (1977)
• "Study of a River" (1966)
• "Tarantella" (1940)
• "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1945)
• "A Trip Down Market Street" (1906)
Films selected to the National Film Registry
Tue Dec 28, 2010
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/films-selected-national-film-registry-ap
The Right Wing Plot to Destroy Public Pensions
If things go according to the right wing's plans, the Federal Government that bailed out Wall Street millionaires and billionaires won't help out state governments, in the process destroying public pensions and making public worker unions politically impotent. This is the plan according to of James Pethokoukis of Reuters, who declares: "This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011."
Pethokoukis reports that "the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans 'have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.'"
Without low-interest bonds, states suffering the squeeze from the economic downturn may be forced into bankruptcy, a scenario that delights many in the GOP. As The Weekly Standard notes with approval, "The bankruptcy law should give debtor states even more power to rewrite union contracts, if the court approves. Interestingly, it is easier to renegotiate a burdensome union contract in municipal bankruptcy than in a corporate bankruptcy." Pethokoukis summarizes: "From the Republican perspective, the fiscal crisis on the state level provides a golden opportunity to defund a key Democratic interest group. For the GOP, it’s an economic and political win."
There are some legitimate issues on the fiscal soundness of current pensions for public workers. You don't have to be a right-wing charlatan or a Wall Street asshole to admit that. (Although it doesn't hurt if you are.) But the supposed solution here is politically cynical and may be as economically damaging to the public as the "Fuck You!" attitude to subprime loan victims has been.
Secret GOP plan: Push states to declare bankruptcy and smash unions
James Pethokoukis
Dec 7, 2010
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/12/07/secret-gop-plan-push-states-to-declare-bankruptcy-and-smash-unions
Pethokoukis reports that "the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans 'have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.'"
Without low-interest bonds, states suffering the squeeze from the economic downturn may be forced into bankruptcy, a scenario that delights many in the GOP. As The Weekly Standard notes with approval, "The bankruptcy law should give debtor states even more power to rewrite union contracts, if the court approves. Interestingly, it is easier to renegotiate a burdensome union contract in municipal bankruptcy than in a corporate bankruptcy." Pethokoukis summarizes: "From the Republican perspective, the fiscal crisis on the state level provides a golden opportunity to defund a key Democratic interest group. For the GOP, it’s an economic and political win."
There are some legitimate issues on the fiscal soundness of current pensions for public workers. You don't have to be a right-wing charlatan or a Wall Street asshole to admit that. (Although it doesn't hurt if you are.) But the supposed solution here is politically cynical and may be as economically damaging to the public as the "Fuck You!" attitude to subprime loan victims has been.
Secret GOP plan: Push states to declare bankruptcy and smash unions
James Pethokoukis
Dec 7, 2010
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/12/07/secret-gop-plan-push-states-to-declare-bankruptcy-and-smash-unions
How Easy Obamacare Could Have Been Fixed
Truth-Out.org reprinted Chapter 5 from Thom Hartmann's excellent book Rebooting the American Dream on its site. The title of the chapter - "Medicare 'Part E'- for Everybody" - summarizes its conclusion pretty succinctly: that the real solution to America's healthcare crisis is to simply allow a buy-in to Medicare for all Americans as a healthcare public option, which is pretty much my conclusion as well. It's not only good economics, it's good politics: expanding an effective and popular program that has worked is the way to go. The best thing about opening up Medicare is it wouldn't kill private insurance, but rather improve it, by forcing them to innovatively compete with real competition rather than participate in a rigged oligopoly. What's more, if universal coverage is a real goal of health reform (which apparently it isn't under Obamacare, as it is guaranteed to still exclude millions from the healthcare system) rather than have an individual mandate (i.e. forcing people to buy insurance from corrupt insurance companies, a strategy which is both politically unpopular and of at best dubious constitutional grounds) you could merely set up a payroll tax for those without private insurance, so they are automatically included in the public option. The payroll tax plan would be politically contentious, no doubt, but no more contentious than the Obamacare debate has been and with a greater upside.
Unfortunately, Obamacare didn't expand a successful and popular program like Medicare, but rather an unsuccessful and unpopular program that is for-profit korporate health insurance. The end result is we'll still have easily the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world. Hartmann notes:
"As journalist and author T. R. Reid pointed out in his seminal 2008 documentary, Sick around the World, and in his subsequent book on the topic, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that allows for-profit corporations to offer basic, primary-care health insurance. While many countries allow for-profit players in the insurance market, they’re specialized; the insurance will get you a single room or suite in a private hospital or covers things like elective cosmetic surgery - basically health insurance add-ons for the rich. But every other nation except the United States considers health care a right instead of a privilege, so they let only nonprofit companies provide insurance for it, or the nations’ governments provide it themselves."
Oh, well, too bad those evil Republicans stopped Obama and the Democrats from giving us the health care reform they really wanted to, but couldn't. After all, there were only 59 Dems in the Senate, one short of the number needed to stop the filibuster that forced the necessary compromise. There's only one problem with this argument:
"If legislation is considered in the Senate that only adjusts the amounts of revenue coming in or going out, it can be done through a process called 'reconciliation,' which requires only a simple majority - 50 votes - to pass, with the vice president to break a tie.
For example, George W. Bush and the Republicans used reconciliation - majority rule - to push through his huge cuts in taxes on the richest Americans three different times in the first decade of this century. They were not creating a new program but simply adjusting the revenue figures. Ronald Reagan had done the same. If legislation has to do only with revenue or scale adjustments to existing programs, 50 votes in the Senate are enough.
Therein lies the greatest - and the simplest - opportunity to truly reform health care.
We already have Medicare, which is a fairly comprehensive basic health insurance/health-care program that covers nearly all Americans over 65 years of age. It is, in essence, a single-payer health-care program. Obama and the Democrats could easily push to expand the Medicare program to allow Americans of all ages to participate in it, and all they’d need is a simple majority, not a supermajority."
Could the Democrats get 51 votes out of 59 Senators (or 50, assuming Biden would vote yes on the tiebreaker) on expanding Medicare with a buy in for a public option? (Or, perhaps more contentiously, if you want to go the whole nine yards, a new payroll tax to create real universal coverage?) It's hard to imagine nine Democrats doing something that would be so politically unpopular, as a public option had overwhelming support in pretty much all opinion polls. But what's telling is that all it would take is one Congressman (Senate or HOR) to get this up for a vote, and not one did. No Dennis Kucinich, not even supposed independent socialist Bernie Sanders. It appears that all the Democrats in Congress would rather protect a corrupt secret deal made by the Obama Administration to the for-profit health industry than help the average American.
For further reading:
Medicare “Part E”- for Everybody
Thom Hartmann
Monday 13 December 2010
http://www.truth-out.org/medicare-part-e-everybody65901
Also, please check out Firedoglake.com, which has been the best site in covering the flagrant flaws of Obamacare.
Unfortunately, Obamacare didn't expand a successful and popular program like Medicare, but rather an unsuccessful and unpopular program that is for-profit korporate health insurance. The end result is we'll still have easily the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world. Hartmann notes:
"As journalist and author T. R. Reid pointed out in his seminal 2008 documentary, Sick around the World, and in his subsequent book on the topic, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that allows for-profit corporations to offer basic, primary-care health insurance. While many countries allow for-profit players in the insurance market, they’re specialized; the insurance will get you a single room or suite in a private hospital or covers things like elective cosmetic surgery - basically health insurance add-ons for the rich. But every other nation except the United States considers health care a right instead of a privilege, so they let only nonprofit companies provide insurance for it, or the nations’ governments provide it themselves."
Oh, well, too bad those evil Republicans stopped Obama and the Democrats from giving us the health care reform they really wanted to, but couldn't. After all, there were only 59 Dems in the Senate, one short of the number needed to stop the filibuster that forced the necessary compromise. There's only one problem with this argument:
"If legislation is considered in the Senate that only adjusts the amounts of revenue coming in or going out, it can be done through a process called 'reconciliation,' which requires only a simple majority - 50 votes - to pass, with the vice president to break a tie.
For example, George W. Bush and the Republicans used reconciliation - majority rule - to push through his huge cuts in taxes on the richest Americans three different times in the first decade of this century. They were not creating a new program but simply adjusting the revenue figures. Ronald Reagan had done the same. If legislation has to do only with revenue or scale adjustments to existing programs, 50 votes in the Senate are enough.
Therein lies the greatest - and the simplest - opportunity to truly reform health care.
We already have Medicare, which is a fairly comprehensive basic health insurance/health-care program that covers nearly all Americans over 65 years of age. It is, in essence, a single-payer health-care program. Obama and the Democrats could easily push to expand the Medicare program to allow Americans of all ages to participate in it, and all they’d need is a simple majority, not a supermajority."
Could the Democrats get 51 votes out of 59 Senators (or 50, assuming Biden would vote yes on the tiebreaker) on expanding Medicare with a buy in for a public option? (Or, perhaps more contentiously, if you want to go the whole nine yards, a new payroll tax to create real universal coverage?) It's hard to imagine nine Democrats doing something that would be so politically unpopular, as a public option had overwhelming support in pretty much all opinion polls. But what's telling is that all it would take is one Congressman (Senate or HOR) to get this up for a vote, and not one did. No Dennis Kucinich, not even supposed independent socialist Bernie Sanders. It appears that all the Democrats in Congress would rather protect a corrupt secret deal made by the Obama Administration to the for-profit health industry than help the average American.
For further reading:
Medicare “Part E”- for Everybody
Thom Hartmann
Monday 13 December 2010
http://www.truth-out.org/medicare-part-e-everybody65901
Also, please check out Firedoglake.com, which has been the best site in covering the flagrant flaws of Obamacare.
Maybe the TSA Has Gone a Little Bit Too Far...
The mainstream news cycle has dropped the story of TSA airline passenger abuse, but that doesn't mean it isn't still happening.
From RawStory.com comes this little tale. Claire Hirschkind, a 56-year-old woman with a pacemaker, was unable to go through the TSA's porno scanners due to potential dangers to her life-saving device. Instead, they demanded to give her an "enhanced patdown" - which is a nice euphemism for being finger fucked. Ms. Hirschkind, a rape victim, refused: "I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are.'" She was pushed to the floor, handcuffed and arrested. Of course, this gross violation of the Fourth Amendment would be disgusting without the added circumstances, but in her case it is decidedly an even greater outrage...
Rape victim arrested for refusing TSA pat down
Eric W. Dolan
Friday, December 24th, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/rape-victim-arrested-refusing-tsa-pat
From RawStory.com comes this little tale. Claire Hirschkind, a 56-year-old woman with a pacemaker, was unable to go through the TSA's porno scanners due to potential dangers to her life-saving device. Instead, they demanded to give her an "enhanced patdown" - which is a nice euphemism for being finger fucked. Ms. Hirschkind, a rape victim, refused: "I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are.'" She was pushed to the floor, handcuffed and arrested. Of course, this gross violation of the Fourth Amendment would be disgusting without the added circumstances, but in her case it is decidedly an even greater outrage...
Rape victim arrested for refusing TSA pat down
Eric W. Dolan
Friday, December 24th, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/rape-victim-arrested-refusing-tsa-pat
Classic Photo Break
Kenn Thomas of SteamshovelPress.com & Robalini in the 90's
Robalini, KT, and Greg Bishop wearing the hat & glasses of William S. Burroughs, owned by Richard Metzger of DangerousMinds.net
From left to right: Bishop, Robalini, Jim Martin of Flatland Books, The Christ Conspiracy author Acharya S and Kenn Thomas
From left to right at Barney's Beanery: Free Citizen zine editor Scott Sawyer, Acharya S, Robalini, KT & writer Skylaire Alfvegren. (Where is Acharya's foot in this photo?)
From left to right at LAX: Robalini, Acharya S, KT and Greg Bishop
FeedBack: Who is Behind Wikileaks?
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/
I, too, am troubled by the superficial content of the recent cables that have been released. There is really no new information there that isn't widely available on the Internet. I find nothing related to the "strategic" reasons the US is at war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nothing about the Pentagon agenda to foster the secession of oil and mineral rich Balochistan from Pakistan as a US client state - just like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other former Soviet republics. Nothing about CIA support for the Baloch separatist movement. Nothing about the CIA training young Baloch separatists in bomb making and other terrorist activities to disrupt operations at the Chinese-built Gwadar Port (intended to transport Iranian oil and natural gas via Pakistan to China.)
http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/
I, too, am troubled by the superficial content of the recent cables that have been released. There is really no new information there that isn't widely available on the Internet. I find nothing related to the "strategic" reasons the US is at war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nothing about the Pentagon agenda to foster the secession of oil and mineral rich Balochistan from Pakistan as a US client state - just like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other former Soviet republics. Nothing about CIA support for the Baloch separatist movement. Nothing about the CIA training young Baloch separatists in bomb making and other terrorist activities to disrupt operations at the Chinese-built Gwadar Port (intended to transport Iranian oil and natural gas via Pakistan to China.)
Ronni Chasen & Star Whackers
The Melchizedek Communique has been quite busy lately even if it hasn't been writing about the Lincoln Assassination. It's one of the few places to follow the curious death of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen, even though authorities now claim case closed, that she was killed by supposed lone gunman Harold Smith. But as MC notes:
Harold Smith had allegedly bragged about killing Ronni Chasen. He reportedly claimed he was waiting to receive $10,000 for assassinating Chasen. Several persons close to Ronni Chasen have described her murder as a professional hit. "A lot of people think it's a hit. A lot," said singer-songwriter Carol Connors, a friend of Chasen for more than 35 years. Kathie Berlin, a publicist and close friend of Chasen, said, "I knew this was a professional hit from the minute I heard about where the shots went and the number of shots." "This was clearly a targeted hit," said a veteran Hollywood film studio executive who has known Chasen for three decades.
Incidentally, Usually when attempted robbers shoot their victims five times at point blank range, they follow through with the actual robbery.
Patrick Goldstein, in a smug LA Times piece to dismiss most of the mystery surrounding the murder, had to admit that "it seems as if everyone in town agrees on one thing: the Beverly Hills Police Department’s explanation that Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was killed by a small-time crook in a botched midnight robbery is utter hogwash."
So if it wasn't a random murder, what's really behind her death? Theories that have been floating on the Web include gambling debts by a close Chasen friend or family member, a dispute over an art deal gone bad, shady investments in one of the productions she was involved with and a petty squabble over Oscar campaigns. A common bad guy in many of these theories is the Russian Mafia, which is probably a great place to start in the mystery sniffing. MC tries to tie the Chasen murder with the infamous "Star Whackers" rant given by Hollywood actor turned fugitive Randy Quaid. Quaid's claim of "Star Whackers" has been derided in the press, and perhaps it is just the paranoid ramblings of a man who has lost his grip. But at this point, it's probably more credible than the official line.
For further reading:
Melchizedek Communique, MC122110
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc122110.html
Ronni Chasen: Dark theories over her slaying
Patrick Goldstein
December 13, 2010
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/12/ronni-chasen-a-victim-of-lurid-hollywood-conspiracy-theories.html
As a side note, MC points out the apartment Harold Smith lived in was next to the studio Ed Wood filmed Plan 9 From Outer Space. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the murder, but it's a pretty cool fact to know.
Harold Smith had allegedly bragged about killing Ronni Chasen. He reportedly claimed he was waiting to receive $10,000 for assassinating Chasen. Several persons close to Ronni Chasen have described her murder as a professional hit. "A lot of people think it's a hit. A lot," said singer-songwriter Carol Connors, a friend of Chasen for more than 35 years. Kathie Berlin, a publicist and close friend of Chasen, said, "I knew this was a professional hit from the minute I heard about where the shots went and the number of shots." "This was clearly a targeted hit," said a veteran Hollywood film studio executive who has known Chasen for three decades.
Incidentally, Usually when attempted robbers shoot their victims five times at point blank range, they follow through with the actual robbery.
Patrick Goldstein, in a smug LA Times piece to dismiss most of the mystery surrounding the murder, had to admit that "it seems as if everyone in town agrees on one thing: the Beverly Hills Police Department’s explanation that Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was killed by a small-time crook in a botched midnight robbery is utter hogwash."
So if it wasn't a random murder, what's really behind her death? Theories that have been floating on the Web include gambling debts by a close Chasen friend or family member, a dispute over an art deal gone bad, shady investments in one of the productions she was involved with and a petty squabble over Oscar campaigns. A common bad guy in many of these theories is the Russian Mafia, which is probably a great place to start in the mystery sniffing. MC tries to tie the Chasen murder with the infamous "Star Whackers" rant given by Hollywood actor turned fugitive Randy Quaid. Quaid's claim of "Star Whackers" has been derided in the press, and perhaps it is just the paranoid ramblings of a man who has lost his grip. But at this point, it's probably more credible than the official line.
For further reading:
Melchizedek Communique, MC122110
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc122110.html
Ronni Chasen: Dark theories over her slaying
Patrick Goldstein
December 13, 2010
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/12/ronni-chasen-a-victim-of-lurid-hollywood-conspiracy-theories.html
As a side note, MC points out the apartment Harold Smith lived in was next to the studio Ed Wood filmed Plan 9 From Outer Space. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the murder, but it's a pretty cool fact to know.
DNA Test for John Wilkes Booth?
Meanwhile, another conspiracy theory has been gaining currency in the mainstream media, this one slightly of historical importance, even if it covers events nearly 150 years old. Specifically, it's the idea that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, didn't die twelve days after the murder but instead lived another 38 years.
Granted, this theory isn't completely new: it was powerfully presented in the 1975 book Jesse James Was One of His Names, by Del Schrader & Jesse James III. The book's text used to be available online for free, but alas no more. You can get a copy of the book on CD for $39.99 by contacting L.K. Shick by email or snail mail:
L.K. Shick
3700 S. Westport Ave., #2501
Sioux Falls, S.D. 57106
shark_lyric1@yahoo.com
Some of you may be confused by the title of this book. After all, just what the hell does Jesse James have to do with the Lincoln Assassination? (And for you younger readers out there, the Jesse James we're referring to here is the Wild West outlaw, not the dude who cheated on Sandra Bullock with a bunch of skanky whores.)
Well, to give a Cliff Notes version of the theory, the Lincoln Assassination was part of a bigger operation, involving the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society that essentially was the spy network for the Southern Confederacy. Apparently, James was a member, and his bank robberies were fund-raising activities for the Confederate underground. Another alleged member of the Golden Circle was Booth, and thus the slaying of Lincoln was a job done by the Southern intelligence apparatus. JWB's death was faked and he was given a cover identity as a reward for his deed.
(As a side note, two leaders of the Golden Circle were "respectable" Mason Albert Pike and Bedford Forrest, the man who inspired the first name of Tom Hanks' retarded Oscar winner. The same two men founded the Ku Klux Klan. It can then be argued the KKK evolved from remnants of hardcore racists and confederates within the Golden Circle.)
This theory has been covered pretty well on the Internet, though it's a bit hard to find now. Brian Redman of Conspiracy Nation (now called Melchizedek Communique, found at http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html ) did postings on it in 1999, but they're not to be found on his Website now. Dave McGowan of Davesweb.cnchost.com also wrote about it in 2003, and this led to his inclusion in the "bonus" documentary found on the National Treasure: Book of Secrets DVD. I had a little something to do with that, as I was unavailable to be interviewed for the DVD, but recommended McGowan for the DVD based on his interest in the subject. McGowan tells the behind-the-scenes story of the interview in this funny post:
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr92.html
In case you didn't see the movie (or the documentary, which has aired on the Discovery Channel by itself) the Golden Circle as the mastermind of the Lincoln Assassination is central to the movie's plot.
Well, along comes a new TV show, the most excellent Brad Meltzer's Decoded on the History Channel ( http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-decoded ) and they decided to investigate the angle of whether Booth actually died or faked his death. Along the way, they learned of the grave for Edwin Booth, JWB's brother. DNA from his corpse could be compared to the vertebrae of the alleged JWB killed in 1865 found at the National Museum of Health and Medicine to settle the issue once and for all. For some reason, the National Museum of Health and Medicine is fighting this. But the DNA test has some strong supporters including historian Nate Orlowek: "If the man who killed our greatest president got away and a giant hoax was perpetrated on the American people, then we should know about it."
To read the CNN article on this subject:
Did Abraham Lincoln's assassin get away? DNA could end questions
Mallory Simon
December 24th, 2010
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/24/did-abraham-lincolns-assassin-get-away-dna-could-end-questions
And to read more about the Knights of the Golden Circle, check out the following blog:
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com/
The G.I. Joe Conspiracy
From The Vigilant Citizen, the Masked Internet Superhero who brought you the koolest konspiracy of the last two years with the "Lady Gaga is an Illuminati Agent" theory, now has G.I. Joe in his/her target. According to Vigilant, the Joe cartoons in the 80's weren't merely half-hour long commercials for really cool toys you wanted your parents to buy for you, but rather a diabolical propaganda unit for the New World Order. And to Vigilante's credit, the case made is a pretty powerful one:
G.I. Joe is an iconic cartoon TV show that marked an entire generation of young boys during the 80s. Most fans still recall the main characters and the epic gun fights. But what about the storyline? A look at the TV series in today’s context is quite a strange experience: Many of Cobra’s “far-out” plots are actually happening today. Could G.I. Joe be a case of predictive programming? We will look at some G.I. Joe episodes describing the replacement of the US dollar and the usage of mind control on celebrities and civilians and see how they relate in today’s context.
To read the whole article:
How the Animated Series G.I. Joe Predicted Today’s Illuminati Dajjal Agenda
December 18, 2010
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/12/18/how-the-animated-series-g-i-joe-predicted-today%E2%80%99s-illuminati-dajjal-agenda
And to read more from Vigilant:
http://www.vigilantcitizen.com/
Of course, Vigilante doesn't mention the other G.I. Joe conspiracy, that the 70's version of the doll (uh, I mean, action figure) was, like his Mattel Toys knock-off Big Jim, totally gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) The "G.I. Joe, Big Jim and the homosexual agenda" theory is even more persuasively presented at Retroland in its recent profile of the Big Jim toyline:
Introduced by Mattel Toys, Big Jim had a body to be proud of and he wasn’t afraid of showing it off. With actual flexing biceps, and patented “Big Jim Body Action”, this was one highly flexible action figure. The included decorative armband proved no match for his biceps of steel and could be popped off with a single squeeze. And with a mere push of a protruding dorsal button, Jim’s mighty arm would snap into action, able to break his karate board as if it were a stick of butter. These weren’t the only accessories that came with Big Jim though. A big Jim’s Sportsbook was also included, as well as dumbbells and, um, a skimpy set of shorts.
But what’s a guy without friends? To his credit, Jim had a number of equally muscular acquaintances, which in hindsight might have been a little too Village People-esque. You had Big Jeff, the blond with the khakis and machete; Big Jack, the African-American version of Big Jim; and Big Josh, the furry lumberjack with the cutoff denim shorts. Throw in a police officer and a construction worker and these guys could have gone on to enjoy a career as a successful musical act.
To read the whole article on Big Jim:
Big Jim
December 20, 2010
http://www.retroland.com/big-jim
Incidentally, though the invaluable Retroland Retropedia is no longer linked to its front page, you can still find its extensive entries at this URL:
http://dev.retroland.com/pages/retropedia
The Konformist Returns: 2011
Hope you all had a Happy Holidays, The Konformist returns for the New Year with a different format. Basically, it's going to be less articles from other sites and more original works and commentary. That way, The Konformist will return to its roots hopefully, as the first place to go to hear something rather than a place to hear what others have been saying. FeedBack is definitely encouraged.
One important piece of good news: after being listed as 'This site may harm your computer' on Google.com for almost a year, Konformist.com has been removed from that advisory and has been updated. In fact, the site had a malware virus on it for only a short period of time, which it received from my computer. Finally this week I managed to upload a clean version of my site to Konformist.com, which included pages that were deleted when Lunarpages.com removed the virus from the server. There have been numerous speculation and queries on to how the malware attack happened, and some have suspected that The Konformist was a victim of some CIA cyber attack. In fact, the culprits are Mariah Milano and Lela Star, who inspired the web search that resulted in the virus attack on my old desktop. I mention their names because, though they did cause a virus attack, they are still worthy of a web search for all you guys out there.
Thanks for your patience,
Robert Sterling
Editor, The Konformist
http://www.konformist.com/
http://robalini.blogspot.com/
Friday, January 21, 2011
Vote 4 Beast of the Year 2010!
Who is The Konformist Beast of the Year?
To vote for your pick go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/polls
Or send email to: robalini@aol.com
It's time for the annual pick of The Konformist Beast of the Year.
One nominee was chosen each month from May 2009 to April 2010. Here are the choices:
May 2009: Timothy Geithner
June 2009: Alex Rodriguez
July 2009: Glenn Beck
August 2009: Roberto Micheletti
September 2009: The Hills, The Jonas Brothers & Twilight
October 2009: Billy Tauzin
November 2009: Thorborn Jagland
December 2009: Lloyd Blankfein
January 2010: Ben Bernanke
February 2010: 2012
March 2010: Jay Leno
April 2010: Akio Toyoda
To vote for your pick go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/polls
Or send email to: robalini@aol.com
To vote for your pick go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/polls
Or send email to: robalini@aol.com
It's time for the annual pick of The Konformist Beast of the Year.
One nominee was chosen each month from May 2009 to April 2010. Here are the choices:
May 2009: Timothy Geithner
June 2009: Alex Rodriguez
July 2009: Glenn Beck
August 2009: Roberto Micheletti
September 2009: The Hills, The Jonas Brothers & Twilight
October 2009: Billy Tauzin
November 2009: Thorborn Jagland
December 2009: Lloyd Blankfein
January 2010: Ben Bernanke
February 2010: 2012
March 2010: Jay Leno
April 2010: Akio Toyoda
To vote for your pick go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/polls
Or send email to: robalini@aol.com
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
http://www.naturalnews.com/030815_junk_food_addiction.html
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
Thursday, December 23, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Scientists are increasingly becoming convinced that junk food can be just as physically addictive as street drugs like heroin.
Researchers at Rockefeller University have found that foods high in fat and sugar cause the brain to release many of the same pleasure chemicals that produce drug addiction, including cortisol, dopamine, galanin and serotonin. Over time, regular consumption of junk food can create imbalances in these chemicals, leading us to eat more and more in order to restore normal levels.
"They cause us to have more cravings," said Rosa Lopez, of the New York Department of Health. "There are physiological changes."
A recent study by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute confirmed this long-term effect by feeding rats either a healthy diet, a healthy diet plus limited amounts of junk food, or a healthy diet plus unlimited amounts of junk food. While rats in the first two groups remained healthy, rats in the third group binged on junk food and quickly became obese.
"You lose control. It's the hallmark of addiction," researcher Paul Kenny said.
When researchers then directly stimulated the pleasure centers in the rats' brains, they found that the obese rats needed more stimulation than the other rats to achieve the same effect. This suggests that their junk food diet had actually dulled their brain's pleasure centers, creating dependency.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations," researcher Paul Johnson said.
Because ending a junk food addiction may be as difficult as quitting smoking, Lopez recommends tackling just one bad habit at first. Cutting out soda can be a good place to start.
"In some ways, you may have to view junk foods the way alcoholics anonymous views alcohol: one bite is too many, and a thousand is not enough," writes Jack Challem in his book The Food-Mood Solution.
Junk food as addictive as street drugs
Thursday, December 23, 2010
David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Scientists are increasingly becoming convinced that junk food can be just as physically addictive as street drugs like heroin.
Researchers at Rockefeller University have found that foods high in fat and sugar cause the brain to release many of the same pleasure chemicals that produce drug addiction, including cortisol, dopamine, galanin and serotonin. Over time, regular consumption of junk food can create imbalances in these chemicals, leading us to eat more and more in order to restore normal levels.
"They cause us to have more cravings," said Rosa Lopez, of the New York Department of Health. "There are physiological changes."
A recent study by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute confirmed this long-term effect by feeding rats either a healthy diet, a healthy diet plus limited amounts of junk food, or a healthy diet plus unlimited amounts of junk food. While rats in the first two groups remained healthy, rats in the third group binged on junk food and quickly became obese.
"You lose control. It's the hallmark of addiction," researcher Paul Kenny said.
When researchers then directly stimulated the pleasure centers in the rats' brains, they found that the obese rats needed more stimulation than the other rats to achieve the same effect. This suggests that their junk food diet had actually dulled their brain's pleasure centers, creating dependency.
"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations," researcher Paul Johnson said.
Because ending a junk food addiction may be as difficult as quitting smoking, Lopez recommends tackling just one bad habit at first. Cutting out soda can be a good place to start.
"In some ways, you may have to view junk foods the way alcoholics anonymous views alcohol: one bite is too many, and a thousand is not enough," writes Jack Challem in his book The Food-Mood Solution.
Strong Evidence Emerges of BP Oil on Seafloor
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704447604576007761183035214.html
BUSINESS
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Strong Evidence Emerges of BP Oil on Seafloor
JEFFREY BALL
A university scientist and the federal government say they have found persuasive evidence that oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill is settling on the ocean floor.
The new findings, from scientists at the University of South Florida and from a broad government effort, mark the latest indication that environmental damage from the blowout of a BP PLC well could be significant where it's hardest to find: deep under the Gulf's surface.
The amount of oil that has settled in the sediment—and the extent of damage it has caused—remains unclear. But scientists who have been on research cruises in the Gulf in recent days report finding layers of residue up to several centimeters thick from what they suspect is BP oil.
The material appears in spots across several thousand square miles of seafloor, they said. In many of those spots, they said, worms and other marine life that crawl along the sediment appear dead, though many organisms that can swim appear healthy. How the death of organisms in the sediment might affect the broader Gulf ecology is something scientists are studying.
Tests to determine how much of the material on the seafloor matches the spilled oil are continuing. But the fact that tests now have started to link some oil in the sediment to the BP well could add to the amount of money BP ends up paying to compensate for the spill's damage.
Under federal law, companies found responsible for an oil spill have to pay compensation for the resulting environmental harm. The more BP's oil is found to have polluted the Gulf floor and killed marine life there, the more money the government is likely to press BP to pay.
The test results also raise questions about the possible downsides of the government's use of chemical dispersants to fight the spill.
Under federal direction, about 1.8 million gallons of dispersants were sprayed on the spilled oil in an effort to break it up into tiny droplets that natural ocean microbes could eat up. At the time, officials said the dispersants shouldn't cause oil from the spill to sink to the seafloor. However, more recently, a federal report said dispersants may have helped some spilled oil sink to the sediment.
Scientific teams have reported in recent months finding a strange substance on the Gulf floor, in some cases as far as about 80 miles from BP's ill-fated Macondo well, which blew out in April and spilled an estimated 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped.
They have speculated that the substance—found as deep as 2,300 meters below the surface— was oil from the BP blowout. But, until now, they haven't had this evidence from chemical tests.
David Hollander, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, said in an interview that he and colleagues have just completed tests showing that the chemical profile of oil they found in Gulf sediment matches that from the blown-out BP well.
"The chemical signatures are identical," said Mr. Hollander, who found the contaminated samples in an area of the Gulf floor off the Florida Panhandle. Although it's conceivable the tests could show a false match with the BP oil, "the statistical probability of something like that is unimaginable," Mr. Hollander said.
The federal government also has found oil matching Macondo oil in Gulf sediment, Steve Murawski, a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, said in an interview. He declined to disclose how much sediment contamination the government found, or exactly where in the Gulf it was, saying experts still are analyzing the test results.
The government plans to publish details of its findings later this month.
BP, too, is testing the Gulf environment for oil contamination, and some of its results will figure into the coming federal report. Laura Folse, director of science and technology for BP's Gulf Coast restoration effort, declined to say whether BP found oil matching Macondo oil in the Gulf sediment.
She also said she couldn't comment on Mr. Hollander's findings because she hadn't seen them.
Oil from a given location has a telltale chemical pattern—a distinct mix of the various hydrocarbon compounds that make up oil. Running an oil sample through special machines spits out a graph, or fingerprint, of the amount of each component in that oil.
Normally, scientists draw these fingerprints by measuring certain compounds in oil known as "biomarkers." The federal government used that method in its tests, NOAA's Mr. Murawski said.
Mr. Hollander and his colleagues found their sediment samples lacked enough of those biomarkers to test, he said. So they examined a different set of compounds in the oil. They measured the quantity of two groupings of carbon atoms that each compound contained.
When they compared the resulting graph to one from a known sample of Macondo oil, the graphs were "sitting right on top of each other," signaling a match, Mr. Hollander said.
Mr. Murawski said the method Mr. Hollander used is "accepted" but "not standard," though he stressed he wasn't criticizing Mr. Hollander's work.
Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer, also has found what she believes to be evidence of BP oil in Gulf sediment. She is awaiting lab results tracing the chemical fingerprints of sediment samples she took.
On a research cruise in the Gulf that ended Friday, she saw worms that crawl along the Gulf floor "just decimated," she said. But eels and fish, which can swim away, often appeared fine, she said.
The federal government made sure to test sediment in areas where Ms. Joye and Mr. Hollander said they found oil.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
BUSINESS
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Strong Evidence Emerges of BP Oil on Seafloor
JEFFREY BALL
A university scientist and the federal government say they have found persuasive evidence that oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill is settling on the ocean floor.
The new findings, from scientists at the University of South Florida and from a broad government effort, mark the latest indication that environmental damage from the blowout of a BP PLC well could be significant where it's hardest to find: deep under the Gulf's surface.
The amount of oil that has settled in the sediment—and the extent of damage it has caused—remains unclear. But scientists who have been on research cruises in the Gulf in recent days report finding layers of residue up to several centimeters thick from what they suspect is BP oil.
The material appears in spots across several thousand square miles of seafloor, they said. In many of those spots, they said, worms and other marine life that crawl along the sediment appear dead, though many organisms that can swim appear healthy. How the death of organisms in the sediment might affect the broader Gulf ecology is something scientists are studying.
Tests to determine how much of the material on the seafloor matches the spilled oil are continuing. But the fact that tests now have started to link some oil in the sediment to the BP well could add to the amount of money BP ends up paying to compensate for the spill's damage.
Under federal law, companies found responsible for an oil spill have to pay compensation for the resulting environmental harm. The more BP's oil is found to have polluted the Gulf floor and killed marine life there, the more money the government is likely to press BP to pay.
The test results also raise questions about the possible downsides of the government's use of chemical dispersants to fight the spill.
Under federal direction, about 1.8 million gallons of dispersants were sprayed on the spilled oil in an effort to break it up into tiny droplets that natural ocean microbes could eat up. At the time, officials said the dispersants shouldn't cause oil from the spill to sink to the seafloor. However, more recently, a federal report said dispersants may have helped some spilled oil sink to the sediment.
Scientific teams have reported in recent months finding a strange substance on the Gulf floor, in some cases as far as about 80 miles from BP's ill-fated Macondo well, which blew out in April and spilled an estimated 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped.
They have speculated that the substance—found as deep as 2,300 meters below the surface— was oil from the BP blowout. But, until now, they haven't had this evidence from chemical tests.
David Hollander, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, said in an interview that he and colleagues have just completed tests showing that the chemical profile of oil they found in Gulf sediment matches that from the blown-out BP well.
"The chemical signatures are identical," said Mr. Hollander, who found the contaminated samples in an area of the Gulf floor off the Florida Panhandle. Although it's conceivable the tests could show a false match with the BP oil, "the statistical probability of something like that is unimaginable," Mr. Hollander said.
The federal government also has found oil matching Macondo oil in Gulf sediment, Steve Murawski, a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, said in an interview. He declined to disclose how much sediment contamination the government found, or exactly where in the Gulf it was, saying experts still are analyzing the test results.
The government plans to publish details of its findings later this month.
BP, too, is testing the Gulf environment for oil contamination, and some of its results will figure into the coming federal report. Laura Folse, director of science and technology for BP's Gulf Coast restoration effort, declined to say whether BP found oil matching Macondo oil in the Gulf sediment.
She also said she couldn't comment on Mr. Hollander's findings because she hadn't seen them.
Oil from a given location has a telltale chemical pattern—a distinct mix of the various hydrocarbon compounds that make up oil. Running an oil sample through special machines spits out a graph, or fingerprint, of the amount of each component in that oil.
Normally, scientists draw these fingerprints by measuring certain compounds in oil known as "biomarkers." The federal government used that method in its tests, NOAA's Mr. Murawski said.
Mr. Hollander and his colleagues found their sediment samples lacked enough of those biomarkers to test, he said. So they examined a different set of compounds in the oil. They measured the quantity of two groupings of carbon atoms that each compound contained.
When they compared the resulting graph to one from a known sample of Macondo oil, the graphs were "sitting right on top of each other," signaling a match, Mr. Hollander said.
Mr. Murawski said the method Mr. Hollander used is "accepted" but "not standard," though he stressed he wasn't criticizing Mr. Hollander's work.
Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer, also has found what she believes to be evidence of BP oil in Gulf sediment. She is awaiting lab results tracing the chemical fingerprints of sediment samples she took.
On a research cruise in the Gulf that ended Friday, she saw worms that crawl along the Gulf floor "just decimated," she said. But eels and fish, which can swim away, often appeared fine, she said.
The federal government made sure to test sediment in areas where Ms. Joye and Mr. Hollander said they found oil.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian, research suggests
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/8214257/Most-dinosaurs-were-vegetarian-research-suggests.html
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian, research suggests
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian rather than meat-eating beasts, research suggests.
Andy Bloxham
21 Dec 2010
While Tyrannosaurus Rex sums up the image of a dinosaur wreaking terror by ripping flesh with powerful jaws, many of its closest relatives were more content nibbling leaves.
A new study of the diet of 90 species of theropod dinosaurs challenged the conventional view that nearly all theropods hunted prey, especially those closest to the ancestors of birds.
Rather it showed that among the most bird-like dinosaurs known as coelurosaurs plant eating was a common way of life.
Their diet may have also helped them survive and exploit new environments becoming the most successful group of dinosaurs throughout the Cretaceous Period, 145-65 million years ago.
Dr Lindsay Zanno of the Chicago Field Museum said: "Most theropods are clearly adapted to a predatory lifestyle, but somewhere on the line to birds, predatory dinosaurs went soft."
Theropods are a group of bipedal dinosaurs colloquially known as "predatory" dinosaurs and include the iconic hunters Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
Among theropod dinosaurs, all modern birds and several groups of their closest extinct relatives belong to a subgroup known as Coelurosauria.
Most were feathered and most intelligent dinosaurs and those with the smallest body sizes also belong to this group.
However researchers have been only left with fossilized bones and teeth to work with and so had to deduce their diets.
For example the bone-crunching teeth and jaws of Tyrannosaurus rex were the tools of a megapredator or that the tooth batteries of Triceratops were used for shearing plant material.
However many coelurosaurian dinosaurs have more ambiguous adaptations such as peg-like teeth at the front of the mouth or no teeth at all so determining their diet has been a challenge.
Dr Zanno added: "These oddball dinosaurs have been the subject of much speculation but until now, we have not had a reliable way to choose between competing theories as to what they ate."
But a small number of fossilized dinosaur dung, stomach contents, tooth marks, the presence of stones within the stomach that serve as a gastric mill for digesting vegetation have been found along with a number of species.
And two dinosaur species preserved locked in the throes of combat have been found to cast light on the mystery of what dinosaurs ate.
The researchers found almost two dozen anatomical features statistically linked to direct evidence of herbivory including a toothless beak.
"Once we linked certain adaptations with direct evidence of diet, we looked to see which other theropod species had the same traits. Then we could say who was likely a plant eater and who was not."
Applying their data on diet, the researchers found that 44 theropod species distributed across six major lineages were eating plants and that the ancestor to most feathered dinosaurs and modern birds had probably already lost its appetite for flesh alone.
Because plant eating was found to be so widespread in Coelurosauria, the hypercarnivorous habits of T. rex and other meat eating coelurosaurs like Velociraptor should be viewed "more as the exception than the rule."
Besides identifying diet, the researchers analyzed whether different groups of coelurosaurs followed the same evolutionary pathways toward an herbivorous diet.
They found that over time, species lost their flesh-rending teeth, developing strange tooth types such as peg, wedge, and leaf-shaped teeth, and ultimately, some lost most or all of their teeth altogether and replaced them with a bird-like beak.
The beaks then continued to evolve into a myriad of forms and help support a high degree of dietary diversity in modern birds.
One theory why they were so successful was that the break up of continents and origin of new habitat opened up new dietary niches for coelurosaurs to explore.
Dr Zanno said: "The ability to eat plant materials may have played a pivotal role in allowing coelurosaurian dinosaurs to achieve such remarkable species diversity.
"But more study is needed to understand what role dietary shifts may play in evolutionary processes."
Because ceolurosaurian dinosaurs include the closest extinct relatives of birds, understanding their biology is also extremely important to understanding how, why, and under what conditions birds evolved and first took flight.
"We don't know what drove the ancestors to birds to take flight," she says, "seeking food in the trees is just one of many possibilities."
Using statistical analysis to find correlations between physical traits and diet could offer a new window as to how evolution works.
"Being able to establish diet in extinct animals with confidence will allow us to start tackling even broader questions, such as whether animals tend to increase in body and diversity when they evolve herbivory."
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian, research suggests
Most dinosaurs were vegetarian rather than meat-eating beasts, research suggests.
Andy Bloxham
21 Dec 2010
While Tyrannosaurus Rex sums up the image of a dinosaur wreaking terror by ripping flesh with powerful jaws, many of its closest relatives were more content nibbling leaves.
A new study of the diet of 90 species of theropod dinosaurs challenged the conventional view that nearly all theropods hunted prey, especially those closest to the ancestors of birds.
Rather it showed that among the most bird-like dinosaurs known as coelurosaurs plant eating was a common way of life.
Their diet may have also helped them survive and exploit new environments becoming the most successful group of dinosaurs throughout the Cretaceous Period, 145-65 million years ago.
Dr Lindsay Zanno of the Chicago Field Museum said: "Most theropods are clearly adapted to a predatory lifestyle, but somewhere on the line to birds, predatory dinosaurs went soft."
Theropods are a group of bipedal dinosaurs colloquially known as "predatory" dinosaurs and include the iconic hunters Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
Among theropod dinosaurs, all modern birds and several groups of their closest extinct relatives belong to a subgroup known as Coelurosauria.
Most were feathered and most intelligent dinosaurs and those with the smallest body sizes also belong to this group.
However researchers have been only left with fossilized bones and teeth to work with and so had to deduce their diets.
For example the bone-crunching teeth and jaws of Tyrannosaurus rex were the tools of a megapredator or that the tooth batteries of Triceratops were used for shearing plant material.
However many coelurosaurian dinosaurs have more ambiguous adaptations such as peg-like teeth at the front of the mouth or no teeth at all so determining their diet has been a challenge.
Dr Zanno added: "These oddball dinosaurs have been the subject of much speculation but until now, we have not had a reliable way to choose between competing theories as to what they ate."
But a small number of fossilized dinosaur dung, stomach contents, tooth marks, the presence of stones within the stomach that serve as a gastric mill for digesting vegetation have been found along with a number of species.
And two dinosaur species preserved locked in the throes of combat have been found to cast light on the mystery of what dinosaurs ate.
The researchers found almost two dozen anatomical features statistically linked to direct evidence of herbivory including a toothless beak.
"Once we linked certain adaptations with direct evidence of diet, we looked to see which other theropod species had the same traits. Then we could say who was likely a plant eater and who was not."
Applying their data on diet, the researchers found that 44 theropod species distributed across six major lineages were eating plants and that the ancestor to most feathered dinosaurs and modern birds had probably already lost its appetite for flesh alone.
Because plant eating was found to be so widespread in Coelurosauria, the hypercarnivorous habits of T. rex and other meat eating coelurosaurs like Velociraptor should be viewed "more as the exception than the rule."
Besides identifying diet, the researchers analyzed whether different groups of coelurosaurs followed the same evolutionary pathways toward an herbivorous diet.
They found that over time, species lost their flesh-rending teeth, developing strange tooth types such as peg, wedge, and leaf-shaped teeth, and ultimately, some lost most or all of their teeth altogether and replaced them with a bird-like beak.
The beaks then continued to evolve into a myriad of forms and help support a high degree of dietary diversity in modern birds.
One theory why they were so successful was that the break up of continents and origin of new habitat opened up new dietary niches for coelurosaurs to explore.
Dr Zanno said: "The ability to eat plant materials may have played a pivotal role in allowing coelurosaurian dinosaurs to achieve such remarkable species diversity.
"But more study is needed to understand what role dietary shifts may play in evolutionary processes."
Because ceolurosaurian dinosaurs include the closest extinct relatives of birds, understanding their biology is also extremely important to understanding how, why, and under what conditions birds evolved and first took flight.
"We don't know what drove the ancestors to birds to take flight," she says, "seeking food in the trees is just one of many possibilities."
Using statistical analysis to find correlations between physical traits and diet could offer a new window as to how evolution works.
"Being able to establish diet in extinct animals with confidence will allow us to start tackling even broader questions, such as whether animals tend to increase in body and diversity when they evolve herbivory."
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Beam Me Up: 'Teleportation' Is Year's Biggest Breakthrough
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/17/beam-teleportation-years-biggest-breakthrough/
Beam Me Up: 'Teleportation' Is Year's Biggest Breakthrough
December 17, 2010
Crew members on the Starship Enterprise beamed to alien planets via teleporters. Now scientists are perfecting a way to communicate via a similar technology.
Thanks to physics, and the truly bizarre quirks of quarks, those Star Trek style teleporters may be more than fiction.
A strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe -- a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that teleportation or even time travel may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.
Until this year, all human-made objects have moved according to the laws of classical mechanics, the rules governing ordinary objects. Toss a ball in the air and it falls back to Earth. Drop a coin from your roof and it falls into your yard. But back in March, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics -- the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles.
And the implication -- that teleportation and even time travel may someday, somehow be a reality -- is so groundbreaking that Science magazine has labelled it the most significant scientific advance of 2010.
Physicists Andrew Cleland and John Martinis from the University of California at Santa Barbara and their colleagues designed the machine -- a tiny metal paddle just barely visible to the naked eye -- and coaxed it into dancing with a quantum groove: First, they cooled the paddle until it reached its "ground state," or the lowest energy state permitted by the laws of quantum mechanics (a goal long-sought by physicists). Then they raised the widget's energy by a single quantum to produce a purely quantum-mechanical state of motion.
They even managed to put the gadget in both states at once, so that it literally vibrated a little and a lot at the same time -- a bizarre phenomenon allowed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics.
"When you observe something in one state, one theory is it split the universe into two parts," Cleland told FoxNews.com at the time, trying to explain how there can be multiple universes and we can see only one of them.
Crazy? Maybe. Insanely great science? Absolutely.
Science magazine has just recognized this first quantum machine as the 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. The magazine's editors have also compiled nine other important scientific accomplishments from this past year into a top ten list, appearing in a special feature in the journal's current issue.
"On a conceptual level that's cool because it extends quantum mechanics into a whole new realm," said Adrian Cho, a news writer for Science. "On a practical level, it opens up a variety of possibilities ranging from new experiments that meld quantum control over light, electrical currents and motion to, perhaps someday, tests of the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality."
Science's list of the nine other groundbreaking achievements from 2010 follows.
Synthetic Biology: In a defining moment for biology and biotechnology, researchers built a synthetic genome and used it to transform the identity of a bacterium. The genome replaced the bacterium's DNA so that it produced a new set of proteins—an achievement that prompted a Congressional hearing on synthetic biology. In the future, researchers envision synthetic genomes that are custom-built to generate biofuels, pharmaceuticals or other useful chemicals.
Neandertal Genome: Researchers sequenced the Neandertal genome from the bones of three female Neandertals who lived in Croatia sometime between 38,000 and 44,000 years ago. New methods of sequencing degraded fragments of DNA allowed scientists to make the first direct comparisons between the modern human genome and that of our Neandertal ancestors.
HIV Prophylaxis: Two HIV prevention trials of different, novel strategies reported unequivocal success: A vaginal gel that contains the anti-HIV drug tenofovir reduced HIV infections in women by 39 percent and an oral pre-exposure prophylaxis led to 43.8 fewer HIV infections in a group of men and transgender women who have sex with men.
Exome Sequencing/Rare Disease Genes: By sequencing just the exons of a genome, or the tiny portion that actually codes for proteins, researchers who study rare inherited diseases caused by a single, flawed gene were able to identify specific mutations underlying at least a dozen diseases.
Molecular Dynamics Simulations: Simulating the gyrations that proteins make as they fold has been a combinatorial nightmare. Now, researchers have harnessed the power of one of the world's most powerful computers to track the motions of atoms in a small, folding protein for a length of time 100 times longer than any previous efforts.
Quantum Simulator: To describe what they see in the lab, physicists cook up theories based on equations. Those equations can be fiendishly hard to solve. This year, though, researchers found a short-cut by making quantum simulators—artificial crystals in which spots of laser light play the role of ions and atoms trapped in the light stand in for electrons. The devices provide quick answers to theoretical problems in condensed matter physics and they might eventually help solve mysteries such as superconductivity.
Next-Generation Genomics: Faster and cheaper sequencing technologies are enabling very large-scale studies of both ancient and modern DNA. The 1,000 Genomes Project, for example, has already identified much of the genome variation that makes us uniquely human—and other projects in the works are set to reveal much more of the genome's function.
RNA Reprogramming: Reprogramming cells—turning back their developmental clocks to make them behave like unspecialized "stem cells" in an embryo—has become a standard lab technique for studying diseases and development. This year, researchers found a way to do it using synthetic RNA. Compared with previous methods, the new technique is twice as fast, 100 times as efficient and potentially safer for therapeutic use.
The Return of the Rat: Mice rule the world of laboratory animals, but for many purposes researchers would rather use rats. Rats are easier to work with and anatomically more similar to human beings; their big drawback is that methods used to make "knockout mice"—animals tailored for research by having specific genes precisely disabled—don't work for rats. A flurry of research this year, however, promises to bring "knockout rats" to labs in a big way.
Hexavalent chromium: Chemical found in drinking water of 31 US cities
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1220/Hexavalent-chromium-Chemical-found-in-drinking-water-of-31-US-cities
Hexavalent chromium: Chemical found in drinking water of 31 US cities
Hexavalent chromium is the pollutant at the heart of 'Erin Brockovich.' The movie recounts the legal battle waged by residents of Hinkley, Calif., who blamed exposure to the chemical for high rates of diseases.
Chris Richard, Contributor / December 20, 2010
Los Angeles
A national survey has found that the drinking water in 31 US cities contains hexavalent chromium, an industrial chemical that was a key concern in the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich."
The findings were released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, which used laboratory tests. It found the highest concentrations of hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, in the drinking water in Norman, Okla.; Honolulu; and Riverside, Calif. Levels ranged from 12.9 parts per billion in Norman to 0.03 ppb in Cincinnati and Boston.
For the 35 cities surveyed the average was .18 ppb. That's three times the “public health goal,” or ideal standard, under consideration by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
Scientific and legal debate has raged over the risk posed by hexavalent chromium in drinking water since the 1990s, when the then-obscure legal file clerk Erin Brockovich unearthed evidence that the substance had leaked from a Pacific Gas & Electric natural-gas plant into the groundwater in Hinkley, Calif.
Residents sued, and in 1996 PG&E paid a $333 million settlement to about 600 people who blamed exposure to the chromium 6 for high rates of cancer and other diseases.
The Environmental Working Group picked its subject cities from those listing high levels of total chromium in their water. While the Environmental Protection Agency does not require testing for hexavalent chromium, it does require testing and has set a limit of 100 parts per billion for all variants of the metal, including the healthful chromium 3.
Rebecca Sutton, who oversaw the Environmental Working Group survey, acknowledges that there have been periodic alarms and lawsuits across the country over chromium 6 contamination.
“What this report indicates is that this problem may be more widespread, just at lower levels of concentration,” she says. “These are chronic exposures we're concerned with. A little bit every day can involve increased risk.”
Many researchers say hexavalent chromium is an inhalation carcinogen, but some have claimed that the risks are negligible when the substance is ingested. Still, in 2009, National Toxicology Program scientists reported that their research “clearly demonstrates” that the compound is a carcinogen in drinking water.
Sam Delson, a spokesman for California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, says his agency considers that finding conclusive. The agency is preparing a public health goal of .06 ppb that would be one factor in determining safe exposure levels.
In Norman, Okla, utilities director Ken Komiske says his agency has always monitored its water supplies closely to make sure it meets the federal standard for all chromium. Mr. Komiske says Norman does not test for chromium 6.
“This report is kind of new to us,” he says, adding that his offices fielded about two dozen calls from concerned Norman residents on Monday. “We've been in touch with the state and federal authorities, asking 'What are we supposed to do next?' ”
Ms. Sutton, of the Environmental Working Group, says her organization hopes the survey will prompt more widespread checks for hexavalent chromium contamination, and new federal regulation.
Hexavalent chromium: Chemical found in drinking water of 31 US cities
Hexavalent chromium is the pollutant at the heart of 'Erin Brockovich.' The movie recounts the legal battle waged by residents of Hinkley, Calif., who blamed exposure to the chemical for high rates of diseases.
Chris Richard, Contributor / December 20, 2010
Los Angeles
A national survey has found that the drinking water in 31 US cities contains hexavalent chromium, an industrial chemical that was a key concern in the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich."
The findings were released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, which used laboratory tests. It found the highest concentrations of hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, in the drinking water in Norman, Okla.; Honolulu; and Riverside, Calif. Levels ranged from 12.9 parts per billion in Norman to 0.03 ppb in Cincinnati and Boston.
For the 35 cities surveyed the average was .18 ppb. That's three times the “public health goal,” or ideal standard, under consideration by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
Scientific and legal debate has raged over the risk posed by hexavalent chromium in drinking water since the 1990s, when the then-obscure legal file clerk Erin Brockovich unearthed evidence that the substance had leaked from a Pacific Gas & Electric natural-gas plant into the groundwater in Hinkley, Calif.
Residents sued, and in 1996 PG&E paid a $333 million settlement to about 600 people who blamed exposure to the chromium 6 for high rates of cancer and other diseases.
The Environmental Working Group picked its subject cities from those listing high levels of total chromium in their water. While the Environmental Protection Agency does not require testing for hexavalent chromium, it does require testing and has set a limit of 100 parts per billion for all variants of the metal, including the healthful chromium 3.
Rebecca Sutton, who oversaw the Environmental Working Group survey, acknowledges that there have been periodic alarms and lawsuits across the country over chromium 6 contamination.
“What this report indicates is that this problem may be more widespread, just at lower levels of concentration,” she says. “These are chronic exposures we're concerned with. A little bit every day can involve increased risk.”
Many researchers say hexavalent chromium is an inhalation carcinogen, but some have claimed that the risks are negligible when the substance is ingested. Still, in 2009, National Toxicology Program scientists reported that their research “clearly demonstrates” that the compound is a carcinogen in drinking water.
Sam Delson, a spokesman for California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, says his agency considers that finding conclusive. The agency is preparing a public health goal of .06 ppb that would be one factor in determining safe exposure levels.
In Norman, Okla, utilities director Ken Komiske says his agency has always monitored its water supplies closely to make sure it meets the federal standard for all chromium. Mr. Komiske says Norman does not test for chromium 6.
“This report is kind of new to us,” he says, adding that his offices fielded about two dozen calls from concerned Norman residents on Monday. “We've been in touch with the state and federal authorities, asking 'What are we supposed to do next?' ”
Ms. Sutton, of the Environmental Working Group, says her organization hopes the survey will prompt more widespread checks for hexavalent chromium contamination, and new federal regulation.
Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/21/senate-sacrifices-trouble_n_799861.html
Zach Carter
zach.carter@huffingtonpost.com
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com
Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods
12-21-10
WASHINGTON -- Despite mounting evidence of big banks committing serious fraud in the foreclosure process, the U.S. Senate eliminated $35 million in legal aid to homeowners trying to keep their homes.
The fund was wiped out in order to meet government spending caps advocated by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), but will likely end up costing taxpayers much more in the long run, as wrongful foreclosures burn through the balance sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The slashing of the foreclosure-assistance fund is just one casualty of Washington's increasing bipartisan push to cut spending across the board.
The $35 million fund was created by the Wall Street reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in July, but the Senate never took the additional necessary step of appropriating the money. Even if it had been appropriated, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week gave up on passing a budget for next year in the face of Republican opposition to earmarks.
Although the dollar amount is tiny in comparison with other federal housing programs, legal aid funding is a critical to the foreclosure relief effort. Without hiring a good lawyer, it is extremely difficult for borrowers to successfully defend their homes against banks -- even when banks are committing clear-cut violations.
Recent reports suggest severe, nationwide problems with the mortgage system. A survey of 96 attorneys found that banks started foreclosure proceedings on 2,500 borrowers who were negotiating a loan modification. The survey was conducted by the National Association of Consumer Advocates and the National Consumer Law Center.
According to a Dec. 13 report by the Congressional Oversight Panel, Obama's main foreclosure prevention initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), will reach less than one-fourth of the borrowers it was intended to. And for the lucky few that do get help, the process can require years of legal wrangling. Over 29,000 borrowers have been stuck in trial modifications awaiting permanent relief for at least one year, according to the COP. Under program rules, the trial period is supposed to last for 3 months.
Millions of other homeowners have been improperly denied loan modifications, charged illegal fees, and even improperly evicted. But for the $35 million legal aid fund to ever do borrowers any good, Congress had to actually set aside money for the program. And the Senate Appropriations Committee never did.
As rhetoric about allegedly out-of-control government spending heated up this year, both Obama and members of Congress began touting plans to freeze discretionary spending. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) even authored a bill that would have implemented a three-year freeze on spending levels. While the bill never passed, it made new initiatives like the foreclosure relief fund very difficult to get through the appropriations committee, according to Senate aides familiar with the battle. The committee decided to follow the Sessions-McCaskill limit despite the fact that it didn't have the force of law.
McCaskill, who does not serve on the Appropriations Committee, insisted that she was not to blame in an interview with The Huffington Post.
"I'm not an appropriator, so I don't participate in the process of prioritizing. So I can't speak to the priorities that they decided were most important. Clearly, going to Sessions-McCaskill levels of spending, that was a modest cut in what had been submitted by the president. It's still an increase over last year. So I'm trying to figure out why they had to cut a program if in fact this budget reflects an increase over last year's spending, which it does, a little short of two percent," said McCaskill.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, regretted the Senate failure. "We had a big fight in our committee and we won it to, to reauthorize $35 million and we're hoping it gets appropriated," he told HuffPost late last week.
"I think McCaskill is wrong on these things. I understand she's got some worries about her district, but she plays an unconstructive role in this," said Frank. "These kind of restrictions on domestic spending with unlimited spending for the war -- and you always have to talk about both -- is a great mistake. And the liberal community's got to focus more on Afghanistan, Iraq, NATO. NATO is a great drain on our treasury and serves no strategic purpose."
Frank said the overall deficit hysteria has tilted the debate. "The president plays into it with his freeze on domestic spending," he said. "And particularly when you say we're going to stick with where we are, how do you accommodate new things?"
Critics say that targeting legal aid simply makes no sense in the context of the overall federal budget. "This is such a trivial sum -- it's what we spend on the military in about 20 minutes," according to economist Dean Baker, co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
What's more, by allowing borrowers to fight improper foreclosures, legal aid funding would almost certainly help ease taxpayer losses from fraudulent home seizures implemented by major banks. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs all provide federal guarantees for mortgages. When those mortgages sour, government agencies are usually better off working out a mortgage modification with a borrower than foreclosing.
But government agencies do not connect with borrowers -- instead, they rely on private sector banks to interact and negotiate on their behalf. Since the banks make money from charging fees and conducting foreclosures, critics allege that banks are improperly pushing borrowers into trouble -- at taxpayers' expense. Legal aid funding to help borrowers could help limit those losses.
"We don't know how many foreclosures this will end up preventing, but given that we are willing to spend over $100 billion a year in tax subsidies to support people owning a home, it certainly seems reasonable to spend $35 million a year -- less than 0.04 percent of this amount -- to give them the chance to stay in their home," Baker said.
Frank said that the fiscal argument is counterproductive and that legal help should be given to homeowners in foreclosure as a matter of social justice. "Let's not make that argument. We don't know and you don't know," he said. "I'm for the money because I think it's a matter of social justice. Let's not try to [make] up that we think it's going to save money in the long run, which we don't know. And that's not why we're doing it."
Regardless, banks clearly come out winners in the plan. Fewer borrowers fighting foreclosures results in more bank revenue from foreclosure fees, and lower expenses for the banks.
"The mortgage servicing industry is broken and that the effects of that broken system are being felt by America's homeowners," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told HuffPost. "If not for the tireless efforts of foreclosure attorneys, many families would have mistakenly lost their homes and the fraudulent and corrupt practices of the mortgage servicing industry may have never come to light."
The author of the legal aid provision, Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) expressed frustration over the impasse in an interview with HuffPost, accusing the funds' detractors of using budgetary gimmicks as an excuse to cut a program they didn't support.
"These funds are as important now as they were when we were trying to get them into the bill in the first place," Watt said. "There were some people who didn't want this fund all along. We had to work to get it in there, so it's not surprising that they would try to come up with excuses to take it out."
Banks are likely to benefit from the death of the legal aid package, as borrowers find themselves financially unable to challenge improper fees and foreclosures. But the fund's defeat is doubly unfortunate for struggling homeowners thanks to last week's defeat of a separate legal aid bill in the House.
The U.S. Treasury Department had refused to allow funds for the Wall Street bailout to be spent on legal aid for borrowers, citing a lack of legal authority. That decision came under fire from COP panelist Damon Silvers during a Dec. 16 hearing.
"When hedge funds get money under [the bailout], I believe they get to pay for lawyers, and it puzzles me that a vast amount of TARP money has been expended on legal counsel for the benefit, obviously, of the government. It seems as though lawyers are understood to be a necessary and essential component of all the transactions that HAMP and TARP undertake, except when homeowners need the lawyers."
But Treasury had insisted that because the Wall Street overhaul included a $35 million legal aid fund, a separate fund was not necessary. Last week, House lawmakers from foreclosure-battered states attempted to push legislation that would explicitly authorize Treasury to extend legal aid funds to borrowers, but the bill failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed for passage under fast-track rules.
So troubled homeowners will not be receiving any help from Congress this holiday season. And with soon-to-be-House-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) opposed to legal aid programs, they are unlikely to get any further assistance next year.
Zach Carter
zach.carter@huffingtonpost.com
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com
Senate Sacrifices Struggling Homeowners To Budget Gods
12-21-10
WASHINGTON -- Despite mounting evidence of big banks committing serious fraud in the foreclosure process, the U.S. Senate eliminated $35 million in legal aid to homeowners trying to keep their homes.
The fund was wiped out in order to meet government spending caps advocated by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), but will likely end up costing taxpayers much more in the long run, as wrongful foreclosures burn through the balance sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The slashing of the foreclosure-assistance fund is just one casualty of Washington's increasing bipartisan push to cut spending across the board.
The $35 million fund was created by the Wall Street reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in July, but the Senate never took the additional necessary step of appropriating the money. Even if it had been appropriated, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week gave up on passing a budget for next year in the face of Republican opposition to earmarks.
Although the dollar amount is tiny in comparison with other federal housing programs, legal aid funding is a critical to the foreclosure relief effort. Without hiring a good lawyer, it is extremely difficult for borrowers to successfully defend their homes against banks -- even when banks are committing clear-cut violations.
Recent reports suggest severe, nationwide problems with the mortgage system. A survey of 96 attorneys found that banks started foreclosure proceedings on 2,500 borrowers who were negotiating a loan modification. The survey was conducted by the National Association of Consumer Advocates and the National Consumer Law Center.
According to a Dec. 13 report by the Congressional Oversight Panel, Obama's main foreclosure prevention initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), will reach less than one-fourth of the borrowers it was intended to. And for the lucky few that do get help, the process can require years of legal wrangling. Over 29,000 borrowers have been stuck in trial modifications awaiting permanent relief for at least one year, according to the COP. Under program rules, the trial period is supposed to last for 3 months.
Millions of other homeowners have been improperly denied loan modifications, charged illegal fees, and even improperly evicted. But for the $35 million legal aid fund to ever do borrowers any good, Congress had to actually set aside money for the program. And the Senate Appropriations Committee never did.
As rhetoric about allegedly out-of-control government spending heated up this year, both Obama and members of Congress began touting plans to freeze discretionary spending. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) even authored a bill that would have implemented a three-year freeze on spending levels. While the bill never passed, it made new initiatives like the foreclosure relief fund very difficult to get through the appropriations committee, according to Senate aides familiar with the battle. The committee decided to follow the Sessions-McCaskill limit despite the fact that it didn't have the force of law.
McCaskill, who does not serve on the Appropriations Committee, insisted that she was not to blame in an interview with The Huffington Post.
"I'm not an appropriator, so I don't participate in the process of prioritizing. So I can't speak to the priorities that they decided were most important. Clearly, going to Sessions-McCaskill levels of spending, that was a modest cut in what had been submitted by the president. It's still an increase over last year. So I'm trying to figure out why they had to cut a program if in fact this budget reflects an increase over last year's spending, which it does, a little short of two percent," said McCaskill.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, regretted the Senate failure. "We had a big fight in our committee and we won it to, to reauthorize $35 million and we're hoping it gets appropriated," he told HuffPost late last week.
"I think McCaskill is wrong on these things. I understand she's got some worries about her district, but she plays an unconstructive role in this," said Frank. "These kind of restrictions on domestic spending with unlimited spending for the war -- and you always have to talk about both -- is a great mistake. And the liberal community's got to focus more on Afghanistan, Iraq, NATO. NATO is a great drain on our treasury and serves no strategic purpose."
Frank said the overall deficit hysteria has tilted the debate. "The president plays into it with his freeze on domestic spending," he said. "And particularly when you say we're going to stick with where we are, how do you accommodate new things?"
Critics say that targeting legal aid simply makes no sense in the context of the overall federal budget. "This is such a trivial sum -- it's what we spend on the military in about 20 minutes," according to economist Dean Baker, co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
What's more, by allowing borrowers to fight improper foreclosures, legal aid funding would almost certainly help ease taxpayer losses from fraudulent home seizures implemented by major banks. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs all provide federal guarantees for mortgages. When those mortgages sour, government agencies are usually better off working out a mortgage modification with a borrower than foreclosing.
But government agencies do not connect with borrowers -- instead, they rely on private sector banks to interact and negotiate on their behalf. Since the banks make money from charging fees and conducting foreclosures, critics allege that banks are improperly pushing borrowers into trouble -- at taxpayers' expense. Legal aid funding to help borrowers could help limit those losses.
"We don't know how many foreclosures this will end up preventing, but given that we are willing to spend over $100 billion a year in tax subsidies to support people owning a home, it certainly seems reasonable to spend $35 million a year -- less than 0.04 percent of this amount -- to give them the chance to stay in their home," Baker said.
Frank said that the fiscal argument is counterproductive and that legal help should be given to homeowners in foreclosure as a matter of social justice. "Let's not make that argument. We don't know and you don't know," he said. "I'm for the money because I think it's a matter of social justice. Let's not try to [make] up that we think it's going to save money in the long run, which we don't know. And that's not why we're doing it."
Regardless, banks clearly come out winners in the plan. Fewer borrowers fighting foreclosures results in more bank revenue from foreclosure fees, and lower expenses for the banks.
"The mortgage servicing industry is broken and that the effects of that broken system are being felt by America's homeowners," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told HuffPost. "If not for the tireless efforts of foreclosure attorneys, many families would have mistakenly lost their homes and the fraudulent and corrupt practices of the mortgage servicing industry may have never come to light."
The author of the legal aid provision, Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) expressed frustration over the impasse in an interview with HuffPost, accusing the funds' detractors of using budgetary gimmicks as an excuse to cut a program they didn't support.
"These funds are as important now as they were when we were trying to get them into the bill in the first place," Watt said. "There were some people who didn't want this fund all along. We had to work to get it in there, so it's not surprising that they would try to come up with excuses to take it out."
Banks are likely to benefit from the death of the legal aid package, as borrowers find themselves financially unable to challenge improper fees and foreclosures. But the fund's defeat is doubly unfortunate for struggling homeowners thanks to last week's defeat of a separate legal aid bill in the House.
The U.S. Treasury Department had refused to allow funds for the Wall Street bailout to be spent on legal aid for borrowers, citing a lack of legal authority. That decision came under fire from COP panelist Damon Silvers during a Dec. 16 hearing.
"When hedge funds get money under [the bailout], I believe they get to pay for lawyers, and it puzzles me that a vast amount of TARP money has been expended on legal counsel for the benefit, obviously, of the government. It seems as though lawyers are understood to be a necessary and essential component of all the transactions that HAMP and TARP undertake, except when homeowners need the lawyers."
But Treasury had insisted that because the Wall Street overhaul included a $35 million legal aid fund, a separate fund was not necessary. Last week, House lawmakers from foreclosure-battered states attempted to push legislation that would explicitly authorize Treasury to extend legal aid funds to borrowers, but the bill failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed for passage under fast-track rules.
So troubled homeowners will not be receiving any help from Congress this holiday season. And with soon-to-be-House-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) opposed to legal aid programs, they are unlikely to get any further assistance next year.
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/steve-wozniak-to-the-fcc-keep-the-internet-free/68294/
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too nobel to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt somehow
Ahh, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now
-- Bob Dylan
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
Dec 21 2010
To whom it may concern:
I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely believe that I was the first person to create such a simple service in my region. Why was I the first? This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then.
The major expense for a young engineer is the rent of an apartment. The only answering machine I could legally use, by leasing (not purchasing) it from our phone company, the Codaphone 700, was designed for businesses like theaters. It was out of the price range of creative individuals wanting to try something new like dial-a-joke. This machine leased for more than a typical car payment each month. Despite my great passion and success with Dial-a-Joke, I could not afford it and eventually had to stop after a couple of years. By then, a San Francisco radio station had also started such a service. I believe that my Dial-a-Joke was the most called single line (no extensions) number in the country at that time due to the shortness of my jokes and the high popularity of the service.
Moving ahead, I have owned four homes in my life. None of these had cable TV, even though one was a new development where the law required cable. None of these had DSL, including my current home, which is only .8 miles up a hill from the populous (constant-homes) town I live in. I pay for a T1 line, which costs many times what DSL runs for about 1/10 the bandwidth. That's as close as I can come to broadband where I live. The local phone providers don't have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access.
As a side note, I once phoned the cable company in the town I lived in. I could look from my bedroom window at homes ¾ of a mile away which had cable. I told the cable company that I would be willing to pay the cost of laying cable to my home. The cable company looked into it and got back to me that they could not do this because there were not enough homes on my hill to pay for the monthly rental of running their cable on telephone poles.
In the earliest days of satellite TV to homes, you would buy a receiver and pay a fee to get all the common cable channels. I had a large family (two adults, six kids) and felt like making every room a lot easier to wire for TV. Rather than place a satellite receiver in each room, I'd provide all the common channels on a normal cable, like cable companies do. In my garage, I set up three racks of satellite receivers. I paid for one receiver to access CNN. I paid for another to access TNT. I paid for others to access HBO and other such networks. I had about 30 or 40 channels done this way. I had modulators to put each of these channels onto standard cable TV channels on one cable, which was distributed throughout my home. I could buy any TV I liked and plug it in anywhere in the home and it immediately watch everything without having to install another satellite receiver in that room. I literally had my own cable TV 'company' in the garage, which I called Woz TV, except that I even kept signals in stereo, a quality step that virtually every cable company skipped.
Then I got this idea that I could pretty easily run my signal through the wires in conduits up and down our 60-home neighborhood. The neighborhood had been partially wired for cable before the cable company went bankrupt as the neighborhood was being developed. I phoned HBO and asked how much they would charge me just to be a nice guy and share my signal with 60 neighbors. What came back was an answer that I couldn't do such a personal thing. I had to be a cable company charging my neighbors certain rates and then a percentage of what I was charging, with minimums, had to be paid for HBO. I instantly realized that you couldn't do something nice in your garage as a normal person and I gave up the idea.
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.
When young, I remember clearly how my father told me why our country was so great, mainly based on the constitution and Bill of Rights. Over my lifetime, I've seen those rights disregarded at every step. Loopholes abound. It's sad. For example, my (Eisenhower Republican) father explained the sanctity of your home and how it could not easily be entered. It was your own private abode. And you had a right to listen to any radio signals that came because the air was free and if it came into your home you had a right to listen to it. That principle went away with a ban on radios that could tune in cell phone frequencies in the days of analog cell phones. Nobody but myself seemed to treat this as a core principle that was too much to give up.
I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned.
The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP's should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don't destruct them. I don't want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today's Internet.
Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway. What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go. This is one of the most popular themes of our life and even our popular music. It's a type of freedom from some concerns that makes us happy and not complain. The roads are already paid for. You rarely hear people complain that roads are "free." The government shines when it comes to having provided us pathways to drive around our country. We don't think of the roadways as being negative like telecommunication carriers. It's a rare breath of fresh air.
I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I'm asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to "sign on" with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I'm a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
That's how the people think. They don't want this to encroach on their Internet freedom.
I was brought up being told that one of the main purposes of our government is to help people who need help. When I was very young, this made me prouder than anything else of my government. I felt that way until the year that the San Jose Draft board voted 5-3 to call me not a student because I'd submitted my grades instead of the proper form, and made me 1A for service in Vietnam. As soon as I got a safe draft lottery number, they sent me a letter saying that they would grant me a 2S student deferment, because then they could get a shot at me in a later year. What was this game? Why was the government doing this sort of thing to a citizen? They aren't always about helping the people.
We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it's probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.
Sincerely,
Woz
Steve Wozniak is a computer engineer who co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs. He created the Apple I and Apple II series computers in the mid-1970s. After earning the National Medal of Technology in 1985, Wozniak left Apple to work on various business and philanthropic ventures.
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too nobel to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt somehow
Ahh, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now
-- Bob Dylan
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
Dec 21 2010
To whom it may concern:
I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely believe that I was the first person to create such a simple service in my region. Why was I the first? This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then.
The major expense for a young engineer is the rent of an apartment. The only answering machine I could legally use, by leasing (not purchasing) it from our phone company, the Codaphone 700, was designed for businesses like theaters. It was out of the price range of creative individuals wanting to try something new like dial-a-joke. This machine leased for more than a typical car payment each month. Despite my great passion and success with Dial-a-Joke, I could not afford it and eventually had to stop after a couple of years. By then, a San Francisco radio station had also started such a service. I believe that my Dial-a-Joke was the most called single line (no extensions) number in the country at that time due to the shortness of my jokes and the high popularity of the service.
Moving ahead, I have owned four homes in my life. None of these had cable TV, even though one was a new development where the law required cable. None of these had DSL, including my current home, which is only .8 miles up a hill from the populous (constant-homes) town I live in. I pay for a T1 line, which costs many times what DSL runs for about 1/10 the bandwidth. That's as close as I can come to broadband where I live. The local phone providers don't have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access.
As a side note, I once phoned the cable company in the town I lived in. I could look from my bedroom window at homes ¾ of a mile away which had cable. I told the cable company that I would be willing to pay the cost of laying cable to my home. The cable company looked into it and got back to me that they could not do this because there were not enough homes on my hill to pay for the monthly rental of running their cable on telephone poles.
In the earliest days of satellite TV to homes, you would buy a receiver and pay a fee to get all the common cable channels. I had a large family (two adults, six kids) and felt like making every room a lot easier to wire for TV. Rather than place a satellite receiver in each room, I'd provide all the common channels on a normal cable, like cable companies do. In my garage, I set up three racks of satellite receivers. I paid for one receiver to access CNN. I paid for another to access TNT. I paid for others to access HBO and other such networks. I had about 30 or 40 channels done this way. I had modulators to put each of these channels onto standard cable TV channels on one cable, which was distributed throughout my home. I could buy any TV I liked and plug it in anywhere in the home and it immediately watch everything without having to install another satellite receiver in that room. I literally had my own cable TV 'company' in the garage, which I called Woz TV, except that I even kept signals in stereo, a quality step that virtually every cable company skipped.
Then I got this idea that I could pretty easily run my signal through the wires in conduits up and down our 60-home neighborhood. The neighborhood had been partially wired for cable before the cable company went bankrupt as the neighborhood was being developed. I phoned HBO and asked how much they would charge me just to be a nice guy and share my signal with 60 neighbors. What came back was an answer that I couldn't do such a personal thing. I had to be a cable company charging my neighbors certain rates and then a percentage of what I was charging, with minimums, had to be paid for HBO. I instantly realized that you couldn't do something nice in your garage as a normal person and I gave up the idea.
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.
When young, I remember clearly how my father told me why our country was so great, mainly based on the constitution and Bill of Rights. Over my lifetime, I've seen those rights disregarded at every step. Loopholes abound. It's sad. For example, my (Eisenhower Republican) father explained the sanctity of your home and how it could not easily be entered. It was your own private abode. And you had a right to listen to any radio signals that came because the air was free and if it came into your home you had a right to listen to it. That principle went away with a ban on radios that could tune in cell phone frequencies in the days of analog cell phones. Nobody but myself seemed to treat this as a core principle that was too much to give up.
I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned.
The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP's should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don't destruct them. I don't want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today's Internet.
Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway. What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go. This is one of the most popular themes of our life and even our popular music. It's a type of freedom from some concerns that makes us happy and not complain. The roads are already paid for. You rarely hear people complain that roads are "free." The government shines when it comes to having provided us pathways to drive around our country. We don't think of the roadways as being negative like telecommunication carriers. It's a rare breath of fresh air.
I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I'm asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to "sign on" with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I'm a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
That's how the people think. They don't want this to encroach on their Internet freedom.
I was brought up being told that one of the main purposes of our government is to help people who need help. When I was very young, this made me prouder than anything else of my government. I felt that way until the year that the San Jose Draft board voted 5-3 to call me not a student because I'd submitted my grades instead of the proper form, and made me 1A for service in Vietnam. As soon as I got a safe draft lottery number, they sent me a letter saying that they would grant me a 2S student deferment, because then they could get a shot at me in a later year. What was this game? Why was the government doing this sort of thing to a citizen? They aren't always about helping the people.
We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it's probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.
Sincerely,
Woz
Steve Wozniak is a computer engineer who co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs. He created the Apple I and Apple II series computers in the mid-1970s. After earning the National Medal of Technology in 1985, Wozniak left Apple to work on various business and philanthropic ventures.
Fake Net Neutrality: Like Letting Enron Write the Electricity Rules
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2010/12/21/fake-net-neutrality-what-does-corporate-capture-look-like/
Fake Net Neutrality: Like Letting Enron Write the Electricity Rules
By: Scarecrow
Tuesday December 21, 2010
David Dayen’s post this a.m. summarizes concerns about the apparent regulatory capture of the Federal Communications Commission, which is about to issue new rules to undermine internet open access, aka, “net neutrality.” NYT coverage is here.
I’ll leave to Tim Karr and others to describe the technical features and sell outs that have allowed the Western World’s Worst internet/broadband structure to become slower, more expensive and more discriminatory than services in other countries. Senator Al Franken gave an excellent speech, worth watching on the full range of policy issues.
It may help to have an analogous framework on how to think about what corporate capture of the internet and broadband service means, not just in terms of speed and coverage but in terms of content and pricing. It’s not just that our service is slower and we face monopoly pricing, it’s that a tiny handful of corporations are seizing control of what we’ll be allowed to watch and read.
Suppose that President Eisenhower had proposed we build an interstate highway system, but we’d allow only three or four large corporations to carve up and own all the main interconnections, determine the tolls and decide who got to drive on them during which hours. The corporations could also decide where the on/off ramps were, which communities they did or didn’t serve, where the routes went, depending on which provided better tax breaks.
And suppose these same companies owned a couple of auto companies, and they could decide whether cars and trucks made by their affiliate companies got better access, more lanes, higher speeds and lower tolls than cars/trucks sold by competitors.
Then suppose the Justice Department and the FTC did not think it their job to enforce the anti-trust laws of the United States, while the federal highway regulators did not believe they should have rules requiring open access, fair pricing, and non-discrimination.
Welcome to the forthcoming US policy on broadband/internet access.
We’re now told that the Democratic appointees on the FCC plan to develop a master plan for how this will all work. But until the Obama Administration and Congress forcefully and clearly direct the FCC to adopt and enforce rules for open, non-discriminatory access to the internet, the FCC has no framework consistent with the public interest for talking about some master plan. I doubt they’re even having a relevant conversation.
We saw an analogous battle over access to another network, the electricity transmission infrastructure. That industry spent over two decades struggling with the concepts of open access, non-discrimination, and efficient pricing. And after some failures and very bad false starts — recall California — we’ve made some progress there.
The electricity transmission system now connects the whole country, but its operation, once wholly balkanized, is now split between two types of system operators.
In over half the country, the transmission system is operated regionally by an independent, non-profit organization overseen by a federal regulator. Each independent system operator (ISO) functions under open access, non-discrimination rules. Every supplier, every generator, regardless of ownership, and every buyer/community/utility gets open access to the entire grid on non-discriminatory terms. Every technology/fuel source — wind, solar, coal, gas, nuclear, etc, can get on the grid just by connecting to the interconnected grid and agreeing to the open access rules. This system keeps the lights on in well over half the country, and the same model functions in about a dozen countries world wide.
However, in the rest of the US — mostly the deep South (think Southern Company) and the West (outside California) — the transmission system is owned and operated in a balkanized fashion by a [usually] private regional utility monopoly that has a vested interest in making sure competitors and/or non-preferred technologies are not given the same access as their own generators. If the owner’s lines are “full” or “congested,” the owners can allow their generators to serve their loads but curtail anyone else. Competitors are not allowed to connect to the grid under the same rules; buyers (e.g., municipal utilities) can’t buy from others and use the owner’s lines without negotiating special access deals and paying fees to the owner. The federal regulators tolerate this discrimination, because they can’t overcome the campaign contributions and political influence the monopolists have in Congress. Sound familiar?
Today’s FCC announcement reminds me of where the California electricity restructuring debate was in 1995, about the time Enron and its trader friends (remember “screw granny”?) were at the height of their influence and they were helping the large utilities write the rules that guaranteed discrimination and included rules that we knew would enable Enron’s gaming the system. Those of us who objected and demanded the system operators function as quasi-public entities and guarantee open access and non-discrimination were accused of being socialists plotting a government takeover, even a Soviet 5-year Plan! We’ve been here before, and what’s coming next will be ugly.
It’s blindingly obvious that “citizens” like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, should never be allowed to write the rules for the internet and broadband access. Nor should their captured regulators ever sanction discrimination and anti-competitive mergers that allow Comcast to gobble up NBC.
John Chandley
Fake Net Neutrality: Like Letting Enron Write the Electricity Rules
By: Scarecrow
Tuesday December 21, 2010
David Dayen’s post this a.m. summarizes concerns about the apparent regulatory capture of the Federal Communications Commission, which is about to issue new rules to undermine internet open access, aka, “net neutrality.” NYT coverage is here.
I’ll leave to Tim Karr and others to describe the technical features and sell outs that have allowed the Western World’s Worst internet/broadband structure to become slower, more expensive and more discriminatory than services in other countries. Senator Al Franken gave an excellent speech, worth watching on the full range of policy issues.
It may help to have an analogous framework on how to think about what corporate capture of the internet and broadband service means, not just in terms of speed and coverage but in terms of content and pricing. It’s not just that our service is slower and we face monopoly pricing, it’s that a tiny handful of corporations are seizing control of what we’ll be allowed to watch and read.
Suppose that President Eisenhower had proposed we build an interstate highway system, but we’d allow only three or four large corporations to carve up and own all the main interconnections, determine the tolls and decide who got to drive on them during which hours. The corporations could also decide where the on/off ramps were, which communities they did or didn’t serve, where the routes went, depending on which provided better tax breaks.
And suppose these same companies owned a couple of auto companies, and they could decide whether cars and trucks made by their affiliate companies got better access, more lanes, higher speeds and lower tolls than cars/trucks sold by competitors.
Then suppose the Justice Department and the FTC did not think it their job to enforce the anti-trust laws of the United States, while the federal highway regulators did not believe they should have rules requiring open access, fair pricing, and non-discrimination.
Welcome to the forthcoming US policy on broadband/internet access.
We’re now told that the Democratic appointees on the FCC plan to develop a master plan for how this will all work. But until the Obama Administration and Congress forcefully and clearly direct the FCC to adopt and enforce rules for open, non-discriminatory access to the internet, the FCC has no framework consistent with the public interest for talking about some master plan. I doubt they’re even having a relevant conversation.
We saw an analogous battle over access to another network, the electricity transmission infrastructure. That industry spent over two decades struggling with the concepts of open access, non-discrimination, and efficient pricing. And after some failures and very bad false starts — recall California — we’ve made some progress there.
The electricity transmission system now connects the whole country, but its operation, once wholly balkanized, is now split between two types of system operators.
In over half the country, the transmission system is operated regionally by an independent, non-profit organization overseen by a federal regulator. Each independent system operator (ISO) functions under open access, non-discrimination rules. Every supplier, every generator, regardless of ownership, and every buyer/community/utility gets open access to the entire grid on non-discriminatory terms. Every technology/fuel source — wind, solar, coal, gas, nuclear, etc, can get on the grid just by connecting to the interconnected grid and agreeing to the open access rules. This system keeps the lights on in well over half the country, and the same model functions in about a dozen countries world wide.
However, in the rest of the US — mostly the deep South (think Southern Company) and the West (outside California) — the transmission system is owned and operated in a balkanized fashion by a [usually] private regional utility monopoly that has a vested interest in making sure competitors and/or non-preferred technologies are not given the same access as their own generators. If the owner’s lines are “full” or “congested,” the owners can allow their generators to serve their loads but curtail anyone else. Competitors are not allowed to connect to the grid under the same rules; buyers (e.g., municipal utilities) can’t buy from others and use the owner’s lines without negotiating special access deals and paying fees to the owner. The federal regulators tolerate this discrimination, because they can’t overcome the campaign contributions and political influence the monopolists have in Congress. Sound familiar?
Today’s FCC announcement reminds me of where the California electricity restructuring debate was in 1995, about the time Enron and its trader friends (remember “screw granny”?) were at the height of their influence and they were helping the large utilities write the rules that guaranteed discrimination and included rules that we knew would enable Enron’s gaming the system. Those of us who objected and demanded the system operators function as quasi-public entities and guarantee open access and non-discrimination were accused of being socialists plotting a government takeover, even a Soviet 5-year Plan! We’ve been here before, and what’s coming next will be ugly.
It’s blindingly obvious that “citizens” like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, should never be allowed to write the rules for the internet and broadband access. Nor should their captured regulators ever sanction discrimination and anti-competitive mergers that allow Comcast to gobble up NBC.
John Chandley
Net Neutrality Advocates Decry FCC 'False' Solution
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/21-9
Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Net Neutrality Advocates Decry FCC 'False' Solution and 'Squandered Opportunity'
Statements by Free Press and ACLU
WASHINGTON - The media advocacy group Free Press released the following statement in response to actions by the FCC today:
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The rule passed by the FCC today does not reclassify wireless broadband service as a telecommunications service, which the ACLU and other proponents of network neutrality have long urged. Treating broadband access as similar to phone service would have allowed the FCC to rely on its broader regulatory authority. By a 3-2 vote Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules intended to prevent Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from acting as gatekeepers on the Web. The rules, however, heavily favor the industry they are intended to regulate, and leave consumers with minimal protections. Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps voted with Chairman Julius Genachowski, while Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker voted against.
Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron made the following statement:
“We are deeply disappointed that the chairman chose to ignore the overwhelming public support for real Net Neutrality, instead moving forward with industry-written rules that will for the first time in Internet history allow discrimination online. This proceeding was a squandered opportunity to enact clear, meaningful rules to safeguard the Internet’s level playing field and protect consumers.
“The new rules are riddled with loopholes, evidence that the chairman sought approval from AT&T instead of listening to the millions of Americans who asked for real Net Neutrality. These rules don't do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the Internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination. No longer can you get to the same Internet via your mobile device as you can via your laptop. The rules pave the way for AT&T to block your access to third-party applications and to require you to use its own preferred applications.
“Chairman Genachowski ignored President Obama's promise to the American people to take a 'back seat to no one' on Net Neutrality. He ignored the 2 million voices who petitioned for real Net Neutrality and the hundreds who came to public hearings across the country to ask him to protect the open Internet. And he ignored policymakers who urged him to protect consumers and maintain the Internet as a platform for innovation. It’s unfortunate that the only voices he chose to listen to were those coming from the very industry he’s charged with overseeing."
The American Civil Liberties Union released this statement:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today passed a new rule clarifying the legal authority of the FCC to enforce network neutrality principles. Network neutrality principles protect free speech online by prohibiting the owner of a network from prioritizing some content on the Internet while slowing other content.
The rule approved today by the FCC includes full network neutrality protections for the wired Internet, which includes cable and DSL service to homes and businesses, but provides lesser protections for wireless broadband service and may allow wireless broadband providers to block certain applications and services that compete with their own applications and services. The American Civil Liberties Union has called for network neutrality protections on both the wired and wireless Internet as important safeguards for free speech.
"Network neutrality principles are essential to protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans who rely on the Internet as a forum for free speech. While the new FCC rule creates stronger network neutrality protections for Americans who use the wired Internet, it fails to provide adequate protections for Americans who rely on wireless broadband service," said Chris Calabrese, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "By creating two sets of regulations – one for the wired Internet and one for wireless broadband – and failing to ground them in the strongest legal protections available, the FCC has failed to protect free speech and Internet openness for all users. The ACLU will continue to fight for full network neutrality protections. Internet openness is key to protecting our First Amendment rights."
The rule passed by the FCC today does not reclassify wireless broadband service as a telecommunications service, which the ACLU and other proponents of network neutrality have long urged. Treating broadband access as similar to phone service would have allowed the FCC to rely on its broader regulatory authority under Title II of the Communications Act to enforce network neutrality principles.
Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Net Neutrality Advocates Decry FCC 'False' Solution and 'Squandered Opportunity'
Statements by Free Press and ACLU
WASHINGTON - The media advocacy group Free Press released the following statement in response to actions by the FCC today:
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The rule passed by the FCC today does not reclassify wireless broadband service as a telecommunications service, which the ACLU and other proponents of network neutrality have long urged. Treating broadband access as similar to phone service would have allowed the FCC to rely on its broader regulatory authority. By a 3-2 vote Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules intended to prevent Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from acting as gatekeepers on the Web. The rules, however, heavily favor the industry they are intended to regulate, and leave consumers with minimal protections. Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps voted with Chairman Julius Genachowski, while Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker voted against.
Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron made the following statement:
“We are deeply disappointed that the chairman chose to ignore the overwhelming public support for real Net Neutrality, instead moving forward with industry-written rules that will for the first time in Internet history allow discrimination online. This proceeding was a squandered opportunity to enact clear, meaningful rules to safeguard the Internet’s level playing field and protect consumers.
“The new rules are riddled with loopholes, evidence that the chairman sought approval from AT&T instead of listening to the millions of Americans who asked for real Net Neutrality. These rules don't do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the Internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination. No longer can you get to the same Internet via your mobile device as you can via your laptop. The rules pave the way for AT&T to block your access to third-party applications and to require you to use its own preferred applications.
“Chairman Genachowski ignored President Obama's promise to the American people to take a 'back seat to no one' on Net Neutrality. He ignored the 2 million voices who petitioned for real Net Neutrality and the hundreds who came to public hearings across the country to ask him to protect the open Internet. And he ignored policymakers who urged him to protect consumers and maintain the Internet as a platform for innovation. It’s unfortunate that the only voices he chose to listen to were those coming from the very industry he’s charged with overseeing."
The American Civil Liberties Union released this statement:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today passed a new rule clarifying the legal authority of the FCC to enforce network neutrality principles. Network neutrality principles protect free speech online by prohibiting the owner of a network from prioritizing some content on the Internet while slowing other content.
The rule approved today by the FCC includes full network neutrality protections for the wired Internet, which includes cable and DSL service to homes and businesses, but provides lesser protections for wireless broadband service and may allow wireless broadband providers to block certain applications and services that compete with their own applications and services. The American Civil Liberties Union has called for network neutrality protections on both the wired and wireless Internet as important safeguards for free speech.
"Network neutrality principles are essential to protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans who rely on the Internet as a forum for free speech. While the new FCC rule creates stronger network neutrality protections for Americans who use the wired Internet, it fails to provide adequate protections for Americans who rely on wireless broadband service," said Chris Calabrese, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "By creating two sets of regulations – one for the wired Internet and one for wireless broadband – and failing to ground them in the strongest legal protections available, the FCC has failed to protect free speech and Internet openness for all users. The ACLU will continue to fight for full network neutrality protections. Internet openness is key to protecting our First Amendment rights."
The rule passed by the FCC today does not reclassify wireless broadband service as a telecommunications service, which the ACLU and other proponents of network neutrality have long urged. Treating broadband access as similar to phone service would have allowed the FCC to rely on its broader regulatory authority under Title II of the Communications Act to enforce network neutrality principles.
The FCC's weak new "open Internet" rules
http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/21/fcc_network_neutrality/index.html
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2010
The FCC's weak new "open Internet" rules
A partisan vote on Tuesday displeases everyone. And everyone's right
Dan Gillmor
The neutering of the Internet is now the unofficial policy of the Federal Communications Commission. Contrary to the happy talk from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at a rule-making announcement today in Washington, the move is well underway to turn the Internet into a regulated playground for corporate giants.
Tuesday's FCC vote on rules purportedly designed to ensure open and free networks was a 3-2 partisan charade, with Genachowski and the other two Democratic commissioners in favor and the two Republicans against. It did nothing of the sort. The short-term result will be confusion and jockeying for position. Genachowski's claim that the rules bring "a level of certainty" to the landscape was laughable unless he was talking about lobbyists and lawyers; their futures are certainly looking prosperous. The longer-range result will be to solidify the power of the incumbent powerhouses -- especially telecommunications providers and the entertainment industry -- to take much more control over what we do online.
It's almost not worth the trouble of telling you what's in the rules, because they are so meaningless. About the only redeeming feature is a requirement that ISPs be more transparent about how they manage their networks. I would expect to see a bare minimum of compliance here, and little if any enforcement except an occasional wrist-slap, if that.
But when it came to rules that might boost network neutrality -- the notion that end users (you and me) should decide what content and services we want without interference from the ISPs -- the FCC's order paid lip service to the concept while enshrining its eventual demise. In theory, land-line carriers (traditional phone and cable companies, for the most part) won't be allowed to play favorites. In practice, the new rules invite them to concoct new kinds of services that do precisely that.
But even that fuzzy concept won't apply to mobile carriers, which means that discrimination will be explicitly permitted by companies like AT&T and Verizon for customers of the iPhone and iPad, among other devices that are increasingly the most important entry point to the Internet.
The rules are also an open invitation to ISPs to spy on their customers. Genachowski's repeated references to users' right to use "legal" content were code words for the entertainment industry's push to have ISPs become their enforcement arms in the copyright wars. Hollywood wants your ISP to watch everything people do, and then block users who are alleged to be infringing.
If Genachowski and his supporters think that they've done the right thing because they're being attacked from all sides, they're missing the reality. Sometimes, when everyone hates what you've done, you've done the wrong thing.
The FCC majority didn't have the courage, or the political support from the Obama administration (yes, another broken promise), to push for regulations that would address net neutrality in any meaningful way. So the protests from open-Internet folks was immediate, and justified.
Republicans and their house organ, Fox News, talk about Tuesday's vote as a "plan to regulate the Internet," and they're half-right. They mouth platitudes about freedom and liberty. They end up with a free-fire zone for corporations -- an oligopoly of content and services for captive consumers.
But they're right to be wary of regulation, because we've seen the corrosive effect of regulation in so many other arenas already. The FCC is already a captive of telecom companies in its traditional operations. Why would anyone expect this to be any different when it comes to the Internet? And the law of unintended consequences tells us that any regulations would be sure to have effects we can't foresee today. That's the issue the network-neutrality advocates also usually fail to address.
What wasn't on the table in the FCC's deliberations was actual competition. Unlike many other countries, the United States doesn't require Internet providers to share their lines and networks. By "share" I don't mean "give away" -- this is essentially about renting capacity to other companies that want to be ISPs. That's how the Internet got so big so fast in the first place: Phone companies were not allowed to prevent other ISPs from offering service on phone lines, but now they're allowed to prevent similar competition, and the market is a stifling oligopoly as a result.
If you think the Internet should be an enhanced form of cable television, you should be happy where we're heading. If you think it should be the messy and complex result of what innovators want to create, and what customers at the networks' edges want to do with the creations, you should worry.
A longtime participant in the tech and media worlds, Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Follow Dan on Twitter: @dangillmor.
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2010
The FCC's weak new "open Internet" rules
A partisan vote on Tuesday displeases everyone. And everyone's right
Dan Gillmor
The neutering of the Internet is now the unofficial policy of the Federal Communications Commission. Contrary to the happy talk from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at a rule-making announcement today in Washington, the move is well underway to turn the Internet into a regulated playground for corporate giants.
Tuesday's FCC vote on rules purportedly designed to ensure open and free networks was a 3-2 partisan charade, with Genachowski and the other two Democratic commissioners in favor and the two Republicans against. It did nothing of the sort. The short-term result will be confusion and jockeying for position. Genachowski's claim that the rules bring "a level of certainty" to the landscape was laughable unless he was talking about lobbyists and lawyers; their futures are certainly looking prosperous. The longer-range result will be to solidify the power of the incumbent powerhouses -- especially telecommunications providers and the entertainment industry -- to take much more control over what we do online.
It's almost not worth the trouble of telling you what's in the rules, because they are so meaningless. About the only redeeming feature is a requirement that ISPs be more transparent about how they manage their networks. I would expect to see a bare minimum of compliance here, and little if any enforcement except an occasional wrist-slap, if that.
But when it came to rules that might boost network neutrality -- the notion that end users (you and me) should decide what content and services we want without interference from the ISPs -- the FCC's order paid lip service to the concept while enshrining its eventual demise. In theory, land-line carriers (traditional phone and cable companies, for the most part) won't be allowed to play favorites. In practice, the new rules invite them to concoct new kinds of services that do precisely that.
But even that fuzzy concept won't apply to mobile carriers, which means that discrimination will be explicitly permitted by companies like AT&T and Verizon for customers of the iPhone and iPad, among other devices that are increasingly the most important entry point to the Internet.
The rules are also an open invitation to ISPs to spy on their customers. Genachowski's repeated references to users' right to use "legal" content were code words for the entertainment industry's push to have ISPs become their enforcement arms in the copyright wars. Hollywood wants your ISP to watch everything people do, and then block users who are alleged to be infringing.
If Genachowski and his supporters think that they've done the right thing because they're being attacked from all sides, they're missing the reality. Sometimes, when everyone hates what you've done, you've done the wrong thing.
The FCC majority didn't have the courage, or the political support from the Obama administration (yes, another broken promise), to push for regulations that would address net neutrality in any meaningful way. So the protests from open-Internet folks was immediate, and justified.
Republicans and their house organ, Fox News, talk about Tuesday's vote as a "plan to regulate the Internet," and they're half-right. They mouth platitudes about freedom and liberty. They end up with a free-fire zone for corporations -- an oligopoly of content and services for captive consumers.
But they're right to be wary of regulation, because we've seen the corrosive effect of regulation in so many other arenas already. The FCC is already a captive of telecom companies in its traditional operations. Why would anyone expect this to be any different when it comes to the Internet? And the law of unintended consequences tells us that any regulations would be sure to have effects we can't foresee today. That's the issue the network-neutrality advocates also usually fail to address.
What wasn't on the table in the FCC's deliberations was actual competition. Unlike many other countries, the United States doesn't require Internet providers to share their lines and networks. By "share" I don't mean "give away" -- this is essentially about renting capacity to other companies that want to be ISPs. That's how the Internet got so big so fast in the first place: Phone companies were not allowed to prevent other ISPs from offering service on phone lines, but now they're allowed to prevent similar competition, and the market is a stifling oligopoly as a result.
If you think the Internet should be an enhanced form of cable television, you should be happy where we're heading. If you think it should be the messy and complex result of what innovators want to create, and what customers at the networks' edges want to do with the creations, you should worry.
A longtime participant in the tech and media worlds, Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Follow Dan on Twitter: @dangillmor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
