The world's third largest economy is sending worrying signals to those whose best hopes for an end to the Global Economic Crisis reside with China. Though Chinese growth projections seems spectacular in a recessionary world, with estimates ranging from 8% to above 9%, there is both more and less to these numbers than meets the eye.
The superstructure underlying China's impressive growth rate over the past decade and more has been exports, especially to the American consumer, with facilitation from credit flows emanating from Beijing. In a situation where the central government is priming the stimulus pump, growth is being artificially created to a large extent, since domestic demand cannot compensate for China's ravaged export markets. Factories may still be manufacturing export goods, however, the inventories are surging while shipments abroad are contracting. That appears to be the message revealed in new figures on China's economic performance.
According to China's customs bureau, exports in July declined a staggering 23% from a year ago. This number is apocalyptic, yet on paper China's GDP keeps soaring. How can an export driven mega-economy experience significant growth simultaneously with its core export sector undergoing a free fall contraction? By flooding the economy with liquidity through monetary easing, it would appear. However, this is not a recipe for long-term, sustained growth. This policy will only succeed if there is a rapid turnaround in China's export trade. That is a dim prospect, in light of the continuing decline in employment numbers in most of China's key export markets, especially the United States and the Eurozone.
Another revealing statistic to emerge from Beijing involves lending. The first 6 months of 2009 involved a floodtide of easy credit saturating the Chinese economy. However, in July new loans declined by a massive three quarters from the prior month. It seems policymakers in China are getting more concerned about the prospect that overly-loose credit will fuel an asset bubble in Chinese equities and real estate, while leading to an increase in loan defaults in the future.
Taken together, we see China engaged in a a series of massive interventions and policy actions in response to the Global Economic Crisis that are not dissimilar from other major economies. These steps are predicated on the hope that massive pump priming will keep the economy from imploding until there is a global recovery, enabling China's export trade to resume its upward trajectory.
In my view, despite the rosy growth projections, the underlying fundamentals of China's economy are based on fragile assumptions. If demand for China's export goods from overseas consumers remains far under peak demand levels for a sustained period, Beijing will confront this reality: the nation's massive export manufacturing infrastructure cannot indefinitely employ workers who fabricate products that pile up on the docks of China's major ports. That is the nightmare scenario China's leadership circles pray never unfolds.
Since the first time I heard about it, I've wanted to do the 127 Sale, that once-a-year 648 mile yard sale that runs along RT 127 from Alabama through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. A gorgeous drive, southern food, and a shot at quite possibly some of the best finds of my rummaging career seemed like the perfect way to spend a few summer days. So this past weekend I skeptically packed up my six year old daughter, a wad of cash, and our portable DVD player with enough Barbie Fairytopia installments to send someone into a seizure.
We decided to join the procession of trash-to-treasure alchemists in Knoxville, which meant a twelve-hour drive from New York. I bucked up, drank three Starbucks DoubleShots and vowed to make it there in one long haul. About an hour into the drive I realized we had forgotten the DVD car charger and we were completely out of juice. I figured we'd have to do this the old fashioned way and sleep / talk the whole way there. What happened next was nothing short of amazing. As we left the insanity of the Jersey Turnpike and headed down into the moonlit mountains of West Virginia, my daughter's normally unending chatter slowly tapered off. She was, for the first time in her life, speechless. I turned around and saw her just staring out into the Appalachian darkness. At many times we were the only car on the lightless road which scared me, but seemed to enthrall her. When she finally did speak, she mumbled something about the brightness of the moon and how close to the sky we must be. I started to think that maybe this trip was about more than just some amazing Prouvé chair I'd find behind a broken bookcase.
By the time we arrived in Tennessee, my daughter had slept through the night in the back of the car and was raring to go. Maybe it was the southern air, but my maniacal "early bird gets the worm" approach to everything I do was replaced by the uncharacteristic notion that we should spend the day at the zoo. After a few hours of camel rides and my daughter's delight at a chocolate and caramel concoction at Waffle House, I'd almost forgotten why I'd come. All of a sudden I didn't care so much about mid-century steals and vintage sconces. I pondered this late into our first night at the Knoxville Holiday Inn while I prepared for the day of driving and shopping ahead.
Day Two's drive from Tennessee to Kentucky was full of more revelations. Instead of complaining about the drive and the endless stops along the road, my mini-me began clamoring to hit every junky display we passed. She seemed to get the same thrill when she unearthed a discarded Lite Brite that I did when I found that set of sixties horsehead lamps. I'd found my yard sale soulmate! We spent the whole day poring over box after box of potential scores and would yelp together every time we struck gold.
Day Three was full of more yard sale adventures peppered with a cinematic saving of an injured dog on the side of the road, chatting and laughing with quite possibly the oldest living human in Kentucky, and a pitstop at a roadside BBQ trailer where I watched my little girl wrinkle her nose at her first taste of grits. Priceless.
So while I had intended to write an article on the amazing scores to be found at one of America's quirkiest happenings, things took a slightly unexpected turn. Don't get me wrong, on the drive home I DID revel in our carload of wins which included a set of limited edition hand-painted Kentucky Bourbon bottles from the seventies, and a tennis racket used in the 1968 US Open in my hometown of Forest Hills. But during that same ride it dawned on me that what Halle and I discovered together was ultimately much more than either of us had "bargained" for. We got that a simple drive across a simple place, rummaging through junk with someone you love is just as good (if not better) than a week at any of the five star resorts we've been to together. So the verdict on the 127 Sale with your awesome kid and your pickup? A hole in one. (Oh and I DID score that set of mid-century schoolhouse chairs I'd fantasized about - Halle found them behind an old armoire.)
It is difficult to believe that only 16 years ago some of us were outraged by the Harry and Louise ads. Those ads seem quaint compared to what we are seeing today from the opponents of health care reform and their scare tactics that are just short of saying that health care reform means President Obama will personally sign orders to kill anybody who is sick or over 60 years old. It is, however, a good bet that if we wait long enough, we will start hearing that as well.
This is unfortunate because health care reform is long overdue. A more efficient system that insures more people, simplifies the health care process, brings costs down and creates rational incentives for health care providers, health care seekers and everybody else would be of great value to the entire country. The creation of such a system would be very difficult, and perhaps not fully possible, but it should be the goal of Obama's policy.
The political reality is that given the margin with which he was elected and the substantial margins by which the Democrats control both houses of congress it is likely that we will get some form of an Obama health care bill. It is, unfortunately, increasingly clear now that the bill will be limited in scope. Moreover, any chance of a serious debate about how to balance competing needs and political realities has been shouted down. Because the anti-health care reform interests, in collaboration with broader right wing organizations, have invested in scare tactics, rumor mongering and fear to the preclusion of negotiation, communication or compromise, the Democratic health care bill will probably not be as inclusive as many of us would like; and a major progressive goal of more than half a century will still be unmet.
The failure of health care reform will not in itself be a devastating blow to the progressive movement. After all, we have failed, or been stopped, on this issue many times before. However, if health care reform fails it will raise serious questions about a central premise of both Obama's campaign and the progressive movement that supported it. The debate about health care, is part of the broader movement and thus is also a debate about how we do governance, pitting those who believe we can change and move away from the nastiness and partisanship of the last twenty years against those who believe that the problem with how we have done politics in the last 16 years is that we were too calm. At its base, this is a fight over whether change is possible. Accordingly, the defeat of meaningful health care reform may well signify the defeat of the optimism and hope surrounding Obama as well as of the notion that it is possible to make real change in Washington.
The promise of change in both the substance and style of politics was deeply felt when Obama took office. So far, the Obama administration has given us some important pieces of legislation passed, a refreshing movement away from the radically ideologically driven Bush administration and a far more style and intellect in the White House, but the promised dramatic change is still very much a work in progress. The economy may recover, but it is clear now that it will not fundamentally change. We will likely get a health care reform bill, but there is a real possibility that it will be one of essentially half measures.
The health care debate so far has clearly shown that Obama has brought change to Washington. Before Obama was president, major media figures did not compare the president's administration to Nazi's, opponents of the president's policies and once and perhaps future leaders of major political parties did not suggest that the president was going to establish death panels, and elected officials of the party out of power sought to calm, not stoke, the noisiest and most radical opponents of the president. These changes are not the fault of the president, but speak to the extent to which the president's opponents will go, and their willingness to use increasingly outrageous tactics, to oppose the president. Seven months into the Obama presidency the Republicans' biggest, and perhaps only, success has been drowning the optimism from earlier in the year in a pool of red baiting, misinformation, comparisons to Nazis and intimidation. Defeating Obama on health care will be a big step towards making this Republican success permanent.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Nobel Peace laureate and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said Tuesday that he has swine flu, showing that not even a head of state is safe from the virus that has caused worldwide concern but relatively few deaths.
The 69-year-old president and Nobel Peace Prize winner said in a statement that he was quarantined at home and is being treated with the anti-flu medicine oseltamivir.
"The pandemic makes no distinctions," Arias said. "I am one more case in this country and I am being submitted to the recommendations that health authorities have established for the entire population."
Arias suffers from asthma and is at higher risk than most, but was in good enough health to continue working.
"Aside from the discomfort of the fever and sore throat, I feel in good shape and in full capacity to carry out my work by telecommuting," Arias said in the statement.
The president had flu symptoms since Sunday, but participated in public activities as late as Tuesday morning, when he appeared at a call center.
Arias has been serving on-and-off as a mediator in the political crisis in Honduras after that country's president was ousted June 28 in a coup.
At a press conference with Mexico's President Calderón and Canada's Prime Minister Harper, President Obama responded to a question on the timeline for immigration reform by stating that immigration reform was a priority but would have to wait till 2010 after health care, energy, and financial regulation bills were passed.
This is a reversal of his campaign promise to pass immigration reform in 2009. Patience for 2010 is hard to come by when the new administration persists with an enforcement-only strategy that Obama criticized during the campaign trail. Both represent a betrayal to Latino voters who were a key constitutency in delivering the presidency and a majority of Democrats to the US Congress.
What President Obama and other Democrats fail to take into account is that the Latino community can't wait till 2010 for justice to arrive.
The escalation of human suffering continues: civil and human rights violations in detention facilities; families torn apart as armed ICE agents arrest loved ones in their home; increased hate crimes and racial profiling of Latinos; workplace abuses by unscrupluous employers; all of this and more have been a motivating factor for what Latinos expected in 2009: change.
Yet, where is the change? There have been some modest gestures: lifting a 5 year ban for legal immigrant access to S-chip and not including the faulty E-Verify program in the stimulus package (later included in federal contracts).
Yet the two central demands of the immigrant rights movement: stop the deportations and passage of humane immigration reform are nowhere in sight.
Shockingly, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Janet Napolitano's leadership continues to support and expand Bush-era enforcement strategies. Despite numerous reports documenting human rights abuses in detention facilities, DHS refuses to create enforcable, independent regulations of the detention system.
For-profit prisons and local and state jails continue to cash in from the criminalization and detention of immigrant workers and youth.
Other administrative reforms have also gone unheeded. DHS refuses to repeal 287G agreements that have led to a vigilante cowboy culture by local and state law enforcement, such as Arizona's Sheriff Arpaio, who has been charged with over a thousand civil rights violations.
DHS has been window dressing workplace raids by pushing I-9 audits; which hurt workers as much any workplace raid. Indeed, the latest "desktop raid" targetted a unionized meatpacking plant. As one immigrant worker observed, "in the fields they never raid; because you have to be truly desperate to work there."
Social Security No Match letters sent to employers, that have less than 1% effectiveness, have yet to be repealed.
It is clear that the Obama Administration has a political strategy that continues to cater to the most virulent xenophobic section of American society and a private prison and defense industry.
Legalization should not be postponed--in an economy that is largely based on consumerism, anything that puts money in the pockets of workers is a good thing. Legalization has been shown to raise wages, increase tax revenues, and encourage people to spend more.
If politicians make promises they don't keep-who should we believe?
We need to believe in ourselves and hold politicians accountable not just in the voting booth but in calls to their office, public forums and meetings. The need for visible protests that force the issue into the public eye cannot stop. Indeed, it must escalate.
Immigration was a losing electoral platform for Republicans in 2006 and 2008. If Democrats don't challenge the dehumanizing policies of the past and deliver humane immmigration reform it will be a bankrupt electoral platform in 2010 and 2012.
WASHINGTON — The State Department struggled Tuesday to explain Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's face-off with a Congolese student and suggested that the questioner's nervousness sparked the outburst with the mention of her husband's name.
Clinton snapped at the university student in Kinshasa on Monday when he asked what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and Congo native and former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo thought about an international financial matter. Mutombo was appearing with her at the university.
"Wait. You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" Clinton asked in response. "My husband is not the secretary of state; I am. So you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I'm not going to be channeling my husband."
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday that Clinton reacted that way because of the question.
"As the question was posed to her, it was posed in a way that said, 'I want to get the views of two men, but not you, the secretary of state,'" Crowley said.
The French-speaking student later said he had meant to say President Barack Obama, according to U.S. officials traveling with Clinton. It was unclear whether that meant he misspoke or the translator erred.
"Perhaps he was nervous," Crowley said.
Asked if Clinton had any regrets about losing her cool, Crowley tried to deflect the question, saying she was not available to get her thoughts. At the time, Clinton was en route between stops during her 10-day tour in Africa, and she did not address the outburst to reporters traveling with her in the Congo.
Clinton's trip was overshadowed at the start by her husband's secret diplomatic mission to North Korea, where President Kim Il-Jung turned over two U.S. journalists who had been held after straying across the border.
The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services is investigating a conflict-of-interest allegation involving the official in charge of drug approvals at the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA said.
In the Bank of America (BAC.N) Merrill Lynch bonus imbroglio, the SEC has proposed a settlement in which, once again, the defendants neither admit nor deny wrongdoing.
Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are the Mighty Boosh, a comedy team that have spawned a radio series, a BBC television show, and countless live performances. They talked to Boing Boing video maven Xeni Jardin recently about their show and what it's like bringing it to the U.S.
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. � Police say a 6-year-old boy rescued a 2-year-old girl from a fire at a Long Island house where three adults later were found dead.
They say the two women and one man found in the burned Central Islip (EYE'-slip) house had been shot but it's unclear if they died from gunshot wounds or the fire, which has been ruled an arson.
Homicide Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick says firefighters were called to the blaze Tuesday morning. The two-story house was engulfed in flames.
Neighborhood resident Jessie Scott says the house went up in flames "like a matchbox."
The three adults were found in a back bedroom. One of them lived in the home.
The boy and girl were found outside the home and are doing OK. They've been taken to a hospital.
Imagine the scene. America 2009. Eighteen thousand people have died in one year, an average of almost 50 a day. Who's taking them out? What's killing them? To investigate, President Barack Obama might be tempted to call on Jack Bauer, the fictional rogue intelligence agent from the hit TV series "24," who invariably employs torture and a host of other illegal tactics to help the president fight terrorism. But terrorism is not the culprit here: It's lack of adequate health care. So maybe the president's solution isn't Jack Bauer, but rather the actor who plays him.
The star of "24" is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections to health-care reform -- in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health-care system. As a youth, Tommy Douglas almost lost his ailing leg. His family could not afford treatment, but a doctor treated him for free, provided his medical students could observe. As an adult, Douglas saw the impact of widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression. Trained as a minister, he had a feisty temperament and a popular oratorical style. He moved into politics, joining the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party. After several years in Parliament, he led the CCF's decisive victory in the province of Saskatchewan, ushering in the first social democratic government in North America.
Douglas became premier of Saskatchewan, and pioneered a number of progressive policies there, including the expansion of public utilities, unionization and public auto insurance. But Douglas' biggest battle, for which he is best remembered, is the creation of universal health insurance, called Medicare. It passed in Saskatchewan in 1962, guaranteeing hospital care for all residents. Doctors there staged a 23-day strike, supported by the U.S.-based American Medical Association. Despite industry opposition, the Saskatchewan Medicare program was so successful and popular that it was adopted throughout Canada. While Tommy Douglas was fighting for health insurance in Canada, a similar battle was raging in the U.S., resulting in the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, giving guaranteed, single-payer health care to senior citizens and the poor.
Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and insurance-industry-funded groups are encouraging people to disrupt town-hall meetings with members of Congress. A number of the confrontations have become violent, or at least threatening. Outside President Obama's Portsmouth, N.H., event, a protester with a pistol strapped to his thigh drew further attention with a sign that read, "It is time to water the tree of Liberty." Thomas Jefferson's complete quote, not included on the sign, continues, "... with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
Rush Limbaugh says "24" is one of his favorite shows. He has even visited the set. Limbaugh should learn from the real-life actor who plays his hero, Jack. Limbaugh and his cohorts may find truth not as satisfying as fiction.
In 2004, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. poll named Tommy Douglas "The Greatest Canadian." At a protest in 2000 against efforts to roll back the Medicare system in the province of Alberta, Kiefer Sutherland defended Canada's public, single-payer system:
"Private health care does not work. America is trying to change their system. It's too expensive to get comprehensive medical care in the U.S. Why on earth are we going to follow their system here? I consider it a humanitarian issue. This is an issue about what is right and wrong, what is decent and what is not."
Maybe Jack Bauer can save the day.
* * * Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
SAO PAULO, Brazil — In one murder after another, the "Canal Livre" crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.
Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.
"The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police," state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged in an interview with The Associated Press.
The killings of competing drug traffickers, he said, "appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show."
Souza denied all the criminal allegations and called them absurd, insisting that he and his son are being set up by political enemies and drug dealers sick of his two decades of relentless crime coverage on TV and crusading legislative probes.
"I was the one who organized legislative inquiries into organized crime, the prison system, corruption, drug trafficking by police, and pedophilia," Souza said in an interview with the AP.
Souza's lawyer, Francisco Balieiro, said that the only witness is a disgraced police officer hoping for leniency in nine murders he is charged with.
"There is not one piece of material proof in these accusations," Balieiro said.
Vasconcelos said the accusations, which have made headlines in Brazil, stem from the testimony of several former employees and security guards who worked with the Souzas, allegedly as part of a gang of former police officers involved in drug trafficking.
Souza's son, Rafael, has been jailed on charges of homicide, drug trafficking and illegal gun possession.
Police said Wallace Souza faces charges of drug trafficking, gang formation and weapons possession, but has not been charged with any killings.
Souza remains free because of legislative immunity that prevents him from being arrested as long as he is a lawmaker. He is being investigated by a special task force, and state judicial authorities will decide whether the case goes forward.
Vasconcelos said the crimes appear to have served the Souzas in two ways: They eliminated drug-trafficking rivals, and they boosted ratings.
"We believe that they organized a kind of death squad to execute rivals who disputed with them the drug trafficking business," he said. Souza, he charged, "would eliminate his rival and use the killing as a news story for his program."
Souza became a media personality after a career as a police officer that ended in disgrace, according to Vasconcelos, who said the lawmaker was fired for involvement in scams involving fuel theft and pension fraud.
Souza denied those allegations, but said he was forced to leave the force in 1987 after being wrongly accused of involvement in a college entrance exam fraud scheme that he was investigating.
He started "Canal Livre" two years later on a local commercial station in Manaus, the capital of Brazil's largely lawless Amazonas state. It became extremely popular among Manaus' 1.7 million residents before going off the air late last year as police intensified their investigation.
The show featured Souza, in a studio, railing against rampant crime in the state, punctuated with often exclusive footage of arrests, crime scenes and drug seizures.
"When I became a police officer in 1979, bandits weren't raised in this city – no way," he told the audience in one show. Brazil was then a dictatorship, whose police ruthlessly targeted criminals with little concern for civil rights.
One clip showed a reporter approaching a freshly burned corpse, covering his nose with his shirt and breezily remarking that "it smells like barbecue." Police say the victim was one of the five allegedly murdered at Souza's behest.
Souza denied any role in that killing and explained how his reporters manage to get so quickly to crime scenes, using well-placed sources and constantly monitoring scanners for police radio dispatches. The show also posted workers at police stations, and at the Manaus morgue, where word often came first about newly discovered bodies.
"To say that a program that has had a huge audience for so many years had to resort to killing people to increase this audience is absolutely absurd," Souza said.
Souza parlayed his TV fame into a career in the state legislature, getting elected three times – twice with the most votes of any lawmaker in the state. At the same time, he remained a fixture on television.
Souza's biography on the state legislature's Web site says the show, which he ran with his brother, was investigative journalism aimed at fighting crime and social injustice.
"The courageous brothers, as they're known, bring hope to the less fortunate," reads the description, "showing a 'naked and raw reality' to call authorities' attention to social problems."
___
Associated Press writer Marco Sibaja contributed to this report from Brasilia, Brazil.
A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for. And a New Jersey patient was charged $72,000 for a spinal fusion procedure that Medicare covers for $1,629.
Here are the questions you are asking about the market rally:
Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
Should I return to the markets slowly or over time? Is [name of stock] a good buy?
Are we headed for rampant inflation?
Should I buy gold?
Here are my answers:
I don't know and you shouldn't care.
There is only one question that intelligent investors should be asking. You won't find it discussed in the financial media. Your "market beating" broker or advisor is unlikely to focus on it.
It is this question that is the focus of this week's video:
The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein.
Newly released emails from the House Judiciary Committee show Bush staffers Scott Jennings and Jane Cherry poking fun at one another in the wake of a Washington Post article revealing the political firing of U.S. Attorneys.
In one instance, Jennings claimed he simply "followed orders," which prompted Cherry to ask: "Isn't that what the Nazis claimed?"
Glenn Beck choked up on his Fox News program Tuesday afternoon while speaking about his daughter, who was born with cerebral palsy (h/t TVNewser).
He spoke about her in a discussion on Nazi eugenics, and showed a poster from that era that called to mind his daughter's condition.
"I want to show you a poster that I saw this morning getting ready for the show," Beck said, "and I want you to know that I have a daughter who was born with cerebral palsy. And when she was born, they said she would never walk or talk or feed herself. She went to college, they were wrong. This poster bothers me so much because the hand of the person shown in this poster reminds me of my daughter's hand."
The poster, from Nazi German, shows a picture of a man with what Beck called a "gnarled hand," and ays in German, according to Beck, something like, "It's going to cost 60,000 marks to keep this man alive...he's a sweet guy and everything, but his quality of life. It's a shame, but your time is up."
For years, yoga devotees have been telling us that bending and twisting our limbs into gravity-defying contortions is a great way to develop the perfect body. Now things have gone one step further, with a new wave of teachers claiming that yoga also offers a fast track to a beautiful mind.
Everyone from fraught mothers to stressed-out hedge-funders is catching on to the benefits of yoga therapy, a fusion of deep breathing, invigorating postures and self-help. This version of the ancient Indian practice is gaining credence within the medical community for helping with a range of issues, such as recession depression and anxiety, through to bipolar disorder and other mental-health problems.
According to The Washington Post, "the White House asked the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to take down the ads, which feature Jasmine Messiah, a vegetarian who attends a Miami-Dade County public school that, she says, offers no vegetarian or vegan lunch options." According to the president of the Physicians Committee, the White House Counsel's office "made it clear that they viewed this as something that could lead to legal action if I wasn't responsive. But that was an implication."
It's hard to evaluate the White House Counsel's office statements based on such a paraphrase, but if they did suggest that the reference to the President's daughters was legally actionable, they were wrong. The so-called "right of publicity" may go further than I'd like, but even it doesn't go that far, especially in the context of a noncommercial poster that references someone in the course of making a political point.
Such speech is protected by the First Amendment, and in any event not an infringement of the right of publicity in the first place. See, e.g., Vassiliades v. Garfinckel's, Brooks Bros., 492 A.2d 580, 592 (D.D.C. 1985); Berkos v. NBC, Inc., 515 N.E.2d 668 (Ill. Ct. App. 1987); 765 Ill. Comp. Stat. 1075/1 et seq.. That the names aren't used is not itself dispositive, but the noncommercial nature and the fact that it involves something more than just selling a copy of someone's name or likeness should be dispositive.)
Of course, if the people from the Counsel's office simply relayed a request on behalf of the President, asking the Committee to do what they argued was the morally right thing and not really threatening legal action, that's a different story. I'm not sure why that should come, though, from the Counsel's office; but maybe the Counsel's office has historically had a broad mandate in such matters.
Still, even if the claim is that the Committee is doing something unethical or in bad taste, I don't see how that would be so. They aren't saying anything offensive or demeaning about the girls. They aren't faulting the girls for anything they've done. They're not, I think, putting them in a position where they might be deeply embarrassed if they see the ad, or if a friend asks them about it.
In fact, the ad isn't about anything the girls did — it's about what their relatively well-to-do parents are able to provide them, and what the Committee says the government should provide to all children (a position, incidentally, that I don't share on the merits). I don't see anything tasteless or ethically improper in commenting on public affairs, and in part on the options that the President has, by mentioning in this way the privileges that the President's children enjoy.
On Tuesday's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Matthews' guest was William Kostric, the man who brought a gun earlier in the day to protest President Obama's health care town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Kostric was waring a (legal) handgun strapped to his leg and holding a sign referencing this Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
The segment grew more and more heated as Matthews repeatedly asked Kostric why he came to the meeting wearing a gun. "Well, why did you bring a gun to a Presidential event today?"
"That's not even a relevant question," Kostric said, shrugging. "The question is, why don't people bear arms these days."
"Okay, you bought a sign that said 'The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants' and you're carrying a god damn gun at a Presidential event. I think those things make people wonder what you're about."
Kostric for his part, was unrepentant, and maintained that he was there in a totally non-violent capacity. "No one from New Hampshire was alarmed. Maybe some of the people they bussed in from Massachusets were alarmed. But we're not really concerned about them."
Beekeeping, despite the plethora of environmental benefits, is illegal in New York City. Plenty of great organizations, like Just Food, are working to overturn the ban. In the meantime, city beekeepers are staying stealthy and undercover. Check out these urban beekeepers in an undisclosed Brooklyn location.
But this is symptomatic of a larger problem with FNC's "news" coverage of town halls -- it is entirely one-sided and has been during this entire summer. These protesters are the good guys, the Congressmen who say they should maybe wait their turn to ask a question are impeding on their rights to free speech. It is this mentality that leads a news network to ignore the President and his Q&A and focus only on the sharper questions aimed to disrupt.
Few couples would choose to marry during periods of severe relationship stress, but then, trials come unexpectedly -- you can't plan for layoffs, illness or a raging wildfire that forces a change in wedding venue 24 hours before the big event. That bad start, however, can have benefits. While an abundance of research shows that stressful life events often amplify a couple's problems -- turning a husband's short temper into abuse, for example -- and increase the likelihood of divorce, studies also show that hardship can have an upside. For some couples, it's protective, helping solidify their commitment into an unshakable us-vs.-the-world resolve. Data from the Great Depression suggest, for instance, that economic adversity held many couples together. "Those families who were cohesive before the Depression, they banded together as a team and really became more cohesive in dealing with the economic crisis," says Gottman -- surely good news for the untold numbers of newlyweds who have faced job loss or foreclosure in the past year.
I don't know what the Federal Reserve is. I don't know what they're doing."
So admitted comedian-commentator Bill Maher on his HBO talk show a few weeks ago, expressing a sentiment that, judging by the applause, was shared by many members of his presumably well-educated, media-consuming, studio audience. One of Maher's guests, humorist Joe Queenan, also fessed up to being pig ignorant of what the Fed is and does. And earlier that same week, Eliot Spitzer, the onetime sheriff of Wall Street, told MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan that the Federal Reserve "is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job" that must be closely examined by Congress.
Spitzer was referring specifically to the New York Fed, a distinction that quickly fell away as his ready-for-prime-time sound bite shot through a blogosphere intent on viewing anything to do with finance as part of a conspiracy theory. "That scared the hell out of me," Maher told his guests. "Despite what he likes in his sex life, [Spitzer] knows a lot about this."
Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But one thing Spitzer clearly knows is how to play to a crowd desperate to suss out villains in a financial crisis. And let's face it, the Fed is as good a target as any. Shrouded in secrecy, the central bank, which may see its powers broadened in a regulatory overhaul, remains a mystery to many. This is true, despite the truckload of media coverage devoted to economics and finance these past few months, including a special PBS NewsHour "forum" in late July in which Fed chairman Ben Bernanke took the unprecedented step of answering questions from 40 people from Kansas City, Mo. The first query came from a social worker who asked Bernanke to explain what, exactly, is the Federal Reserve. "I don't have a clue what they do," she told the chairman.
All of this eagerly professed ignorance got me thinking: What is it about anything that has to do with money, finance or economics that enables otherwise thinking people to plead total cluelessness? After all, most people work, earn money, use banks, save for retirement. The Supreme Court is no less secretive, mysterious, complicated or powerful than the Fed, but it's pretty hard to imagine someone like Maher declaring that he has no idea what the court is or what it does. But people have no problem wearing their financial ignorance on their sleeves. They're actually sort of proud of it. "I read as much of financial coverage as I can understand," media critic Jack Shafer wrote back in late 2007. "I'm not embarrassed by my ignorance -- why should I be? I can't be much more clueless than the masters of the universe who have lost their companies billions."
Well, actually, you can be, as Queenan proved that night on Maher. Indeed, another guest, historian Niall Ferguson, called out Queenan on his ignorance (earlier, Queenan proclaimed that Obama's approval rating would be better if the Dow simply hit 10,000, healthcare, war and unemployment be damned) and proceeded to school him on the Fed and how it works. Queenan's snide response (which he repeated several times): "I didn't go to Harvard." No, he didn't, but he did once work at Forbes.
OK, now we get it: Only smarty-pants, wonkish types get this stuff. The cool kids don't know it, don't understand it, certainly don't want to study up on it, and, if like Ferguson, you do get it (and you actually teach at Harvard), you're not just elitist, you're suspect. Unaccessible. An apologist. Maybe you're even in cahoots with all those guys on Wall Street with their bailout-fueled bonuses.
The odd thing here is that many areas of finance are complex, even inaccessible, though the fundamentals, like the functions of the central bank, aren't. And it's arguably never been more important, particularly given the fact that every taxpayer owns chunks of some big banks, that ordinary Americans bone up on the subject. Instead, the attitude du jour seems to be to cheer on the notion that the Fed, which you may have the sketchiest understanding of, is a Ponzi scheme, or that Goldman, Sachs & Co. is a vampire squid that caused every bubble, or that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was brought down by eight evil men who treated the 24,992 salt-of-the-earth geniuses who worked for them like crap. It's almost like folks secretly want to encourage the very thing they fear. The cartoon is so much more satisfying than the truth.
DELHI - Women protesters marched through the streets of Kathmandu in their hundreds after the Government announced a "humiliating" scheme to offer financial incentives for men to marry widows.
The insurance industry-planted extremists who have been trying to disrupt health care reform should talk to Jim from St. James, Missouri. Jim's not a paid activist. He's not a spin doctor. He's just a hard-working guy from middle America. And Jim is exactly the kind of person that health insurance reform will help.
Jim works full-time as a truck driver for St. James Ready-Mix in St. James, Missouri. He takes home about $400 a week after taxes, which is enough to get by on in rural, eastern Missouri, but not enough to pay for health care for his family. And in Jim's family, like families across the United States, the lack of affordable, quality health insurance is devastating.
Jim could get health insurance from his employer but the cost, recently lowered to $369 per month, is more than Jim's monthly rent. And he has two teenage kids, a cat and a dog, a long commute to work with the high cost of gas, not to mention food to put on the table, school supplies and clothes, etc. As a single parent, Jim says it's near impossible to make ends meet.
All of which would be hard enough. But Jim's daughter Tabitha has kidney disease. They already pay out of pocket for her medicine, which is expensive but, considering how much they would pay in prescription co-pays even if they had insurance, still less than if Tabitha were insured. Still, Jim and his daughter worry about what might happen if Tabitha got sick. Jim is a hard-working father forced to gamble with his family's well-being because our health insurance system puts big profits ahead of our health care needs.
Jim is like many of us sandwiched in the middle. He earns more than the average person in his town (the per capita income for St. James was $14,509 in 2000 -- after taxes). But even though Jim is by no means rich, he still earns too much to qualify for subsidized insurance programs like the State Children's Health Insurance Program. "I tried," Jim says.
Health insurance reform will help the millions of Americans without jobs or access to any health insurance options. But it will also help even more Americans like Jim, who are paying for insurance that's making them broke or have access to insurance but just can't afford it. Creating a competitive and regulated health insurance market, including a public health insurance option, will hold the insurance corporations accountable and drive down the cost of coverage for everyone while improving care, too.
Jim didn't vote for President Obama. But, he now says, "If he did something about health care reform... well, I'd sure shake his hand." While partisan bickering divides Washington, average Americans like Jim are putting partisanship aside because they need help. "And if government can help, they should help," says Jim.
Jim is like so many Americans, who every morning they wake up, work hard to make our nation strong and prosperous. But every night, so many people like Jim go to sleep worrying about the risks and dangers the next day might hold. "This is a great country I live in," Jim told me. "I just hope I can make it better." Let's hope our great country can help make Jim's life better, too.
In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.
The activists, most of them in their thirties and forties, expected the climb to the top of the smokestack would take less than three hours. Instead, scaling a narrow metal ladder inside took nine. "It was the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done," 35-year-old Ben Stewart said later. "It was like climbing through a huge radiator -- the hottest, dirtiest place you could imagine."
In the end, the fatigued, soot-covered climbers were only able to paint the word "Gordon" on the chimney before, facing dizzying heights, police helicopters, and a high court injunction, they were compelled to abandon the attempt and submit to arrest. They could hardly have known then that their botched attempt at signage would help transform British debate about fossil-fuel power plants -- and that it would send tremors through an emerging global movement determined to use direct action to combat the depredations of climate change.
The case took on historic weight only after the Kingsnorth Six went to court, where they presented to a jury what is known in the United States as a "necessity" defense. This defense applies to situations in which a person violates a law to prevent a greater, imminent harm from occurring: for example, when someone breaks down a door to put out a fire in a burning building.
In the Kingsnorth case, world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, flew to England to testify. According to the Guardian, he presented evidence that the Kingsnorth plant alone could be expected to cause sufficient global warming to prompt "the extinction of 400 species over its lifetime." Citing a British government study showing that each ton of released carbon dioxide incurs $85 in future climate-change costs, the activists contended that shutting the plant down for the day had prevented $1.6 million in damages -- a far greater harm to society than any rendered by their paint -- and that their transgressions should therefore be excused.
What surprised both Greenpeace and the prosecution was that 12 ordinary Britons agreed. The jury returned with an acquittal, and the freed defendants made the front pages of newspapers throughout the country. The tumult also produced political results. In April, British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband announced a reversal in governmental policy on power stations, declaring, "The era of new unabated coal has come to an end." Discussing Kingsnorth, Daniel Mittler, a long-time environmental activist in Germany, told me recently, "it was probably one of the most impactful civil disobedience cases the world has ever seen, because it was the right action at the right time."
If Not Now...
The idea that now is the right time for more resolute action to address the climate crisis is spreading fast enough to dot the global map with hot spots of disobedience. As it turns out, the Kingsnorth Six are part of a rapidly growing population. Joining them are the Dominion 11, arrested after forming a human blockade to stop the construction of a coal plant in Wise County, Virginia, in November 2008, and the Drax 29, who went on trial this summer for boarding and stopping a train delivering coal to a power plant in North Yorkshire, England, last year.
In fact, arrests are piling up quicker than journalists can coin name-and-number nicknames. The Coal Swarm website keeps track of an ever-lengthening list of protests. New headlines now appear weekly:
"Activists scale 20-story dragline at mountaintop removal site in Twilight, WV"
"14 Arrested at TVA headquarters in Knoxville, TN"
"10 activists board coal ship in Kent, England"
"Activists shut down Collie Power Station, Western Australia"
In August 2007, Al Gore, Nobel-prize-winning author of An Inconvenient Truth, told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." By the time Gore made that statement, some young people had already started blocking bulldozers, and many more, young and old, would soon follow.
Still, Gore can be excused for feeling that such measures were overdue. With global warming, perhaps more than any other issue, there is a disjuncture between a widespread acknowledgment of the gravity of the situation we face and a social willingness to respond in any proportionate way.
The landmark 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that a two degree Celsius rise in average temperature, likely by 2050, would create severe water shortages for as many as two billion people and place between 20% to 30% of all plant and animal species at risk of extinction. It gets worse from there. An April 2009 Guardian poll reported: "Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed." More probable, they believe, is "an average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century," a level that could create hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing areas afflicted by desertification, depleted food supplies, or coastal flooding.
That these consensus predictions may feel remote and improbable to much of the American public does not reflect a real scientific debate, but rather a common reluctance to face unpleasant facts -- and also the considerable success of the coal and oil lobbies in dampening the electorate's sense of urgency about the issue. Those two realities are precisely what direct action intends to confront.
An Inconvenient Politics
When Vice President Gore started endorsing civil disobedience, Abigail Singer, an activist with Rising Tide, a leading network of grassroots climate groups, noted, "It'd be more powerful if he put his body where his mouth is." She had a point.
As it happens, 68-year-old James Hansen, arguably the most famous climate scientist alive, has been less reticent about putting himself on the line. His involvement has furnished a great deal of mainstream respectability to those turning to more confrontational means of expressing dissent, and the trajectory of his political engagement catches an important trend.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hansen published many groundbreaking papers demonstrating the reality of a warming planet. Just as the work scientists had done in the early 1980s proving that human activity was creating a hole in the ozone layer had resulted in a 1987 treaty against chlorofluorocarbons, Hansen assumed that the work of those documenting climate change would result in swift legislative remedy.
"He's very patient," Hansen's wife Anniek told Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker. "And he just kept on working and publishing, thinking that someone would do something." This time around, however, industrial interests proved far more entrenched. In order to help move glacially slow climate negotiations forward, Hansen started speaking out and, more recently, has begun risking arrest at demonstrations.
Of course, there is never a shortage of people who will question the tactics of civil disobedience and direct action. "We're every bit as worried about climate change as the protestors," a spokesperson for the E.On corporation, the energy company that runs Kingsnorth, said upon the announcement of the famous verdict, "but there are ways and means to protest and we would suggest their demonstration was not the way to do it."
There are far less compromised skeptics, too. Many harbor a distaste for social-movement theatrics or operate on the belief that, sooner or later, science will speak loudly enough to force the political situation to sort itself out. Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy expressed such a view when the IPCC released its 2007 report. "The worst stuff is not going to happen," he said, "because we can't be that stupid."
Sadly, the latent hope that politicians will eventually come to their senses cannot suffice as a political strategy. The stark facts of segregation in the American South never put an end to that longstanding injustice; it took an unruly civil rights movement to force change. In this case, presumably less farsighted and more profit-hungry energy companies than the climate-concerned E.On have invested tens of millions of dollars in convincing elected officials and newspaper editorial boards that reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is neither practical nor particularly needed. The operative force at work here is not stupidity, but political power.
Hansen and others motivated to confront the industry head on have concluded that, unless there is a public counterbalance to the organized money of those who profit from the status quo, what science has to say will be largely irrelevant, no matter how theoretically convincing it may be. Unless citizens themselves become inconvenient, the truth will remain a minor consideration.
The Disaster You Can See
It is no accident that, on June 23rd, when Hansen was arrested for his first time, it was in West Virginia, the heart of coal country. Because coal is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and worldwide, and because there is enough coal left in the ground to heat the planet to catastrophic levels, that fossil fuel has been the focus of much new protest. As long as U.S. and European power plants continue spewing coal smoke, their governments will have absolutely no credibility in trying to influence the policies of rising economies such as China and India. Nonetheless, current U.S. legislation ensures that coal burning will continue largely unchecked for decades to come.
In West Virginia, concerns about coal's impact on the atmosphere have intersected with a local environmental atrocity known as mountaintop-removal mining, a practice that Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both claimed to oppose in the presidential campaign, but which continues today. This has made Appalachia the heart of direct action on the climate-change issue in the U.S. -- or, as a blog tracking area protests puts it, "Climate Ground Zero."
"You stand at the edge of one of these mountaintop removal sites and you'll never feel the same way again," says Mat Louis-Rosenberg, a staffer at Coal River Mountain Watch in southern West Virginia. The practice turns rolling mountains and valleys into flat, desolate moonscapes. Locals regularly hear the blasts of surface mines from their homes and then drink the resulting contaminants in their well water. When newly created lakes of toxic coal waste give way -- as happened last December as a billion gallons of sludge flooded 300 acres of land near Harriman, Tennessee -- they are the ones whose homes stand immediately downstream.
These dangers have given organizers a chance to create campaigns that connect the abstractions of climate change to specific sites of environmental ruin. "You can get a visceral and immediate sense of how bad this is," says Louis-Rosenberg. "It's not an invisible gas and a bunch of science that most people don't understand."
This year, in a series of escalating initiatives, environmentalists in the area have chained themselves to rock trucks, obstructed coal roads, and climbed up a huge crane-line mining machine to halt its work. A delegation of concerned citizens, including Hansen, crossed a police line onto the property of Massey Energy, a company responsible for mountaintop removals. Louis-Rosenberg places such direct action alongside a raft of other activities: community organizing, research for environmental impact statements, and gathering co-sponsors for a Congressional ban on filling valleys with mining waste. "Ultimately, things will have to see their resolution in some sort of federal regulation or legislation," he says. "But at this point there is not the political will to deal with the crisis. I see it as my role as an activist to create that political will."
The Next "Seattle Moment"?
When the Kingsnorth decision was announced, an E.On representative said the company was "worried that this ruling will encourage other protestors to engage in similar actions at power plants across the country." The worry was justified.
The diverse local protests taking place internationally are starting to feel like part of something larger, especially since they are already beginning to have an impact. Of the 214 new coal plants proposed in the United States since the year 2000, more than half have been cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold. The website Coal Moratorium Now, which tracks public campaigns, shows that citizen dissent played a critical role in many of the cancellations or delays. Other results have been less obvious but no less real. Facing greater resistance, and the prospect of costly public relations battles, power companies are simply proposing to build fewer coal plants than was once the case.
Environmental organizers are planning for still larger mobilizations. In March, hundreds of people, including Hansen and 350.org campaign organizer Bill McKibben, joined in human chains to block the entrances to a target of enticing symbolic importance: Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning facility built in 1910 that provides steam and refrigeration power to Capitol Hill. Police avoided making arrests, which could have easily exceeded highs for any previous act of civil disobedience around climate issues in American history. Nonetheless, the gathering produced a desired effect: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Acting Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers requesting that the plant switch to natural gas.
On a global level, activists are starting to envision an international day of action that might launch disparate local campaigns into the mainstream spotlight and create a more unified global movement. A buzz of expectation and organizing now surrounds a December U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where environmental ministers and other officials will gather to create a new treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol. The conference is taking place almost exactly 10 years after the 1999 Seattle protests which overwhelmed the ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization and altered the shape of globalization debates for years after.
Hopes for recreating an event of that magnitude are based on more than just a coincidental anniversary year. Before Seattle, localized activity by global justice advocates had similarly swelled -- with a wave of student anti-sweatshop drives, environmental boot camps, organic food gatherings, corporate ad spoofs, indigenous rights battles, and cross-border labor campaigns already simmering. Seattle united these into a recognized "movement of movements" more potent than the sum of its parts.
Organizers have suggested that as many as 100,000 people might take to the streets in Copenhagen. Among those planning around the Denmark conference, there is currently a debate about whether to converge on the conference itself or to target a heavily polluting company somewhere nearby as an example of bad climate-change behavior.
Likewise, in the United States, where events will be timed to take place in solidarity with the demonstrations in Copenhagen, there is a debate about whether to try to work with the Obama administration or turn up the heat on it. In the end, a range of tactics will no doubt be deployed in Copenhagen and in other cities around the world. A coalition of groups, including the normally satiric Yes Men, is managing a site called BeyondTalk.net, which allows people to sign a pledge expressing their willingness to join in nonviolent civil disobedience as the conference date nears.
As of this writing, 3,210 people have signed on. Compared with the numbers of people who will ultimately have to be persuaded of the need to act in order to force meaningful solutions to climate change, that remains a modest tally. In terms of the growing levels of dedication and personal sacrifice it represents, its significance is far greater. After all, that's more than 3,000 people willing to take the chance that a determined action, even a botched one, might ultimately reverberate far and wide. It's more than 3,000 people who may just be willing to climb for hours through a huge radiator in order to stop the planet from becoming one in all too short a time.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website DemocracyUprising.com. (An audio interview with him on climate-change activism is available by clicking here.) Research assistance for this article was provided by Sean Nortz.
Here is a passage from my 2005 Bestseller, The Translucent Revolution.
Looking Beyond Enlightenment
There is an important distinction to be made between translucence and traditional understandings of "enlightenment." Very few of the people I have talked to would seriously label themselves as "enlightened." At the same time, the overwhelming majority said that they were no longer seeking a state of enlightenment, although many had done so previously. Most said they no longer had any idea what the word was supposed to mean. This is in sharp contrast to the atmosphere of spirituality that existed even fifteen years ago, when most spiritual people were still following a guru, trying to win the cosmic jackpot.
Musician and songwriter Peter Makena and his wife, Aneeta, exemplify this change. They were both disciples of the controversial Indian teacher Bhagwan Rajneesh in the 1970s. (He has been known simply as Osho since a few months before his death in 1991.) Now Peter is less sure what the "E" word means: " 'Enlightenment' used to have an elusive meaning, something like the Holy Grail. It represented a final end point, in my idealistic and dreamer-like search, of what human potential could be. Today my sense of that potential is more of a finger pointing, a hint, a direction, with no final product."
I asked Peter and Aneeta what they would say if someone were to ask if they were enlightened. "I'd laugh," answered Aneeta. "I couldn't say enlightened or unenlightened, I just don't think like that." Yet both feel they are always learning and growing. They call it an endless exploration. Today's translucents have fallen in love with the present moment and the possibilities of living right now as a gift of love, as a work of art. They've lost interest in potential future states. Translucents have seen past the dangling carrot of future enlightenment. They live for now, and now, and now. It's much easier to have a spiritual experience than it is to live a spiritual life. It's the life that is more important than the experience. -- Lama Surya Das
As we deepen in familiarity with our silent, limitless, real nature, and as we broaden our forays into the uncharted territories of living from here, the very notion of some final graduation becomes obsolete. The silence is neither enlightened nor unenlightened; it cannot undergo any change. And the monkey-like, mind-body organism is simply a sophisticated animal, no more. It is always undergoing change, unenlightenable. Have you ever seen an enlightened penguin or a liberated flea?
An Endless Journey
Translucents speak of life as a "rivering," a process without end. Like a fountain that is always pouring forth, it is an endless and spontaneous enlightening, not a fixed state. Unlike the goal-oriented self-improvement industry that has dominated our culture for so long, this process is an endless unfolding of discovery and delight. There is no attempt to fix a problem or to achieve a final higher state. Translucence is more a direction than a destination. Like heading East, the process doesn't imply a specific point of arrival. It is a way of living life with art and humor, returning continuously to here, and here, and here, always steeped in the vastness of the view and blessing each moment with a gift of creative presence.
"At some point, I just stopped seeking," says Tom. "There was a turning point, when I was about forty. I saw that I was like a rat in a maze, always thinking freedom would come later, after one more retreat or workshop. I saw how absurd this was, and it dropped. It was after that, after I stopped seeking, that I could wake up to things as they really are."
Our lives are like tiny little boxes within the infinite realms of consciousness, creativity, and expression. How far can we take it? How much can we love? How large is this, how applicable in life? I can't imagine that there's any limitation to that whatsoever. -- ShantiMayi
Spiritual seeking may have a defining end; the process of embodiment, on the other hand, is endless. It is a relaxing, the allowing of more love, more presence, more creativity to flow. How can we ever say, "I have reached the outer limits of love?" or, "I now have discovered all that can be discovered of creativity, or humor, or compassion?" As we wake up, we see the very nature of things as they are: still in their essence and constantly undergoing modification in their appearance. Recognizing this may bring more relaxation, more love, or more humor to our humanness, but there can be no end point.
Andrew Cohen -- the founder of the magazine What Is Enlightenment? -- points out that both individual awakenings and their embodiment are happening within a larger context, one that completely transcends individuality. He calls this "impersonal enlightenment": We are part of the developmental process. The evolutionary context is something very different from the experiential recognition of the timeless. An individual human being begins to glimpse that he or she is literally part of this 14-billion-year process of development, right now, and that their own awakening to that fact is the universe becoming aware of itself. It's as significant and as important, if not more important from a certain point of view, as the experiential recognition of timelessness.
Many of those I interviewed have come to the same conclusion; they realize that their own spiritual experience is only a tiny part of the larger context of collective awakening and evolution.
To read more about a radically different way of looking at awakening pick up your very own copy of Translucent Revolution today.
On Monday, August 10, the American Small Business League (ASBL) filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding its lawsuit against the Small Business Administration (SBA) for the release of SBA executive Mike Stamler's phone records. The ASBL originally filed suit for Stamler's phone records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after the SBA claimed that it did not have them. (http://www.asbl.com/documents/20090810notice_appeal_endorsed.pdf)
The ASBL filed suit in Federal District Court, Northern District of California in March of 2009. At the time, former U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward M. Chen ruled in favor of the SBA, supporting its claim that it does not have access to its own phone records. ASBL originally requested Stamler's phone records after several journalists told the organization that Stamler had libeled and slandered the ASBL and its President Lloyd Chapman.
In one instance, the Long Island Business Journal (LIBJ) received an angry profanity ridden email from Stamler after the publication quoted Chapman in a story about the launching of a government website. LIBJ's staff responded by issuing a blog titled, "Expletives the SBA's forte?" (http://libn.com/libizblog/2008/02/22/expletives-the-sbas-forte/)
I am confident that we will prevail in this case. Ultimately, we have never lost a case against the SBA or any other federal agency, and I think it is almost laughable that the SBA will go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in an effort to convince the court that they don't have access to their own phone records. This is a perfect example of what we have seen from the SBA for years. Anytime you want to look at what they're doing, you have to go to federal court to get it. Clearly they have something to hide.
The ASBL has won a series of federal lawsuits against the SBA, and other federal agencies, which have forced the release of thousands of pages of documents, further exposing the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to corporate giants.
It's a staple of health policy discussions these days: 20% of patients account for 80% of all health care costs. Within that 20%, those who have the highest costs suffer from multiple chronic illnesses. One of the most challenging examples is individuals with both mental health and substance use disorders. Unless we figure out how to more efficiently care for these high-need patients, expanding access to health care--no matter the approach--will become unaffordable.
Two recentarticles in the Washington Post demonstrated all too clearly that our system for treating individuals with both mental health and substance use disorders is entirely ineffective. Of the estimated 7 million individuals nationwide suffering from co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, only 10% receive the type of evidence-based treatment that addresses both disorders and actually improves their health.
This failure is costing us--to the tune of $100 billion annually in lost productivity as well as huge costs associated with inpatient care and re-hospitalization.
As we talk about health care reform and cost containment, behavioral health care must be part of the discussion.
Like primary and specialty health care, behavioral health care requires major improvements, and reforming care for individuals with co-occurring disorders doesn't have to break the bank. But it does require us to get to the root of the issue: our system's failure to support providers to treat both problems in an integrated way.
Despite an overlap in the patient population they serve, mental health and substance use providers--encouraged by past approaches to payment and regulation--often operate in silos, with integration of care being the exception and not the rule. Even when individuals are treated for both disorders, inconsistencies in accepted practices between mental health and substance use service providers often produce ineffective outcomes. The results for the 90% who don't get proper care are disastrous: their disorders worsen, their quality of life is reduced, and far too many lives end prematurely.
The current focus on health reform and the need to create a more coordinated and cost-effective health care system makes this an ideal time to ensure that integrated care for individuals with both mental health and substance use issues becomes the norm by:
• Lifting regulatory restrictions that prevent simultaneous treatment of both disorders.
• Streamlining the clinical protocols used to identify, diagnose, and treat co-occurring disorders by both mental health and substance use providers to eliminate conflicting practices and align treatment regimens.
In New York, an initiative is underway to align efforts across the public and private sectors to address integrated care. The Center of Excellence for the Integration of Care (CEIC) was created by the New York State Health Foundation to focus on the latter goal, while the New York State Office of Mental Health and the Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services are addressing the former.
Specifically, CEIC was established to integrate care at the state's 1,223 licensed mental health and substance abuse outpatient treatment centers by providing training and helping these providers adopt standard protocols to identify, diagnose, and treat patients who have co-occurring disorders. When put into practice, this will collapse the barrier for treatment between the two areas and make the most effective evidence-based treatment practices standard statewide. Most important, it will ensure that there is "no wrong door" for anyone seeking care for co-occurring disorders.
While CEIC's work is still in its infancy, it's already making promising headway, and by 2014 expects to have significantly raised the number of patients with co-occurring disorders receiving integrated treatment. And, that jump is expected to save New York millions in lost productivity, re-hospitalizations, and related health care costs.
New York State is fortunate to have forward-thinking leaders at its Office of Mental Health and Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. They are committed to restructuring reimbursement and regulation to encourage better care for people with both mental health and substance use disorders. This is an area where our state can be a leader in helping the nation adopt strategies to improve care for this vulnerable population. Integrating care for this population provides a valuable lesson as we continue to debate the best ways to reform our health system.
Four Victoria's Secret models--Marisa Miller, Alessandra Ambrosio, Lindsay Ellingson, and Emanuela De Paula--appeared on "The Early Show" Tuesday to announce that their annual fashion show would be returning to New York (last year it was held in Miami Beach). Harry Smith, who recently got a little flirtatious during a Jennifer Aniston interview, also asked Huffington Post blogger Ambrosio about her post-baby body, flaunted his knowledge of the 'Body by Victoria' bra, and asked De Paula what makes Brazilian women beautiful.
In his attempt to improve relations with the Muslim world, President Obama has done what no other American president has ever done before.
Starting with his inauguration speech in which he stressed on the importance of relaxing the defensive posture so that the demonization process could stop. Following with his speech at the Turkish Parliament in which he offered the reassurance that neither the US nor the West is in war with the Muslim world. And concluding with his historic Cairo speech in which he highlighted the importance of mutual respect in order for genuine dialogue and understanding to take root.
However, the litmus test is how quickly certain unjust policies instituted after the tragic events of 9/11 are reversed, and how impartially America treats Muslims facing the justice system.
"At our department, our Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) is building stronger relationships with Arab and Muslim Americans...," asserted Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, in her recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. And, while Secretary Napolitano projects a pristine picture, unfortunately the reality on the ground tells a different story -- one in which rhetoric is in abundance and substance is scarce.
For almost a decade now, the constitutional right guaranteeing the presumption of innocence until proven guilty was routinely compromised any time the accused was a Muslim. Granted, Muslims, by and large, enjoy more freedom to practice their religion and build religious institutions in America than in any other country, including their own. However, Muslims of Arab background continue to be subjected to routine harassment and mistreatment. Recently, another Muslim group -- the Somalis -- has joined them to share their uncomfortable space under the spotlight.
For the Somalis, matters have taken the wrong turn when 20 young men turned out missing in the Minneapolis area and three turned out dead. These youth are believed to have joined al-Shabab, and are feared to come back with militant ideologies. Al-Shabab is listed in the US as a terrorist organization.
While the Somali community is generally mindful that a serious investigation is indeed warranted, it is concerned about how sensationalized media reports are already indicting the community and its religious institutions in the court of public opinion. For this could set the stage for severe backlash, and for law enforcement to exert unchecked authority.
And now that two Somali youth are in custody and one pleading guilty to aiding al-Shabab and the second's process being underway, the metaphorical audible whispers of the community have been: the stage is set for the FBI to make multiple arrests during the holy month of Ramadan and right before the eighth 9/11 memorial day.
The Somali community feels "under siege."
And this sense of cynicism settled in when complaints about FBI officers entering homes and businesses under false pretenses and without any court warrant were brushed off by the very watchdog mandated to guard against abuse of power and protect constitutional rights- CRCL.
It has grown more profoundly when, in what seemed inexplicable stretch of jurisdiction, complaints about counterintelligence professionals from New York Police Department showing up at homes and businesses in Minneapolis were again defended by CRCL representatives as standard operational procedure. These kinds of dismissive treatments, needless to say, put shroud of suspicion around that office's claim of independence. CRCL representatives should never function as the FBI's public relations office. Of course, there is nothing wrong with projecting a good image of the law enforcement offices and authorities that protect our lives and communities, but that should be the function of a different department.
To make matters worse, this whole thing comes at a time when relations between US Muslims and law enforcement authorities has been strained over the discovery that the FBI has been sending informants and planting agent saboteurs in mosques to provoke worshipers and trap unsuspecting youth.
"While law enforcement professionals are in general fact-driven people, a significant number of them still function as though it is 2003 and America is waging an ill-advised war against Iraq. And changing that frame of mind where facts and fiction confluence will take time," said one community member who was a victim of that frame of mind.
Earlier this year, a coalition of America's largest Muslim organizations issued an open letter asserting their intention to halt cooperation with the law enforcement authorities so long as the FBI continues mixing politics with law enforcement practices and implicating reputable organizations with sheer innuendos. Despite the vicious disinformation routinely cooked by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and David Horowitz who believe that the seven million Muslims in America are "sleeping cells" and "ticking bombs," facts indicate the complete opposite.
In conclusion, in order to build bona fide bridges of understanding that could significantly reduce elements hindering the US and the Muslim world to work together on critical issues of mutual importance, the following real change must take place:
First, real policies, such as the US Patriot Act must be improved and made more balanced.
Second, Muslims should be treated as stakeholders and not as aliens with bombs strapped around their waists.
Third, both the administration and local governments should appoint competent Muslims as high level policy advisers, not simply as tokens. The more independent-minded these individuals are, the more credibility they earn for their respective offices.
On July 14, CBS, current owners of the legendary FM rock station WBCN-FM in Boston, announced they would be closing the station effective August 13, to make room for the city's second "sports talk" radio outlet. The demise of the "Rock of Boston," as WBCN is known, including the retirement of its call letters, quickly became the talk of Boston. And it's not hard to understand why.
Since March 1968, WBCN has been a major artery for relevant music, culture and politics for generations of listeners in Boston. The press coverage surrounding the station's closing has focused on WBCN's impressive role in breaking four decades of bands, including the Who, Aerosmith, J. Geils, and U2, among others. However, it was arguably during WBCN's early days, from 1968 to 1975, as one of the nation's first "free-form progressive rock" radio stations, that WBCN had its greatest impact in Boston and nationally, as it both chronicled and helped promote the great social, cultural and political upheavals of that era.
I worked at WBCN starting in 1970, at the age of 14, first as an intern, and soon after covering news and hosting my own weekly show. With the recent announcement of the station's closing, I reflected on the station's early days, and its legacy, in an Op-Ed article in the Boston Globe.
It began:
"The year was 1968. Young Americans were dying in an unpopular war halfway around the world. Protesters were battling police on campuses and in the streets throughout the country. A national upheaval was underway involving the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements. These revolutions would forever transform the nation socially, culturally, and politically. But you would never know it from listening to the radio, where fast-talking DJs played ads for acne cream along with Top 40 pop ballads like Frank and Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid.''
And then came WBCN-FM.
The radio station, which billed itself as "The American Revolution,'' was the vision of a young, hip entrepreneur named Ray Riepen, who simultaneously created the "alternative'' newspaper The Boston Phoenix and the legendary rock club the Boston Tea Party. WBCN began broadcasting from the back room of the Boston Tea Party on March 15, 1968. From the moment it hit the air, the station helped define, as well as promote, popular culture and politics in Boston for the '60s/boomer generation in a way that nothing had before. And its impact quickly spilled over nationally.
Since Tuesday's announcement that WBCN's owner, CBS, will take the station off the air in August, its role in launching music careers, including The Who, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, and U2, has been widely cited. But WBCN was more than a cultural innovator. It was a social and political force as well, particularly from 1968 to 1975, when, long before Facebook or MySpace, the station served as the social medium that connected a generation in Boston . . ."
The closing of WBCN-FM comes at a time when there is a growing disconnection between the general public, and community and national media, as well as a fading of the belief that one reporter, or one newspaper, or one community radio station, can make a difference. To help today's young people understand the power of media to create social change, a new documentary film, The American Revolution, is being produced. It will examine WBCN, from 1968 through 1975, and the social, cultural and political impact the station had. My company is producing the film, and as part of its creation, we are collecting personal recollections from that era, as well as archival material, including audio, photographs, and memorabilia, both from WBCN as well as that era generally. You can see more about the documentary, and how to share your recollections and material, at the film's web site at WBCNthefilm.com
It is ironic that for the final four days of WBCN, CBS relaxed its programming rules, so that, for the first time in decades, announcers could play or discuss whatever they wanted on-air. I was driving around Cambridge yesterday, listening to WBCN, which sounded as good as it ever had. There was the live version of Jimi Hendrix's "Band of Gypsies" (with the five-minute guitar solo); unreleased live U2 performances; the Ramones; tapes of unsigned local bands; a discussion about Timothy Leary's lasting impact on popular culture; and even some dead air. It may be going away, but for one last weekend, WBCN was back. And it was good.
Since last December, I have been following the impact of the economic downturn in the Southeast Asian countries where I have worked for almost two decades. The deep recession quickly affected developing countries, even countries such as Laos and Cambodia, who are less tied to the financial sectors of the economy.
During my trip last week to Cambodia, I saw firsthand just how hard hit the country is -- worse than anything I had seen reported. Since the mid-1990s, Cambodia has had many apparel factories open and a substantial number of jobs created, with more than 90% of Cambodia's exports from the garment sector. But due to the recent decrease in consumer buying worldwide, there is a fall in the demand for goods. Garment factory after garment factory in Cambodia have closed, and many others have greatly downsized. It is estimated that 70,000 jobs have recently been lost. Most of these workers are women between the ages of 18-26; and without these jobs, they are in serious trouble. Majority of these women come from villages and are the primary earner for the family, sending money back every month for their families and communities.
These rural communities rely on family members working at urban factories for their food, housing, education and health care. With a lack of employment in the villages, women are forced to look for alternative work in the city. The problem is that there is no other work. Economic options for these women are bleak. Many end up in the sex trade or migrating illegally, where some fall prey to human trafficking. Official reports of migration are approximately 200,000 but many believe that the actual number is higher. According to the World Bank, more than 200,000 people in Cambodia may drop back into poverty this year alone due to the economic crisis, with the potential of hundreds of thousands more if the downturn continues.
The good news is that many groups, including large international brand-name apparel companies, non-profit organizations and international institutions, such as the International Labor Organization, are already in Cambodia. They are all concerned and interested in helping with this situation and what is needed is a collaborative effort. If all these organizations could come together and agree on what roles to play, the best initiatives to create and to act quickly, we could possibly stop the job losses and hopefully regain some of the 70,000 jobs lost.
The long-term outlook for Cambodia in regards to the apparel industry is good. Its competitiveness and past performances make it a sound investment for a collaborative initiative. Nonprofits could assist in education and health care. Apparel companies, in partnership with other organizations, could cover minimum salaries and training programs for future skills. And since bank lending has tightened, trade finance groups could help with cash flow for garment companies.
But the time is now. Every month a woman is out of work and has no salary, she is pushed into a more difficult economic situation. And once entering the sex trade industry, few women leave. Service programs to help sex workers rehabilitate and train for other work currently fail at very high rates.
Many see the results of human trafficking and want to get involved; but more importantly, the focus should be on empowering the mechanisms to prevent it. It may seem obvious but supporting and training women for vocational work is not just an economic engine for the country but a deterrent from the cultural and community destruction that trafficking creates. And prevention and sustainable jobs is the key.
One week after posting my open letter asking for a concept in the health care reform bill, I received an email from President Barack Obama.
Several hours before my letter showed up on Huffington Post, I forwarded it to the White House, using the "contact us" form on their website. I thought that it would be nice to let them know about the letter before making it public. In the process, I revealed to them my personal email address. At this email address, I received a generic mailing from President Barack Obama a week later, with the subject line "What health insurance reform means for you". Adding my email address to the White House spam list appears to be the only practical outcome of my open letter to President Obama.
At almost exactly the same time, I received an email from my acquaintance commenting on my text. Actually, he forwarded to me the same spam email from the White House with a comment, "Seems ok to me, what's all the fuss about? It's about time we check and take away control from the free market thugs who could care less unless you give them money."
This email prompted me to look again at the message from Mr. President. Let us cite it here:
• No discrimination for pre-existing conditions • No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays • No cost-sharing for preventive care • No dropping of coverage if you become seriously ill • No gender discrimination • No annual or lifetime caps on coverage • Extended coverage for young adults • Guaranteed insurance renewal so long as premiums are paid
On the surface, it looks good. Actually, it sounds like a promise of Christmas every day of the year: too good to be true.
A pledge of no discrimination for pre-existing conditions prompted me to look into encyclopedias for definitions of insurance. It is a way of managing risk of unexpected losses. Therefore, by definition we cannot buy insurance to cover the repair of a roof after that roof began leaking. Trying to do this would be a fraud. One might expect that a Harvard Law School graduate knows it. Nevertheless, this is what Mr. President is promising us in his email.
Should it mean that a sick person, with a pre-existing condition, should not be able to get medical care? Obviously, no. However, health insurance as we have it now is not a way to handle this. This could be handled in two ways. One is by government assistance for people in need. This is how it is done -- imperfectly -- now. The second way is by creating a new insurance product, lifelong health risk insurance, paid for throughout life and meant not for coverage of petty everyday medical expenses, but for coverage in instances when health care costs, for whatever reason, go above a predefined level of affordability.
Health Care as an Entitlement
In the first approach, health care for people with high treatment costs is secured by the government, and paid for by taxes. We have it partially now, as Medicaid pays for medical treatment for poor people. For others, it is a so-called "community benefit", which mostly means hospital care for people who do not pay. We all pay for this later, in increased rates for people covered by Medicare or private insurance. If we select to continue this path, we could formalize what we now pay anyway, and agree that everyone should receive medical care in instances where the cost of treatment goes above some predefined levels that we would accept as being above affordability for most Americans.
When agreeing on this, we could notice as well that many serious health conditions could be dealt with better in their early stages. Hence, we would conclude that good everyday basic health care could save us a lot of money otherwise spent on emergencies and advanced stage illnesses. The final conclusion in this path of reasoning would be that health care should be a basic right of every American the same way as education is. This way we would end up with a health care system similar to the one in France now, where everyone receives health care when needed without worrying about any payments, as the government there pays doctors and hospitals as our government supports teachers and public schools.
Health Care as a Product
In the second approach, we would assume that health care is a service, similar to our home or auto repairs. This is how our current private health insurance works now. Unfortunately, it works imperfectly.
If we look closely into our current health insurance plans, at their core they are not insurance at all. Mostly, they are health maintenance plans: something that we could compare to an extended car warranty. They cover unexpected high-cost medical treatments, but only for the duration of the contract, usually one year. Therefore, if a bus would strike someone insured, all medical expenses, within agreed limits, would be covered. If someone would get a stroke, it would be covered as well. However, if such an event would result with a need for ongoing health care, this would be excluded form the renewed policy as a pre-existing condition, or would be covered by the policy collecting in advance an estimated cost of such medical care. People working for the government or large corporation would be more fortunate, as by a virtue of being a part of a large group, they would not feel the increased cost due to their preexisting conditions, as it would be dissolved in the large pool. Nevertheless, their rates gradually would go up as well, and eventually their employers would ask for larger co-payments. Small businesses would have premiums raised at the next policy renewal.
Sticking to the concept of health care as a commercial service, we can overcome the problem of preexisting conditions only by implementing a new product: a lifelong insurance against instances of catastrophic health deterioration. With the risk, that an insurance company might go bankrupt, people would buy this long term insurance only if it would be guaranteed by the government, in a similar manner as our currently government-guaranteed bank deposits.
Insurance companies issuing health risk insurance would notice that they would spend less for the treatment of the seriously ill if people would have better preventive and basic medical care. Consequently, they would be financially interested in promoting health maintenance plans, similar to those called now "health insurance." Furthermore, recognizing the importance of health care, the government would continue its policy of tax deductions for buying health insurance, and could structure its policy in such a way that not buying health risk insurance would mean higher taxes. This way, without a mandate, we could have the prevailing majority covered.
What Is Better?
I have no intention to hide that, based on my understanding of how things work, I am convinced that we could have better health care at lower cost when treating it as a product, not as an entitlement. However, I have to acknowledge that systems built on the opposite concept can provide satisfactory results. For example, the World Health Organization named the French health care system as the best in the world.
My point is that these two approaches are not compatible. It is as with driving on the left or on the right side of the road. I have heard opinions why one is better than the other However, we cannot have both at the same time. President Obama claims that those Americans that are satisfied with their current health insurance would be able to keep it when others would go with the public plan. This promise boils down to the pledge that with his health reform proposal, some vehicles would be allowed to follow the right side road rule and some the left side rule.
We may debate endlessly which option is better. However, trying to combine them is the worst of the worst. It creates the monstrous apparatus with the wealth of the private industry and the political strength of the government. This hand in hand work of the government with the health care industry is the main reason for our current health care crisis at the first place. However, naming the problem is not an objective for President Obama.
It is striking that in the email from President Obama quoted above, we do not see a former university professor who could outline to us the essence of the problem, present the viable options, and tell us which one is better. Instead, we have a voice of an every day politician promising as usual what people want to hear, or -- as a Polish saying goes -- pears on a willow tree.
Health care reform was the single biggest issue in the 2008 campaign. Everywhere any of the candidates went, especially town hall meetings, they were peppered with the question: "What are you going to do about the dismal state of our nation's health care system?" There weren't any Tea Baggers descending on these places demanding the candidates pledge that they do nothing to change the miserable private health care system we currently have. Even John McCain and Sarah Palin had to pretend they had a plan and talked up all sorts of nice sounding "reforms," such as shopping for insurance across state lines, that would do little (if anything) to stop the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations from gaming the system. What happened that so changed the terms of the health care debate?
Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, refers to capitalist business elites as "an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
The same type of business people Smith identified 233 years ago run our political economy today. For them the system works best when elites make the most fundamental decisions for our society unencumbered by the trappings of "democracy" and the population is depoliticized or misinformed, or both.
Single payer? "Off the table."
Tax the windfall profits of health insurance and drug companies? "Off the table."
Volume buy drugs to control costs? "Off the table."
Public Option? (We'll see).
The elites have spoken.
Forty years ago, the social theorist Paul Baran pointed out that contemporary capitalism's emphasis on marketing and advertising is designed "to make people want what they don't need, and not to want what they do." It's painfully obvious that we need a national health care system that provides every American with access to affordable, quality care. But with the "Running of the Tea Baggers" this August we see the power of elites to "deceive and oppress" the public, and to confuse people about what's in their best interest.
Even in times of peace and prosperity the corporate media environment produces false needs and uses corporate marketing techniques to manipulate consumers. This media environment also knows how to push all the right buttons that dwell in the hearts of "low information" citizens to allow elites to dictate national policy and to block reforms that will cut into their bottom line.
The corporate-tool-Congressman-from-Louisiana-turned-corporate-tool-lobbyist-for-Big Pharma, Billy Tauzin, cut a deal with the White House so his clients, who have gorged themselves at the public trough, cannot be charged more than the arbitrary amount of $80 billion over a ten year period because that just wouldn't be fair. And this calculation comes after George W. Bush and Thomas Scully and Tauzin himself engineered a huge give away of taxpayer dollars to the pharmaceutical industry with the passage of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. Tom DeLay rammed it through Congress while the Bush White House lied about its true costs. Lying to Congress about the costs of a major overhaul of the nation's Medicare system might sound like an impeachable offense to some of us but in the halcyon days when the Republicans controlled everything and had the corporate media cheerleading for them we heard nary a peep of criticism. Tauzin, Scully, and their buddies instantly became fabulously wealthy -- who wouldn't want to rake in over $2 million a year as a shill for Big Pharma?
The current state of the health care "debate" illustrates, even with the election of Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress, we might have already lost the vocabulary for collective moral discourse. Whenever someone says health care is a human right or that the federal government is capable of managing a large part of the nation's health care system (as it already does) these ideas are generally met with scorn, indifference, and an onslaught of lies.
NEW YORK — Prosecutors say the former chief financial officer for Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty to conspiracy and other charges.
Frank DiPascali is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
Madoff is serving 150 years in prison for a Ponzi scheme that demolished thousands of people's life savings, wrecked charities and shook confidence in the financial system.
Customers have described DiPascali as their main contact with Madoff's firm.
Prosecutors told the judge last week that DiPascali had agreed to enter a plea. The charges also include securities fraud, falsifying records and international money laundering.
A phone call to DiPascali's attorney, Marc Mukasey, was not returned.
One would think by now that we had learned the lesson of Vietnam: i.e., is that you couldn't build and destroy at the same time. We'd come by day with gunships and flamethrowers and clear the Viet Cong from the village and then back to camp at night. Charlie would come back into the village at night and we would go again in the day. We didn't go forward. We didn't go back. We never controlled the area. We kept this up for ten years with 58,000 killed and 378,000 wounded. Then finally gave up.
As we said in World War II: "Be sure you own it before you do anything." Now in Iraq we've done the same thing. This morning they're still blowing each other up. Never complete control. In Iraq we should have announced that anyone with IED equipment or material had until this time next week to deposit it at designated places. After that, those possessing IED material would be publicly hung. Now you own it. Now you can set up schools for girls. But today, we put a picture of girls in school in the newspaper; claim "Mission Accomplished;" and squat, waiting for enough natives to be trained to take over. And the losers are supposed to train the winners. In the meantime, GIs are expendable.
Apparently, the Afghans don't like foreign takeovers or presence. The Afghans didn't like the British, didn't like the Russians, and now don't like us. This week's The Wall Street Journal relates under the heading "Taliban Now Winning" that: "The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U. S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops ...." After eight years, the question is not whether we need more troops, but whether the Afghanistan war is worth the life of one more troop.
General Barrett McCafferty reports on TV that our commitment under the new strategy could take ten to twenty-five years. The problem is not our fighting men and women. It's the command. We have no idea of taking complete control - of owning Afghanistan. It's the policy of "build and destroy." Let's assume that after years of "build and destroy" we have won. Victory is ours. What have we got? Anyone that reads Elizabeth Rubin's report in last week's The New York Times Magazine entitled, "Karzai in His Labyrinth," will have to agree that at best we've won a narco state. Rubin reports: "The Afghan president is isolated and distrusted, and even if he is re-elected this month, that's not likely to change."
Afghanistan has never caused the United States any trouble. The terrorists on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. The now terrorists, Taliban, or militants were our allies in Charlie Wilson's war. We all agree that, if alive, Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan. As a kid I remember Sportin' Life in "Porgy and Bess" feeding coke to the longshoremen on the docks. In my eighty-seven years we have not stopped the U. S. consuming drugs and in twenty-five more years we're not going to make warlords like democracy and stop growing drugs. Apparently, we Democrats, like the Republicans, believe that, in order to get reelected, we must keep the war going. More troops? Afghanistan is not worth the life of one more troop.
A man carried a handgun strapped to his leg to a town hall meeting being held by President Obama in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Tuesday.
It's legal for him to have the gun as long as it is unconcealed, the police told MSNBC. The man was on private property -- church ground on the roadway leading to the high school where Obama would speak. The church gave the man permission to be there. However, according to police officers, he is under constant surveillance and is not anywhere near where the president will speak.
Hours before Obama was to arrive at Portsmouth High School, the road leading to the event site was lined with people - about 100 supporters of Obama's health care overhaul on one side and about half as many opponents on the other. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the president was prepared for possible disruptions.
When the California lottery began in 1985, it conjured up visions of instant richness for many, myself being one of the many. Naively I would purchase a ticket at the local 7/11 and then wait for the good news. While waiting the few days before winners were announced, I would spend a good bit of time imagining how I would spend my millions. A fully paid for new house, car, etc., but that still left huge amounts to be spent. (At the time saving was not a priority!) As I began to plan how I would spend the money, I realized how truly delightful it was to imagine my sister's face when I gave her a bundle. Then I remembered a friend who was in trouble financially, and with pleasure knew I could resolve that aspect of her problems. The list began to grow as I added favorite organizations, charities, movements, individuals I admired but didn't know personally, and on and on.
Each Friday I would call the lottery message line and discover I had not won. As my world of illusion dissipated, my thoughts would go back to what I needed financially to get by, how I would get it, how much work it would take, and so on until my next lottery ticket purchase. Then the fantasies would begin again, and I would be in a kind of ecstatic bliss in the experience of having enough not only to not worry but also enough to give wherever and to whomever I felt like giving.
After a certain number of these repeating cycles I woke up. First, that the odds of my winning the lottery were absurdly small and that by counting on something so unlikely was wasting my time and energy that could be used more productively. More importantly, however, I realized that I was counting on an excess of money to give me the means to be as generous as I could imagine. I realized that the periods of fantasy of giving away what I had filled me with a wonderful joy. When I discovered that I didn't have the funds promised by lottery dreams, I saw that the lottery dream was really only a pointer to the joy of giving. I recognized that waiting to have something to give (money) was falsely keeping me from giving what I had. It was a true epiphany!
That realization changed my entire outlook. In an instant I went from what is called "scarcity consciousness" to bounty. I didn't have any more money, but I was rich! I realized that however I judged the amount of money I did have, I had enough to give some away. I saw I could give my attention, I could give my support, I could give my best wishes, I could give my good will, and I could give love. And I saw that unlike my fantasy lottery take, the more I gave the more I got back!
I saw I didn't have to wait for some future "good luck" to live a fulfilled life. I saw that I could freely tell the truth about what I wanted in my life and what I didn't want. I didn't have to wait to own a certain amount of material goods to be responsible for my own generosity or my own happiness.
Did you read this blog hoping it would tell you how to win the lottery? It did! You have won!
You can collect your winnings by simply stopping the trail of thoughts that starts with "If only I had..."and notice, "What do I have". When you stop trying to get or even attract "more," you can realize what you have that can be freely given away. When you give freely, which is very different from giving because you should, how does it feel? Do you have less or more?
What do you have to give? Does anything really stop you?
Gangaji will hold her next public meeting in Ashland, Oregon, August 16th. She will be in Boston for a public meeting September 12th, and in Woodstock for a public meeting September 14. She will hold a seven day retreat at Garrison Institute, NY, beginning September 16th. Read more about Gangaji's events and catalog of books and videos online.
The good news is that Latin American criticism of the Obama Administration's failure to pressure the coup regime in Honduras has reached the level that Obama himself can no longer ignore it. The bad news is that Obama's response so far seems to be to stay the course: talk left, act right.
President Barack Obama said on Friday that he has no quick way to resolve the political crisis in Honduras, where supporters of a coup are refusing to let ousted President Manuel Zelaya return to power. ... "I can't press a button and suddenly reinstate Mr. Zelaya," Obama said.
Actually, Mr. Obama, you do have a button. You're probably right that it won't "suddenly" reinstate Mr. Zelaya. What's much more likely is that pressing your button would make the coup regime much more likely to accept the compromise proposal put forward by the Costa Ricans to allow President Zelaya's reinstatement. Since your Administration sponsored the Costa Rican process, it seems natural that you would do something to make it work. Why not press your button and see what it does?
Sixteen Democratic Members of Congress - Representatives Raul Grijalva, Jim McGovern, John Conyers, Jose Serrano, Chaka Fattah, Mike Honda, Barbara Lee, Jesse Jackson, Jim Oberstar, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Delahunt, Jan Schakowsky, Donna Christensen, Sheila Jackson Lee, Sam Farr, and Linda Sanchez - have urged you to freeze U.S. assets and suspend U.S. visas of coup leaders in Honduras. Why haven't you already done so, or even threatened to consider it?
Would it a meaningful sanction to revoke the U.S. visas of coup leaders? There is considerable evidence that it would be. The last significant sign of apparent movement from coup leaders towards compromise followed one day after your Administration took a similar action. The New York Timesreported on July 29:
The head of Honduras's de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, has expressed support for a compromise that would allow the ousted president of his country to return to power, according to officials in the de facto government and diplomats from the region.
...
The call from Mr. Micheletti came one day after the United States increased pressure on the de facto Honduran government by withdrawing diplomatic visas from four high-level officials, and as members of the Honduran Congress began their own examination of Mr. Arias's proposal.
But this signal led nowhere, likely because your State Department undercut the impact of its sanction by downplaying it and indicating that there would be no follow-up. The four coup leaders can still travel to the U.S.- just not on diplomatic visas.
Your State Department clearly believes that visa bans can be a meaningful sanction. On August 6, the Washington Post reported:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began a major trip to Africa on Wednesday by publicly urging Kenya, a strategic U.S. ally, to move faster to resolve tensions lingering from a disputed 2007 election that precipitated the country's worst crisis since it gained independence.
Clinton went further in a meeting with Kenyan leaders, urging them to fire the attorney general and the police chief, who have been accused of ignoring dozens of killings carried out by police death squads, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. Clinton also raised the possibility of banning some Kenyan officials from traveling to the United States if the government does not move more quickly to prosecute those responsible for post-election ethnic violence that left 1,300 people dead. The organizers are widely suspected to include senior officials and cabinet ministers, many of whom have family members in the United States.
"We are going to use whatever tools we need to use to ensure that there is justice," the official said. "We raised the possibility of visa bans and implied there could be more."
So, in Kenya, your State Department is willing to use the threat of visas bans to pressure the government to "move more quickly to prosecute those responsible for post-election ethnic violence" in 2007. Someone in the U.S. government clearly cares about this.
But your State Department is as yet willing, apparently, to use the threat of visa bans to pressure the coup regime in Honduras to accept the compromise proposal for President Zelaya's reinstatement put forward by the Costa Ricans - the process your Administration sponsored, to bring about the goal, President Zelaya's reinstatement, that you say you support.
Ay yi yi, Nancita. You've gone and done it now, you're officially living la vida loca. But I digress...
We rejoin the wacky world of the Botwin clan as Shane sits bleeding in the back of a cushy town car with Cesar attending to the wound (revealing that he was once an army nurse) and Nancy having a mom meltdown as Esteban realizes he is under attack from Pilar. Vodka all around; in the wound and down both Nancy and Shane's gullets.
Meanwhile, back in the (sort of) real world, Doug sets up a sidewalk stand of You're Pretty! Cosmetics and has a turf war with a gang of nature scouts at a nearby table. After a customer of Celia's stops by to try and replenish her supply, Doug finally realizes why Celia's cosmetics are selling like hotcakes. And it's on, baby.
Post bullet wound, the Botwins repair to the protected world that Esteban's casa provides. Shane is fussed over, Silas is urged to backpack around Europe with an unlimited supply of cash (he declines), and Nancy confronts Cesar in the back garden. She knows that he's Pilar's informant. It's all falling into place. Cesar tells her Esteban's happiness is his happiness. "That's pretty gay, Nurse Cesar," retorts Nancy and shoots him in the shoulder.
Dr. Alanis - I mean Audra - is called to Casa Reyes and patches up Shane's arm wound. Andy is buzzing around her like a bee near honey, trying to get her to date him again. But Dr. Audra knows the truth; he's got it bad for Nancy, always has and always will.
Now that Doug knows the score (in every sense), he confronts Dean Hodes who fesses up that yes, Celia is dealing drugs in cosmetic cases. At this point, she's used him to move her into her classy new condo and thrown him out the door. "I was gonna be a drug kingpin," he mourns. "I was gonna be Tony Montana!" Dean and Doug decide to join forces to teach Celia a lesson. My money's on Celia here, because they're such losers. This is the show's 420 Moment for the week.
The all-powerful Pilar has moved the pieces in the chess game again, and has withdrawn Esteban from the gubernatorial race. Esteban grows some cojones and decides not only to finally marry Nancy, but to run independently.
Andy's wedding gift to Nancy is to sign over his baby daddy rights back to Esteban, but he can't stomach actually attending the wedding. Said ceremony takes place in Esteban's front room, with only Silas and Shane there to bear witness alongside Esteban's goons and the priest. Ignacio, in a powder blue tux, wipes away a tear. Yes, our Nancy is now Senora Reyes. Ay Carumba!
Before we close the curtain again on the Reyes-Botwins, we glimpse Mrs. Reyes visiting the nefarious Guillermo in prison to engage his services to rub out Pilar. You don't mess with La Nancy's niños.
Weeds can be seen on Showtime Monday nights at 10pm.
It is so easy to carry around unexpressed emotions, especially if you grew up in a family who used impregnated silences in a passive aggressive way to say or, rather, to not say, that you are mad with each other. Non-communication is the biggest cause of upset. Relationships break up over of it and wars start because of it. However, if you can learn to communicate in a balanced way, two individuals, in their right minds, can always come to an agreement. Here are some reasons why you want to let it all out immediately, regardless of what you've been used to.
1. Looking Younger: If you are someone who has many internal conversations in your head, as if the person that you're not clear with is there, it is a sure sign that you have something to say and you need to say it. An over load of negative internal chatter can really create deep lines on your face and make you look older than you really are. So pluck up the courage and express what you need to, in a balanced way, and you might find you will look younger as the lines begin to soften.
2. Over Reacting: If you do not have the guts to express yourself clearly the first time an issue comes up with one person, the next time the same problem rears its head with them or someone else, you will probably find that you over react, as your lack of communication, in the first place, has compacted over time. Try to be honest and clear with everyone as you go, so you don't offload all your pent up emotions on to the next person who pushes the same button.
3. Impact on Your Body: Maybe you clench your jaw when you're angry, or you have a habit of hunching your shoulder, as if you are carrying the world on your back. Whatever you do, these suppressed emotions have a way of lodging themselves internally and creating more and more of a negative impact on your body. If they remain unexpressed for a long period of time, they can really take their toll and ultimately cause long-term aches and pains. So, if you have an ailment and you think the possible cause might have to do with something that you haven't said or cleared, then you need to think of a way of expressing yourself, as this could very possibly help heal your body as well.
4. Exaggerating: Unexpressed communication can cause an enormous amount of internal chatter. If you mull over the conversation endless times in your mind, it has a tendency to twist and turn, and like Chinese whispers it can easily change form, so that what the person really said, compared to what you now think they said, is actually totally different. You have to be careful, in this instance, not to turn a little incident that needed talking about, in the moment, in to a huge, drawn out drama.
5. Giving Praise: If you have positive thoughts about someone, don't just think it or assume that the other person knows how you feel about them already, make sure you tell them. Everyone likes to be appreciated, loved and complimented and you can bring a huge amount of joy to someone by giving praise. Everyone loves to feel valued.
That's it for this week and if you want to contact me please do so at sophie@howhappyis.com.
How fulfilled do you find yourself these days? Do you even think about living life in a way that is fulfilling, or is it enough to just get by? Does it even matter?
Some people live a life of aspiration, some settle for goals, and still others are doing what they can to "just get by."
Lest we get distracted here, I have spent some considerable amount of my life "just getting by." When my family lost everything (dad died, insurance company denied coverage for his leukemia, insurance company denied death benefit, family forced into bankruptcy, etc) and I wound up living in my beater of a car, I had some experience with "just getting by."
Only, not really.
These were the 60's and my version of getting by was working full time washing dishes in one of the campus cafeterias while scrambling to stay in school. I was also actively involved in the civil rights movement, although not nearly as conscious about the process as I might like to give myself credit for being.
One day, on a protest line, I wound up getting hit by a tear gas canister. As I picked it up and started to throw it back, I suddenly, and inexplicably, found myself looking back at myself, as though I were a spectator to my own activity. And then I heard myself screaming, "why don't you a**holes love us?"
At that moment, life began changing in profound and meaningful ways. As wave after wave of awareness broke over me, I saw the contradiction of my life to that point: my message was love and peace, and my strategy was to yell, scream and throw things.
Up to that point, I had lived my life with a series of goals. Not the most meaningful goals, but goals nonetheless. Get a job (after the first bankruptcy). Make the track team. Win a medal. Get into college. Find a way to stay in college.
I was pretty good at setting goals and achieving those goals. And, still, life wasn't all that fulfilling. Only I didn't notice. There was always something else to do, some hurdle to overcome, and, of course, the challenge of just making it through another week.
And then that tear canister hit me, or perhaps more accurately stated, that tear gas canister awakened me.
As I can see so clearly now, with the benefit of time, experience and insight, that little awareness about loving vs. screaming, opened me up to an expanded realization of what really mattered to me. That moment is one that I characterize today as one of inspiration. I was inspired by a higher source, and inspired toward a higher purpose.
According to Random House, the word inspire means: • to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence: • to communicate or suggest by a divine or supernatural influence • to guide or control by divine influence.
Indeed, I was inspired to turn my life into something more than achieving goals, overcoming difficult situations, and surviving to fight another day. My focus on goals shifted toward a life of aspiration.
Random House defines aspiration as: • strong desire, longing, or aim; ambition: intellectual aspirations • a goal or objective desired
When you dig a bit further into the epistemology of these words, it turns out that they both share a common lineage, all stemming from a 13th century root word meaning an animating or vital principal, from old French and Latin words meaning soul, courage, and breath.
Curiously, inspiration and aspiration¸ all share that same common root word meaning to breathe or to breathe in. And the older usages all point toward a form of "divine inspiration" as in "the breath of life," often referred to as spirit.
In that odd moment on a strike line about civil rights, I was indeed inspired to seek a higher level of goals in life. Mine was to move from achieving the kinds of things you could measure with a check list, to a life of aspiration. To me, this was a moment of divine inspiration.
That divine inspiration came from within. No preacher, sermon or set of dogma told me what to do. I began awakening to that which resided inside of me, to my Spirit, to my Soul, to my connection with the Divine.
It became increasingly clear that I wanted my life to be about making a difference in the quality of life as measured by the qualities of loving and caring.
I have focused my work on enabling others to expand their own awareness of what matters most to them while also enabling me to live a good and abundant life. These columns are but a current form of sharing insights and awareness, most often in the form of exploring common, sometimes current events and experiences.
Underneath it all, you will find a common thread in the form of a question, often unspoken: what is it that matters most to you? Why does it matter? What are you hoping to experience?
My thought is that most of us are seeking to live a life of aspiration and inspiration. What inspires you? Are you focused on goals? Just getting by? Would you prefer to lead a life characterized by higher levels of aspiration, of service, and of caring?
What if you could aspire to an inspired life? And what if that life could also be one of success and fulfillment?
We will explore these themes and more in the coming weeks. Please let me know what matters to you, what questions you would like to see us explore, and any thoughts or advice you have for making life more rewarding and more fulfilling.
Believe in yourself. You've heard that the secret to success is to "believe in yourself." But have you ever noticed that no one ever tells you HOW to believe in yourself?
Today, more and more people believe in themselves less and less. That's because we've lost so much (money, wealth, prestige) in recent years. Loss leads to lack of self-belief, which leads to more loss, which leads to even lower self-belief.
The four main reasons people don't believe in themselves are:
1. Lack of accurate mirroring 2. Lack of positive experience 3. Lack of self-confidence 4. Lack of empowering daily habits
You can believe in yourself starting today by following these four proven steps:
1. Find a Loving Mirror.
A Loving Mirror is a person who believes in you, even when you don't believe in yourself. The Naturals of Success each had at least one person who showed them their potential, even when they didn't believe it themselves.
You can find Loving Mirrors in your own family, your friends or even work associates. Start by acknowledging the good you see in others, then ask for the support you need.
2. Transfer your experience.
If you've never done something, how are you supposed to believe you can do it? The first time you do something is, by definition, something you haven't done before. Yet, most people don't realize you can believe you can do something before you ever do it.
Let's say you're about to appear on TV for the first time. Remember when you succeeded at other things, like driving a car or landing your first job. You'll start to realize you've got more experience than you think.
3. Build your self-confidence muscles.
It's true: some people are born with more innate self-confidence than others. But even if you weren't lucky enough to have been born with natural self-confidence, just like a muscle, you can build your confidence by working on it.
What builds self-confidence? Use Afformations like "Why am I so confident? Why do I believe in myself? Why do I trust my intuition?" because these empowering questions focus your mind on why you are, in fact, confident.
4. Install empowering habits.
We each perform a number of habits every day. Most are unconscious, many are disempowering. When you exchange your disempowering habits of thought and behavior to empowering ones, and your self-belief will naturally increase.
The irony is that if you look up the word "self-belief" in the dictionary, it's not there yet. That's because I had to create that term to describe the level of belief a person has in themselves. Self-belief is different from the misleading "self-esteem" or even "self-confidence", which itself is a subset of self-belief.
Because positive self-belief leads to positive actions, which lead to positive results, which lead to even higher self-belief, building positive self-belief is critical to living a life of more wealth and happiness.
Once you break the code of having unstoppable self-belief, you can turn the tide and make the changes you really want in your life faster, easier and with far less effort.
Visit MyCodebreaker.com for a free demonstration of how to install Unstoppable Self-Belief in a fraction of the time it took most millionaires to get there.
With President Obama scheduled to promote health insurance reform at a Town Hall-style meeting in New Hampshire, both the network of lobbyist-fueled "tea-party" activists and progressives supporting reform are ramping up their organizing. Expect massive, and potentially ugly, right-wing protests outside the hall, while Secret Service and planned distribution of tickets should protect the President from any violent threats inside -- as opposed to the lynching in effigy of him and members of Congress at other events or death threats against legislators. No wonder Reps. Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi attacked such disruptions as "un-American," even as that charge infuriated right-wing pundits and the GOP. Ironically, they're accusing Democrats of impugning their patriotism, the basis of decades of GOP attacks on liberals.
Amid the GOP's tacit acceptance of mob violence as normal dissent -- no Republican has clearly urged it yet to stop -- progressives and unions are starting to make some progress in getting the voices of pro-reform citizens heard, as reported yesterday by In These Times.
Unfortunately for progressives, as Rachel Maddow reported yesterday, well-funded corporate and pharmaceutical interests are paying for extremist ads and fomenting mob-style turnouts at the health care Town Halls:
And, according to a memo describing a GOP "tea-party" conference call last week for right-wing activists, right-wingers are still determined to thwart health-care reform by any means necessary; it's a "war" they intend to win. Written by a progressive source who listened in to the call as an undercover operative, the conference call featured some major players on the right:
A Republican strategy conference call on August 7th brought together right-wing activists from anti-tax groups, anti-health care organizations, and small government associations--all under the guidance of the National Tax Limitation Committee, the American Liberty Alliance, the "Tea Party Patriots", RecessRally.com, and the infamous Dr. Laffer. The call began with attacks on Paul Krugman, George Soros, MSNBC, and liberals in general. The moderator then asserted that their movement is indeed a grassroots one and that the August fight is a "war." There were repeated attacks on unions, particularly SEIU (cited Kathy Castor town hall in Tampa).
The right-wingers made clear there was no room for compromise in their "war." As the undercover scribe reported:
"Apparently we on the left aren't the only ones frustrated with the Senate Finance Committee. Listeners on the call were encouraged to actively protest Senators Grassley, Enzi, and Snowe in order to stop them from negotiating with Democrats. The moderator said, "The goal is not compromise, and ANY bill coming out this year would be a failure for us... because the Democrats will turn even a weak bill from the Senate Finance Committee into Canadian-style single-payer through underhanded implementation." They called for mass protests in Iowa in order to sway Grassley."
The conference call produced some memorable quotes from the organizers:
•"We have an opportunity to realistically kill Obama's agenda."
• "There's a lot of coverage for poor people out there already that the Democrats don't want you to know about. It's just not on the radar screen."
• "The purpose of Tea Parties is not to find a solution to the health care crisis--it is to stop what is not the solution: Obamacare."
• When asked if we should get rid of Medicare because it is government health care: "Who is this asking?! I don't have to answer that."
The organizers of these events are being aided by a little-known network of right-wing, corporate-funded organizations and websites exposed Monday by AlterNet. Going well beyond previous reporting on the mobilizing role of the healthcare-linked FreemWorks lobbying shop run by former Majority Leader Dick Armey, the article reports:
So, while Armey's army of taxphobes is useful to [the GOP and corporations], it would be great to get some really hard-core types to further stoke the fires -- especially if marshaled by guys who know how to really tar Democrats with racist imagery and slurs of unpatriotic behavior.
That's where Grassfire.org and its brother networking site, ResistNet, come in. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who promised to make health-care reform President Obama's "Waterloo," is a big fan. Says so right there on the Grassfire Web site. ResistNet is yet another right-wing hub for organizing the disruption of health-care town hall meetings....
Adele Stan of AlterNet, after exposing the ties between health-care lobbyists, Rupert Murdoch and so-called grass-roots activists, concludes her overview:
Think these organizations are not the Republican establishment? Consider that the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council's PAC will feature former "moderate" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a keynote speaker.
In the corridors of Washington's K Street lobbying offices, in the district offices of Republican members of Congress, and in the executive suite of one singular mogul, the men of power must be well-pleased with themselves, watching YouTube videos of the mayhem they have unleashed on the rest of us. But they may just get their pound of flesh.
And she ends with this video from last year's political campaign getting featured again on the right in today's ugly, no-holds-barred political climate:
Our House of Representatives just recently approved $330 million for the purchase of executive jets, but responding to public outcry backed down at the last minute. The Senate is yet to be heard from. Congress' currently authorized annual budget for the National Endowments for the Arts (N.E.A.) is $155 million. Priorities that speak for themselves.
On Friday Mr. Rocco Landesman, appointed by President Obama, was confirmed as the new Chairman of the N.E.A. In a New York Times interview ("New Chairman Sees..." 08.08.09), he made it abundantly clear that he had little patience for the disdain with which politicians still seem to view the Endowment. Landesman was particularly angered by the debate and haggling over whether or not to include $50 million for the NEA in the multi-hundred billion dollar federal stimulus package. He would note incredulously, "artists don't have kids to send to college, or food to put on the table, or medical bills to pay?"
He further gave full measure to the role of the arts in the economy. Landesman was outspoken, "We need to have a seat at the big table with the grown-ups. Art should be part of the plans to come out of this recession...there has to be a place for us in domestic policy."
As significantly, Landesman talked of bringing the NEA back to its original mandate, that of supporting and nurturing excellence in the arts, nurturing the best and most creative the nation has to offer.
With that focus is inherent a profound appreciation of the towering significance of art to our society, especially as we, our nation and our civilization are engaged in a existential global struggle pitted against the deep antipathy of radical and fundamentalist Islam, its jihad pathology, despising our openness, our common values, ready to vanquish our liberties and turn women to child-bearing chattel.
Permit me to quote from a previous post ("Obama, The Arts, and Soft Power" 11.06.08):
"As never before in this century of instant communication and the dissemination of information, it is the culture of a people that projects its influence and its' standing throughout the world. Yes, armaments and weaponry still count, as does economic might, but who we are and what our values are will have far greater impact in the minds of friend and adversary alike. And it is our art, our culture of today, playwrights and actors, our song writers and musicians, our choreographers and dancers, our poets and writers, our artists and museum curators, our film makers and art visionaries of every kind. This is the America the world is keenly interested in learning more about, seeing, feeling, experiencing. It is also one of our great strengths. This is a talented and gifted land with vast reservoirs of energy to create and dream."
Just one last point on how well Mr. Landesman understands the exigencies of his new mandate. In the NY Times article he is quoted that he would immediately reinstate the grants awarded to individual artists known as the "Artists Fellowship Program". The program was expunged from the N.E.A. by Congressional mandate in one of Congress' more triumphal feckless moments, at the height of the cultural wars some 20 years ago. Though seemingly arcane, this program of awarding individual grants to artists selected by panels of peers was the heart and soul of the N.E.A. and since its absence the Endowment has been but a shadow of its former self. Back in 2002 as the Bush administration's new Endowment Chairman was to begin his mandate an Op-ed appeared in the New York Times ("To Encourage Great Art Help Great Artists" Op-ed 01.12.02) arguing the case for reinstatement. Sadly, nothing came to pass. Mr. Landesman would be doing a great service to the N.E.A., the arts and the nation if the Artist's Fellowship Program were indeed reinstated.
The work of animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is an acquired taste, one to which cultural differences can prove to be a barrier.
I'll admit that I wasn't a particular fan of Miyazaki's Oscar-winning Spirited Away or his other films. Perhaps it's my misspent Looney Tunes/Walt Disney-focused youth. For whatever reason, his work has been a little short on story and long on symbols for my taste.
But I confess: I was charmed and captivated by his newest film, Ponyo. A kind of reimagining of The Little Mermaid,Ponyo (pronounced PON-yo) has a childlike wonder wedded to dazzlingly imaginative visuals, in a story of surprising simplicity and equally surprising emotional depth.
The film's two central characters are both 5-year-old children: a boy, Sosuke (voiced by Frankie Jonas - yes, little brother to those Jonas brothers), and a girl, Ponyo (Noah Cyrus). Sosuke lives with his mother (Tina Fey) in a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean; Sosuke's father (Matt Damon) pilots cargo ships that Sosuke can see in the distance from shore. Sosuke's days are spent at a preschool, next door to the senior citizens' home where his mother works.
Ponyo starts the story as a goldfish with a human face; she looks a little like Crockett Johnson's Harold, of purple crayon fame. Ponyo and her school of identical guppy-sized siblings live in an undersea castle with her father (Liam Neeson), who has magic powers over the fish and ocean (though he breathes air within his own self-contained bubble) and wears what looks like vintage threads from Carnaby Street circa 1980.
Ponyo meets Sosuke while still in fish form, when he rescues her after she becomes stuck half-in, half-out of a glass jar. Sosuke puts her in a bucket of water and takes her to school, naming her Ponyo and proclaiming her his new best friend. So when she is recaptured by her father, Sosuke is devastated.
But Ponyo has fallen hard for Sosuke. So she uses her father's magic to transform herself into a human girl and return to shore to find him. In doing so - becoming human while practicing magic - Ponyo throws the world out of balance, causing the moon to come too close to the Earth, wreaking havoc with the tides and requiring her father and mother (the queen of the oceans) to bring things back to right.
Really, it's as broad and simple as that. But the imagery and colors are so vivid, so imaginative, so inventively enthralling that the plot tends to fall by the wayside. Miyazaki pulls you into a world of pure imagination that seems, by turns, inspired by images from Maurice Sendak, Winsor McCay and the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.
The plot hinges on true love - but a love between 5-year-olds. Yet Miyazaki makes these emotions meaningful, even compelling, thanks to the sense of wonder with which he imbues his imagery.
The English-language voice cast features a stellar lineup (including also Betty White, Lily Tomlin and Cate Blanchett). The two most talkative characters are Ponyo and Sosuke - but then, this isn't a dialogue-driven tale.
Rather, like most of Miyazaki's films, there's a dreamlike quality to the storytelling that takes it into a fairy-tale realm, even within the modern world. In this case, the magical qualities serve the story, making Ponyo a tale that will transport, physically and mentally.
For more reviews, interviews and commentary, visit my website:www.hollywoodandfine.com.
The generally well-reviewed broadcast Monday of HBO's Nine Lives of Marion Barry shows just how riveting real-life melodramas can be. The rise and fall of Marion Barry from civil-rights activist to crack-smoking mayor to a councilman still dogged by drug, tax and corruption charges illustrates the unique power of documentaries. They satisfy our cravings for true stories, but without the cheesy qualities that have so degraded the reality shows on TV.
And if you were lucky enough to have attended the documentary-only AFI/Discovery Silverdocs festival in Silver Spring, Maryland in June, you could have seen the film's premiere, with Marion Barry in attendance, greeted with applause by some, but hardly all, of those packed into the spacious theater's auditorium. On top of that, the festival featured an eye-popping 122 films from nearly 60 countries over the course of the week-long celebration of documentaries, drawing 25,000 attendees.
Of course the best-known footage in the former Mayor's career is in the film: Barry being busted by the feds for smoking crack and complaining, "Bitch set me up." Here's the film's trailer:
Yet, as the Daily News reviewer recapped, there was a lot more to Barry:
But as "Nine Lives" demonstrates, that was hardly the beginning of Barry's story, or the end. He served six months in jail, got out and in 1994 was elected mayor again.
Some white folks, in particular, assumed this was the people of D.C. giving an f-you gesture to The Man. This film suggests that, given Barry's history in the town, there may have been more to it.
In the 1960s, Barry was a former Eagle Scout and Ph.D. student who dropped out to join the civil rights movement.
Aggressive and confident, handsome and well-spoken, he rose rapidly. Some who knew him say he could have been a successor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a national leader.
He chose to go local, though, campaigning for empowerment of the residents of Washington, a city that was 70% black but run entirely by Congress, often the white Southerners in Congress.
After the city won at least partial sovereignty, Barry was elected mayor on a platform of reform.
It's not clear when drugs kicked in for him, since he didn't admit until years later that they did. But "Nine Lives" is not alone in suggesting a drug addict may not have been the best mayor for a city with devastating drug problems. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they also took back control of Washington.
And Barry's story rolled on.
A decade later, in frailer health and now a veteran of several drug relapses, Barry was elected to the City Council. In 2008, he was reelected.
The picture of Barry from those who knew him is no less complex. His late ex-wife, Effi, who finally left him when he went to jail, says she doesn't know the man in the hotel sting video.
Some say he's a hustler who played the system. Others, including Barry himself, say he's a victim of the disease of drugs.
A few local journalists thought the film wasn't tough enough on Barry. But as someone who lived in D.C. during much of the turmoil of his terms in office (he was nicknamed Mayor-for-Life), I agree with reviewers who feel the film offers a relatively unvarnished look at his career, although it downplayed the ongoing poverty of the inner-city residents he claimed to represent.
The film has an epilogue noting that after the 2004 reelection campaign that's featured in the film, he pleaeded guilty to tax evasion and tested positive for cocaine while on probation.
But the film was completed before even newer allegations were revealed in July involving alleged corruption in contracts and the gritty details of a tawdry obsession leading to an arrest for a stalking accusationlodged by an ex-girlfriend; Barry was arrested, but the charges were later dropped.
With so much real-life melodrama, who needs stilted reality TV shows?
And why should we make do with the emotional rants of Tyra Banks on America's Next Model or the machinations of Donald Trump when we can follow the mood swings, tangled romantic life and alleged misbehavior of Marion Barry?
In that spirit, for almost every type of reality television show, there's an artful, more thoughtful documentary that's coming to a theater near you -- or is already new on DVD or in theaters. Many of the best have been shown, or premiered, at Silverdocs.
So for would-be fans of American Idol who don't think much of the music or personalities on the show, there's Afghan Star, which takes a touching look at a country emerging from Taliban repression absorbed in a televised national singing contest, And unlike the minor controversy over whether runner-up Adam Lampert lost fairly this year, it's really a matter of life-and-death for one young woman Afghan contestant who faces death threats after dancing a bit to the music and performing without a head scarf.
This year, the breakup of the marriage of Jon and Kate , stars of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, has been one of the biggest tabloid stories after the death of Michael Jackson. America's fascination with dysfunctional and oddball families also made The Osbournes a huge hit.
But these stories all pale next to the convoluted woes and disputes plaguing the working-class Mosher family, as chronicled by co-directors Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri, in the film festival's grand prize US feature, October Country. It's moody, amusing, stunningly filmed and riveting. As the Silvedocs guide aptly described it (with video trailer included):
OCTOBER COUNTRY is a haunting multi-generational story of a working-class family coping with poverty, teen pregnancy, foster care and the ineffable horrors of child molestation and war. A co-directing effort by filmmaker Michael Palmieri and photographer and writer Donal Mosher, it follows Donal's family in Herkimer, New York from one Halloween to the next, resulting in a beautifully crafted film remarkable for its intimacy, sensitivity and textured portrait of a family in crisis that has become all too familiar, if not representative, of America's poor.
And for fans of behind-the-scenes show business reality shows, from Project Greenlight to Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, there's never been any such show on TV to match the story told in The Best Worst Movie of the remarkable second life given to a cult horror film, Troll 2. That film makes Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane, and the story of these amateurish actors coping with the film's original obscurity and their new-found fame as "camp" idols is both touching and hilarious.
The film's most remarkable find is the upbeat Southern dentist and beloved local altruist, Dr. George Hardy, who starred as a featured player in the film, and is now relishing all the attention at midnight movie showings as a cult icon. As the website for the film, made by a former child actor in the movie, summarizes its appeal:
Best Worst Movie is the acclaimed feature length documentary that takes us on an off-beat journey into the undisputed worst movie in cinematic history: Troll 2.
In 1989, when an Italian filmmaker and unwitting Utah actors shot the ultra-low budget horror film, Troll 2, they had no idea that twenty years later they would be celebrated worldwide for their legendary ineptitude.
Two decades later, the film's now-grown-up child star (Michael Paul Stephenson) unravels the improbable, heartfelt story of the Alabama dentist-turned-cult movie icon and the Italian filmmaker who come to terms with this genuine, internationally revered cinematic failure.
Is Troll 2 really the worst movie ever made as claimed by IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes? Or is Troll 2, as some would claim, a misunderstood masterpiece that never fails to entertain... a work of genius? Twenty years after Troll 2 was made, the feature length documentary BEST WORST MOVIE explores the Troll 2 phenomenon through the personal story of the cast of characters that took part in its creation and why it is celebrated by fans worldwide.
And that's what makes a film festival like Silverdocs so unique: real larger-than-life characters, from the disgraced but still determine former Mayor Marion Barry to his polar opposite, the selfless, amiable small-town dentist, Dr. Hardy, both made appearances at the festival to help promote their films. And, when they're on screen, like movie stars in fictional features, you can't help but be fascinated by them:
The star of "24" is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections to health-care reform -- in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health-care system. As a youth, Tommy Douglas almost lost his ailing leg. His family could not afford treatment, but a doctor treated him for free, provided his medical students could observe. As an adult, Douglas saw the impact of widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression. Trained as a minister, he had a feisty temperament and a popular oratorical style. 
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