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Michael Moore: Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' "Rush Limbaugh" ...by Michael Moore Top
I have watched with mild amusement this week the self-immolation of the Republican Party as it bows before the altar of Rush Limbaugh, begging for mercy, pleading for forgiveness, breathlessly seeking guidance and wisdom from The Oracle. President Obama and the Democratic Party have wasted no time in pointing out to the American people this marriage from hell, tying Rush like a rock around the collective Republican neck and hoping for its quick descent to the netherworld of irrelevance. But some commentators ( Richard Wolffe of Newsweek , Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years -- an end to the war, establishing universal health care, closing Guantanamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more tax and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street -- these are all things which the MAJORITY of Americans believe in, too. That's why in November the majority voted for the guy I voted for. The majority of Americans rejected the ideology of Rush and embraced the same issues I have raised consistently in my movies and books. How did this happen? Considering how, for the past eight years, the Republican machine thought they could somehow smear and damage the Democrats if they said it was "the party of Michael Moore," it appears that the American public heard them loud and clear and decided that, 'hey, if you say Michael Moore is connected to the Democrats, then the Democrats must be OK!' During this past election, a Democrat in Michigan, Mark Schauer, was running against the incumbent Republican congressman, Rep. Tim Walberg. Schauer asked me to endorse him and campaign for him, and I did. The Republicans were thrilled. They acted like they had been handed manna from heaven. They filled the airwaves with attack ads showing pictures of me and asking voters, 'is this the guy you want influencing your congressman?' The voters of western Michigan said "YES!" and threw the Republican out of office. The newly elected congressman told me his poll numbers had gone up once the Republicans started running ads likening him to me. There have been over a half-dozen attack documentaries on me ("Michael Moore Hates America," "Fahrenhype 9/11," etc.), plus a feature film starring Kelsey Grammer and James Woods that had me being slapped silly for 83 minutes. Several books have been written by the Right in a concerted attempt to denounce me. One book, "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America," had me listed at #1. The author was so sure people would know why, he didn't even bother to write a chapter on me like he did for the other 99. You just get to the end of the book and all it says is "#1" with nothing but a big picture of me that takes up a full page. What made the Republicans so sure that Americans would recoil upon the mere mention of my name, or by simply showing a photo of my face? The result of this was one colossal backfire. The more they attacked me, the more the public decided to check out who this "devil" was and what he was saying. And -- oops! -- more than a few people liked what they saw. Overnight I went from having a small, loyal following to having millions go to movie theaters to watch... documentaries? Wow. Yes, the more the Right went after me, the more people got to hear what I was saying -- and eventually the majority, for some strange reason, ended up agreeing with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and elected Barack Obama as President of the United States, a man who promised to end the war, bring about universal health care, close Guantanamo, stop torture, tax the rich, and rein in the abusive masters of Wall Street. Think about this road I've traveled. At the beginning of the Bush years, I was pretty much an outsider, referred to as being on the "far left." I usually found myself holding viewpoints that differed from the majority of the people in this country. When I spoke out against the war -- before it even started -- I was marginalized by the mainstream media and then booed off the Oscar stage in "liberal Hollywood" for commenting about a "fictitious" president. Seventy percent of the public back then supported the war and approved of the job George W. Bush was doing. But I stuck to what I believed in, kept churning out my movies, and never looked back. The Right and the White House spokespeople came after me time after time. President Bush 41 called me an "a**" on TV, and I became a favorite punching bag at both the 2004 and the 2008 Republican National Conventions in speeches by John McCain and Joe Lieberman . On the front page of this morning's Washington Post , Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to George W. Bush, revealed -- for the first time -- the Bush White House strategy of singling me out in the hopes of turning the country against me and the Democratic Party. Here's what the Post said: Mark McKinnon, a top adviser in President George W. Bush's campaigns, acknowledged the value of picking a divisive opponent. "We used a similar strategy by making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party," he said of the documentary filmmaker. In the end it all proved to be a big strategic mistake on their part. Thanks to the Republican attacks on me, average Joes and Janes started to listen to what I had to say. Contrary to Richard Wolffe's assessment that "there were no Democrats as far as I can remember who were saying they stood with Michael Moore," Democrats, in fact, have stood side by side with me during all of this. Here's the Congressional Black Caucus supporting me on Capitol Hill in 2004. Here's Terry McAuliffe , the head of the Democratic National Committee, enthusiastically attending the premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" with two dozen senators and members of Congress. Here's a group of Democratic congresspeople endorsing my film "Sicko" in the chambers of the House Judiciary Committee in 2007. And here's President Jimmy Carter inviting me to sit with him in his box at the Democratic National Convention. Far from making me into a pariah, the Republicans helped the Democratic leadership realize that to identify themselves publicly with me meant reaching the millions who followed and supported my work. Though John Kerry lost in 2004, my focus that year had been to get young voters registered and out to vote (I visited over 60 campuses). And so, just a few short months after the release of "Fahrenheit 9/11," America's young voters became the only age group that John Kerry won. They set a new record for the largest 18- to 24-year-old turnout since 1972, when 18-year-olds were given the right to vote, thus sending a signal about what would happen four years later with the youth revolution that ignited Obama's campaign. After "Fahrenheit," I kept speaking out, the Republican machine kept attacking me, and two years later, in 2006, the American public sided with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and voted in the Democrats to take over both houses of Congress. And then, finally, two years after that, we won the White House. That's the difference -- The American people agree with me, not Rush. The American public believes that health care is a right and not a commodity. They want tougher environmental laws and believe that global warming is real, not a myth. They believe that the rich should be taxed more. They want to go after the crooks on Wall Street who got us into this mess and the politicians who enabled them. They want more money invested in education, science, technology and infrastructure -- NOT in more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. They believe that, whether Democrats or Republicans have been in power, wealthy corporations have been calling the shots for the past few decades and the American people's voices have not been heard as their country has slowly been driven into the ground. Our politicians and our media have been bought and paid for by the highest bidders and we don't trust them anymore. Finally -- they want us to get the hell out of Iraq and to investigate the criminals who sent us there for fictitious reasons. Obama and the Democrats going after Rush is a good thing and will not do for him what the Republican attack plan did for me -- namely, the majority of Americans will never be sympathetic to him because they simply don't agree with him. The days of using my name as a pejorative are now over. The right wing turned me into an accidental spokesperson for the liberal, MAJORITY agenda. Thank you, Republican Party. You helped us elect one of the most liberal senators to the presidency of the United States. We couldn't have done it without you. Michael Moore More on Barack Obama
 
Art Levine: Are DC Pundits Wrong Again? Obama, Biden Boost Pro-Union Bill's Prospects Top
The media pundits and "savvy" insider strategists who brought you GOP nominee Mitt Romney, unstoppable President Hillary Clinton and hosannas for the all-knowing Alan Greenspan may be facing another surprise over the Employee Free Choice Act. Despite some in Washington echoing conservative-fed downbeat political speculation and talking points about the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act, strong support for the bill from Barack Obama and Joe Biden at this week's AFL-CIO meeting in Miami spurred opposing reactions that tell a different story. Conservatives have offered horrified attacks while a new optimism is emerging from union supporters. One union strategist even proclaimed in an email to reporters: What have we learned this week? That the Obama Administration is 100 PERCENT behind the Employee Free Choice Act. All chatter, gossip, and innuendo to the contrary turned out to be just the usual BS pushed around by opponents of workers actually having a voice at their job. President Obama explicitly said he supports the Employee Free Choice Act. Vice President Joe Biden explicitly said he supports the Employee Free Choice Act. Sec. of Labor Solis explicitly said she supports the Employee Free Choice Act. Vice-President Biden's statement provided the clearest indication yet that not only does the Administration support the bill, it will work for it, too. As The New York Times and other news outlets reported: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave organized labor an extremely warm embrace on Thursday at the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s executive council meeting here. Mr. Biden began by thanking the presidents of several unions, including the painters, firefighters, teachers and mine workers, for campaigning alongside him in various states last fall. "It's good to be home," Mr. Biden told a ballroom in the Fountainebleau Hotel that was filled with union leaders and their aides. "The best place for me to be in my whole career is to be surrounded by organized labor." Then, he added to huge applause, "You all brought me to the dance a long time ago, and it's time we start dancing." He also championed union organizing legislation, a proposal that is becoming one of the more contentious proposals up on Capitol Hill, with battle lines already drawn between labor and business. Despite Biden's strong endorsement , the National Association of Manufacturer's blog, Shopfloor, tried its best to keep the "savvy" insider narrative line going that it was only a brief , lukewarm endorsement that didn't improve the bill's chances: Surprisingly brief comments about the Employee Free Chocie Act. In fact, just a single paragraph. The AFL-CIO leaders must be disappointed.... "So, folks, that's why there's no one thing we have to do. This is all going to be difficult, and one of the most difficult things will be to reinstitute that basic bargain. And I think the way to do that is the Employee Free Choice Act. (Applause.) "Folks, let's get it straight -- we're not asking -- we're not asking for anything we don't deserve. And we're not asking for anything that wasn't intended when the NLRB said we should be encouraging -- encouraging -- unions. We just want to level this playing field again." But, in fact, the AFL-CIO and other unions aren't disappointed at all. As the AFL-CIO blog reported yesterday: Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Council today that returning our economy to health means restoring the basic right to join a union and bargain collectively. And the way to do that is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. He quoted President Obama saying: '"I don't buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment." "If you've got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business. So let me add to that and say that I have a simple, basic belief, one that we're going to work hard to put into action: If a union is what you want, a union you're entitled to have."
 
Jonathan Melber: New York Art Fairs Adjust To The Sobering Economy Top
The Armory Show kicked off yesterday in New York, but signs of the cruel economy are looming (some literally ) over the sprawling international art fair. The organizers of the show, which drew over 50,000 visitors last year, say they expect more people this year, global economic crisis be damned. But whether this year's crowd will buy anything is anyone's guess. "I've certainly lowered my expectations," said David Zwirner, among the hottest dealers in New York and the one responsible for the Madoff watercolor (priced at $100,000). Many exhibitors had to lower more than that. With the largest booths at the fair costing $57,000, a number of galleries struggling to meet their financial commitments had to move to smaller booths--and some had to pull out of the fair entirely. Katelijne De Backer, the fair's Executive Director, told me that she made unusual accommodations to exhibitors this year, such as letting more than one gallery share a booth and financing payment plans. "I've never seen anything like this," said De Backer. "I was constantly on the phone working with galleries to help them stay in the fair." Still, De Backer and her team have reason to be optimistic. After all, the Armory Show began because of a recession, as a way for galleries to pool resources and cultivate more interest in contemporary art, and therefore more sales, than any of them could do by themselves. That was in 1994, when four New York dealers decided that organizing their own fair was the best way out of the economic slump. "We made a list of everyone we wanted to be in the fair, and eventually took three floors and had 60 rooms in the Gramercy Park Hotel," said Paul Morris, one of the founders of what was initially called the Gramercy International Art Fair. "We charged people $50 to be in it. We didn't know what we were doing." They kept doing it, though, as the art market began to rebound. After five years the fair had enough money to move to the 68th Regiment Armory, where, like its 1913 modern-art precursor, it took its name before eventually settling on the Hudson River piers. That's when the market exploded. By 2004, total art sales during the Armory Show were $43 million; the last two years they hit $85 million. Morris, who became Vice President of MMPI Art Shows & Events when it bought the Armory Show two years ago, said he's "bullish" about the future of the fair, which has significantly increased the number of galleries exhibiting work--240, up 50% from last year's 160--and, thanks to MMPI's parent company Vornado Realty Trust, plans a $100 million renovation of Piers 92 and 94 next year. At the same time, Morris was candid about market realities. "We're back to the days of wanting to break even." Helen Allen, Executive Director of the PULSE art fair, probably the most selective of the other art fairs that come to New York during the Armory Show, was similarly frank about the difference from years past. "I have no idea what to anticipate, because this is the first time that we're in this economic crunch." "The economy often tends to trigger knee-jerk reactions," said Allen, who, like her Armory Show counterparts, had to offer payment plans to keep some exhibitors in PULSE. "If people can stay the course, and be thoughtful and strategic in this economy, they'll still do well." Allen considered for a moment. "Or at least well enough, for the next few years." Yan Pei-Ming, Portrait de Bernard Madoff , 2009. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York Jonathan Melber is an attorney and co-author, with Heather Darcy Bhandari , of ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (Free Press), a professional-development guide for visual artists. He and Heather twitter here .
 
The Money Train: Philly Transit Upgrading With Federal Stimulus Money Top
AWAITING THE late-spring arrival of $200 million in economic stimulus money, SEPTA plans to create 5,590 jobs in what General Manager Joseph M. Casey called the "true spirit" of President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. "This money is a use-it-or-lose-it opportunity," Casey told the Daily News, "and if you're not ready to use it, you shouldn't be running a transit agency.
 
Aaron Greenspan: Why I Sued Google (and Won) Top
Like most Americans, I use Google's search engine several times a day without so much as a second thought. It was only in 2007 that my company's relationship with Google, Inc. temporarily escalated to that of a full-fledged customer, when Think Computer Corporation became yet another a Google AdWords advertiser. (AdWords advertisements appear on the right side of the main Google search results.) Sadly, the several ad campaigns we tried during this brief experiment failed miserably to bring in any new revenue, and so I personally went back to being just another user of Google's search service--at least until March, 2008. That's when my company signed up for the flip side of Google's advertising juggernaut: AdSense. In anticipation of a new product, Think had acquired a brand new domain name that was unexpectedly receiving a high volume of internet traffic. Instead of paying Google for Think's ads, I thought it might make more sense for Think to get paid for displaying Google's. Everything went according to plan until 11:00 A.M. on December 9, 2008. With a single click, a faceless Google employee decided that Think Computer Corporation's membership in the AdSense program "posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers," and the account was disabled with no warning. Trying to sign into the AdSense management site brought not the familiar user interface, with its limited account payment records and reports (including what Google currently owed Think, which amounted to approximately $721.00), but the following unhelpful statement, and nothing more: Your AdSense account for this login is currently disabled. We recommend checking your email inboxes for any messages we may have sent you regarding your account status. Sometimes our messages can be caught by email filters, so please be sure to check the Bulk/Spam folders of your email accounts as well. If your account was disabled for invalid click activity, please visit our Disabled Account FAQ for more information. Return to AdSense home. Knowing only that I was somehow posing "a significant risk" to advertisers, I e-mailed Google to ask about exactly what had happened. An errant automated response told me that my records could not be found. Going back and using the on-line appeal form on the AdSense web site similarly yielded no result; not even a confirmation that the appeal had been received. In the appeal I offered to send Google hundreds of pages of log files to prove that no fraud had taken place, but no one replied. More than once, I tried calling Google at its corporate offices in Mountain View. Invariably the person on the other end of the line sounded like they were approximately my age, and there's a chance I might have even gone to college with some of them, but despite all of those similarities the difference in bureaucratic flexibility could not have been more vast. While I was capable of authorizing any action on behalf of my company, Google's overachieving receptionists were not even permitted to transfer my phone call to AdSense customer service. There was no AdSense customer service. Even if there had been, it would not have mattered much. I also couldn't be transferred to any of the engineers who worked on AdSense. Or product managers. Or executives. It made no difference that I was also a paying AdWords customer. Trying a more aggressive approach, I tried instead to be transferred to the legal department. That, too, was not an option. Despite the clear existence of the legal department, I was told again and again that I was not allowed to speak with anyone in it. For the time being, I gave up. Two days after the account was disabled, on December 11, 2008, Google's AdSense team posted a message on its blog introducing a new system called "AdSense for Domains." Unlike normal AdSense ("for Content," as it was then re-branded), AdSense for Domains was designed to be used by web sites that were effectively blank. When I had tried to sign up for it previously, given that my domain name needed exactly such a service, it had been "closed"--code for "available to a limited number of companies with large numbers of domain names." Now, I was once again enraged since Google could have easily allowed me to switch over to their new service if they had merely waited two days. Another flurry of phone calls to the AdSense employees who had written on the corporate blog got me nowhere. I left voicemails about my disabled account diligently, to no avail. I even called AdWords customer support, intentionally asking for the wrong department to see if a real human being could help. These efforts netted a relatively quick e-mail rejection of my appeal form, and fairly unbelievable recordings of telephone calls with Google employee Adam C. When questioned, "Can I just ask in general why you guys have a support team for AdWords, but not AdSense?", the knowledgeable Mr C. replied, "I do not know." When asked, "Is there a project manager," he replied, "There's no one I'd be able to transfer you to." I was able to get an e-mail address for the legal department, so I e-mailed legal@google.com--and never received a reply. In the meantime, I tried to figure out what to do with my web site since I couldn't use AdSense anymore. I found Sedo, a European company that had a contract with none other than--you guessed it--Google AdSense--to display advertisements on placeholder web sites. By signing up with Sedo, I could once again use AdSense, but with one small catch. Since Sedo was the middleman, my effective rate of payment per click was somewhere between 1/5,000th and 1/10,000th of what it had been previously. Despite all of its well-meaning claims about its Terms and Conditions, it appeared that Google was willing to pay for my web site traffic after all--so long as it wasn't me receiving the money. I'd already posted once on the AdSense Forums, where thousands of AdSense partners regularly asked questions and voiced gripes about the program, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to post again, hoping someone from the Google legal team might see my concern. Again, there was no reply. I looked up the profiles for the "AdSense Experts" who answered questions in their official roles as forum moderators. Each expert had a different crayon stick-figure picture, and (useless) information about their favorite food or town, but no contact information--not even an e-mail address. With undoubtedly hundreds of employees working on advertising alone, all of them completely unreachable except in heavily scripted contexts, Google's amazing money machine was starting to look a bit more like the type of Potemkin Village the parents of the company's founders had fled decades before. I spoke with Adam C. of AdWords once more on the phone. After pointing out that in the United States of America, the accused are generally given the right to know both the crimes they are being accused of, and the identities of their accusers, Mr. C. responded by saying that such thinking did not apply to Google's terms of service. Effectively, Google's position was that it was above the law, and if not any law in particular, then at least the spirit of the law. Irked, I decided to find out if such a position was tenable. On January 15, 2009, I walked over to the Santa Clara County courthouse in Palo Alto, which conveniently fell within the same county lines as Google's home of Mountain View, and filed a civil small claims lawsuit for $721.00--the amount Google owed Think when it disabled the account--using form SC-100. For a total of $40.00 in court fees, I arranged for Google, Inc. to be served by certified mail. The hearing was scheduled for March 2, 2009. Since lawyers are not permitted in small claims court, Google instead sent Stephanie Milani, a Litigation Paralegal. During the short last-ditch-resolution period before the hearings on the afternoon schedule began, Ms. Milani argued that I must have done something wrong to deserve my fate. When I asked her what, she didn't know. The AdSense engineers had not told her. "Google can terminate your account for any reason," she told me. "Not any reason," I said. "Not because I have blue eyes. Or brown eyes." After being told to quiet down by the courtroom guard, we decided that we had reached an impasse, exchanged documents, and went back into the court room. Arguing before that day's pro tempore judge, I pointed out that my company had done nothing wrong to deserve termination of the contract, that Google could not prove any wrongdoing, that Google's fraud detection algorithm was imperfect by definition (since one cannot intuit moral intent through mathematical analysis), that advertisers must already agree to bear risk as part of the AdWords terms and conditions (clause 5), and that Google had gone to great lengths (including eliminating the ability to view account records) to make it difficult to dispute anything--all while owing Think money. In fact, terminating accounts for "posing significant risk" just when they started to earn significant amounts of money seemed like a great way for Google to cut accounting liabilities in a difficult economic climate. After my explanation, the judge had a question. "What was the reason Google gave you for disabling your account?" "Beyond, 'posing a signficicant risk to advertisers,' they didn't give a reason." I said. "I don't know." Google's Ms. Milani didn't know either. She argued that advertisers had already been refunded my $721.00, even if they hadn't asked for a refund. She claimed that Google could terminate accounts for any or no reason, and that I had agreed to such terms by signing up for AdSense in the first place. She even said that I'd admitted to violating the terms of service when I sent in my appeal form, because I had mentioned that my new domain name was only a placeholder site. In fact, clause 6 of the AdSense for Content Terms and Conditions does not allow Google to terminate accounts for "no" reason--only "any" reason. Much to my amusement, the judge interrupted her to make a point that sounded familiar. "But you couldn't terminate my account because of the color of my eyes, could you? I have brown eyes. You couldn't terminate my account because of that." Ms. Milani reiterated her previous arguments, but the judge didn't buy them. "I don't think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721," he said finally. "I think there might be money in Google's treasury for that." In the end, printed on a baby blue sheet of paper by the clerk's aging dot matrix printer, the judgment was actually entered for $761.00 total, due to the $40.00 court costs. I couldn't help but to smile in front of the judge. "But it's not fair!" Google's paralegal protested. "What if everyone whose account was cancelled sued Google?" It's a valid question. Yet until Google changes its policies to become more transparent, which might also reassure skeptics that AdWords and AdSense, which have oddly limited reporting capabilities, aren't just two sides of the same ponzi scheme (for why else would one want to terminate legitimate accounts with high monthly liabilities when they're supposed to be making money for Google on each click?)--I will give this answer: Maybe everyone whose account was cancelled, should. Aaron Greenspan is President & CEO of Think Computer Corporation and the author of Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era . More on Google
 
David Sloan Wilson: Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection VI: Individualism Top
Most people are prepared to admit that we are influenced by our cultures in ways that we don't understand. As a proverb puts it, the hardest thing for a fish to see is water. Part of the "water" of Victorian culture was an assumption of European superiority. Darwin was progressive for his time but even he was repelled by the "savages" of Tierra del Fuego. When Victorians attempted to view racial and cultural diversity through the new lens of evolutionary theory, some argued that the different races are different species, with Africans closer to the apes. Others argued that we are all one species but that cultural evolution runs along a single track, from savagery to civilization, so that the humane thing to do was make everyone else more like Europeans. Only in retrospect can we look back and see that not only are these theories wrong, but they don't even follow straightforwardly from evolutionary theory. What is the water of our culture? I would like to nominate individualism. Individualism is the belief that individuals are somehow a privileged level of the biological hierarchy; that explanations framed in terms of individual action are somehow more "fundamental" than explanations framed in terms of social action; that individual self-interest is a grand explanatory principle that can explain all aspects of humanity. For many people, these beliefs seem like common sense. Water always does. It wasn't always that way. Consider the following passage from the social psychologist Daniel Wegner: Social commentators once found it very useful to analyze the behavior of groups by the same expedient used in analyzing the behavior of individuals. The group, like the person, was assumed to be sentient, to have a form of mental activity that guides action. Rousseau (1767) and Hegel (1807) were the early architects of this form of analysis, and it became so widely used in the 19th and early 20th centuries that almost every early social theorist we now recognize as a contributor to modern social psychology held a similar view. Even in Darwin's time, the Russian naturalist and social theorist Peter Kropotkin accused evolutionary theory of being biased by the individualism of British culture, which made competition seem more commonsensical than mutual aid. Even so, Wegner's passage documents that something happened in the middle of the 20th century that made our culture even more individualistic than it was before. Margaret Thatcher's notorious quip in 1987 that "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." would have boggled the minds of the Victorians! Against this background, when evolutionists rejected group selection in favor of "the theory of individual selection" in the 1960's (see T&R IV ), they were just swimming with the other fish. At roughly the same time, a position known as "methodological individualism" became dominant in the social sciences and radical individualism became the dominant position in economics. These parallel events did not take place because scientists were talking to each other across disciplines and changing their views in a coordinated fashion. Much as scientists might like to think otherwise, their formal theories were simply reflecting a larger cultural sea change. What exactly was this sea change? I would love to know the answer to this question and urge historians of culture and science to study it, or to contact me if they already have. Nazi Germany and the cold war with Communism probably had something to do with it. With Ayn Rand there was a direct connection, since she came from Russia and had a zeal for free-market economics that rivaled religious fundamentalism, as I recount in a chapter of Evolution for Everyone titled "Ayn Rand: Religious Zealot." Another factor might have been the allure of reductionism; the belief that lower-level explanations are somehow more fundamental than higher-level explanations. Regardless of the reasons, the hyper-individualism that took hold during the second half of the 20th century became the cultural "water" for the theory of individual selection in evolutionary biology, which portrayed everything that evolves as a variety of self-interest. The zeal associated with hyper-individualism in general might also explain the zeal with which some individual selectionists argued their position, as I documented in T&R V . Thinking about science as a culturally influenced activity is a tricky business. On one hand, everyone is prepared to admit the abstract possibility and to see it clearly for past examples, such evolutionary theories of racial and cultural diversity in Darwin's day. On the other hand, most scientists don't like to admit the possibility for their own theories. To make matters worse, some scholars who study science as a culturally influenced activity conclude that science therefore has no more truth value than any other cultural belief system, such as astrology. The hardest ground to capture, it seems, is the middle ground. Science remains the best cultural system we have for holding each other accountable for our factual statements--vastly better than astrology, for example. But scientists are full of biases, many beneath their conscious awareness, just like everyone else. That's why a cultural system is required to overcome individual biases. The cultural system does a pretty good job but is especially prone to failure when everyone shares the same biases. Then there is nobody around to propose and defend an alternative hypothesis. The best solution would be to make sure that scientists are as culturally diverse as possible and to employ an army of scholars to scrutinize current scientific theories for cultural bias in a constructive way, sharing the belief that at the end of the day there can be an accumulation of knowledge that deserves to be called factual. Factual matters are definitely at stake for the issues associated with group selection. What I called "the original problem" in T&R II remains a fact. It is simply the case that "for the good of the group" traits are often locally disadvantageous. If they are to evolve at all, a selective advantage must exist at a larger scale. If group-level selection is sufficiently strong, then "for the good of the group" traits can evolve in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups. Determining the relative importance of within- vs. between-group selection is a straightforward matter of theoretical and empirical research. Even though hard work might be involved, it should be possible to determine the facts of the matter. What I called The Great Reckoning in T&R IV appeared to deliver a verdict: group-level selection is almost invariably weak compared to individual-level selection. As George C. Williams put it, "group-level adaptations do not, in fact, exist." Despite the appearance of decades, he was massively wrong. To be continued.
 
Bill Seeks To Let FDIC Borrow Up To $500 Billion Top
WASHINGTON - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is moving to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow as much as $500 billion from the Treasury Department. The Connecticut Democrat's effort - which comes in response to urging from FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - would give the FDIC access to more money to rebuild its fund that insures consumers' deposits, which have been hard hit by a string of bank failures.
 
Patricia Zohn: Culture Zohn Off the C(H)uff: Leanne Shapton Shows How Breaking Up Is Hard to Do Top
When I first heard about the book Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry , from the very cool, Very Short List , I can't say I didn't get a delicious frisson of recognition. Here's the concept: an ex-couple auctions off the accumulated detritus of their relationship. Meticulously documented like a real auction catalog with lot numbers, estimates and photographs, the arc of their love affair is laid out for all to inspect, everything from the early days of excitement and nervousness to the middle years of coziness to the end-stage tears. LOT 1044 A mix CD A CD titled Valentine Lullabies for the Lenore I Adore. Cover is a photocopied portion of an Ed van der Elsken photograph. Song list: Johnny Cash, "If You Could Read My Mind" / Björk, "Bachelorette" / George Harrison, "My Sweet Lord" / Bee Gees, "Hold On" / Nick Drake, "Northern Sky" / Caetano Veloso, "Love Me Tender" / Yoko Ono, "Mrs. Lennon" / John Lennon, "Oh Yoko" / Neil Young, "Bandit" / Beth Orton, "Dolphins." 43⁄4 x 51⁄2 in. $20-30 LOT 1037 Two pairs of clogs Two pairs of clogs from Sven of Sweden, 4401⁄2 La Cienega Boulevard. One pair powder blue women's, size 8, the other red, men's size 11. Some scuffing to leather. $30-50 LOT 1258 Self-help and relationship books The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm (Harper & Row, 1962); Why We Love by Dr. Helen Fisher (Henry Holt and Co., 2004); He's Scared, She's Scared by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol (Dell Trade Paperback,1995). $20-30 Leanne Shapton , whose brilliant execution of her concept is evident on every page of this very affordable book ( $12.24 at Amazon! ) is certainly the cleverest woman I don't know: she has made sour cherry tarts out of coconut cupcakes. Why is Ms. Shapton so effective? Things start off well enough for Doolan and Morris, her protagonists, but Shapton cannily plants the seeds of their doom and by lot 1148 you have certainly got the drift: Doolan is a smart woman looking for a steady, permanent partner, someone she can count on, and Morris is just another (talented) commitment phobe. You are drawn into their heartache by the precision of Shapton's choice of objects and images, everything from the quotidian [Two pairs of clogs, Lot 1037, plastic room keys, Lot 1133] to the chichi [,Tiffany Key Ring, Lot 1189] and their unerring, spot-on descriptions; lists of pros and cons Doolan makes as she muses about whether Morris is "the one," playlists of the CDs Morris gives her in the beginning [Valentine lullabies,Lot 1044] and increasingly guilt ridden baubles in the end [Hermes Watch, Lot 1307]. LOT 1133 A collection of hotel card keys One hundred and fifty hotel card keys, various locations, kept by Morris from his travels on assignment. 21⁄8 x 33⁄8 in. $10-20 LOT 1189 A Tiffany key ring A sterling silver Tiffany key ring. Some wear and scratches. Included is original box. 11⁄2 in. in width. $50-65 Given by Morris to Doolan with a set of keys to 11A Sherman Street. Engraved tag, barely legible, reads "L." LOT 1307 An Hermès wristwatch An Hermès Arceau women's wristwatch with blue calfskin watchband. Some wear to band, otherwise good condition. Included is original box. $500-900 Included is a handwritten note from Morris to Doolan reading: "I did not handle that at all well, and the circumstances were terrible. This is for you, and in apology, and though it wasn't meant to be this time, perhaps next? Love, Hal." Plus Doolan, a cake columnist for the New York Times , and Morris, a photographer, are so artful, tucking notes into vintage books and homemade cards, making each Playbill from things they see together the backdrop for poignant epistles in the dark. Self-help books [Lot 1258] always tell you to get rid of everything after you've broken up. No more saved emails or music or photos. Shapton reverses this homily. Besides suggesting we all have interesting lives (its not just St Laurent and Jackie O who had good stuff) she posits we can actually take the sting out of the breakup by making a little scratch off it. Part of the charm of this book is that it confers on all of our collected junk a certain weightiness that is very appealing. Life truly = art. It made me stress about my file drawer and cardboard boxes haphazardly stuffed with years of memories of ex-bf's -- none of which is cataloged. (My sis-in-law is the scrapbooker-cum-historian in our family) When I venture to open them (usually in an annual fit of nostalgia brought on at tax time), I am always surprised by the contents. While that element of surprise is refreshing it can also be horrifying: what if the earthquake slash mudslide slash fire comes and wipes it all away? We've all had our own sad experiences with the break up: the gradually lengthening separations, the tortured emails and phone calls, the repressed anger, the notes left on the fridge that bespeak misery more than milk. Shapton is not alone in mining the breakup biz. Sophie Calle is a one-woman cottage industry of breakup. (Her new show Take Care of Yourself opens April 9th -- it's about the shock and pain of the breakup email, and her subsequent revenge that enlisted scores of friends and colleagues.) And Rachael Yamagata 's recent album of love songs is about the breakup. The last lines of Elephants says everything you need to know about arming yourself against the vagaries of amour gone south: So for those of you falling in love/Keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right/Throw yourself in the midst of danger/But keep one eye open at night. Leanne Shapton takes a minute at the end of a long day art directing the NY Times Op-Ed Page to go Off the C(H)uff with the Culture Zohn, who was extremely nosy about the truth behind this marvelous book. CZ: Lenore works at the NYT. So do you. Is Lenore you? LS: I was offered the NYT job a couple of months before I finished the book, so no, I am not Lenore, but it was a funny coincidence. I do have some Lenore tendencies -- I obsessively make cakes, and lists... but I am actually a little more like Hal, though Hal is also a composite of a few close friends and ex-boyfriends. CZ: Adam (Gilders) gets the dedication, but James Truman the love. Hmmmm. LS: Adam was a very dear friend who died in March 2007. For Christmas in 2006 I gave him a couple of Truman Capote's scarves I got post-auction, and a copy of the catalog. The book was in part inspired by that catalog and obvious feelings of loss-- and thinking hard about the histories you share with people. CZ: It's a cliched question, in other words, but is this your story? LS: Yes and no, obviously a lot of that crap is mine, and many of the feelings of romance and frustration are drawn from my experience, but their particular love story is totally invented. In a way, having to prop their 4 years together and invent their scraps of paper and write their postcards put distance between me and them, and filled them out as their own characters. CZ: Are details culled from friends you acknowledge in back? Your own life? Combo? LS: Many details were culled from my own life yes, I have a problem with throwing things with any sentimental value away. I would talk to my friends about what they held onto from past relationships, what they burned, flushed or threw away. There are not very many incidents in the book that are taken from friends anecdotes, but those conversations helped me figure out what wound up in drawers and stuffed into paperbacks. They are variations on relationship experiences that I found a lot of people share. CZ: Who were your models? LS: Lenore Doolan was played by my friend Sheila Heti, a great fiction writer who lives in my old apartment in Toronto. I knew she'd done some acting and she was living in New York the summer of 2008 so I asked her if she would be my Lenore. Hal Morris was played by Paul Sahre, a very talented graphic designer with whom I've collaborated on all sorts of projects. I offered to pay them in wooden books I make and paint, and luckily for me they agreed. CZ: What is it about breaking up with someone that is so universal? LS: I suppose everyone is looking for love, and we live in a culture where we have opportunities to fall in love far more than once. (I also think there are also more varieties of love out there, like crazy hybrid tomatoes.) A person might go through the dissolution of a major love or a minor love, but the frictions and feelings are very primal -- heartbreak, longing, jealousy, anger-- etc. People often say love is universal -- which it is -- so the loss of love naturally is too. Like all good fiction, Important Artifacts takes us on a highly original journey with unique characters. I will certainly give this book to anyone I know who has had trouble with love. And who hasn't?
 
Cellphones May Spread Superbugs In Hospitals, Says Study Top
PARIS (AFP) - Cell phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria -- including the drug-resistant MRSA superbug -- and may be a source of hospital-acquired infections, according to study released Friday. Researchers from the Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey led by Fatma Ulger tested the phones and dominant hands of 200 doctors and nurses working in hospital operating rooms and intensive care units.
 
Will Bunch: What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown Top
The most talked-about journalism of this week wasn't produced the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart's epic, eight-minute takedown on last night's "Daily Show" of CNBC's clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart's motives in undertaking the piece -- after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC's faux populist ranter Rick Santelli -- but you can't argue with the results. The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL " more cowbell " sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths . As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted , "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this." But that's not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game? Here's how: 1) Great research trumps good access to the powerful: The Stewart piece makes this controversial but critical point in two different ways. For one thing, the story shows how access to the nation's most powerful CEOs -- supposedly the big advantage of a journalistic enterprise like CNBC -- isn't worth a warm bucket of spit when it results in slo-pitch softball questions, for fear of offending the rich and powerful. And so we see Ford's CEO grilled about Kid Rock's performance at the auto show, Ponzi scammer (later revealed) Alan Stanford quizzed on whether it's fun to be a billionaire, and Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo gushing at how corporate chiefs were still telling her that their companies were doing great, even as the massive iceberg was casting its shadow over the hull of the American economy. Jon Stewart's act of journalism -- reported, of course, by his ace team of writers -- worked because there were no interviews at all. It all hung instead on meticulous research, dredging up lethal quips of CNBC's stock pumping hosts to hang them with theior own undeniable words -- Jim Cramer's "buy buy buy" when the Dow was roughly double what it is today, his touting of Bear Stearns' and Bank of America's doomed stocks. The kind of research that's so hard for most newspapers to do anymore, with downsized staffs and ever-looming deadlines, but which can so often belies the spin from our "accessible" sources. 2) The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media? Balanced reporting is important, but a balanced, modulated tone of voice? Not now, not when millions are hurting from lost jobs and under-water mortgages, and many millions more are living in fear of the same fate. People need information but what they so desperately want an outlet that shares their passion -- and, yes, that rage -- and so Jon Stewart gave people what they weren't getting anywhere else. 3) Tear down this wall...of pretending that the media itself isn't a major player in American society, and isn't a factor in most big stories. Sure, there were greedy bankers and their pocketed politicians working in unintended tandem to take the Dow from 14,000 down to 6,600, but these popular TV pundits were there every step of the way, as "The Daily Show" revealed, and their contribution was consequential. Mainstream media, after all these years, has a hard time understanding that one of the major political forces in this country is mainstream media, something the audience knows all too well. 4) The First Amendment doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate. I don't know about you, if you actually watched the piece, but I feel like I learned something important -- confirming the cheerleading nature of the nation's most-watched source for business news, even in a moment of oncoming disaster -- but I also busted my gut laughing as I did. And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?. You know, sometimes people do some crazy stuff when they realize their days are numbered. I don't have the answers to problems facing American journalism -- not my own newsroom , mired in Chapter 11 , nor the others that face a possible death sentence . But fighting for life will mean living each day like it was your last, with passion, anger and laughter, the way "The Daily Show" shined a light on a crevice of the nation's battered economy on Wednesday night. More on Newspapers
 
SPOILERS: "American Idol" Picks 13 For Top 12 Top
LOS ANGELES — Thirteen turned out to be the lucky number for Anoop Desai on "American Idol." After announcing the three remaining finalists at the end of Thursday's wild card round, Simon Cowell announced that the much-loved 22-year-old college student from Chapel Hill, N.C., won a previously unannounced 13th spot in the next round of the popular Fox singing contest. In past seasons, 12 finalists were picked to move on. "We decided _ recently _ we're going to make this a top 13," Cowell revealed. The three other wild-card finalists were Jasmine Murray, the big-voiced 16-year-old high school student from Starkville, Miss.; Megan Corkrey, the quirky 22-year-old single mother from Sandy, Utah; and Matt Giraud, the soulful 23-year-old dueling piano player from Kalamazoo, Mich. The previously dismissed foursome were selected by the show's judges. Desai's last-minute selection wasn't the night's only seemingly unscripted moment. After oh-so-emotional semifinalist Tatiana Del Toro performed Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You," she kneeled and pleaded for a spot from the judges. Then, host Ryan Seacrest came on stage and told her she didn't have to get up off her knees. "Family show, family show," judge Kara DioGuardi repeatedly proclaimed throughout the awkward moment. Desai, Murray, Corkrey and Giraud join previously picked finalists Kris Allen, Danny Gokey, Alexis Grace, Allison Iraheta, Adam Lambert, Scott MacIntyre, Jorge Nunez, Lil Rounds and Michael Sarver. The 13 finalists will start competing next Tuesday _ with one singer sent packing each Wednesday. ___ On the Net: http://www.americanidol.com More on American Idol
 
Geoffrey R. Stone: Civil Unions in Illinois: One Small Step Top
By a vote of five-to-four, an Illinois House committee today approved House Bill 2234, the Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act. If adopted, the Act will provide those individuals who enter into civil unions, including both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, with "the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections, and benefits" as are afforded by Illinois law to married individuals. What were the four representatives who opposed the Act thinking? After all, we let murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and rapists get married. But they don't want to let people who love and care deeply for each other, people who have led good and decent lives, even to have civil unions - because they are gay ? What could they possibly have been thinking? It's possible, of course, that they thought they were merely supporting the views of the majority of Illinoisans. After all, we live in a democracy, so it is only natural that elected representatives should follow the wishes and preferences of their constituents. On this view, their votes were an example of democracy in action. Think again. Every public opinion poll in recent years shows that a substantial majority of Americans favors the recognition civil unions (if not same-sex marriage). Indeed, a compilation of a dozen such polls, ranging from Fox News, to Gallup, to Newsweek, to CBS, to ABC/Washington Post, to Quinnipiac, reveals that Americans favor the legal recognition of civil unions by an overwhelming 60% to 34%. Of course, it's possible that Illinois is out of the mainstream. Perhaps these legislators are reflecting the views of Illinoisans rather than of Americans. But that seems hardly plausible in a state that is today one of the bluest in the nation - a state with two Democratic senators, a Democratic governor, 58% of whose House members are Democrats, and that also happens to be the home of Barack Obama. But perhaps being a Democratic is not a good proxy for a citizen's views on the issue of civil unions. Think again. In fact, Democrats favor the legal recognition of civil unions by 63% to 32%. But elected representatives are not always supposed to represent the views of the People. Sometimes, we hope they will be independent and even courageous. Sometimes, we hope they will protect us against our own biases, prejudices, and intolerance. Sometimes, we hope they will live up to our highest ideals and aspirations, even when a majority of us have lost sight of those values. Sometimes, we hope they will be better, wiser, fairer than We the People. Certainly, there are some admirable examples of such principled and courageous behavior by elected representatives. Those officials, for example, who opposed racial segregation, challenged laws forbidding miscegenation, criticized denial of the right to vote for women, condemned the internment of Japanese-Americans, or voted against the Patriot Act -- even in the face of overwhelming majority will -- were truly heroes of our nation. They were far-sighted men and women who saw beyond the horizon in order to champion our most fundamental commitment to equality, due process of law, and individual liberty. Are the four Illinois representatives who opposed the Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act American heroes of this ilk because they stood fast in the face of the majority will? Merely to ask the question is laughable. They are not far-sighted, but blind to our nation's values and to its constant striving for moral progress. They cling to a closed-minded "tradition" that is no more consistent with American's principles of equality and individual dignity than those who defended segregation, miscegenation, and the view that a woman's place is in the home rather than in the voting booth. They will be, and already are being, run over by moral progress. The same polls I invoked earlier demonstrate the nature and magnitude of that progress, for Americans under 30 favor the legal recognition of civil unions by a resounding 67% to 27%. Even more dramatically, among my students at the University of Chicago Law School and the NYU School of Law in a course on Constitutional Decisionmaking, 94% assert not only that the law should recognize civil unions, but that the denial of same-sex marriage violates the United States Constitution. Of course, the young are not always right. But sometimes they can see more clearly than those of us who remain dully set in our ways, even when those ways are rigid, simplistic, ignorant, and cruel. What does explain the four Illinois representatives? Perhaps it is mere political partisanship. After all, Republicans oppose the legalization of civil unions by 46% to 50%. But that's hardly an overwhelming majority. That split might explain why some Republicans would oppose civil unions, but it certainly doesn't explain lockstep partisan voting. A more likely explanation, I suspect, involves religion. It is clear from the polls that the vast majority of those who oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions do so for religious reasons, and freely admit to this explanation. Indeed, the groups most vehemently opposed to civil unions are white Evangelicals (29% to 67%) and those who claim that they attend church every week (36% to 57%). But religion is not a sound basis for making law in a free society committed to the separation of church and state. On the subject of separation of church and state, it is worth noting that the Act is self-consciously titled the Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act, because it expressly states that nothing in the Act shall interfere with "the religious practice of any religious body" or compel any religious body "to solemnize or officiate a civil union." That does respect the separation of church and state. What does not respect that profound American principle is the insistence of some religious bodies on telling other religious bodies - and the state - what they may and may not legally recognize. For these four representatives to vote to deny individuals the fundamental freedom to form legally-recognized civil unions because a minority of citizens opposes that policy for religious reasons is simply a disgrace. I want to propose a thought experiment for them. Imagine it is twenty-five years from now and you are fortunate enough to be having a conversation with your grandchildren or great-grandchildren. They ask you whether you ever voted, back in the old days when you were in the Illinois legislature, on the issue of civil unions. What answer will make you shrink in their eyes?
 
Leo W. Gerard: Creep of the Week: PennyMac's Stanford L. Kurland Top
Ever since President Obama announced his plan to forestall foreclosures, many of those lucky enough to have burned their mortgages have angrily suggested that less frugal homeowners get the Creep of the Week award. While acknowledging such prodigal-neighbor-resentment, I am giving the award this week to a much more malevolent, seriously more depraved subprime creep: Stanford L. Kurland. This is a guy who profited from creation of the sub-prime mortgage crisis as former president of Countrywide Financial and who is now profiting from the wreckage caused by those sub-prime mortgages - both at the expense of taxpayers. The best description of this appeared in the New York Times in a column by op-ed writer Gail Collins : "It's like Jeffrey Dahmer selling body parts to a clinic." Or this, in a Times story by Eric Lipton : "It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it." That's from Margo Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center. The center tried to stop abusive lending by the likes of Countrywide, which during the heyday of sub-prime was the largest mortgage lender in the nation but in the past nine months has been sued by several states contending it defrauded borrowers by hawking defective mortgages that quickly went to foreclosure. The guy in the bungalow next door may have made some mistakes. He bought a house he couldn't afford with a mortgage he couldn't pay and then slid his credit card to get a big screen TV and a dirt bike for his kid. But here's the thing, when Countrywide sold him on that loan, he just didn't understand it. All the old fogies out there with their glorious fixed-rate mortgages can call him stupid. But he wasn't. He was duped. There's a reason these were called predatory loans. The prey was that guy in the bungalow next door. The predator was Stanford L. Kurland and his ilk who all profited a plenty from little guys not understanding that the low "introductory" interest rate would balloon into one that made the monthly payments completely unaffordable. Yes, some applicants lied about their income to qualify for loans, but often that was encouraged by loan processors, who made money on each loan they sold. And in other cases, the loan processors provided those false wage figures themselves for what's now known as liar loans. Ultimately, it was the banks that weren't requiring income verification or any income information at all. The neighbor reaching for the American Dream isn't at fault. It's the bankers - Kurland and company - who urged dreamers to sign the dotted line knowing the loan would never work out, knowing a bank would never grant such a mortgage if it were going to remain on the books of a local institution. That didn't happen. Mortgage brokers like Kurland pushed these loans because they knew they were going to immediately dump that trash. These loans became that oxymoron: "toxic assets." They were packaged and peddled on Wall Street in bundles as securities. Then companies like AIG sold insurance on them. It all started falling apart when the real estate market slipped. That wasn't supposed to happen. None of those Wall Street wizards who had made untold billions on this scheme had calculated a drop in the market. Suddenly, no one knew the value of the "bundles," because each contained an unknown number of good and bad mortgages. Banks started to fail. Taxpayers provided $700 billion to prop them up - including Bank of America, after it bought the financially-sputtering Countrywide. But Kurland's not hurting. He cashed out of Countrywide before its stock tanked, taking $200 million with him. He used some of that money to set up a new company: PennyMac. For about 38 cents on the dollar, PennyMac buys bad mortgages from the federal government -- which got them with taxpayer money from failing banks. Then PennyMac gives homeowners the opportunity to refinance at affordable rates - perhaps rates that Kurland, as president of Countrywide, should have been offering in the first place. Fine, Kurland's PennyMac gives the guy in the bungalow next door payments low enough to let him stay. But the cycle of mortgaging is costing taxpayers 62 cents on the dollar. Kurland's got taxpayers coming and going. And for that scam, far more than any poor homeowner, he richly deserves the Creep of the Week Award. More on Barack Obama
 
Slump Humbling Blue-Chip Stocks, Once Dow's Pride Top
The banking giant Citigroup commanded a stock price of $55 just two years ago. But at one point Thursday, as markets hurtled to their lowest close in 12 years, the shares were worth less than an item at the Dollar Store. After months of breathtaking declines, this is what Wall Street has come to: Blue-chip companies, once considered safe investments and cornerstones of the economy, are akin to penny stocks.
 

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