Monday, March 30, 2009

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Jeffrey Feldman: Fear and Anger in Michigan Top
As the economic crisis reaches the end of the early rounds, all eyes turn to Detroit--knocked to its knees by the credit crunch last November.  The news of the day: if GM wants more help getting back on its feet from Washington, there must be changes at the top.  Thus, 30-year car industry executive, Rick Wagoner, is stepping down.  One question:  If asking Rick Wagoner to leave is good for GM---and by extension, good for the country--why is there so much fear in Gov. Granholm's (D-MI) voice?  Why?  Fear and anger, that's why.  Fear and anger are rising in Michigan: Fear that things are about to get much, much worse than they already are; anger that the federal government is strong arming the Mitten State just a short while after opening up America's coffers to Wall Street with no strings attached.  New York gets what it wants, when it wants it from Washington, Michigan gets slapped in the face. The fat cats on Wall Street caused this problem, they sank the economy, and they got paid off by a robber-baron president as he scuttled out of office and tossed the keys to the new guy. Executives in Detroit get tarred and feathered and escorted to the door. Fearful, angry arguments are never subtle, never accurate, but always hotter than molten steel.  Fear and anger reduces politics down to the simplest of all logic:  they did this to us, and they will pay for it. Fear and anger are rising everywhere else, too, but in Michigan they are heating up at a pace that must have made a restful night's sleep a thing of the past for the beleaguered governor.   In an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, the tremble in Jennifer Granholm's voice is apparent: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy The governor looks tired, no question about that. But there is more than exhaustion in her voice. Granholm was not really speaking to Matt Lauer when she called Wagoner a 'sacrificial lamb.' She was speaking to the millions of Michiganders who woke up this morning fearful for the future of their families, and angry at Washington for pushing around a state that has fallen on hard times. The Obama administration must think--really think--or the fear and anger could explode into something much hotter.  We walked up to this ledge before, 75 years ago. In Studs Terkel's prophetic masterpiece Hard Times , psychiatrist Dr. David J. Rossman remembered those days: Big business in 1930 and later in '32 came hat in hand, begging Roosevelt.  They have never gotten over their humiliation, and they have never forgiven him for having the wits to do something about it The "humiliation" of GM began long ago.  It had nothing to do with the Obama administration, everything to do with a unforgiving market that turned its nose at what GM had to offer after decades of gobbling it up.  When GM fell to its knees last November and came hat in hand to the Bush administration, the people of Michigan blame their humiliation on fickle consumers and on Washington.  With hat in hand yet again and Rick Wagoner cast aside, the anger is focusing more and more on Washington alone. Fear and anger are rising in Michigan and everywhere else. This morning, there must be more than one governor worried that Michigan could be the place where flint finally meets steel. In the 30s, we are told, people never let their anger overtake them. They blamed themselves more than they blamed others.  Can the same be said today with Rush Limbaugh's broadcast bandwidth and accusations far larger and more toxic than Father Coughlin's ever were?  Will anger subside again as it did in those hard times?  In all likelihood, Jennifer Granholm does not think it will, which means Obama's auto industry plan is about far more than restructuring. The half-life of hope has come and gone in Michigan.  What the White House, GM and Chrysler do this week--and the next six weeks--could be the moment students study 100 years from now.  This was where the 2009 recovery worked or, god forbid, this is where it failed. In other words: What's good for Michigan is good for the country. (cross-posted from Frameshop ) More on Barack Obama
 
John Prendergast: Law & Order: SVU Takes On the Issue of Child Soldiers and Sex Slaves in Africa Top
Co-authored with actress Mariska Hargitay, star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit It's midnight. We are in a studio in North Bergen, New Jersey, filming take after take of a scene for an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. We're tired. It's the fourteenth hour of what will be a sixteen-hour day. We're tired, but we're ambitious. When the episode airs on March 31st, 2009. at 10PM on NBC, we need it to reach not only into households across this country, but all the way into the dense forests of one of the most troubled places on earth. The episode is called "Hell," and it is based on the experiences of child soldiers and sexual slaves in Central Africa. The history of the region is harrowing. For over two decades, the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, has brought untold suffering to the people of central Africa--for many years in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, more recently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This small but ruthless militia specializes in abducting children and enlisting them to serve as soldiers and sex slaves. Boys are brainwashed and given guns; sometimes they're forced to kill their own family members. Girls serve as "wives" for the militia commanders, often bearing their children. Over the last decade, nearly two million people in northern Uganda have been forced from their homes and into refugee camps. At the height of the conflict, the camps' squalid conditions were claiming nearly 1,000 lives per day. The children--tens of thousands of them - who would walk for miles every night to seek shelter and safety from the LRA -coined a term for their endless journeys: "night commuting". The LRA has since moved out of northern Uganda, and peace is slowly returning to the region. But the LRA's atrocities are now underway in neighboring Congo and southern Sudan. Their latest spree of brutality has already killed more than 1,000 people. The Lord's Resistance Army would not exist without Joseph Kony, its messianic, megalomaniacal leader. For years, Kony has promised to emerge from the bush and engage in peace talks. Time and again, he has proven that he is not serious about peace, and that he will resist any attempts to negotiate an end to his reign of terror. Last December, with U.S. backing, the armies of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and southern Sudan launched a joint military operation against the LRA to apprehend Joseph Kony and his key commanders and thus end the conflict. Thus far, the mission has failed. As the LRA moves to evade capture, they are looting, pillaging and killing, targeting innocent and unprotected civilians in their path. But the situation is not hopeless. A solution is actually possible. Thus far, this immense suffering has occurred largely off the radar of the Western capitals. If the suffering is to end, that radar must begin to register this crisis. If the show on Tuesday night moves you--or if this information has moved you--take a minute to write to your Senators and to President Obama and urge him to make this crisis a priority. Swift and decisive action by the administration to protect civilians from further violence can be part of a broader strategy to end the conflict. As a start, ask the president to name a Special Envoy for Central Africa to deal with the LRA and with the ongoing war in the Congo. Learn more at www.enoughproject.org. Can a TV show raise awareness, educate millions of Americans, and inspire them to demand government action that will bring an end to the scourge of child soldiers and sex slaves half a world away? It's midnight, we're filming--and we are ambitious. Join us in our ambition. Mariska Hargitay is an actress who appears in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. John Prendergast is Co-founder of Enough, the anti-genocide project at the Center for American Progress. More on Genocide
 
Mike Doyle: Pedestrian Danger at Museum Campus Top
Imagine my surprise this past Friday when I took one of my urban hikes through my downtown Chicago neighborhood and walked right into what may be the most unnecessarily dangerous pedestrian crossing in town. I was heading down the lakefront from Marina City towards the ( allegedly contemporary ) Adler Planetarium, a path which passes by the Shedd Aquarium shortly before a sharp turn east sets you on Solidarity Drive for that quarter-mile scenic stroll down the embankment towards artificially starry skies. Recent Chicago Department of Transportation reconstruction in the vicinity of Solidarity Drive has made the area a bit less convenient in recent months, with frequent road and crosswalk closures. But through it all, one critical north-south crossing across Solidarity has been maintained to make sure Museum Campus visitors --mostly families with school and stroller-age children--have access to the Adler. At least until now. On Friday, I found that last remaining crossing closed. I asked a construction worker about it. He told me, "The DOT doesn't want pedestrians interfering with cars anymore and we can't do anything about it." ( Area Map: "O" marks the spot: location of the dangerous pedestrian crossing at Museum Campus, the intersection of South Museum Park Drive and East Solidarity Drive.) The detour that replaces the now-closed, 20-second/20-foot crosswalk? A 20-minute/more than half-mile hike from the family/stroller exit of the Shedd (oh irony), counter-clockwise down Museum Campus Drive all the way to Soldier Field to the nearest open ped crossing, and then all the way back up. I kid you not. Speaking of kids, for CDOT to think kids and toddlers in strollers would be walked by their families so far out of their way instead of their parents finding some other strategy to get across is imbecilic on the face of it. ( Photo: See anything wrong with this picture? I have 114 others just like it.) And, of course, that's just what the families are doing. Lots of them. On Friday afternoon, I stood at the closed crosswalk and watched more than 100 people wade out into the middle of oncoming two-way traffic on Solidarity Drive from the north and walk 30 feet down the middle of the street to get to the nearest available south sidewalk. Making matters worse, for the entire 30-foot walk down Solidarity Drive, construction barriers and temporary fencing prevent any access whatsoever to the sidewalks on either side of the street, and (you know there had to be an and here, right?) eastbound traffic--including on Friday lots of buses, dump trucks, and cement mixers--comes flying around a blind corner after a stop sign--directly towards families crossing the street. Take a look at what I mean: ( Close-up Graphic: Follow the yellow line from the Shedd Aquarium's family/stroller exit to the Adler Planetarium...via a 30-foot walk down the middle of a two-way street with no shoulders or sidewalk access. Whatsoever.) Of course, the families need not be attempting to make the crossing. On the other hand, if you were a tired parent dragging a few screaming kids around Chicago all day, would you seriously consider taking an extra 20-minute walk in the sun instead of finding a way across the two lanes of traffic directly in front of you? I didn't just watch all those people wade into traffic. I stuck around for 90 minutes, pulled out my iPhone, and took 115 photos of them dodging traffic thanks to this oh-so-boneheaded detour decision of CDOT's. And then I made some calls to people I thought could help someone or someone's child from getting killed at this crossing. Silly me. Here's who I spoke with and here's how much help they turned out to be: 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti's Office: First I tried to contact 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti (the only Chicago alderman I ever refused to serve birthday cake ). But 20 minutes of repeatedly calling the Ward and City Hall offices never yielded a live person. So I left a message and moved on. The Chicago Police Department: I next called the CPD to report the ongoing dangerous crossing issue. The dispatcher said they'd send a car to investigate. I waited half an hour for a car to arrive, but one never did. All Mainstream TV News Desks: Amazed that neither Fioretti's office nor the CPD were of any help, being a media relations insider I pulled my phone back out and explained the problem--and the availability of heart-stopping B-roll footage--to the TV news desks of WBBM CBS 2, WMAQ NBC 5, WLS ABC 7, WGN 9, and WFLD Fox 32. They all yawned. The Bob Fioretti Call-Back: While I was calling the news stations, a woman from Fioretti's Ward office called me back. I told her I was watching waves of families wade into oncoming traffic. She told me, "We'll make some calls and let you know why that's happening." My inside voice called her a moron while my outside voice underscored the immediacy of the problem--and the fact that I'd just called every TV station in Chicago explaining the issue and telling them Fioretti's office hadn't even picked up the phone. Her next response: "I guess we can call the police and CDOT." You think? I told her I'd wait until they arrived. The CPD Drive-By: Except, arrive and investigate the situation isn't quite what the CPD did. Fly through the intersection in a marked car (see my photos, below) and then immediately leave would be a better way to put it. The WLS ABC 7 Live Truck Sit-and-Shrug: Before I became unfortunate enough to actually see some family get flattened by a cement mixer, I finally decided to head down Solidarity Drive to catch the 146 bus back home and deal with my developing sunburn. That's when I saw a WLS live truck near the Adler taking skyline shots. I walked over and showed the field producer the 115 photos I'd already taken and implored him to shoot some B roll. He shrugged. So I went back home, took a nap and some aspirin, and started to blog. That's when I realized how furious I was at every one of the above people and places I called. For an hour an a half, I watched a steady stream of parents with kids almost getting hit by cars, and the local alderman, the local police, and the local news stations did everything but laugh in my face for telling them what I was watching. I guess dangerous pedestrian crossings in Chicago aren't big news unless someone's parent or child actually dies in them. If that eventually happens at this Museum Campus crossing, you can decide for yourself where to place the blame. You can also decide for yourself how dangerous you feel the crossing is: I invite you to view the slideshow below (or click through to my full flickr photoset ) of those 115 photos of families wending their way across this hazardous and totally unnecessary crossing. At least that's my unofficial opinion about the crossing. But what do I know? I'm no CDOT planner, CPD officer, or local alderman. I was just one of the people trying to cross the street. Alive, that is.
 
The Real News: Obama Should Save the Banks, Not the Bankers Top
Tom Ferguson: Stimulus package is dangerously small; plan for toxic assets shovels money to bankers. Thomas Ferguson is a political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a Political Science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also a a contributing editor of The Nation . He is also the author of several books, the recent of which is Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political System The Real News Network 's Paul Jay sits down with Prof. Thomas Ferguson to discuss the latest government plans to help banks rid themselves of their troubled assets. Calling the economic situation simply "bad", Prof. Ferguson insists that the size of the stimulus is not capable of addressing the range of pressing issues that is facing the U.S. economy. With the unemployment rate nearing the 10 percent mark and the world economy continuing its downward momentum, Prof. Ferguson says that the size of the stimulus should have been at least 1.2 trillion dollars, if not more. Part 2 and 3 of this interview are posted on The Real News website. For further interviews or to contact Paul Jay, visit The Real News website . More on Economy
 
ProPublica: FBI Opens Investigation into Post-Katrina Shooting Victim - What Role Did the N.O.P.D. Have in the Death? Top
by A.C. Thompson , ProPublica The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining whether civil rights laws were violated in the case of Henry Glover, a New Orleans resident whose charred body was found shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit in August, 2005. Glover's death was not investigated by either local or federal agencies until The Nation and ProPublica reported late last year that he had been shot by an unknown attacker and left to die by New Orleans police. The Glover case is now the subject of inquiries by the FBI and two New Orleans Police Department units. William Tannner, 41, who was quoted by The Nation /ProPublica account of Glover's death, says he was recently interviewed by three FBI agents at the bureau's offices near the University of New Orleans. "There were a lot of questions about the police and how they treated me," said Tanner. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on the federal probe in a March 27 story . FBI Special Agent Sheila Thorne told us Saturday: "The matter is under investigation to determine whether there were any possible civil rights violations." Thorne declined to elaborate on the bureau's focus, but civil rights cases often center on law enforcement officials suspected of abusing civilians and depriving them of their constitutional rights. So far this month federal prosecutors have announced the arrest of a Wyoming state trooper for an alleged kidnapping, as well as the sentencing of two former Memphis police officers for conspiring to rob drug dealers, and the sentencing of a Lucas County, Ohio sheriff's deputy for attacking jail inmates. Federal prosecutors could use the law to bring charges against those who attacked Glover. In a city haunted by violence, Glover's demise stands apart because of the apparent involvement of the local law enforcement. A 31-year-old father of four, Glover was shot by an unknown assailant shortly after the hurricane struck, on Sept. 2, 2005, according to Tanner. Glover sought help from a group of NOPD officers, but the cops refused to treat Glover or call for an ambulance, allowing him to bleed to death in the back seat of a car, Tanner says. Police, according to Tanner, then seized both the auto and Glover's body. The car, a Chevrolet Malibu, was eventually discovered in an isolated spot along the Mississippi River. Inside was Glover's severely burnt corpse, which had been reduced to little more than ashes and bone fragments, autopsy records and photos show. No witness has yet come forward to describe how the car caught fire. In addition to speaking with the FBI, Tanner says he's been interviewed by NOPD Deputy Chief Bruce Adams of the Public Integrity bureau, and Sgt. Detective Gerard Dugue from NOPD's cold case homicide unit. During the past month NOPD officers have taken the Chevrolet into evidence, said William Hepting, a New Orleans resident who lives near the site where the car was abandoned. The scorched vehicle had been rusting on the riverbank for more than three years. A.C. Thompson's original reporting on New Orleans supported by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute , ProPublica , the Center for Investigative Reporting and New America Media.
 
Adele Stan: O'Reilly and Barbara Walters: A Very Limited View Top
One would think that with four women co-hosts, Bill O'Reilly would have been put to the test in today's appearance on " The View " (ABC), given his producer's stalking of blogger Amanda Terkel and the uproar that has followed. But not one question was asked about the Terkel stalking, or subsequent efforts by Terkel's supporters to hold O'Reilly's advertising sponsors to account for their support of this outrageous bully. Which leads one to wonder: Are the producers of "The View" so unaware of what is happening in media that they somehow missed the uproar (which was featured prominently on The Huffington Post, and to which O'Reilly rival Keith Olbermann devoted two segments)? Or was there a pre-interview agreement between O'Reilly and The View that he would not be called to account for these actions ? Quick review: two weekends ago Amanda Terkel went away for a weekend to an off-the-beaten-track town in Virginia, only to be ambushed by two male employees of O'Reilly, who stuck a camera in her face and accused her of hurting a rape victim, Alexa Branchini, and her family, and called her "dishonest." (Terkel's crime was to highlight on her blog comments O'Reilly had made about a different rape victim, Jessica Moore, in which O'Reilly virtually blamed the young woman for her own rape.) Terkel's blog post was prompted by the decision by Branchini's foundation, which advocates for rape victims, to invite O'Reilly to speak at the organization's fundraising event. (For a more complete accounting, click the links in this post.) But the clincher was the fact that O'Reilly never invited Amanda Terkel to defend her comments in-studio; instead he sent two men to trail her on the highway for two hours and then accost her. I find it deeply troubling that among the hosts of The View, none asked O'Reilly about this. Except for one, these are women known as fairly progressive -- women who've no doubt encountered discriminatory and bullying behavior by men during the course of their own careers. In letting O'Reilly slide by as they did, they enabled this known misogynist, allowing him to appear before a female audience as a nice-enough guy -- not one who would ever send a couple of guys out to stalk your daughter while she's on vacation. More on Bill O'Reilly
 
Stephen Herrington: No Vietnam is This Top
I got a high number in the first draft lottery and was not required to go and did not go to Vietnam. Whatever reasons I had for not volunteering would seem obsequious. But, to compare our current Afghanistan involvement with Vietnam or even the Soviet experience there, as some in the more yellow of presses have been doing, is disingenuous. Jon Soltz does a very good job of deconstructing the Obama plan for dealing with the current situation in Afghanistan. I would simply add a more abstract view, if you will read on. This is not the Afghanistan that defeated the British Empire or the Soviet Union. This is not Vietnam and is in no danger of becoming a Vietnam. This is a lousy situation, purposely allowed to fester by a Republican Administration and Congress that lacked the philosophical inclination to deal with by any method other than force. It is a neo-con creation and, simply, requires an anti neo-con solution, which has been proposed by Obama. What Afghanistan and Vietnam have historically had in common is Russia, either as a tsarist or communist hegemony. The Afghans were Russian proxies fighting the British in three wars from the mid 1800s to 1919, over the trade route of the Khyber Pass. The Soviet Union fought Afghans, Afghans as proxies for the West, in the 1980s. The USA fought the North Vietnamese, Vietnamese as proxies for Russia, in our Vietnam war. We now fight, ostensibly, only Afghans and few thousands of Arab expatriates. There is a big difference. Afghanistan today is not a proxy fight between superpowers. In Vietnam it was not only a war of attrition for servicemen's lives, it was a war of economic attrition. Each side calculated the escalation of the war to match the other side against a backdrop of the unthinkable Mutual Assured Destruction. In the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a similar game was played. We gave arms and technology to the Mujahedeen in as much as we could and still avoid direct confrontation with the USSR. In these cases and in the British experience, none were fighting the Afghans, they were fighting an antagonist superpower by proxy. The Afghan conflict, in which we find ourselves, is a war simply neglected, materially and strategically. The strategy that is now moving into place was always available and just not tried, for whatever reason. In the nation of Pakistan we have had an ally in some kind of fallacious marketing sense. They have taken our money to support a government that did only dog and pony shows in lieu of containing the Taliban and Al Qaeda. If and when the Pakistani government can be brought to bear on a mission to actually attack and destroy militant elements in their northern provinces, the war will end. With Pakistani participation, the Taliban will be caught between two forces, and will not have the luxury of a safe haven like the Viet Cong, the Mujahedeen, or even Robin Hood had. They will not have funding, technology, arms and ammunition delivered through a friendly, or at least not hostile, route, and the arms and ammunition will dry up. An army isolated from armament supply is an army defeated. Defeating the social motives, which power the insurrection, is then a matter of charity. Modern military doctrine on fighting an insurrection is premised on cold war assumptions. And cold war assumptions are an uninterrupted flow of support for insurgents from local, regional and international interests. They are worst case scenarios because the cold war saw the worst cases possible. Afghanistan is, by far, not the worst case, it is the neglected case. As the noose is tightened on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the Taliban will go underground and Al Qaeda will flee to other nations. Diplomacy and reconstruction efforts will eventually mollify the Taliban. Al Qaeda will find a place to fight us where we are not. That, after all, is the first principle of guerrilla war. That new venue for Al Qaeda is likely to be Iraq. As the U.S. pulls out, Al Qaeda will move in and disrupt the fragile peace between Sunni and Shia like they did in 2005. We will be playing an international game of Whack a Mole for quite some time. In case you are wondering why the Iraq insurgency has lasted so long, it is the fault of Rumsfeld's Pentagon. On overrunning the weapons stores of Saddam's army, the third largest army in the world, Rumsfeld ordered our troops not to secure them. The stores were looted and those armaments are what still fuels the Iraqi insurgency. A more significant deed of military incompetence has not been accomplished, not since the charge of The Light Brigade. The Bush Administration built the set for an "international war on terror", enlisted the players and opened this play on the international Broadway of conflicts. In some sense it only continues to play because we keep buying tickets. At the root core of our strategy, then, must be a careful examination of what our real motives are in paying to keep this show running. More on Afghanistan
 
Ryan Moats Good Morning America Interview: Accepts Officer Robert Powell's Apology (VIDEO) Top
DALLAS - An NFL player said Monday he accepts the apology offered by a Dallas police officer who stopped him with a drawn gun in a hospital parking lot while his mother-in-law was dying inside. Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that he hopes Officer Robert Powell was sincere in his apology. Watch that Good Morning America interview here . And see the incident on tape in this report below: Powell stopped Moats' SUV outside Baylor Regional Medical Center in suburban Plano on March 18 after the vehicle rolled through a red light. Moats' wife, Tamishia, and other relatives were also in the car. The officer pulled out his gun and threatened Moats with jail as the player pleaded to be allowed to go inside the hospital. Moats' mother-in-law died before he got there while Powell write Moats a ticket and lectured him. Powell, who has been placed on paid leave pending an investigation, issued a statement Friday through his attorneys. "I wish to publicly and sincerely apologize to the Moats family, my colleagues in the Dallas Police Department, and to all those who have been rightfully angered by my actions on March 18, 2009. After stopping Mr. Moats' vehicle, I showed poor judgment and insensitivity to Mr. Moats and his family by my words and actions," Powell's statement said. Tamishia Moats said she'd like to hear the apology personally, but that she, too, would definitely accept it. According to video from a dashboard camera inside the officer's vehicle, Tamishia Moats and another woman disregarded Powell's order to get back inside their vehicle, and they rushed into the hospital. She was by the side of her mother, 45-year-old Jonetta Collinsworth, when she died a short time later from breast cancer. Powell yelled at Tamishia Moats to stay in the SUV. "Excuse me, my mom is dying," Tamishia Moats said. "Do you understand?" Ryan Moats later said the officer pointed his gun at his wife and then at him. He explained that he waited until there was no traffic before continuing through the red light. When Powell asked for proof of insurance, Moats grew more agitated and told the officer to go find it. Compiled by Katharine Zaleski. Text from AP.
 
Heidi Kingstone: The Party Isn't Over Yet for Some Top
If there is a credit crunch in London, which few doubt, it's not at Cipriani, the Italian restaurant in the heart of London's exclusive Mayfair district, where Bellinis -- fresh white peach juice and Prosecco -- cost more than $20.00 each. A delicious plate of scallops with mushrooms - almost $100.00 but then it's a main dish not a starter. That's a relief then. People of course don't go to Cipriani to eat, but to be seen and to see who they will be seen by - some of those people include Mick Jagger, Sarah Ferguson, David Beckham, and the playboy-Formula One boss Flavio Briatore with his latest "super-model" (and the Rotmans). Cipriani is a recent edition to the empire founded in Venice by the father of the current owner, which started with Harry's Bar, two steps from San Marco Square, where the Bellini was invented, and where Hemingway used to drink. The restaurant -- euro-trash central -- is a great place to sit and watch as paparazzi gather outside and the rich jostle for tables, crowding the entrance as the revolving doors keep spinning emptying people in and out. Once inside the charmed circle, you never want to leave, as if somehow, this is where life is really lived. There is a feel akin to the French revolution -- where Marie Antoinette suggested the peasants eat cake. Which is exactly what I did as they have an amazingly delicious vanilla and meringue cake that is equal in calories to the American financial debt -- about a trillion calories a slice -- not to mention cost, but that is of no concern here. If you ever wondered where all those beautiful, expensive, glamorous designer clothes get worn, you'll find them all trotted out here. Expensive, not always in the best of taste. Lots of blond hair, not much of it natural, corresponding to the plastic surgery that has nipped, tucked, turned out and straightened noses, cheeks, chins and much else that can be surgically enhanced. Amidst the buzz and pandemonium there last night was one striking table of 20 young and beautiful Italians, with the right ingredients of style and class and grooming, celebrating the birthday of a young woman with a flawless, discrete yet massive emerald, and picture perfect face. Part of this group were the inheritors/descendants of the Ferragamo family, somehow reminiscent of The Great Gatsby , carefree and happy -- seemingly unaware of the world outside. And there I was, coincidentally, in my new Ferragamo dress -- green, one of the season's hottest numbers. The old-fashioned empire has tarted up its image with a new designer from Prada. For a fleetiing moment I imagined they had turned and looked longingly at that dress -- perhaps wondering if I was related to them, but just couldn't remember how. Then they went back to celebrating, eating their chocolate cake. I can only guess it was probably the item they gave to the staff at Christmas. More on Food
 
Michael Wolff: Here's Rupert's Last Hurrah: Twitter Top
This is an inside Internet baseball column, which you might not be interested in if I don't begin with the punch line: Murdoch buys Twitter. Here's why: On Friday, late in the day, News Corp. announced that it had hired Jon Miller to run its Fox Interactive division. Miller was, several executive changes back, the head of AOL. He may be the most successful executive ever when it comes to dealing with Internet companies that will never be successful because they've been run by non-Internet companies--like Time Warner or News Corp. (Among AOL people, if you ask, the last time anything good happened there, and pretty much nothing good has happened there in near 10 years, was when Miller was running the place.) Miller, since his time at AOL, has put together a venture fund, Velocity, which has a portfolio of choice investments (among them, Broadband Enterprises and OpenX). So, it makes little sense for him to go back and run an old-line media company's dubious digital strategy. Continue reading at newser.com More on Twitter
 
Karen Nussbaum: Laid Off and Left Out Top
Somehow, in our collective outrage over $165 million in bonuses going to the very people who trashed the economy, we've ignored an even bigger scandal. Tens of thousands of laid-off workers in six states won't be receiving extended unemployment benefits, because their governors are more interested in playing party politics than in the well-being of their constituents. If you live in Alabama, Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina or Texas, you are laid off and left out. Six Republican governors have rejected, or have pledged to reject, hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus fund that would help those hurt the worst by Wall Street's irresponsibility. When AIG defrauded investors and the government, employees there took home millions in bonuses. Elsewhere, people are living unemployment check to unemployment check through no fault of their own, laid off because everyone is tightening their belts and job growth is nonexistent. Shoring up the unemployment insurance safety net is fundamental fairness. Obama's stimulus package provides $25 more per week for those who are struggling to make ends meet. Perhaps this doesn't sound like much to Alaska's Sarah Palin, who can spend more of the Republican Party's money on clothes and makeup than most Americans make in a year. But to plenty of Alaskans, it can mean the difference between paying their bills and going hungry while they search for another job. There are many who could use the helping hand. "I'm scared to death," says Elisa Perez-Alford of New Mexico. She lost her job as a social worker when the state had to cut back on spending. Now she relies on credit cards just to pay for groceries. Marvin Bohn of Ohio was laid off after 42 years in the food service industry when Antioch College shut its doors last year. He has diabetes and heart disease, a pacemaker and a defibrillator, and needs 11 medications, but he couldn't afford to continue his health coverage on the $329 a week he gets from unemployment insurance. He has run through his savings paying his medical bills out of pocket, and he has not yet found another job. It makes basic economic sense to give the stimulus money to those who need it the most, but these six Republican governors have decided their constituents don't need that money. Palin refused $160 million in funds for Alaska that would have been used for weatherization, energy efficiency grants, immunizations, air quality grants, emergency food assistance, homeless grants, senior meals, child care development grants, nutrition programs, homeless grants, arts, unemployment services, air quality, justice assistance grants and other programs. "We say no to more operating funds for positions in government," Palin said March 19. South Carolina's Mark Sanford only wants to use the federal money to pay down debt. He said the United States faces a Zimbabwe-style economic collapse if it keeps "spending a bunch of money we don't have." But state debt is only going to be expanded if thousands of formerly employed people lose their homes and have to rely on emergency rooms for their health care. What the Obama administration is asking in return for the stimulus money is that states modernize their unemployment infrastructure. States must cover the lowest-income workers and part-time workers. This seems like a reasonable thing to do when that infrastructure obviously is going to be facing some stress in the near future. Marvin Bohn is thankful the governor of Ohio isn't refusing funds, and thinks it's unfair that where you live could affect whether you get a helping hand. "It shouldn't be partisan, they should ask the people of that state," he says. "The only people who are going to say, 'No, I don't need the money, send it back,' are the people who don't need it, the people who are rich." Next Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the new monthly unemployment figures. The numbers are expected to be bad. Meanwhile, the much looked-for help the federal government has offered will be available only to those Americans whose governors aren't trying to score political points. It's time to remember it isn't just big corporations that are hurting in this economy. Let's let these Republican governors know they need to help make America work for working Americans. More on Sarah Palin
 
Mari Gallagher: Who is # 30? Top
If you read my most recent Huffington Post article or just stay current with the news, you know that the violent death toll for Chicago public school children is breaking records. As other competing stories unfold - the Olympic visit, parking meter revolts, bailouts and so on - #30 is a bit below the radar. His name was Rakeem Robinson. Last May, Rakeem and his friends were handling a loaded gun that misfired. At the time, Rakeem was a 14-year-old freshman at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy. He died this past Thursday at a Harvey treatment center where he lay for months in a coma. Rakeem is the 30th Chicago public school student to die violently this school year. And the school year's not over. Last time, I shared a map of locations of these deaths with our "deck-stacked-against-you" indicator that shows Chicago tracts with the highest concentration of African Americans, Latinos, burdened mortgage holders, high school dropouts, and lowest household incomes. To view an updated map with a few more variables, including the exact location of the shooting incident involving Rakeem and the public school he attended, go to www.marigallagher.com/projects/ . A simple map cannot predict or prevent these deadly patterns. But statistical analysis using robust block-level police and other data might point us in the right direction. That's what we hope for at the National Center for Public Research. We'll keep you posted of our progress. Meanwhile, the street violence that plagues certain locations in Detroit, Miami, Memphis, Los Angeles, Chicago and many other cities, towns and suburbs continues. Although it still feels like winter in the Windy City, summer is coming, and warm weather turns up the volume. When the temperature heats up, so do existing conditions. In my neighborhood, it means more time outside waving to friends and neighbors, planting flowers, and attending barbecues. It means longer walks with my husband and our dog. But in other neighborhoods, it means step outside and linger at your own risk. Like attracts like. Location, location, location. Two phrases. Both say a lot. Back when I was a community development practitioner, I worked on affordable housing development in a pretty tough location. One project was the restoration of a beautiful old building. In its glory days, the first floor was commercial. The second and third floors were apartments. The forth floor was an old Croatian dance hall and the fifth floor its magnificent balcony. But that was twenty years prior. When we worked on restoring the building, all that was left in the dance hall was a beat-up piano and our only tenant - which we were desperate to evict - was a liquor store with an ironclad lease. I'm not against liquor stores per se, but the street already had quite a few. Liquor, public drinking, loitering, harassing passersby, swearing, urinating, and so on set the tone. The project, with its Low Income Tax Credits and layers of financing, was already really hard. Our particular location made it harder still. One day, while the rehab was still underway, kids - or maybe gangs, who knows? - set fire to the piano, and the top floors went up in flames. Amidst screaming sirens and firefighters cordoning off the building, the liquor store never closed. All of the regulars stepped over the yellow tape, continued with their purchases, publicly imbibed, and watched the show. I would not believe such a story if I didn't witness it with my own eyes. It would never have occurred to me that any human being would enter a burning building to buy a fifth of Jack Daniels or a quart of Schiltz from a storekeeper who would go on with business as usual. We were ultimately successful with our affordable housing project and we rid ourselves of the liquor store and its troublemakers, but it was against all odds and with begging and the scraping together of all possible financing. Considering all the federal money being spent these days, I wonder if any will trickle down to the most troubled locations? Let's review the numbers: The stimulus bill: $781 billion The housing bailout: $200 billion Fannie Mae: $200 billion Bear Stearns: $30 billion AIG: $85 billion AIG #2: $65 billion AIG #3: $30 billion The auto industry: $25 billion The auto industry #2: TBD Troubled assets relief: $710 billion Citigroup: $247.5 billion Federal Reserve: $2.95 trillion A total of $5.32 trillion. We need to help the economy get back on its feet, but it'd be great if these investments also stabilized our most troubled locations. This is not an advocacy position. It's the cold, hard data. Death by street violence and open access to guns is a daily reality for many. Who will be #31?
 
Jamie Kalven: Community Garden At Risk Top
Launch photo essay by Patricia Evans Blank slates make for easy planning. Awareness of ecological richness confounds the process, creating conditions for innovation. The purpose of this essay is to complicate the planning process for the new Chicago Theological Seminary building to be constructed on the south campus of the University of Chicago. When the larger urban ecology is made visible, this project becomes at once problematic and full of promise--ripe for elegant design solutions. In May of last year, the University announced it had entered into an agreement to purchase the CTS complex at the center of its campus. It plans to use the structure to house the Milton Friedman Institute (a name that provoked intense controversy , even before the economic crisis sharpened questions about the wisdom of unregulated markets). As part of the agreement, the University will build a new facility for CTS. According to the CTS website , the seminary will move in 2012 to a new building at the southeast corner of 60th Street and Dorchester Avenue: Overlooking the scenic Midway Plaisance, the planned facility will feature a LEED -compatible "green" design by Dirk Danker of Chicago-based Nagle Hartray architects. Plans call for a four-story, 75,000-square-foot structure capped by a green roof. A semi-circular, glass-enclosed chapel and meeting space will provide a welcoming setting for worship and gatherings. The lower level will accommodate future expansion. Earlier this month, the University informed neighborhood residents who participate in the community garden located at the northeast corner of 61st and Dorchester that "construction staging" for the CTS building "will necessitate clearing the current garden site after the 2009 gardening season." This information was conveyed in a letter from Sonya Malunda , Associate Vice-President for Civic Engagement, to Jack Spicer, coordinator of the community garden. Gracious in tone, Ms. Malunda's letter notes that it has been understood from the start that the gardeners' use of University land was provisional: "though we have been pleased to make this property available to the gardeners, we have all known this to be a short-term situation." On behalf of the University, Ms. Malunda offers to work with the gardeners to find a new location. No one questions the generosity of the University. Clearly, Ms. Malunda and her colleagues recognize that the community garden is something more than a vacant lot awaiting development. Yet questions persist. Are University planners properly valuing the garden as an asset (to the U of C as well as the community)? What are the costs of relocating it? What will be lost? Is use of the garden site for construction staging an operational necessity? Are there alternatives? Do these questions of competing values and operational logistics appear in a different light, if the planning unit is enlarged to include the entire block? * * * * Gardens are at once fundamental and elusive: fundamental in that they sustain life and are rooted in the deepest substratum of the human imagination; elusive in that they are seasonal, dormant for extended periods, and difficult to make fully visible as institutions. At 61st Street, gardeners come and go, singly and in pairs, during the day, the week, the season. Different plant species grow and ripen at various times. At any given moment, apart from peak growing season, it is difficult to bring the full reality of the garden into focus. As winter now yields to spring, the garden looks unkempt, even derelict. It takes a sustained act of imagination to comprehend how deeply cultivated it is. To see the density and intensity of attention invested in every square foot. The quiet drama of natural vitality given form by human care. The tangled roots of history, custom, and identity that make a particular place on the earth distinctive, nourishing, a means by which people know who they are. In her letter, Ms. Malunda notes that the garden topsoil "has benefited from years of preparation" and offers to relocate it to a new site. Topsoil is an apt metaphor. The garden is, in more ways than one, a well-composted place. The question is whether the social and civic values woven into the site, qualities that have grown ever richer and more intricate over the years, can simply be scooped up and relocated. The origins of the community garden go back to the 1980's. Over the past two decades, it has coevolved with the facility at 6100 South Blackstone now known as the Experimental Station . (Full disclosure: I played a small supporting role in this history, have a plot in the 61st Street garden, and direct a program at the Experimental Station.) Originally a parking garage, the structure at 61st and Blackstone was acquired in the 1970's by the Resource Center , the major independent recycling operation in Chicago, which used it as a drop-off site. At that time--indeed, until recently--61st Street marked the border between worlds, a border drawn with double strokes of race and class. To the north: Hyde Park and its central institution--the University of Chicago. To the south: Woodlawn, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. In 1986, with the assent of the Resource Center, Mike Fowler, who would later establish E-Z Tree Recycling , began to garden on land immediately to the north and west of the building. To the north, he experimented with intensive cultivation of corn. To the west, he planted apple and apricot trees and established a vegetable garden. Soon he was joined by about a dozen other gardeners; many of them residents of Woodlawn. Among the gardeners were Dan Peterman, a conceptual artist, and his wife Connie Spreen, a doctoral candidate in French literature. In 1995, Peterman and Spreen purchased the site from the Resource Center. Over time, the building and grounds evolved into a unique facility--universally referred to as "61st Street"--in which artistic and intellectual endeavors shared space with practical activities. In addition to Peterman's studio, tenants included The Baffler Magazine , a wood working shop, a bicycle coop staffed by Woodlawn youth, an organization I directed composed largely of former gang members, and an auto mechanic. Over the years, the community garden continued to mature, as did the mix of gardeners. By the late 1990's, there were roughly twenty-five individual plots. Peterman coordinated the site. He oversaw the construction of paths for navigating between plots and established a well. To the north of the building, he and Spreen started an orchard; among the trees they planted were cherry, peach, plum, apple, Asian pear, and quince. Then, in 1998, the garden was threatened by plans to expand the neighboring public school, the Andrew Carnegie Elementary School . The City sought the land dedicated to the garden for a new wing of the school. After extended negotiations, an agreement was reached under which Peterman and Spreen received compensation and a small parcel of land immediately south of the building in exchange for the garden. In 1999, the University agreed to make available to the gardeners the site across the street on the northeast corner of Dorchester and 61st. Almost a decade has now passed, and the garden, under the gentle stewardship of Jack Spicer, has thrived. It has grown to 143 plots, embracing 130 households (with more on the waiting list), while maintaining its mix of gardeners. It has remained a border institution: common ground shared by residents of Woodlawn and Hyde Park. Meanwhile, on the other side of 61st Street, an intense drama was unfolding. In 2001, fire consumed 6100 South Blackstone. All that survived were the exterior masonry walls; everything else was destroyed. The story of the fire and its aftermath, a narrative of loss and renewal, at once grim and heartening, must await another day. For the moment, suffice it to say that Peterman and Spreen summoned the resources and will to reconceive, redesign, and reconstruct the building. Borrowing a term from Frank Lloyd Wright, they renamed it the Experimental Station. Today the facility is alive with programming and activity: the 61st Street Farmers Market , Blackstone Bicycle Works , the Invisible Institute , and Backstory Cafe . And it is the venue for a wide array of community events, ranging from wood-fired bread bakes to conferences on human rights journalism, from jazz concerts to encounters with writers. During the hard years of grief and rebuilding, the institution of the garden grounded and sustained the community that had formed over time at "61st Street." Absent the garden, it is doubtful the Experimental Station would exist in the form it does today. If the garden can be said to be an important civic institution, the Experimental Station can be said to resemble a garden. To list its programs and the events that take place there tells only part of the story, just as an inventory of plants does not tell you what a garden is. A deep coherence underlies the eclectic activities of the Experimental Station: an ecological vision that values robust diversity over monoculture and is animated by core principles of generosity and hospitality. It is a cultural institution that takes us back to a root meaning of "culture"--a nourishing habitat. A central theme emerging from this fertile mix focuses on food culture: the constellation of community garden, farmers market, wood-fired bread oven, and cafe has established the conditions for active inquiry into the practical requirements of sustainable local food systems. In this time of economic distress and uncertainty, of massive dislocations and strenuous adaptations, this ongoing investigation will yield knowledge with direct implications for public policy. At the same time, these linked initiatives have enlarged the ground for civic integration. They constitute welcoming and convivial public space where those long kept apart by fear and folklore, can become, in the deepest sense, neighbors. * * * * Both the University and CTS have, in somewhat different idioms, declared their commitments to "sustainability" and "civic engagement." At the corner of 61st and Dorchester, these themes are not abstractions. They are daily practices with rich histories. The question of the fate of the garden is thus not only an issue of proper regard for a community asset. It bears directly on the mission of each institution. Consider the larger geography in which the community garden and the Experimental Station are embedded and to which the new CTS building will be added. Extending from 61st Street to 61st Place, from Dorchester to Blackstone (effectively the Illinois Central tracks), it embraces the U of C Press Building, the Steam Plant, the recently-constructed "Chiller" plant, and the Carnegie School. Here, compliments of Google Earth, is an overview: View Larger Map Although somewhat dated (it shows the now-completed Chiller under construction), this image is suggestive. It invites a design process that addresses the larger ecology into which the CTS building will be introduced rather than one narrowly focused on the individual construction project. The latter course would almost certainly yield a wasteful, avoidable, and painfully ironic outcome: construction of a new, state-of-the-art, green seminary building at the north end of the block that does injury to the life-supporting diversity and complexity that have taken hold at the south end of the block. By contrast, if the scope of the planning process were enlarged, a range of intriguing possibilities would come alive. Such a process would build upon rather than undermine the powerful design coherence that now exists along 61st Street--the complex of elementary school, garden, farmers market, bike shop, cafe, and so on. And it would orient south toward Woodlawn as well as north toward campus, establishing a gateway that would invite neighborly movement in both directions. Is such design elegance possible? Can the University and CTS realize this opportunity to advance their commitments to sustainability and civic engagement? I do not presume to have command of the range of factors the planners and architects must ultimately reconcile, but I believe these are the right questions. The necessary questions. And they are at hand.
 
F. Kaid Benfield: Strong central cities may help in weathering the recession Top
A number of things came across my desk or computer screen in the last few days that all point to the benefits of strong central cities in dealing with the recession. First, a story by Alejandro Lazo in Saturday's Washington Post once again demonstrated that central locations in our metro area are not suffering the same declines in housing values as outer locations.  I have covered this before (see also here ), but what's new is a full year's worth of data on all home sales in the area in 2008.  Only one jurisdiction in the region had its median home sales price increase, compared to 2007:  Washington, DC itself, with an 8 percent increase.       Region-wide, the median sales price declined 8 percent.  Other than DC, only three of the region's nine major jurisdictions did better than the region as a whole, and all three are close-in suburbs:  the city of Alexandria (-5 percent) and Arlington County (-7 percent) in Virginia, and Prince George's County, Maryland (-7 percent).  Frederick County, Maryland's performance was identical to that of the region as a whole with a drop of 8 percent in median price.  The two worst-performing jurisdictions are both on the metro fringe:  Loudoun (-17 percent) and Prince William (-23 percent) Counties, both in Virginia. There was, of course, lots of variation within the major areas and, in some cases, independent jurisdictions within the major counties whose data are not reflected in my limited map-making skills.  The data also do not include condo sales at all.  The Post article has all the detail.  But I think the general pattern is clear. Second, Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser, who seems to be everywhere lately , has a blog post on the New York Times site in which he discusses why some places fare better than others in depressed economies.  He examines unemployment rates, and cites the level of education in the workforce (good for employment) and the amount on manufacturing in the local economy (bad for employment) as correlating factors.  No surprises there. But then it gets interesting.  Metro areas with strong centers, it turns out, have lower rates of unemployment than those without: "A third variable that predicts the level of unemployment is the centralization of the metropolitan area. About five years ago, the U.C.L.A. economist Matthew Kahn and I wrote a couple of papers about sprawl in America's cities . One benchmark measure of decentralization that we used was the share of employment in ZIP codes that were within five miles of the metropolitan area's urban center. As the next figure [a graph accompanying Glaeser's post on the Times site] shows, January's unemployment is lowest in those areas that are most centralized. "While it is true that skilled places are more centralized, and manufacturing cities are less so, this effect continues to be statistically significant even when I control for skills and manufacturing . . . the facts do suggest that smart people, connected by urban density, are doing a better job of dealing with adversity." Glaeser's graph shows the lowest unemployment rates are found in locations with the highest numbers of jobs located within five miles of the regional center. The third thing that came to mind in the last few days is the sad plight of Detroit, a severely depressed city both highly decentralized (the least centralized on Glaeser's graph ) and highly dependent on manufacturing.  According to the Michigan Association of Realtors, the average sales price of a Detroit home fell to $13,638 in January , a 42 percent decline from the average home price in January 2008.  By at least one report , the median sales price of a home in Detroit in December was only $7,500, and that is not a typo.  Tim Jones reports in the Chicago Tribune that "Detroit, which has lost half its population in the past 50 years, is deceptively large, covering 139 square miles. Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston could, as a group, fit inside the city's boundaries. There is no major grocery chain in the city, and only two movie theaters."  The city's unemployment rate, meanwhile, is 22 percent .  Man, all that's hard to read. While the recession may do the least damage in places where centers are strong, it can be extraordinarily cruel elsewhere. Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog's home page .     More on The Recession
 
Bill Allen: Armageddon Friday Top
As astonishing as it may seem, Texans are on the verge of proving that they are not yet ready to join the 21st Century -- or maybe even the 19th. Politics and religion are about to mix and insure that "laughingstock" becomes an almost required synonym for the word "education" in Texas. The religious right -- in a move that any ayatollah in Iran would be proud to claim -- is dangerously close to substituting religious dogma for science. Right-wing mullahs, oops, er, members on the 15-member State Board of Education are determined to reinstate the religious concept of "intelligent design" into science classes throughout the state. If this happens, textbook publishers will be forced to pander to non-science in order to have their textbooks eligible for use in Texas. So what? Laughing observers in other states could just say, "Let the children of Texas be wrongly educated. It will just mean that our state will have one less competitor for the science and technology jobs in the future." Wrong. It won't be just the children of Texas who will be affected. Because of the size of the Texas schoolbook market, if Texas adopts these rules, then children across the country will have such nonsense included in their textbooks as well. Don't laugh yet. You too have a dog in this fight. It will be a close thing. The vote is Friday, and the mullahs have at least seven of the eight votes required to inflict this dogma on students for ten years. The voices of reason are not going down without a fight, however. Knowing that such a degrading of science education in the state would both jeopardize the education of students and discourage companies -- especially those in the biotech fields -- from finding qualified employees in Texas, some worried parents and business people are even expressing their concern in newspaper ads. Scientists in Texas recognize the impact of turning scientific education over to religious crusaders and, as the president of the Texas Citizens for Science notes, such action would "...put a stain on the scientific quality of the science standards written by the science experts." Heading into Friday's vote, the Board has seven votes (all Republicans) in favor of undermining science and five votes (all Democrats) to uphold science. It comes down to three people to determine whether Texas joins with reason or succumbs to the dictates of zealots. More on Religion
 
Tom Donohue: President's Budget Is a Blueprint for Economic Malaise Top
It has often been said that budgets are a statement of priorities. If that's the case, President Obama has taken his eyes off of the nation's top priority: economic recovery. Instead of proposing measures that would spur economic growth, the president's budget would dramatically increase the size and scope of the federal government, increasing the cumulative federal deficit by nearly $9.3 trillion over the next 10 years. By 2019, the level of debt held by the public would reach an astronomical 82% of GDP. To help pay for this spending, the president would raise taxes on business by $353 billion and on high-income households, which include many small business owners, by $955 billion over the next 10 years. The budget also includes the auction of carbon emissions credits, which amounts to a $646 billion stealth tax. Taken together, these tax increases would discourage saving and investment and slow job growth at a time when the economy is mired in the steepest downturn since the Great Depression. Moreover, the budget would create a tax code that is so skewed that virtually half the taxpayers in the country would be excluded from paying federal income tax and thus have no interest in the way government is run. If that's not bad enough, some members of Congress have begun to talk about using a process known as budget reconciliation to enact sweeping changes to our health care sector. This would allow 51 senators to radically alter 16% of our economy with only limited debate. Reform is desperately needed to address the rising cost of care, uneven quality, and the problem of the uninsured, but the White House budget only includes a $634 billion place holder and no additional details. What is needed is an open and honest debate. In general, President Obama's budget proposal focuses on important long-run issues while losing sight of the immediate concerns presented by the severe weakness in the economy. The spending proposals are broad but in many cases undefined, unfunded, or underfunded. The tax provisions are simply the wrong medicine at the wrong time to cure an ailing economy. That's why the U.S. Chamber is urging Congress to reject the president's budget proposal and craft a budget that will, first and foremost, get the U.S. economy out of its current malaise and back on track for future growth. Congress should address the longer-term issues raised by the president only after the economy is growing again. More on Obama's Budget
 
Politico: 'Some Wonder' If Obama Is Doing Too Much...Michelle Obama Top
If you've been following any coverage of the White House, then you know why the economy hasn't been totally fixed yet: it's because our foolish President insists on doing "more than one thing at a time," including "wars" and "stuff that a majority of Americans put him in office to do," and "ten minutes to fill out an NCAA Bracket." AND THAT'S WHY YOU ARE POOR. But, what if it turns out that Michelle Obama was also foolishly trying to do more than one thing at a time? Because, as an Eat The Press operative points out to us today, that's exactly the contention made in a blockbuster expose by Politico this weekend . No wonder that all vital stuff that the First Lady is supposed to be working on is still broken beyond repair! Writer Nia Malika-Henderson ( who previously brought us this awesome article on the secret "black" code that Obama was using ) wants to make this point, even though it hinges on that favorite of journalistic fake-outs, the "some say" device, which gathers an unlimited supply of non-existent people to opine on a subject that no one had previously cared about: She's become the spokeswoman for all sorts of issues and topics -- from fitness, parenting, the environment and women's rights, to redefining images of black women in American culture and promoting self-esteem for young girls. Yet in the midst of all those themes, it isn't yet clear whether her self-described core messages -- about military families, volunteerism, and helping working women balance work and family life - are truly breaking through. Some wonder if she's spreading herself too thin to emerge in the public mind as a leading voice on those topics. I tell you what, here in Washington, DC, you can't swing a stick without hitting NONE PEOPLE who "wonder is [Michelle Obama] is spreading herself too thin!" Well, in fairness, there's this one person: "I think it's fragmented. She stands for so many things right now, she's doing so many things. She's in the kitchen at the White House, she's building houses, she's digging in the garden. It's all very nice, but I thought to myself, 'Why is she planting herbs?'" said Mindy Sabella, director of marketing at Siegel+Gale, which specializes in strategic branding. And Laura Bush's old press secretary warns: "It is important to stay focused on the two or three things where she can make a difference, rather than start to expand the portfolio where her impact won't be as wide or deep." Why won't Michelle Obama stop and consider the impact of doing more than three things is having on her global brand, and the important, difference-making work she's doing in the field of herb planting? Ahh, but here's where Malika-Henderson works the POWER EQUATION: Yet, for some, Obama's multi-tasking approach to the job raises the specter of Rosalynn Carter, who was dogged early on by questions of whether she was taking on too much and trying to be all things to all people. Ironically, some are raising the same "too much, too fast?" question about Michelle that they're raising about her husband, the president. Ironically, "some" = "Nia Malika-Henderson!" [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Barack Obama
 
Jacqueline Novogratz: Moving Day in Mathare Valley Top
Mathare Valley, Nairobi Mama Rose... "Will I miss anything about Mathare Valley?" the old woman wrinkled her nose and her already small eyes narrowed to quiet slits. "If you said I had to leave here in ten minutes with everything I have, I would be ready to go in nine. Now tell me, what will I miss?" The strong but petite woman is speaking faster now, her words flying, her hands in the air, her eyebrows arched. "Will I miss waking up at every noise and fearing someone is coming to rob or hurt my family? Will I miss the open sewers? Or being able to hear every sound through these tin walls, every quarrel between husbands and wives, every belch and grunt? Will I miss not being able to leave my laundry outside without it being stolen? Or fearing for my children each time they leave the home? Will I miss the darkness or the absence of anything green or the stench that never leaves the air?" she sighed. "I tell you, there is nothing I will miss. I am ready to go this very minute." Mama Rose, so called because she is the mother of Rose, though her real name is Eunice ("Our names disappear and we are given new ones when we give birth to our children," she explained), sits beside me on the frayed sofa in her tiny tin shack on one of the tumble down alleyways of Kenya's most notorious slum. She wears a pink scarf with roses on her head, a plaid woolen jacket over a black cotton dress that hangs over her small, but strong frame, looking neat and well-tended, despite the horrendous conditions just outside her door. Her house is constructed entirely of corrugated iron sheets, mostly rusted, and I wonder how many times the walls have fallen down or been burned or replaced in her 32 years of renting there. Broken sheets of linoleum partially cover the dirt floors. A few pots, pans, tea kettles and thermoses stand on a wooden shelf. The house is illuminated by a single light bulb; clothing is stored wherever there is space - on ropes strung across the walls, and piled in the two tiny rooms where she and her seven children slept each night - four in one single bed, and three on the floor so that Mama Rose can have the dignity of her own small place to sleep. The photographer Susan Meiselas and I came to Mathare Valley to see if we could better understand the trajectory of people moving from this desperate slum to Jamii Bora's development of $4,000 houses in Kaputei. It has been challenging to know if Acumen Fund's housing loan to Jamii Bora actually helps to reach the "real poor". After all, we were told, the houses cost a lot of money. To afford the monthly payments, the average person might have to make more than $4 a day. "Isn't this outside of our target group?" we wondered. At the same time, we knew that the purchasers of homes had started out with Jamii Bora as beggars and prostitutes and people barely scratching out a life. I wanted to become clearer about when and how to provide patient capital that would enable people to become not just a little less poor, but to actually have a chance of moving into middle class. Indeed, poverty has many faces, and I fear Acumen may be contributing to oversimplifying it by defining it as a single income level of "less than $4 a day." Mathare Valley lies in the valley surrounding Nairobi, a shallow bowl of land filled with 750,000 people crammed into little tin can shacks piled along narrow alleyways running with raw sewerage and the refuse of everyday life. I nearly slip several times as I gingerly walk along the pathway, concentrating on keeping my feet on stones along the path. I try to avoid not only the muck, but the jagged edges of the metal rooftops jutting into the alleyways, carefully dodging boys sniffing glue and taking sponge baths, young goats, girls doing laundry in colorful plastic basins. How, I wonder, did Mama Rose not only survive but manage to put her children through school? "I met Jamii Bora, and they told me I could lift myself out of this mess. I started selling vegetables on the street and then used my savings to take a loan to start a water point (a place for selling water) just outside my house. Then I sold little bit of soap -- you know people here like buying things in small bits." I look for an example of the soap. She points to what looked like lye. "I buy the bar for 37 shillings, and then I cut it into six pieces that I sell for 10 shillings each. If a person has very little money, I will agree to cut one of the pieces into two to sell each for 5 shillings. And you see, in other areas nearby, people sell the pieces for 15 shillings, so I get some of their customers because my prices are better. I sell tomatoes and eggs, too, and all the time I am saving, saving." The tiny store, about three by six feet and protected with chicken wire, is attached to her house. The water tap is set up right outside so that the kiosk worker can sell water as well. Thirty-two years in this place, and Mama Rose and her family are finally moving to a home in Kaputei, where she will have space and clean air, her own kitchen garden, an indoor shower and toilet, and a priceless feeling of security. More on Poverty
 
Sally Kohn: How Japan's Other Hybrid Can Save American Jobs Top
Co-written with Sanford M. Jacoby. Original version appeared in Seattle Times , Sun March 29. Today, President Obama announced that the United States government is effectively taking over General Motors and Chrysler and considering bankruptcy. But while Japanese automaker Toyota is also taking a hit as global auto sales slump, analysts expect Toyota to ultimately prevail. It's not just the Prius. Another type of hybrid built into Japan's economic model blends corporate interest with the common good. Japan's cooperative capitalism is the key to Toyota's future -- and ideally America's, too. Promoting his stimulus package, President Obama said, "If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, [it potentially] becomes much more difficult for us to get out of. We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they suffered what was called the 'lost decade.' " Yet while Japan has been used as a cautionary tale, in many ways even at the peak of its recession Japan remained better off than the United States today. Japan did not see its middle class disappear into swelling rates of poverty and unemployment. And Japan was not plagued by growing class resentment. Its inequality remained modest and its large corporations did not have bloated CEO salaries, including at those firms receiving government aid. Why? Despite some changes in recent years, most large Japanese corporations still practice a form of capitalism in which different groups with a stake in the enterprise -- owners, employees, managers, suppliers, creditors -- work together to create value. Cooperation is possible because the various stakeholders have made long-term commitments to the firm. The result is a more holistic corporation, balancing short-term opportunities with long-term needs. A large company in Japan is less likely to lay off thousands of employees simply to help its share price or to gut pension benefits to pay out higher dividends. In other words, Japanese corporations contribute to the common good rather than compete with it. American corporations (including banks), under pressure from speculative investors, prioritize driving up short-term stock prices and dividends. Executives are "aligned" with shareholder interests through stock-based compensation. But this creates an incentive for executives to boost their own compensation by taking excessive risks and by manipulating share prices. Ultimately this harms the long-term health of companies and thus the long-term health of America's economy. Toyota, for instance, refused to line investors' pockets and instead reinvested profits in capital improvements and in research and development, which led to the hybrid. By contrast, through the late 1990s, GM funneled billions of its profits to shareholders -- as dividends and share buybacks -- a fact often overlooked in discussions of what went wrong in Detroit. In stakeholder capitalism, employees participate in corporate decision-making. While unions in both Japan and the United States have declined in recent years, the level of unionization in the United States today is about half that in Japan. And in nonunion Japanese corporations, human capital still is valued more deeply. Senior human-resource executives are far more influential than in comparable American companies, where it is chief financial officers who rule the roost. And when corporations function as teams, fairness becomes an instinctive priority. In the United States in 2006, the average CEO earned more than 364 times the average U.S. worker -- a huge increase from, say, 1980, when the differential was just 40 times more. Japan, on the other hand, has one of the lowest CEO pay gaps in the world, with chief executives earning on average 10 times more than the average worker. Measurements of economic inequality find that wealth, too, is less unequally distributed in Japan. The United States ranks among the worst nations in terms of wealth inequality, at the end of the scale with South Africa and Iran. Of course, Japan is not an economic paradise. About a third of the population works in "atypical" jobs that carry no promise of employment security. These workers, mainly women and young people, don't receive the same benefits the Japanese business model provides others. Just as women and African-American and Latino men face disproportionate discrimination in the U.S. labor market, Japan's inequities, while lower overall, still exist. Nevertheless, lessons from Japan could strengthen the U.S. economy for generations to come. We can cut the gap between CEO and worker pay by giving shareholders a say in executive compensation, an idea that ideally will be ratified now that the SEC is under new management. But we need to go further. For example, we need to revamp corporate charter laws to mandate stakeholder governance and corporate accountability, to adopt laws like the Employee Free Choice Act to strengthen employee representation and to tax unearned income at the same rates applied to wages and salaries. Toyota, like Japan, is not a perfect example. The days of Japan as No. 1 are over. But it's worth noting that the first plank in the Toyota Way is: "Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term goals." That's a good place to start as we rethink the American corporation. Sanford M. Jacoby is professor of management and public policy in the UCLA Anderson School. He is author of "The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance & Employment Relations in Japan and the United States." Sally Kohn is senior campaign strategist for the Center for Community Change . Sometimes, I twitter. Will you follow me? http://twitter.com/sallykohn More on Barack Obama
 
10 Time-Lapse Nature Videos Top
The world is filled with sluggish spectacles. Watching them would be painful were it not for time-lapse photography, which can make those long stories short and remarkably entertaining. When a phenomenon happens very slowly, viewing accelerated footage helps scientists take a step back and see the big picture: At higher speeds, things that we regard as fixed take motion -- even the dullest scenes spring to life. More on Video
 
Lee Stranahan: Why I Quit My Job And Bet On My Own Creativity Top
Last Friday, right in the middle of the biggest economic crisis in a generation, I walked away from my nice, safe, secure job. I walked away from a steady paycheck, employer supplied health insurance, and a 401k. I am betting that my creativity will reap greater rewards and bring more value to myself, my family and the world than working for someone else 40 hours a week. I took back control of my time and my life. Saying that I 'bet' on my creativity makes it sound a littler crazier than it really is. A degree of risk is inherent in all our choices. My friends who are working at a 9-5 job right now are betting that they made the right choice and that they won't be unexpectedly laid off or have their hours slashed in order to save their jobs. They are betting that they will do better at their jobs. It's a bet I could no longer make. "There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin Part of the economic failure we're seeing right now comes to this hard truth - big companies have let all of us down. We've been let down as citizens, consumers, investors and employees. Companies wasted resources and lined the pockets of executives. As I watched the economy start to sink and I realized that some profitable companies were starting to use the poor economy as a way to cut costs, I knew it was time to get real and stop counting on the Corporate American Dream. It all makes me think of John Lennon's beautiful and heart wrenching song God , where he wearily lists all the things he doesn't believe in - Elvis, The Beatles, and an assortment of deities - ending with... I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That's reality. The dream is over and it just comes down to me. Once I decided that, the rush of fear and excitement began. The path was clear and it was time to start working out the details. There's never been a better time to be a creative person or artist than right now. When I started my job five years ago, the creative landscape was very different. There was no YouTube and social media was in its infancy. The costs of the tools and technologies has dropped dramatically. Today we face a scary prospect - technology and the internet has brought us almost unlimited creative possibilities. You can create work, distribute it instantly around the world and promote it yourself. It's scary because it takes away our excuses and leaves our future in our own hands Now the trick is to integrate art and commerce on our own terms, As creative people, we now have to think like business people. You can complain about this new reality or embrace it. If you want to be inspired, just look at the rock and roll, where the most creative musicians have experimented with business models as much as they did with sounds. Radiohead offered their In Rainbows album available online at a name your own price point...and they made a lot of money doing it. Bands like Nine Inch Nails and U2 are offering limited collector's edition versions of their new albums and making their most dedicated fans very happy. There are even rainbows in the the bad economic news. Seth Godin is one my favorite authors and I asked him for his thoughts on the tough economy. He said... "In a down economy, attention doesn't go away and it doesn't cost anything. If anything, it's easier to reach people because the noise level goes down. Which means cash-starved but idea-rich organizations can create ideas that spread farther and faster than ever before." There are a number of ways that quote can be apply to creatives. It's true for our own art work. I discovered this during last year's TV writer's strike, where I ended up getting a good deal of press for my political comedy due to the lack of 'noise' from broadcast television. It's also true that our services as creative people are more vital than ever to companies struggling to survive and needing someone to help them become 'idea rich'. Find those companies who are struggling and use your creativity to help them. Maybe it's the restaurant you love but who is on the verge of closing. Maybe it;'s the indie bookstore down the street or your favorite charity. It might even be the company where you work right now. Could they benefit from your knowledge of viral video or ability to design a brilliant poster? Once you take responsibility for your own time and creativity and start thinking about how you can add value to the world, this frightening economy starts to look different. I see a world full of that's in need of healing but that's full of possibility and waiting for me to let the light of my creative work to shine on it. The world needs your light, too... Lee Stranahan is moving to New Mexico to make moves and teach. He'll also be teaching a seminar on UnJobbing at The UnConvention More on Economy
 
Michealene Cristini Risley: Lyme - emerging disease or hidden epidemic? Top
Thomas Gray, the English poet once said, "Ignorance is truly bliss". "Bliss" is a wonderful form of denial if you are in the throes of disease, such as Lyme. The illness can be a painful and debilitating process, fraught with complicated treatments and medical ignorance. One can accept ignorance with an emerging disease, yet not from the organization that is responsible for setting guidelines for treatment such as the Infectious Diseases Society of America: http://www.idsociety.org/. One gets angrier when you begin to question the root of that ignorance in the national governing body. Is the behavior based on lack of knowledge or more subversive? Is there an ulterior motive to hide the truth of this ailment? The IDSA guidelines are used by health practitioners to treat the disorder and by many health insurance companies to make coverage decisions. This is the point where ignorance turns into systematic deception, when two parties attempt to squelch doctors who in their treatment have discovered that these guidelines in many cases do not work. These doctors have come under fire, in some cases losing their licenses for assisting people debilitated by this disease. There has been widespread anger by "lymies" (this is what we call ourselves) about controversial treatment options and inadequate guidelines. Still, nothing is being done, and people continue to get sick. Last May, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that his antitrust investigation "uncovered serious flaws in the Infectious Disease Society of America's process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines..." "The IDSA guidelines have sweeping and significant impacts on Lyme disease medical care," Blumenthal wrote. "They are commonly applied by insurance companies in restricting coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment or other medical care and also strongly influence physician treatment decisions." http://www.ilads.org/press_2_07.htm Several doctors in key roles on the panel were found to have conflicts of interest. "The IDSA's 2006 Lyme disease guideline panel undercut its credibility by allowing individuals with financial interests -- in drug companies, Lyme disease diagnostic tests, patents and consulting arrangements with insurance companies -- to exclude divergent medical evidence and opinion." It is not just the IDSA, The Center for Disease Control http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lyme/ states the following: "Most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics." For those of us who have Lyme disease, a few weeks of antibiotics would not begin to attack the source of bacteria let alone the co-infections and dormant phases of the illness. Unfortunately, without proper treatment, the disease takes a stronger hold on the infected; making it much more difficult to cure. For those of you who are lucky enough to not have any interaction with the disease or people infected, let me explain what Lyme disease is. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) that is commonly contracted from a deer tick bite. Researchers are also discovering that other insects such as; mosquitoes, fleas and lice may also transmit the disease. Early Lyme disease can produce a wide-range of symptoms and is different in each person. In addition to the initial diagnosis, Lyme can carry many co-infections which can make a person much sicker. The treatment options are varied and most aggressive treatment forms are not supported by traditional western medicine. For now, those of us who have the disease are left on our own to find a treatment that works. It is terribly frightening. A few years back I had spinal surgery-so I know what serious, debilitating pain is-and I would gladly opt for additional spine surgeries if I could get rid of Lyme disease. It is that debilitating. Other transmission confirmations that the general public may not be aware of; Lyme disease can be transmitted in uterus, through breast milk and blood transfusions. Some Lyme specialist believes that the disease can be sexually transmitted since the bacteria can be found in saliva and semen; this form of transmission is still in question. Another troubling aspect of the disease is ability to diagnosis the illness. In many parts of the United States, (and Lyme disease is everywhere) the diagnosis and testing are faulty. In the documentary "Under our Skin" http://www.underourskin.com many of the issues behind this disease are discussed. At one point, in the documentary, a series of "Lymies" show up on the screen. Each person states the number of doctors it took to get a proper diagnosis. Some were searching for years. My search for a diagnosis took five months and twenty-one doctors. Twenty-one doctors in the heart of Silicon Valley and in Stanford Hospitals' backyard. Before I got the diagnosis, I was told that I was pre-menopausal, iron deficient, that I had Addison's disease, Cushing's disease, Adrenal Fatigue and post-trauma from my imprisonment in Zimbabwe: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michealene-cristini-risley/gratitude-musings-after-_b_62791.html Other myths that need to be challenged include the statistics on the prevalence of Lyme disease. I contacted the CDC and talked to the San Mateo County Health Department, for the most part they were less than helpful. I was told by the San Mateo County Health Department that I am the only case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, (another co-infection) in the state of California in over 15 years. I don't believe them. Other thoughts to convey to your physician: • The number of cases, the geographical scope and the proportion of afflicted that are severe cases needs to be reviewed. Lyme disease is not decreasing, it in increasing. You can get Lyme disease during the winter. • Over 50% of those people infected by Lyme disease do not get the distinguishing rash or Bull's eye. • Over 50% of those with Lyme disease get a false-negative on the testing. We do know that Lyme disease can be debilitating. The disease needs to be researched to figure out all transmission modes for this illness. Since testing for this disease is inadequate, more research needs to be done to determine better testing mechanisms. In my own experience and in reading books such as "Cure Unknown": http://www.cureunknown.com/ so many stories of doctors and facilities that do not believe that the disease exists. Insurance companies have typically refused paying for treatments. I personally know that insurance companies are refusing many of my costs. This weekend, my insurance company, Blue Shield of California would only pay for 6 pills to rid me of parasites caused by the immune system fallout from Lyme. In order for me to get the proper prescription of the full 30 pills and to rid the parasite, I had to pay over two-thousand dollars for the additional 24 pills. I purchased enough for the weekend and will start to call Blue Shield on Monday. I wish I was kidding. Many people who have Lyme disease have sounded the alarm, yet the medical establishment is not listening. Why are there so many disbelievers in Western medicine? Why are insurance companies denying the very basic of claims? If the IDSA guidelines are in question, shouldn't the insurance companies be reviewing what is covered? Two weeks ago, I was so ill with Lyme, that I thought I was going to die. I was getting neurological symptoms, my right leg was caving in, and my mind would not work. I called the following hospitals; Stanford Hospital, Mayo Clinic, University of California-San Francisco, not a one of these top institutions would take me as a Lyme patient. I start to get an inkling what is must have been like at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. There are many issues facing our country right now. For me, Lyme disease is at the top of that list. Too many people are becoming debilitated from this disease, some are dying. It is time that the medical establishment takes the politics out of lyme and start practicing they oath they took to help the sick. You can make a difference. Get on-line, call your congress-person, call the White House at (202) 456-1414. Have a conversation with someone who has LYME disease. Help us to take action before Lyme's disease spreads further. To each his sufferings: all are men, Condemned alike to groan, the tender for another's pain; the unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! Why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.
 
Robert H. Frank: Nonsense Pronouncements About Budget Deficits Top
Last month the Congressional Budget Office projected that President Obama's recently proposed budget would add more than $9.3 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. That's one third more than the administration's own projections. If the CBO is right, our national debt in 2019 will be roughly $20 trillion, almost double its current level. On the heels of the CBO reports, cries of doom have been ringing out in the media and in Congress. The Washington Post's David Broder, for example, warned of the huge price that will fall on our children and grandchildren, "who will inherit a future-blighting mountain of debt." House minority leader John Boehner lambasted the president's fiscal irresponsibility and called for an immediate freeze in federal spending. Other doomsayers urge Congress to review the budget line by line, making draconian cuts on every page. But although long-term budget deficits are indeed a serious concern, such hysteria is almost sure to make matters worse. The two critical steps for thinking more clearly about budget deficits are, first, to distinguish between the long run and the short run, and second, to examine how the borrowed money will be spent. The consensus among economists is that the downturn may stretch well into next year and beyond. If they're right, the current short-run deficit is actually much smaller than it needs to be. Longer term, if failure to borrow meant forgoing productive investments in the post-recovery years, then bigger long-run deficits would again be better than smaller ones. But here the doomsayers have a stronger point. Long-run deficits rob us of money we could use to pay for things we value. Spending cuts, however, are not the best way to eliminate long-run deficits. It would be far better, and not particularly difficult, to avoid them by using our own money to pay for those investments. And as I will explain, we could do that by simply changing the mix of things we tax. Economists from both sides of the political aisle agree that the clear short-run imperative is to end the downturn. Herbert Hoover thought the best way to end the Great Depression was to balance the federal budget. And since falling incomes had caused tax receipts to decline precipitously, that meant deep cuts in federal spending. But as John Maynard Keynes explained in 1936, Hoover's strategy actually made matters worse. We're in a deep downturn now because total spending is too low to purchase as much as our economy is capable of producing. Consumption spending, which was artificially propped up by home equity loans and credit card debt in recent years, will not reach its earlier levels any time soon. Nor are private investors likely to bridge the gap, since firms already have more than enough capacity to produce what people want to buy. That leaves government. We need to increase government spending as quickly as possible. Much has already been written about how best to deploy the more than $2 trillion in stimulus spending that may be required. As even the most fiscally conservative economists concede, this effort will have to be financed largely with borrowed money, since higher taxes would simply delay recovery. But even the Obama budget forecasts that deficits will persist well after the economy has recovered. That's because the president is reluctant to abandon his campaign pledge to revitalize the nation's infrastructure. He proposes to pay for some of that investment with higher income taxes on top earners and by selling carbon permits as part of his program to limit CO2 emissions. But because those revenues won't be enough, he proposes to bridge the gap with additional borrowing. Perhaps the president chose that path because he believes the American public will not support additional taxes. If so, I believe he's wrong (more on this point in a moment). But surely no one who has studied voter reactions to proposed tax hikes in recent years could fault the president for holding such a belief. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the president rightly believes that additional tax revenue is unavailable. Should he then abandon his proposed revitalization program to bring the long-run budget into balance? If the investments he proposes will yield a high rate of return, the answer to that question is unequivocally no. A simple numerical example illustrates why. At current interest rates, it will cost about $40,000 a year to service each additional $1 million we borrow. Suppose we use that $1 million to pay for a public investment that yields an annual return of 7 percent, or $70,000 a year in absolute terms. Compared to the alternative of not making this investment, we would be $30,000 a year better off by making it. David Broder's dire pronouncements notwithstanding, making an investment like that with borrowed money would not impoverish our children and grandchildren. On the contrary, it would make them richer by exactly $30,000 a year. Tax phobia in the United States has led to some three decades of profound neglect of our public sphere. As a result, there's a huge inventory of public investments that would yield rates of return larger than the interest rate we pay on borrowed money. For example, because of bottlenecks that currently prevent freight trains from transporting double-decker cargo containers along the Northeast rail corridor, thousands of such containers must instead be transported by truck each day along Interstate I-95. According to one estimate, eliminating these bottlenecks would cost cost $6.2 billion and would return more than twice that amount in benefits, without even counting the value of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. It's sheer folly not to make this investment. Delayed road maintenance provides another compelling example. Blown tires, damaged wheels and axles, bent frames, misaligned front ends, destroyed mufflers, twisted suspension systems and other problems caused by potholes on U.S. roads generate an average of $120 worth of damage per vehicle each year. Adding to those costs is that when road surfaces are not maintained on schedule, the work ends up costing two to four times as much when we are finally forced to do it. If the only way to fix our roads on time were with borrowed money, our children and grandchildren would be much poorer if we refused to borrow. President Obama could invest as rapidly as available materials and manpower would permit during his entire time in office and still not exhaust the list of projects whose rate of return substantially exceeds the interest rate on borrowed money. That making such investments is the right thing to do is not a difficult or controversial point. The pundits and congressional leaders who are urging us to abandon them need to rethink. And if they refuse, we must demand an explanation. That said, we'd still end up much richer in the long run if we paid for the investments with our own money. As I argue in this month's issue of The American Prospect , there's actually a relatively simple and painless way to do that. Once the economy has again reached full employment, we should adopt a new tax system focused on behaviors that cause injury to others. Such behaviors are often profoundly wasteful. Because taxing them leads people to adapt in ways that curtail waste, it's a relatively painless way to generate additional revenue. Taxes on pollution and congestion are familiar cases in point. When Congress attacked the problem of acid rain in the 1990 Clean Air Act by effectively taxing SO2 emissions, firms were able to reduce those emissions at a small fraction of the cost associated with traditional regulatory remedies. The president's proposal for a carbon cap and trade system is a further step along this path. But there are many other promising steps he could take. Although gasoline taxes in Europe, for example, are more than $2 a gallon higher than in the U.S., motorists there have adapted in a variety of ways and actually spend less on fuel than Americans do, including taxes. And they seem no less satisfied with their driving experience than we are. The centerpiece of my proposal is to scrap the income tax in favor of a more steeply progressive tax on consumption. Each family would report its income to the IRS and also its annual savings, much as many now document their annual contributions to tax-exempt retirement accounts. A family's annual consumption is then calculated as the difference between its income and its annual savings. That amount less a large standard deduction--say, $30,000 for a family of four--is its taxable consumption. Rates would start low, perhaps 10 percent, then rise gradually with taxable consumption, topping out at significantly higher levels than current top marginal rates on income. For instance, a family that earned $50,000 and saved $10,000 would have taxable consumption of $10,000 and owe $1,000 a year in tax. The beauty of the progressive consumption tax is that it would essentially create new resources out of thin air. Contrary to the assumption of standard economic models, individual purchase decisions are heavily dependent on the spending of others. As the economist Richard Layard has written, for example, "in a poor society a man proves to his wife that he loves her by giving her a rose, but in a rich society he must give a dozen roses." Similarly, the size of house CEOs feel they need depends on the houses that executives in similar circumstances have. Because salaries of top earners have risen so sharply in recent decades, they have been building bigger houses. This has shifted the frame of reference that defines what the near rich consider necessary or desirable, so they too have built bigger, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. The median new house built in the U.S. in 2007 was half again as large as its counterpart from 1970, despite the fact that median hourly earnings had scarcely risen during the interim. To keep up, middle-income families have had to work longer hours, save less, and commute longer distances. They could escape some of this pressure by simply buying less expensive houses. But because of the link between house prices and neighborhood school quality, most families appear unwilling to take that step. To see how a progressive consumption tax would slow this expenditure cascade and free up resources for more productive purposes, it's instructive to examine how the tax would affect top earners' decisions about how big a house to build. Suppose the top marginal tax rate on consumption is 100 percent and that top earners currently live in 20,000-square-foot-houses. A substantial increase in their income has led them to consider building additions onto those houses. Each faces a choice between two designs, one at 5,000 square feet, the other at 10,000. If the pre-tax cost of the latter design is higher by $5 million, its post-tax cost will be higher by $10 million. Now suppose, plausibly, that this price penalty induces everyone to choose the smaller addition. Because it's relative house size that matters, people will be just as happy as if they'd all chosen the bigger one. (If we account for the hassle of recruiting and supervising additional help to maintain larger houses, they might even be happier!) The government gets $5 million in additional tax revenue, which it can use to hire the contractors who would have built pointless mansion additions to instead construct new overpasses on the Northeast rail corridor. Before the current downturn, the United States was the richest country on the planet. We'll still be the richest country once the downturn's over. We can easily afford to pay for worthwhile public investments with our own money. The current tax system makes it difficult to do this, because higher tax rates on income discourage private savings, the lack of which helped provoke the current downturn. The solution is to tax consumption instead of income. Higher tax rates on consumption not only do not discourage thrift, they strongly encourage it. Phased in gradually after the downturn ends, a progressive consumption tax would slowly shift the composition of spending away from consumption toward investment. Full employment would be maintained, and productivity would grow faster. President Obama was elected in large part because of his ability to persuade people to share his vision of a better future. If I am right that painless ways exist for raising the tax revenue needed to finance his ambitious program, he ought to be able to persuade the American people to embrace them. But if he can't or won't, let's hope he'll at least resist calls by Broder and Boehner to abandon the worthwhile investments he has proposed.
 
Trip Van Noppen: Time to Applaud the "New" EPA Top
One year ago, I called on Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson to resign for letting politics, not science, guide his agency's decisions. I was not alone in this call, the nearly 10,000 EPA employees were in open revolt for the same reason. Johnson was defying the Supreme Court's ruling that his agency should move forward on climate change and was refusing to approve California's forward-looking controls on climate-altering pollution. Today, I am feeling grateful that his successor, Lisa Jackson, is steering the EPA back on course with a string of good decisions, especially her action aimed at regulating one of the most toxic side effects of burning coal for power: coal ash. Coal ash, as you'll recall, became a national story just before Christmas when 1.1 billion gallons of it burst out of a holding pond in Tennessee, flooding more than 300 acres up to 25 feet deep with toxic levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, and boron. Earthjustice has been working for years to prevent this from happening, but not even this Exxon Valdez-scale disaster moved the Bush EPA to act. Fortunately, Jackson sees things differently. Only days after getting a letter signed by 109 green groups, she has promised to issue proposed coal ash regulations. She will be assisted by draft regulations we wrote and submitted to the EPA about two years ago. Getting the federal government to take coal ash seriously is a major victory as we push forward with our goal of ending coal's toxic life cycle from how it is mined to how it is used. This week the Obama adminisration announced they would reconsider permits for mountaintop removal mining which permanently destroys streams across Appalachia and causes severe harm to water quality in downstream communities. We are also encouraged that Senators Lamar Alexander and Benjamin Cardin have introduced a bill to permanently end this practice. We successfully blunted coal's expansion in Kansas and in Florida, and we are challenging plants proposed in New Mexico, Wyoming and elsewhere. Our legal, policy and public education work has helped fuel a national trend away from coal as evidenced by the 100 or so permits for plants nationwide held up because of growing opposition. Moreover, public resistance to new coal plants and the promise of tighter federal regulation has led investors to back away from new coal plants, just as the federal government's Rural Utilities Service has. Now it's time for the new EPA and Congress to make dramatic investments in renewables, conservation and efficiency and it's our job to make sure that the coal industry's considerable money and influence and the false hope of "clean coal" don't sidetrack government action. Amid the vigilance, however, let's not forget to be grateful. Join me in dropping Lisa Jackson a note , thanking her for the good work on coal ash, and encouraging her to keep mending an agency that for the last eight years abandoned its mission and the people and resources it was established to protect. More on Energy
 
Giles Slade: Writers at the End of Print Top
Newspapers are folding around the country like luxury car dealerships. There are unpaid 'furloughs' at USA Today and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reinventing itself as an Internet research firm. Denver's Rocky Mountain News has already gone belly up and it's even money that the San Francisco Chronicle -- a good paper that once reviewed my book favorably -- will soon follow. Part of this is the recession, of course. In hard times, people are less inclined to buy hard-copy newspapers especially when they can receive most of the content online for free. But much of the blame for these closures can be laid at the feet of newspaper executives since there was plenty of warning that the business was changing, and it was time to adapt the advertising base that supports daily printed news. But identifying a cause and a culprit can sometimes be useless, and few people will shed a tear for the hardships of the conglomerates that own our newspapers. The real tragedy involves the masses of newspaper employees who will join the swelling ranks of the unemployed. Some also say a deeper threat will strike down democracy as surely as the Ug99 rust fungus destroyed Asia's wheat harvest: without the watchdog of the professional free press, governments will no longer be accountable to the people. Hmmm. Let's think. It's true that if we were forced to rely on electronic journalism, democracy might well be doomed. By themselves, the literate likes of NPR, Public TV and John King would probably be insufficient to preserve the checks and balances guaranteed by the first amendment from the assaults of reality TV and Nancy Grace. Fortunately, these bastions of responsible electronic journalism are not alone. The New York Times continues to adapt its brand to the new media environment with the same acuity that enabled it to fight it's way up from the five boroughs to become an international beacon of journalism. And then there is the growing mass of non-professionals, myself included, who are brought to you by the same media revolution that is slowly bringing print to its timely end. Bloggers, vloggers, citizen journalists, text-messagers, and tweets have de-professionalized journalism, taking it out of stuffy institutional hands, and putting it back into the streets where it began. However long the transition from print to digitized texts takes, our free press will remain free on the Internet even though it looks grimier and takes considerably better judgment to determine what's sensible and what's B.S. The real upshot of the decline of print journalism is after the shaking out process there will be many fewer electronic newspapers. As e-zines and e-books proliferate, most dailies will not make the transition to e-papers. Their content is too localized. Their attitudes, audience, skills and personnel are too old. This is going to leave a lot of print people out-of-work, and what is it that journalists do when they find themselves with a lot of time on their hands? They write books. Fortunately, during the economic downturn, people are rediscovering the cheap portable medium of books. America is reading again. For these reasons, I predict a flowering of American letters over the next year or so. I can see forcibly retired journalist writing masses of popular histories, how-tos, self-helps, and contemporary analyses. These books will be able to take advantage of the benefits of the decline of print that few have noticed. It is now much easier and cheaper to publish a book than ever before. In the recession, ebooks (and the 'Indie Authors'* who write and publish them) are real comers. There are good reasons for this as April L. Hamilton points out in her truly useful book The IndieAuthor Guide. If you choose to write for Kindle, for example, Amazon does not require an expensive and hard-to-access ISBN number. You can write and publish the thing yourself in Kindle format. Amazon will pay you 35% royalties compared to the standard 12.5% of ordinary hard copy publishers. They can afford to do this since ebooks are composed of magnetic bits which are much cheaper to produce, distribute and store than print editions. Indie Authors can also publicize their Kindle editions with much greater ease than working part-time with an overloaded publicist at a traditional house. Although your home budget will probably be exactly what a traditional publisher might spend, you'll get much better results blogging about the book on Kindle sites. There are about 350,000 kindle owners, -- that number will jump exponentially in the next year -- and now Kindle editions are also readable on iPhones which makes the universe of your readership truly huge. You might make a little money, but the best part is... you will only answer to your readers. More on Newspapers
 
Sean Avery: Hockey Player And Fashion Fanatic Top
Mr. Avery is an unusual presence himself. A charmer off the ice with a fashion sense even sharper, perhaps, than David Beckham's, he worked as an intern at Vogue last summer, counts the designer Vera Wang and the actor Tim Robbins as friends -- and has twice led the National Hockey League in penalty minutes. He has a reputation as a talented player, but one despised by many others in the league. He has a dangerously unpredictable mouth -- and impeccable taste in Dries Van Noten suits.
 
Glenn Hurowitz: U.S. Corporation Poisoning Lions Top
60 Minutes had an extraordinary piece by Bob Simon last night on how U.S. poison manufacturer FMC is exporting Furadan (banned in Europe and strictly controlled in the United States) to Kenya, where it's being used to poison lions - leading to an 85 percent drop in their population: You can call FMC here and let them know what you think about their continuing to manufacture such a dangerous poison: 215-299-6000 or email them here . More on Kenya
 
Morgan Stanley: Sell Stocks Following Best S&P 500 Rally Since 1938 Top
March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Investors should sell U.S. stocks following the steepest rally since the 1930s because earnings are likely to keep weakening, according to Morgan Stanley. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index advanced 21 percent in the past 14 trading days, the most since 1938, according to data compiled by New York-based S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt. It closed at 815.94 last week, rebounding from the 12-year low of 676.53 reached on March 9.
 
G-20 Summit: Britain Tightens Security Ahead Of Meeting Top
LONDON — Thousands of extra police are patrolling London's streets ahead of this week's Group of 20 summit amid fears that terrorists could capitalize on the presence of tens of thousands of unruly protesters to launch an attack. The convergence of the two threats comes as Britain already is at a "severe" level of alert, meaning security officials believe an attack is highly likely. Bankers are being warned to dress casually _ to deflect populist anger aimed their way _ and luxury hotels are securing their perimeters for fear they could be targeted. Concern is particularly high because the last major summit in Britain _ the Group of Eight meeting in July 2005 _ was marked by deadly suicide attacks on London's transit network that killed 52 people. "We will be challenged. We will be stretched," said Simon O'Brien, a senior police commander responsible for the 7.2 million pound ($10 million) operation to secure the city during the meeting. Tens of thousands of demonstrators plan four days of protests at sites across London, threatening to overwhelm police and potentially leave the British capital more vulnerable. Britain's home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said that while no specific plot against the G-20 summit had been identified, terrorists could strike "without warning at any time." Michael Clarke, the head of London's Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said small terrorist groups may use the cover of planned protests by environmentalists, anti-war protesters and labor unions to mount an attack. "The protests will cause uncertainty and chaos, and if they turn violent could complicate the lives of those police and security service staff who are looking for terrorists," said Clarke, who sits on British government's National Security Forum, an advisory panel of security experts. Around 5,000 police _ some armed with Taser stun guns _ will guard London, and an extra 35,000 will be on standby for the summit on Thursday. Some will be stationed at the summit venue in London's docks district, with others protecting swank hotels and the sleek glass towers of the city's financial district. Following November's seaborne attack on Mumbai, India's financial center, extra patrol boats will guard the steel gray waters of the River Thames, and police frogmen will scour the river's length for floating bombs. Police will tap London's network of 10,000 CCTV cameras to monitor protests, while an army special forces unit will be on alert to respond. Protesters have threatened to train their anger on the city's financial center, urging demonstrators to "Bash A Banker" and "Storm The Banks" in leaflets promoting their rallies. Banks and hotels have prepared for attempted raids or sieges on their buildings, said Pepe Egger, a senior security analyst at London's Exclusive Analysis Ltd. He said that unlike previous summits _ including demonstrations outside a G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy in 2001 _ most protests in London will be away from the actual meeting venue at the city's ExCel center. "The interesting thing is that the protesters are unlikely to target the G-20 delegates, their anger is not directed at the G-20 itself. They will target the banks and the financial district," Egger said. Anger at bankers is high in both Britain and the United States, where some of the public funding to rescue stricken banks has been used to pay staff bonuses. The home of Fred Goodwin, the ex-head of Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland, was attacked last week. Banks have told staff to dress in causal clothes on Wednesday and Thursday, to forgo cigarette breaks outside bank headquarters, and to cancel all but their most critical meetings. "I'm pretty worried," said Luke Keyser, a 28-year-old banker at the Royal Bank of Scotland. "We've already been told to dress down. If we want to, we can work from home." ___ Associated Press Writer Martin Benedyk contributed to this report. More on G-20 Summit
 
Suzy Bales: A Forgotten Bulb: Fool's Onion Top
It probably isn't wise for me to admit my latest love is fool's onion. You might misunderstand, thinking me the fool. But then, love is rarely rational. I can only guess how it got its nickname. Perhaps, because it resembles an allium when it flowers. Allium is the onion's family name. They are actually members of the lily family. Truthfully, only fools mistakenly eat them. I'm certain I'm not one. I grow them for the gorgeous blue flowers. Each two-foot, wiry, leaf-less stalk supports a flower head with twelve to twenty royal-purple, trumpets that open in quick succession prolonging the bloom. As each bloom flares into stars, the top of the stem reveals a falling galaxy. Readily available, fool's onion can be confusing to find. Botanists have played shuffleboard sliding it from genus to genus. Over the last forty years it has been classified under Hookera, Triteleia, Milla, Brevoortia, Dichelostemma, Ipheion, Calliprora and Brodiaea. Now, it is sold as both Brodiaea laxa 'Queen Fabiola' and Tritelia laxa'Queen Fabiola' depending on the catalog. The Western coast from British Columbia to Baja California is home to fools onion where they flourish sparkling among the native grasses in dry meadows of lean soil. The corms have made themselves at home in the rich garden loan of my eastern flower borders, generously increasing yearly. That's why it's surprising this easy-going beauty isn't better known and naturalized in gardens across America. Perhaps, like many American natives it will be embraced abroad before gaining popularity at home. Bulbs are the easiest way to tuck more flowers into a small space. Fool's onion take up so little underground space, sleeping most of the year and waking for a few months to charm us with their beauty. Each corm is no bigger than the tip of your little finger, a pebble under ground. Generally, the cheaper the bulbs the more likely they'll return year after year. They are so versatile they can be planted in the spring or the fall to bloom in early summer. There is still time to plant them in early spring. Fools onions, technically corms, are priced a couple dozen for five dollars. Each small, slightly spherical corm easily slips four inches deep under the outer foliage of a ground-hugging perennial such as lady's mantle (Alchemilla mollis) or annual apricot-colored pansies. Lady's mantle's broad, soft, scalloped leaves and sprays of tiny chartreuse flowers sharply contrast with the galaxies of blue stars that rise up through its foliage to bloom and above. Fool's onion foliage hardly matters. It hugs the ground and usually disappears before the flower open. Alternate with September blooming colchicum corms between the lady's mantle and it makes for a productive massing at the front of a border. Repeat the clumps at different intervals to edge a path and draw the eye along. Where winter temperatures fall regularly below 23 degrees, they welcome a little mulch. Generally they grow happily in Zones 5 to 10. However, in colder climates they can be grown like dahlias, planted in the spring, dug up in the fall, stored indoors through the winter and then come spring planted back out. They are worth the effort. Need, I mention they are one of the longest lasting cut flowers--at least two weeks in the vase if cut as the first flowers open. Ironically, the fool is the one who doesn't bother to plant them. They give back so much to the gardener and need so little care.
 
Josh Hartnett Calls 911 For Stomach Cramps Top
Josh Hartnett was taken to Cedars-Sinai hospital early this morning, ending his night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. The 911 call came in at 12:53 AM and the caller said abdominal pains were the issue.
 
Second Home Sales Fall 30% Top
WASHINGTON — The National Association of Realtors reports that sales of vacation homes and investment properties slid 30 percent last year as tough economic conditions and tight lending requirements shut out buyers. The Realtors group also said Monday that median sales prices of vacation and investment homes dropped 23 percent to $150,000 as problems in housing market stretched to the second home segment. Home sales were down across the board in 2008. The Realtors group said sales of primary homes declined 13 percent to 3.77 million last year. Conducted in March, the 2008 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey includes 1,924 responses.
 
Stocks Monday: Market Falls As Automaker Plans Are Rejected Top
NEW YORK — Wall Street's big March rally is officially on hold as the White House rejects turnaround plans from General Motors and Chrysler. All the major indexes are down more than 3.5 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which lost as much as 300 points in midday trading. Fears of an automaker bankruptcy have been looming for months, and the latest developments are making the market even more uneasy about the industry. However, analysts say the pullback, which began with Friday's trading, isn't surprising after the Dow had surged 21 percent over just 13 days. At midday, the Dow is down 285 to 7,491 The Standard & Poor's 500 index is down 29 to 785, while the Nasdaq composite index is down 55 to 1,489. More on Auto Bailout
 
The History Of April Fool's Day Plus The Top Five Pranks Of All Time (VIDEO) (PICS) Top
The origins of April Fool's Day are murky, but the likeliest explanation is that it began as a way to mock French people who were slow to switch to the Gregorian Calendar which changed New Year's from April 1 to January 1. This was over 400 years ago, so people that have yet to get the message deserve a good pranking. Of course there are alternate theories, specifically ones that ascribe the informal holiday to the cultural impact of the Hilaria Festival of ancient Rome, held on March 25, and the Holi celebration in India, which ends on March 31 . The Museum of Hoaxes has a complete collection of all the theories , but the real problem with explaining April Fool's Day is that you never quite know when someone is trying to fool you with their explanation. The classic example of this comes from Joseph Boskin: Constantine and Kugel. This Boston University professor explained that the holiday stemmed from a moment of political unrest under Constantine, when a group of court jesters said they could run the empire better than he could. He claimed that Constantine was amused so he let a jester named Kugel be king for a day...April 1. The "AP" ran this theory in 1983, only to find out it was Boskin's prank on the American public. The real fun, as we all know, is executing these pranks ourselves or, at the very least, reveling pranks past. Here is our collection of the five best pranks of all time... 1) Swiss Spaghetti Harvest In 1957 the jokesters at BBC , ran a segment on the coming of spring after a mild winter and what that meant for Swiss farmers. The answer? An unusually large spaghetti crop. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, "Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, 'place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.'" WATCH: 2) The Taco Liberty Bell In 1996, Taco Bell ran an ad in six major newspapers saying: "In an effort to help the national debt, Taco Bell is pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the 'Taco Liberty Bell' and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt." Many politicians' offices were taken in, as the Park Service received phone calls from aides to Sens. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) and J. James Exon (D-Neb). 3) Arm The Homeless In 1993, the "Arm the Homeless" coalition sent a press release to a newspaper in Columbus, Ohio saying : "The Arm the Homeless Coalition will be collecting donations to provide firearms for the homeless of Columbus... Funds are to be used to provide arms, ammunition and firearm safety training for homeless individuals who pass the coalition's rigorous screening. Homeless are selected for the program on the basis of need, mental and emotional stability, and potential value to society at large." The "AP," CNN, Rush Limbaugh, and the " Columbus Dispatch " did stories about the group, which turned out to be three students from OSU that had no intention of arming the homeless but wanted to "draw attention to the issues of guns and violence, homelessness and media manipulation in our society." Other groups have repeated the hoax since then, here's video of one such prankster... WATCH: 4) Nixon's Second Term In 1992, National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" announced that Richard Nixon was running for a second term as president with the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Listeners were fooled and called in in droves. Later in the show, the host revealed it was a joke and that Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little. 5) Wisconsin State Capitol Collapses in 1933, the "Madison Capital-Times" announced that the capitol building had collapsed after a series of strange explosions that they attributed to "large quantities of gas, generated through many weeks of verbose debate in the Senate and Assembly chambers." Many were outraged, those with a sense of humor laughed.
 
Somali Refugees, Fleeing War, Face Danger, Abuse In Camps Top
NAIROBI, Kenya -- "Life in Somalia is not life, it is full of bullets; there is no life in Somalia," said 70-year-old Maryam. Before she fled to Kenya from her home in Mogadishu's Bakara Market, Maryam's eldest daughter was shot to death and her son was hit in the jaw with shrapnel. Maryam's route to Nairobi included 18 months in Dagahaley camp, one of three dust-blown refugee settlements of sticks and plastic sheeting that are home to more than a quarter of a million Somalis. The settlements are the largest concentration of refugees anywhere in the world. "In the camps there are no bullets," Maryam said, "but life is hard." Others would rather brave the bullets. Mohamed, a 20-year-old Somali man who came to Nairobi this month from another of the refugee camps, is unsparing in his criticism of the settlements. "Life is better in Somalia than in Ifo camp," he said. "Only the security is better; the conditions are terrible." As one human rights activist put it, "The refugees are coming from nothing to nothing, in a place where there is nothing." The three Somali camps were designed for 90,000 refugees. But by the end of this year, they are expected to house four times that number. In August 2008, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that the camps, around Dadaab town in northeastern Kenya, were full. The escalating violence in Somalia has meant that in the past year 165 people a day fled to the camps. At least 13 percent of the refugees in the camps are malnourished. Disease outbreaks are common. In February, cholera struck. Aid groups are warning of a looming catastrophe in the camps. Oxfam recently described a possible humanitarian emergency, the product of insufficient funding, overcrowding and water shortages. UNHCR has appealed to donors for $92 million for the camps around Dadaab and has asked for more land to be allocated to refugees. For Somali refugees outside the settlement camps, run-ins with the Kenyan police can have serious consequences. Kenya's predatory national police force -- which is regularly accused of corruption, brutality and murder -- treats Somali refugees found outside the camps as fair game. The police have extorted money and, according to a report published March 30 by New York-based Human Rights Watch, have forcibly deported "hundreds, possibly thousands" of refugees since the border was shut. The police also prevent Somali refugees from leaving the squalid camps in the country's parched northeast. In some cases, refugees have been beaten, tortured and raped. In many cases, new arrivals have been forced to pay about $50 to avoid deportation and be allowed to reach the camps. In 2007, Kenyan officials closed the country's 424-mile border with Somalia, citing fears of Islamic terrorism and pointing to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassy in 1998 and on an Israeli-owned hotel in 2002. "Kenya has legitimate security concerns and a right to control its borders, but its borders can't be closed to refugees fleeing fighting and persecution," said Gerry Simpson, the refugee researcher at HRW. "People escaping violence in Somalia need protection and help, but instead face more danger, abuse and deprivation." Under international law, it's illegal to forcibly repatriate terrified refugees to the world's most completely failed state, Simpson said. But in this case, the alternative has been confining refugees to a ghetto that has been growing since 1991. An unknown number of Somali refugees -- estimates range from the tens of thousands to more than 100,000 -- have made their way to Nairobi. To get there they must pass a bridge outside the town of Garissa, which refugees call "halak," or "cobra," for the police who solicit bribes before allowing Somalis to pass. Those who make it to Nairobi tend to settle in Eastleigh, the capital's hectic Somali quarter. There is a craziness about Eastleigh: Unpaved roads run past bustling markets; women in hijabs sell khat, a plant chewed as a stimulant; men sit on plastic chairs at tea shops; the muezzin blast the call to prayer from mosques. But this is no slum. Everyone is doing business, trading, making a buck, which will be sent to family and clan-members still in Somalia via a trust-based system called "hawala." Having escaped the refugee camps, Maryam now lives with her surviving daughter and four adopted girls in a single square room in an apartment block on the edge of Eastleigh. Among them, they share two wooden beds in a room hung with printed fabric and garish pictures of Mecca and the Koran. There is a small color television set in one corner and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. But after war-torn Mogadishu and the wretched Dagahaley camp, Maryam considers this luxury. Read more from GlobalPost. More related news... More on Somalia
 
Debora L. Spar: Women Changing China and the World: Modern-Day Lessons from a Foot-Binding Foe Top
Several months ago, the admissions staff at Barnard College received an application essay that stood out from the rest. It was from a young Chinese-American woman who wrote, "The words of my mother became instilled in my head: 'You can be the next Kang Tongbi.'" She then went on to describe how Kang, who entered Barnard in 1907 as its first Asian student, worked to promote women's rights in a tumultuous and ever-changing China. Her driving cause and greatest triumph was the elimination of foot-binding, a traditional but gruesome practice finally outlawed in 1911. Kang, by all accounts, was a remarkable woman. Born the second daughter of an intellectual and well-connected Chinese family, she followed early on in the reformist path of her father, eventually following him into exile in Hong Kong, Canada, and Japan. In 1903, she arrived in the United States, determined both to further her education and to generate international support for her father's Reform Party. At 15 or 16 years of age, she was already making speeches before large crowds in both English and Chinese. "Cats stand by cats," she was quoted as saying, "and dogs help dogs. Why should not we women stand together and help each other?" After college, she wrote poetry, supported women's suffrage, and eventually returned to China, where she continued to agitate for women's causes and took a public and passionate stand against the practice of foot-binding. Today, of course, Kang's story sounds positively quaint: the devoted daughter, the journeying exile, the fight to end a practice now universally regarded as barbaric. But earlier this month, sparked by her centennial and the intriguing application essay, Barnard College decided to hold a symposium in her honor, celebrating the women who, like Kang, are currently working to change China. And so, in a packed ballroom of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Beijing, we gathered a most remarkable group: Yang Lan, a television anchor and media entrepreneur; Yan Geling, an acclaimed novelist and screenwriter; Ruby Yang, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker; and Wu Qing, a long-serving member of the Beijing Haidian District People's Congress and renowned women's rights advocate. Each of the women offered a powerful view of women's activism from the perspective of modern China. Ms. Yan, for instance, became a novelist after serving as a "dancing soldier" and lieutenant colonel in the Chinese army. Ms. Yang rose to prominence when she was chosen from among 1,000 recent college graduates to host a television program on "seeing the world." Wu Qing spent her childhood in a Chinese compound in post-war Japan, and has been detained, rebuffed, and ultimately removed from political office for speaking out against the status quo and in favor of equal rights for rural women. But none of these women offered their stories as cautionary tales or bitter vendettas -- on the contrary, they urged their listeners to challenge injustice despite the consequences, and to remember that change always involves both choice and sacrifice. They were passionate but not strident; revolutionaries aware of evolutionary shifts. All of them spoke of the guiding influence of their mothers and of the support they received from loving, understanding husbands. Implicitly, the Chinese women also pointed to what might be conceived as an East-West divide of feminism. In China, Mao's dictum that "women hold up half the sky" has meant that Chinese women have labored for decades alongside men -- in fields and cramped factories, to be sure, but also in laboratories, banks, and universities. Wu Yi, China's renowned chief trade negotiator, is female; so is Chen Lei, who was 33 years old when appointed chief engineer of China's iconic National Aquatics Center, or "Water Cube." What China lacks is not women leaders but an examination of women's leadership. In the United States, thought about women's rights preceded by a wide margin the actual granting of these rights. Women fought for suffrage, and for reproductive freedoms, and for equal opportunity and pay long before they got any of it. Arguably, they still haven't. In China, by comparison, intellectual scrutiny of feminism was stalled by the cascade of events that has befallen China since the time of Kang Tongbi - war and revolution, famine and rapid-fire growth, an education system still rooted in classical teachings and a political system that does not prioritize any kind of rights. Ironically, therefore, Chinese women may have achieved certain levels of power and equality without an accompanying discussion -- so common in the West -- of what their power means and how it may differ from men's. Which brings us back to the legacy of Kang Tongbi. Like the women who spoke at our symposium, Kang was a reformer who bridged East and West. She worked for radical change, but was herself a rather traditional woman -- following in her father's footsteps, marrying his protégé, painting landscapes and raising two children. She presents an intriguing model for women's leadership, one that may not be entirely palatable to Western tastes, but is nevertheless important to contemplate. Without question, both China and the United States -- along with nearly every country in the world -- still have a great way to go before achieving true equality for women. Yet there is also undeniable change underway; a palpable electricity that hums around Chinese women like Wu Qing and Yang Lan, around Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and our own Hillary Clinton. From my perch at Barnard College, a liberal arts college devoted to the education of women, I see an extraordinary generation of young women grappling with new ideas about feminism and new views of women's power and leadership. Unlike their mothers and grandmothers, this generation is accustomed to a world defined by choice: the choice of reproduction, the choice of gender identity, the choice of educational options and careers. In shaping their own lives and roles, these young women will look to all kinds of role models, reaching as they should across time and place and culture. And Kang Tongbi, along with her formidable heirs in modern China, may not be a bad place to start. More on Asia
 
Dan Dorfman: The Nastiest Four-Letter Word Top
Wall Street may have gone wild over Uncle Sam's plan to buy $1 trillion of bad bank assets to help energize the economy, but some investment pros argue that the ballooning amount of debt at all levels -- especially in the consumer sector -- plus the public's determination to honker down and borrow less -- remains a lingering economic killer. If that's true -- and it seems to make sense -- the end result of the debt debacle appears inevitable: job firings, consumer spending and home foreclosures will continue to mount, while stocks, though off nearly 50% from their October 2007 highs, should once again go down for the count. Granted, the whopping stimulus packages -- $3 trillion and counting and the purchase of toxic bank assets -- should help inject big bucks into the economic stream. But serious questions remain whether financially-strapped consumers, under great economic stress, will take that money and hop aboard the spending bandwagon. The latest savings rate -- a jump in January to 5%, the highest level in 14 years -- suggests not, rather that the consumer has become much less of a spendthrift. That's an ominous sign since debt expansion -- not debt contraction -- is what economic growth is all about. What makes it all so relevant is that the overwhelming amount of debt raises serious questions about the vigor of Washington's rescue packages. It also casts heavy suspicion on Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke's recent sunny forecast on 60 Minutes that the recession will probably end later this year and the market rally that followed it. He made a similarly poor prediction in early 2008. The way Wall Street veteran Thornton Oglove figures it, Bernanke might well heed the words of Abraham Lincoln, who aptly once said, "Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." That's essentially his assessment of Bernanke's latest prediction. He also belittles the Fed chairman's forecasting record, noting that Bernanke hasn't made an accurate prediction on an economic turning point in seven years. Oglove is convinced that the current recession will spill well over into 2010, in large part because of what he calls "the triplets of financial hell." These are an across-the-board credit crisis (a reflection of bulging debt-loads and the refusal of lenders to lend), the crashes in the stock and real estate markets and growing unemployment. Speaking of unemployment, the latest monthly figure shows a rise to 8.1%. But O'glove figures if you factor in the various categories of unemployment -- namely the actual unemployed, discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job and part-time workers who would like to be employed full time -- the jobless number probably approaches 15%. Given no letup in the economic turmoil, he looks for the ever growing increase in unemployment to have a "horrific effect" on the price of homes and most segments of debt. Heightening the consumer's woes is a $300 billion drop in wages and salaries on an annualized basis. A former banking and insurance analyst and now a San Francisco investment consultant, Oglove made a name for himself on Wall Street between 1968 and 1990 as a crack investigator of balance sheets and the quality of earnings. There's no doubt that debt -- more specifically, too much of it -- is probably the nastiest and most worrisome four-letter word right now in the economic vocabulary. The debt numbers are frightening. The average consumer household, for example, is in hock for 140% of its annual income or, in its entirety, for about $14 trillion. Included here are $700 billion of sub-prime mortgages, $4.7 trillion of prime mortgage debt, a fair amount of which is becoming increasingly suspect because of the recession, $1 trillion of auto loans, and credit card debt of $1.1 trillion, coupled with about $4 trillion of credit lines. Those credit lines, though, are dwindling fast as credit card companies, stung by soaring debt defaults, are slashing the numbers of their potential borrowers. By year end, O'glove calculates, "we should have another credit debacle on our hands." Adding to the financial impotence of consumers was last year's wealth devastation. According to the Federal Reserve, the average U.S. household, rocked by wicked declines in the value of its stock portfolio and its home, lost about 18% of its net worth, or in total $11.4 trillion. Government debt also figures into the equation. Currently close to $11 trillion, up from $9.4 trillion a year ago, Oglove figures the number will rise to $20 trillion in four years. That, of course, would be a harbinger of higher taxes. Noting that the total U.S. stimulus package to date, including government monies lent, spent or pledged, now totals almost $12 trillion. O'glove reckons hyper inflation undoubtedly lies ahead because of the inevitable need to speed up the printing presses even more. By year end, he believes, most economists are likely to be more worried about inflation than deflation. He notes, in fact, that inflation is already presently growing at a rapid rate in such areas as food, medical costs and college tuition. What does it all mean as far as investors go? "Much lower equity prices, possibly down to Dow 5000," says O'glove, "because the market is now predicting the U.S. is entering a mini-depression." Dandordan@aol.com More on Economy
 
Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek's Evan Thomas Top
Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who has the big cover story on the rather prickly relationship between the White House and Paul Krugman, offered a rather surprising insight into the relationship between the two. Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, the longtime magazine scribe said that the Obama administration is not "too crazy about Krugman" (no surprise, considering how much criticism Krugman has laid on the White House's economic policies) and that, in private, they "think he is naïve." "They think he is naive, that his idea of bank nationalization is not going to work," said Thomas. "But they are careful not to criticize him on the record." "You know, I think the administration is trying to ignore Krugman, quite frankly," Thomas went on. "But they can't entirely because he has a big voice. You know, that platform of the New York Times, that's a big platform. And he's got his Nobel Prize. You have to take him seriously and can't just ignore him." This is telling, not least because Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, was more prescient about some of the current financial and economic woes than key members of the Obama brain-trust. But from conversations I've had with the administration, I'm not sure if it is entirely true. Krugman does levy some of the harshest critiques at the president's policies -- critiques that sting both because of who Krugman is and where (professionally and philosophically) he comes from. The White House, however, has consulted with him on many matters -- though not all. Krugman, for his part, told Newsweek that "the White House has done very little by way of serious outreach." Moreover, officials in the executive office view him not as naïve but rather as someone who happens to come from "a different ideological perspective." That said, the relationship works two ways. And it is Krugman, not the Obama White House, who has publicly leveled charges of naivety. From Thomas' piece comes this excerpt : "In the 2008 election, Krugman first leaned toward populist John Edwards, then Hillary Clinton. 'Obama offered a weak health-care plan,' he explains, 'and he had a postpartisan shtik, which I thought was naive.'" More on Economy
 
Tabby Biddle: The Call of the Calling Top
In this blog I've discussed public issues and also personal ones. Today's blog is a personal one. I have touched on this topic before, but I am finding I need to discuss it again as I'm curious about other people's experience with it. Here goes... I have been thinking a lot lately about callings, intuition and where creative ideas come from. Is intuition to be trusted? Can we rely on our gut alone? As Thomas Edison once observed, creativity is two percent illumination and the rest love and discipline. Although I am a huge believer and user of my own intuition, I am beginning to see Mr. Edison's point. Before I started my business, I was a teacher. I had been working in a teaching job that didn't feel quite right for some time. There was a voice inside of me saying that I needed to leave. It got to a point where I no longer could fight the inner voice. In June 2007 I left the job. As most of us know it is no easy thing to give up the security of a paycheck, health insurance and a supportive community. On the other hand, it can be even more difficult to suffer with the truth of what you know inside and not act on it. I felt pretty confident that I was doing the right thing as life had shown me before that if I took a leap of faith by responding to my inner guide I would end up in a good place. However, I was finding it difficult to explain to other people what in the world I was doing with my life. As those who have gone through this know, there is usually a window of time where there is a ton of unknown. Even though I am someone who is dedicated to personal growth and have gone through a lot of transitions, this mystery stage doesn't seem to get any easier to explain. Especially when I had NO idea of what was next. And then comes that one day or one moment when the spirit moves through you and you have that incredible "aha" moment that you never could have imagined because your brain would have never put that possibility together on its own. Usually, at least in my experience, these callings are not very rational, and in many cases, seem out of left field. The one that came to me on that July day qualified as out of left field. Start a clothing line? What? I hadn't worked in retail since I was 17, never designed a stitch and never wrote "run a clothing business" on my goal list! But when a calling calls, I have always been one to listen and get right on it. As Elizabeth Gilbert , author of Eat, Pray, Love , said recently, "Creativity does not always function rationally and can feel downright paranormal." I think this applies to creating a business too. For me one of the biggest lessons this time around has been about coupling intuition with good old-fashioned hard work, consistency and follow-through just like Edison suggested. I am curious to know how does intuition play a part in your life? And how is it for you explaining an intuitive choice to someone who may not think that way?
 
Guatemala Bus Drivers Targeted By Gangs Top
In a country as bloody as Guatemala, the last two weeks have stood out. In the last several years, bus drivers have became targets for street gangs seeking extortion money. But the thugs are not breaking the drivers' kneecaps -- they are blowing their heads off. The number of bus drivers killed was around 80 last year. Last week, as I was heading back from the countryside where I'd been visiting malnutrition clinics, the health worker who was acting as my guide told me that four bus drivers in Guatemala City had been killed all in the same day. During one attack, an infant was shot and killed. A common theory, taken seriously by both government officials and everyday Guatemalans, was that this was something beyond mere street crime, but was in fact an effort by the right-wing opposition party to spread chaos and fear to undermine the current center-left government. Public officials received anonymous phone calls warning of an imminent coup. When I asked a U.S. government official if a coup was likely, the answer was "probably not." There were fears the government might invoke martial law in response to the bus attacks. It didn't, but many people hoped it would. The police here are perceived to be worse than useless -- they are often considered to be corrupt and part of the problem. During the elections in 2006 dozens of politicians were killed. It is a culture of impunity that permeates everyday life. This was underscored by a more openly political attack last week. Several days after the country's human rights ombudsman released a report on atrocities from the country's 36-year-old civil war, his wife was kidnapped and tortured with cigarette butts. Thirteen years after the peace accords were signed here, violence and fear continue to be a way of life. Read more at WorldFocus . More on Latin America
 
Dan Dorfman: Ballooning Debt Threatens Economic Rebound Top
If the economy is going to awaken from its Rip Van Winkle slumber anytime soon, it's clear that consumers, who represent roughly 70% of the Gross Domestic Product, must open their wallets and pocketbooks more frequently. But that's easier said than done because they're inundated with debt, $14 trillion worth, which in turn raises serious questions about President Obama's hopes of re-energizing the economy in the near future. Currently, the average consumer household is in hock for 140% of its annual income. Adding to the financial impotence of consumers was last year's wealth devastation. According to the Federal Reserve, the average U.S. household, rocked by wicked declines in the value of its stock portfolio and its home, lost about 18% of its net worth, or in total $11.4 trillion. Granted, the whopping stimulus packages -- $3 trillion and counting and the purchase of toxic bank assets -- should help inject big bucks into the economic stream. But serious questions remain whether financially-strapped consumers, under great economic stress, will take that money and hop aboard the spending bandwagon. The latest savings rate -- a jump in January to 5%, the highest level in 14 years -- suggests not, rather that the consumer is borrowing less and has become much less of a spendthrift. That's an ominous sign since debt expansion -- not debt contraction -- is what economic growth is all about. Included in the current debt are $700 billion of sub-prime mortgages, $4.7 trillion of prime mortgages, a fair amount of which is becoming increasingly suspect because of the recession, $1 trillion of auto loans, and credit card debt of $1.1 trillion, coupled with about $4 trillion of credit lines. Those credit lines, though, are dwindling fast as credit card companies, stung by soaring debt defaults, are slashing the numbers of their potential borrowers, in turn further contracting consumer spending. By year end, figures San Francisco investment consultant and balance sheet specialist, Thornton O'glove, "We should have another credit debacle on our hands." In effect, he argues that the ballooning amount of debt at all levels, especially in the consumer sector -- plus the public's determination to buckle down and borrow less -- will remain a lingering economic killer. If that's true, the end result of the debt debacle appears inevitable: job firings, consumer spending and home foreclosures will continue to mount, while stocks, though off nearly 50% from their October 2007 highs, should once again head lower. The overwhelming amount of debt also casts heavy suspicion on Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke's recent sunny forecast that the recession will probably end later this year and that a market rally will follow it. He made a similarly poor prediction in early 2008. Oglove, in contrast to Bernanke, is convinced that the current recession will spill well over into 2010, in large part because of what he calls "the triplets of financial hell." These are an across-the-board credit crisis (a reflection of bulging debt loads and the refusal of lenders to lend), the crashes in the stock and real estate markets and growing unemployment. Speaking of unemployment, the latest monthly figure shows a rise to 8.1%. But O'glove figures if you factor in the various categories of unemployment -- namely the actual unemployed, discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job and part-time workers who would like to be employed full time -- the jobless number probably approaches 15%. Given no letup in the economic turmoil, he looks for the ever growing increase in unemployment to have a "horrific effect" on the price of homes and most segments of debt. Heightening the consumer's woes is a $300 billion drop in wages and salaries on an annualized basis. Government debt also figures into the equation. Currently close to $11 trillion, up from $9.4 trillion a year ago, Oglove figures the number will rise to $20 trillion in four years. That, of course, would be a harbinger of higher taxes. Noting that the total U.S. stimulus package to date, including government monies lent, spent or pledged, now totals almost $12 trillion. O'glove reckons hyper inflation undoubtedly lies ahead because of the inevitable need to speed up the printing presses even more. By year end, he believes, most economists are likely to be more worried about inflation than deflation. He notes, in fact, that inflation is already growing at a rapid rate in such areas as food, medical costs and college tuition. What does it all mean as far as investors go? "Much lower equity prices, probably down to Dow 5000," says O'glove, "because the market is now predicting the U.S. is entering a mini-depression." Dandordan@aol.com More on Economy
 
Obamas Pay For White House Renovations Personally Top
If there's one thing the Obama's know how to do, it's walk the walk. In a move that bucks past presidential tradition, the Obamas have chosen to decorate the White House using their own hard-earned money (according to New York Magazine , the couple reported $4.2 million in household income on 2007 tax returns) and the talents of Hollywood decorator Michael S. Smith. Incoming presidents are allotted $100,000 to re-decorate the White House residence and the Oval Office -- a sizeable amount of taxpayer cash, particularly in this economy -- as well as access to the White House Historical Association, "a privately funded foundation that paid for a $74,000 set of china shortly before Laura Bush left town." But, according to Camille Johnson, director of communications for the First Lady, this First Couple will wisely "not [be] using public funds or accepting donations of goods for redecorating their private quarters." Read more...
 
Clarence B. Jones: The Challenges to Black Media Under President Obama Top
As we approach another anniversary commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it is appropriate to pause and reflect on the challenges confronting Black Media under an Obama presidency. Historically, the press has been characterized as the "Fourth Estate," a balancing factor to our three branches of government. Protection of public comment and reporting about the activities in the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary (and even individuals within these organizations) is enshrined in our Bill of Rights. Magazine, newspaper, radio and TV reporters of the "Black Media" continue to appear uncertain, still searching for balance between their celebration and constructive criticism of this country's first African-American president. To date, adulation and celebration seem to be the dominant themes. However, adulation and celebration are no substitute for clinical, objective evaluation as to whether or not one or more of the prominent policies developed and proposed by President Obama are in the near- and long-term interest of the African-American community. Predictably, so far President Obama is focusing on those major issues predicated on the political and economic doctrine that a rising tide of an improved economy, affordable health care, and employment prosperity will lift all boats, including those of African-Americans. Whether such policies, assuming successful implementation, will in fact positively affect all groups has yet to be determined. After all, the rising tide only lifts boats that are floating. Its power is useless to those unlucky craft stuck far down at the bottom of the ocean. Black Media has its own diversity of political, social and economic commentators in the media marketplace of ideas. Persons like Armstrong Williams, Shelby Steele, Tom Sowell, Glenn Loury, Roland Martin, Dr. Cornel West, Juan Williams, Tavis Smiley, Tom Joiner, Stanley Crouch, to mention only a few, are needed now more than ever. The issue is not whether one agrees with their respective points of view. What is important is that points of view more diverse than the blind adulation we're seeing must be expressed in this new "Age of Obama." It seems to me a man of character, as Barack Obama appears to be, would expect -- and respect -- nothing less. Indeed, it is a sign of the political immaturity of Black Media that someone so qualified and articulate as Tavis Smiley has been, in effect, treated as "less acceptable" by some Black Media because he critically questioned some of the actions or inactions of candidate Obama, instead of speaking in lock step adulation as others. Black Media has a unique role it can play in the national discussion about the continued criminalization of the use of marijuana. This issue is now front and center in the news in connection with the rising gun violence in U.S. border states and in Mexico. This violence is occurring in the fight over the distribution and sale of drugs to and in the United States. Recently, President Obama, in response to numerous questions in his first online discussion, was asked about the legalization of marijuana. His answer was a succinct "No." Now, since so many African-Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons because of their non-violent participation in the sale of marijuana. Why has no reporter or columnist in Black Media challenged President Obama over the possible wisdom of decriminalization of the purchase and private use of marijuana or our government's failed policies related to massive illegal immigration from Mexico? This is the on-going value of reporting, as opposed to the somewhat limited value of cheerleading. Our airwaves and newspaper pages do not need to be littered with free passes for a man who has defied history. The election is over, and now many diverse interest groups all will have their own perspective on whether or not his leadership benefits them. This includes African-Americans, who must judge his actions from this vantage point now. The most important challenge confronting leadership in the African-American community, and its media, is a rededication to the pursuit of educational excellence and greater assumption of responsibility for personal conduct which creates social pathologies adverse to the health, welfare and safety in our communities. HIV/AIDS, high percentage of out-of-wedlock births and drop out rates of African-American males from High Schools; the high percentage of incarceration; and almost 50% of all murders committed in the United States are of African-Americans. There may be more African-American men between the ages of 18-22 in prison than enrolled in college. America owes a great debt to John Johnson, founder of Ebony and Jet Magazine, and to Dr. King. Both celebrated and affirmed the kaleidoscope of talent and beauty of the Black experience in America. Both demanded the best from us. One can only imagine what they would make of Black Media's failure to hold the president's feet to the fire, regardless of his heritage. Critical and constructive analysis of President Obama's policies and their impact on those issues most affecting the African-American community is more important than ever, and certainly more useful than our Black Media's continued uncritical celebration of our new president. Clarence B. Jones, former editor & publisher of the New York Amsterdam News, lawyer, draft speechwriter for Dr. King, is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute, Stanford University. He is the author of "What Would Martin Say?" and the upcoming autobiography "Memoirs Of A Wintertime Solider." More on Barack Obama
 
Ukraine: Extreme Right Rises As Economy Falls Top
An unexpected regional election victory by a previously marginal ultra-nationalist party is among a string of developments in Ukraine that threaten to fulfil the worst fears of G20 leaders as they gather for their summit in London. More on Ukraine
 
China Repoens Tibet For Tourists After Fears Of Riots Ease Top
Signalling that the risk of anti-Chinese unrest has subsided in Tibet, Beijing has decided to reopen the Himalayan region's soaring mountains and gilded temples to foreign tourists. More on Tibet
 
Vicky Ward: Sex Appeal Takes Years to Master Top
Details magazine has dictated that the sexiest woman on the planet is not Scarlett Johansson, or Gisele Bundchen, but Jennifer Aniston -- who is 40. Meanwhile, People magazine puts Italian actress Valerie Bertinelli, 48, in a bikini on its cover. Cindy Crawford, 43, is covered in soap suds in Allure. There's a celebration going on among all of us over 35. Our dirty little secret is finally out: it's way hotter to be older and wiser than taut, 20 and clueless. Obviously older women have been greatly advantaged by the cosmetic aids that, for example, make Demi Moore at 46 look 26. But the sexual power of age is not exclusively entwined with Botox and Restylane. A young model at a dinner last week was theoretically the most beautiful woman in the room -- but her appeal was greatly diminished by her overt insecurity about having never done anything with her life other than "model". She kept interrupting people, desperate to show she had a brain. The belle of the party was a woman in her late thirties who was eight months pregnant. She focused complete attention on whomever she talked to. All the men left besotted. Their comments reminded me of a recent lunch I had with a businessman 20 years my senior. Somehow the conversation detoured from market volatility into a seminar on why older women often are more appealing than youngsters. He said that first of all, women can be divided into racehorses and donkeys when it comes to sex, and younger women should not be fooled into thinking they are naturally better. Second, every man likes an intelligent woman -- but not a woman who feels she has to wear her brain like a garment for show. Third, men want women to make them feel masculine and important. Young women sometimes think this is demeaning; an older woman knows it's just how the male/female dynamic works. And lastly, a man can smell a self-involved woman a mile off; young women are often self-involved. So now we know why 40 is sexy and 20 is well, just 20. Personally, I look back at my twenties and think how very little I knew about anything, let alone men. But I'm very glad I only got told about racehorses and donkeys recently. If I'd heard that at 20 I might never have left the starting gate. More on Jennifer Aniston
 

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