Friday, May 8, 2009

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Buffett's Berkshire Has First Loss Since 2001 Top
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc posted its first quarterly loss since 2001, hurt by losses on derivative contracts, a big investment in the oil company ConocoPhillips, and the weakening economy. More on Warren Buffett
 
Charlie Rose: My conversation with Hamid Karzai & Asif Ali Zardari Top
Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan & Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan
 
High-Speed Rail: Agreement Reached On Chicago-St. Louis Train Corridor Top
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Union Pacific Railroad and the state of Illinois announced an agreement Friday to assess what must be done to operate both freight and high-speed passenger trains on the Chicago-to-St. Louis rail corridor. The railroad said it will provide the study to the Illinois Department of Transportation by June. The parties described the move as a critical step for Illinois to compete for federal funds to build a high-speed rail line in that corridor. The announcement followed private talks Friday in St. Louis between Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Claire McCaskill of Missouri and officials with Amtrak, Union Pacific and IDOT. "IDOT and Union Pacific have a memorandum of understanding to outline the work needed to have a true high-speed rail corridor between St. Louis and Chicago," Durbin said afterward. He noted that President Barack Obama has told the states that if they're interested in some of the $8 billion in federal economic stimulus funds designated for high-speed rail, they should "step up and be ready to compete." "We've stepped up," Durbin said. Durbin and McCaskill have been lobbying for a high-speed rail corridor between the two cities. The $8 billion is part of $64 billion in the federal stimulus package for roads, bridges, rail and transit. It's part of an overall $787 billion economic stimulus spending package. Durbin said the money will be awarded on a competitive basis. McCaskill said she also will pursue high-speed rail for the St. Louis-to-Kansas City corridor. "It's not just the East Coast that wants high-speed rail," McCaskill said. "It's the grand and glorious middle." St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay applauded the senators for getting "things done." He said high-speed rail is "environmentally friendly, energy efficient and economical." Illinois Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig said the agreement signed Friday with the railroad was first in the U.S. The study would be completed in time for the federal government's announcement of application guidelines in June. He said it would serve as a blueprint for asking Congress to help fund development of a high-speed rail corridor. Robert Turner, a senior vice president for Union Pacific, said freight and passenger rail have coexisted unevenly, and that the challenge would be to integrate them. Before rail travel began declining in the 1960s, the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor had separate tracks for passenger trains and freight. It was later reduced to a single track but the bed of the other track is still intact. Turner said there are ways to accommodate the two. Slower-moving freight trains could be diverted on turnouts to make way for passenger trains traveling as fast as 110 mph. The Chicago-to-St. Louis trip would be reduced from almost six hours to fewer than four. Illinois will pay up to $400,000 for the study. Durbin said developing the line would create 10,000 construction jobs. -ASSOCIATED PRESS More on Moving America
 
Drew Peterson's Girlfriend Packs Up And Leaves Top
BOLINGBROOK, Ill. (AP) -- The woman with whom former Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson has been involved in an on-again, off-again relationship is taking some of her things from his suburban Chicago house. On Friday, a day after Peterson was charged with first-degree murder in the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, Christina Raines loaded some belongings into a vehicle and left. Raines has been linked romantically to Peterson for several weeks. In February, she told the media she hoped to marry him. Peterson has for more than a year been characterized as a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy. Until Thursday, authorities had declined to identify him as a suspect in the death of Savio, whose body was found in her bathtub. -ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [76] -- Countering The Luntz Playbook On Health Care Top
I realize that, as a political blogger, I am supposed to be talking about President Barack Obama's preferences in cheeseburgers today. Sigh. The " What kind of mustard?!?" debate currently raging (which followed the intense "Medium- well ?!?" debate -- I wish I were kidding about this, I really do) among the right wing of the blogosphere is no doubt historically important (right up there with George H.W. Bush's aversion to broccoli), but I would instead like to talk about something a little more serious today. To the purveyors of the burger debates, I would like to say one thing first, though. This is America. We value our freedom here. And that includes the freedom to eat your burger any damn way you want to -- without having to apologize to anyone for your choices . You can even eat your burger with broccoli on it if you want, it makes no difference to me. That is the nature of freedom, and I'm surprised I even have to point this out. Sheesh. But before we get to the serious subject of the day, which involves health care and the Republican's favorite spin doctor, we have to delve into even more lunacy first. Because Georgia is apparently laying the legal groundwork to secede from the Union. In a stunning 43-to-1 vote, the Georgia state senate voted in support of "nullification." Similar bills have been passed in South Dakota and Oklahoma, as Hendrik Hertzberg reports in the New Yorker. If you're like most Americans, you are scratching your head and saying: "Nullification... nullification... I know I heard that term in history class in school... wasn't it something about the Civil War?" You would be right in thinking this. The concept of "nullification" is that individual states can ignore federal laws whenever they feel like it. When a state doesn't agree with something the feds put into law, they can conveniently just thumb their nose at Washington and go on their merry way -- even if that merry way includes leaving the United States of America. If you are now thinking "didn't we settle this whole question by fighting a war over it?" then you would also be right. If you've got the time, read the text of the bill itself. It is couched in flowery legal language, but it could have come straight out of the 1860s South. Stripped of its pretentiousness, it states that the Constitution should be optional, and if Obama tries to take away our guns and ammo, we're outta here. If you think that is an exaggeration, read the bill itself and then decide. It's worth reading for sheer nuttiness alone. But we've got a lot to cover today, so we must press on past the freakshow of nullification in Georgia (and South Dakota). At least in Oklahoma, the governor vetoed the bill, stating that the bill "does not serve the state or its citizens in any positive manner."   Being a slow week otherwise in the Democratic sphere, I am going to award this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award in tandem with this week's talking points. So this week's MIDOTW award goes to Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley, who penned an excellent response to Republican consultant Frank Luntz' talking points document on health care which was leaked this week (we'll have more about this in the Talking Points section, below). Democrats simply cannot be complacent about the fight over health care reform. It's going to be a tough road politically. And we now have the other side's political strategy out in the open, so there will be no excuse for not being able to counter this stuff by the time the fight really begins this summer. But for getting out in front of this fight, and immediately fighting back for what he believes, Senator Jeff Merkley was most impressive indeed. Health care reform is not "just going to happen." It's going to take a lot of work, and part of that work means putting a public face on the Democratic proposals, and undercutting the Republican obstructionism. For admirably doing so this week, Merkley wins the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Well done, Senator! [ Congratulate Senator Jeff Merkley on his Senate contact page to let him know you appreciate his efforts. ]   President Barack Obama was disappointing last week, for two reasons. First, he seems to really not want to talk about gay marriage -- even after another state passed it into law. His stance on the issue has always been that he's for civil unions, and not for gay marriage, but his silence on the issue isn't exactly making him a lot of friends on the left. But, again, he's really just being consistent with what he said on the campaign trail, so it's hard to fault him too much for doing so. However, it's pretty easy to fault him for truly breaking a campaign promise. Because his budget continues the federal ban on money for needle exchange. As a candidate, he was for "repealing" this ban, or "overturning" it. Needle exchange has been proven very effective at slowing the rate of transmission of AIDS, so it can be a life-or-death issue. But, in yet another disturbing example of removing Obama positions from the White House web site, his support for repealing the ban just went down the memory hole. The budget he unveiled this week actually keeps the ban in place, and the language he had on the White House website conveniently disappeared at the same time. The Obama webmasters already had to walk back a sneaky attempt to change Obama's positions last week on Obama's support for "repealing" the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy on gays serving in the military. The word "repeal" briefly morphed to "change," until an outcry caused them to re-insert the word "repeal" once again (this caused me to award Obama a MDDOTW last week, I should mention. Now, I do get that Obama probably wants to push these contentious social issues down the road a bit, because he's got bigger goals to achieve at the moment. Politically, that makes all kinds of sense. But the method being used does not make any sense at all. Obama's web team, and Obama's policy thinkers who approve these changes, need to realize that Obama's followers are extremely web-savvy. And making sneaky changes to language on the White House web site is going to be noticed . So if Obama wants to change his stances on issues, or even delay them or downgrade their priority, they need to bite the bullet and come out and publicly admit they are doing so. Because this is a very worrisome trend from the White House. But I've given Obama a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award for two weeks running, and he did have more important things on his plate this week -- like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a Supreme Court Justice nomination to think about. So I am only giving Obama a (Dis-)Honorable Mention here this week. Because up on Capitol Hill this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proved once again why he simply should not be the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. Arlen Specter jumped the aisle last week, as everyone knows, and became a Democrat. Reid apparently promised Specter things he couldn't deliver, such as Specter being credited for his 29 years as a Republican when it came to figuring seniority. I wrote about this whole mess yesterday, if you're interested in all the gory details. The upshot, as opposed to what it means for Specter (see yesterday's article), is that Harry Reid once again appears weak and unable to control his caucus. Although Specter means the possibility of a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority for the Democrats in the Senate, to get there we've got to have some leadership that can actually deliver it when needed. Unfortunately, we have Harry Reid. Harry Reid has won the MDDOTW award more times than anyone else in the history of this column (counting this week's, this makes nine times he has been so dishonored). It's not hard to see why. [ Contact Senator Harry Reid on his Senate contact page to let him know what you think of his actions. ]   Volume 76 (5/8/09) Frank Luntz is one of those Republicans that is both respected and feared by Democrats. And rightly so. Because Luntz is a master at the business of teaching Republicans how to speak. He gets paid a bundle of money for doing this sort of thing, unlike amateurs such as myself on the web. [Note to Democratic Party: I will cheerfully accept bundles of money for writing this column, just to let you know....] This week, a strategy document from Luntz was leaked. The letter was to Republicans, and it had a ten-point plan for how to defeat the health care reforms that will be up for debate later this year in Congress. Every Democrat who cares about fixing our health care system should read this document, because it is "the other team's playbook" and you will be hearing these talking points over and over again in the next few months by Republicans everywhere. Because we've got the other side's battle plan in advance, though, Democrats can get ready to counter these arguments before they are made. The fight for better health care is going to be a tough one, so every advantage in this fight should be embraced. I should mention at this point that a Democratic professional, George Lakoff, beat me to the punch and already posted his advice on countering Luntz at Huffington Post today. But his talking points are a bit more polite, whereas mine are a bit more visceral, so I think there is room enough for both our takes on the situation. The basic battle is going to come down to whether Americans will be given the choice of a "public option" (as Democrats would say), or "government-run health care" (as Republicans would say). The idea is simple. Don't change health care for people who already have it and want to keep what they're used to. That way, if people are happy with their health care, they don't have to do anything, and nobody is "taking" anything away from them. But for everyone else, offer a government health care plan as a choice in the marketplace of health care. Allow people to buy in to Medicare, for instance. Government health care spends about three percent on overhead (processing claims, all the paperwork, etc.). Private health care spends upwards of fifteen percent. Because government can do it cheaper, Republicans are trying to say that this is some secret plan to kill off the private health care industry by stealth means. In other words, they are admitting that government could do something better than private industry, because it doesn't have to worry about the profit margins. That this argument goes counter to Republican orthodoxy for the past three or four decades does not seem to bother them, it should be pointed out. But conservative inconsistencies aside, the entire 28-page document ( available in PDF format from Think Progress) needs to be at the top of the reading list of every Democratic member of the House and Senate this weekend. If that's too much for you, Politico has a good overview , complete with Luntz' ten talking points. Thankfully, though, Luntz provides polling data which shows not only why the Democratic position is more popular, but why . And, also thankfully, Luntz (via his "negative examples" for Republicans) show exactly how to counter his talking points . In other words, Republican pollsters spent a lot of money doing the research, meaning we don't have to. See, we're saving money already! Ahem. Sorry, got carried away for a moment, there. Won't happen again, I promise. But seriously, when you dig into what Luntz has to say, he shows exactly how to talk about health care reform in a way that will resonate with Americans. Luckily, we've got an easier job than Republicans in convincing the people, because they already agree with the most basic Democratic premises on health care -- that every family has a health insurance horror story. Meaning "the system is broken" is not something we have to convince people of . The Republicans, meanwhile, have only fear. Which brings us to our first talking point.      Fear itself This one is easy. Reminds people of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's immortal words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Republicans know this is a loser for them. From the Luntz letter (emphasis in original): It's not enough to just say what you're against . You have to tell them what you're for . Overt attacks against the Democratic proposals will fail if they aren't balanced with your solutions. It's okay (and even necessary) for your communication effort to center around why the Democratic-supported "government takeover of healthcare" is bad for America. But if you offer no vision for what's better for America, you'll be relegated to insignificance at best and labeled obstructionist at worst. This is the number one talking point for Democrats. The Republicans have nothing. They were in charge for eight years, and the American public got nothing. They are fighting to keep the system exactly as it has been, and refusing to even see how broken it is. The only thing they can do is try to frighten America with dire warnings that any change proposed is going to be horrible. Boil all of these down to one line, shamelessly evoking F.D.R., the man who gave us Social Security. "The only thing Republicans have to offer on health care is fear itself. Because they have nothing else in the way of ideas. Their idea of 'reform' is to keep the status quo, and refuse to take on the health insurance companies. And the only way they see to do that is to scare everyone with fear-mongering rather than have an intelligent debate. It worked for them when Bill Clinton tried to reform health care, but it is not going to work this time around. The American people are smart enough to see through the Republican fear machine."      Obama is for reform, Republicans are against it Once
 
MIDWEST STORMS: Fatal Winds Wreak Havoc In Missouri, Southern Illinois Top
ST. LOUIS — Thunderstorms packing winds gusting to 120 mph pounded parts of the Midwest on Friday, leaving four people dead, collapsing a church and knocking out power to thousands, authorities said. Two people were killed near Poplar Bluff, Mo., when wind knocked a tree onto their car. In Dallas County, a man in his 70s had a fatal heart attack after he and his wife were sucked from their home and thrown into a field 75 to 100 feet away, said county emergency management director Larry Highfill. The wife was taken to a Springfield hospital. Her condition wasn't immediately known. A 54-year-old woman was killed in southeast Kansas when the mobile home she was in was blown off its foundation. Wilson County emergency management spokeswoman Cassandra Edson said it appears the mobile home was "wrapped around a tree." Wind in the area reached 120 mph, destroying the New Albany United Methodist Church, the town's post office and at least one home, authorities said. Major damage also was reported to a high school in Cherokee, Kan. National Weather Service offices in Springfield, Mo., and St. Louis received multiple reports of tornadoes from one end of Missouri to the other, mostly south of Interstate 44. The weather service sent out teams to determine if tornadoes had touched down. Many counties reported wind of 80 mph and higher. Several people were hurt, mostly when wind damaged their homes or businesses, but a few from flash floods. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency. "My primary concern is the safety of Missourians and this executive order makes state agency resources available to help communities respond to the storms," Nixon said. The storm system ransacked southern Illinois as well, peeling siding and roofs off homes and other buildings, blowing out car windows and tearing up trailer parks. About 52,000 Ameren customers were without power around 3:30 p.m., according to the utility company's Web site. A truck driver who had to be extricated from an overturned semitrailer was in serious condition after a "major trauma," said Rosslynd Rice, a spokeswoman for Southern Illinois Healthcare. About six other patients with minor injuries were being treated at Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, she said. "It tore the hell out of things," said Calvin Brown at the Cherry Street Pub in Herrin, a town of about 11,000 residents east of Carbondale. "It was wicked. I haven't seen that in a long time." Carbondale Township Fire Capt. Mark Black said he wasn't sure if a tornado touched down in his area but the "winds were just amazing. They were howling and the siding on the trailers was flying through the air and there was a pretty hard rain." Law enforcement agencies reported tornado touchdowns in the Jackson County community of Raddle and just south of Pinckneyville in Perry County, National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley said. Seeley said the strong line of thunderstorms began moving through the region Friday morning. Wind gusts in the Carbondale area reached 100 mph around 1:30 p.m., and sustained winds were as high as 90 mph. Carbondale resident Eric Fidler said he rode out the storm in a basement room with his wife, 22-month-old daughter and their dog. When they emerged, dozens of large, old trees had been snapped throughout his neighborhood _ including an old oak blocking his front door _ but there was little damage to homes. Even the cushions on his patio furniture were undisturbed. "I was talking to a neighbor and saying, 'This is just incredible. Everywhere I look, there are enormous trees down, but it missed everybody's house,'" said Fidler, who walked a mile to the hardware store for a chain saw. David Gugerty, 28, a graduate student at Southern Illinois University, said a tree crushed his car and a branch tore through the roof of his trailer, coming to rest atop his refrigerator. "I'm sitting in the trailer park trying to decide which way to run," Gugerty said. In sparsely populated Dallas County, Mo., seven other people were also hurt as wind destroyed 50 homes. Highfill said all the damaged homes were in the same path, a strong hint that a tornado was to blame. The storm system left tens of thousands without power, including _ at the peak _ 60,000 customers in the Joplin area. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. In St. Francois County, 911 director Alan Wells said several people suffered moderate injuries from wind damage at their homes. Roofs were torn off of many homes and businesses. A tractor-trailer overturned on U.S. 67 near Park Hills. Wind wasn't the only problem. Many parts of Missouri received 3 inches of rain or more. Flash flooding forced authorities to rescue several people from cars and homes in St. Francois County. Flash flooding also closed roads from Springfield through Cape Girardeau. In Joplin, strong winds toppled a big section of KSNF-TV's tower shortly after 7 a.m., crushing a vehicle and damaging two homes. It appeared no one was hurt. Keith Johnston told The Joplin Globe he was not at home when the tower collapsed, but his wife and two kids were. "My wife said she heard the wind come up and got the kids into the closet," he said. "They heard a booming noise and thought the tower fell." About a dozen homes in Laclede County were destroyed or had major damage, emergency director Jonathan Ayres said. "It does look tornadic from the surveys we have done," Ayres said. "Right now, we're just trying to help these people salvage what they can before dark." Flooding caused widespread problems in Laclede County, shutting down several roads and washing away part of a railroad track. Dan Wadlington, a spokesman for Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said roofs were damaged at two high schools near Springfield, at the towns of Ash Grove and Fair Grove. He said Blunt was prepared to seek federal aid if the damage was significant. Storm spotters said a house in the Springfield area was flattened. An air-conditioning unit was blown off the roof of a Wal-Mart Superstore near Kimberling City, damaging the roof. Fredericktown, about 85 miles southwest of St. Louis, reported damage to several businesses. Another eastern Missouri town, Potosi, reported baseball-sized hail. Several communities _ Joplin, Buffalo, Willard, Elkland among them _ opened shelters for those left homeless by the storms. ___ Associated Press writers Cheryl Wittenauer, Jim Suhr, Ashley M. Heher, Carla K. Johnson and Tammy Webber contributed to this report. More on Extreme Weather
 
Gina Frangello: And Then the Panel Came to Blows: Notes on a Publishing Party Top
Recently, I attended a cocktail party and panel discussion at Maxim's downtown. The party was for people involved in Chicago publishing, and came on the heels -- two days earlier -- of the forming of The Chicago Literary Alliance in Uptown, a networking group for writers and publishers in the city. The Maxim party was larger and more well-heeled than the CLA, including people like Rick Kogan and Donna Seaman, local literary celebrities who would probably not have dragged their asses to Uptown to drink wine from plastic cups (despite this being one of the great pleasures of a literary life) because their days of needing to "network" have long passed and they were probably home chilling with their families. But I digress. At the Maxim's party a small controversy arose. During the Q&A part of the panel discussion, ACM editor Jacob Knabb made a comment to the effect of how technology and alternative media/networking sites are actually beneficial to publishing and literary culture, because it is so much easier to form communities now -- online -- than in the past. His comment was very much in response to the doom-and-gloom tone the panel had taken towards the current publishing climate, with the decline of books-centered print media (and print media in general), the layoffs in New York's publishing world, etc. At Knabb's comment, Rick Kogan, who had delighted the crowd earlier by reminiscing about sitting on Nelson Algren's lap as a child, responded immediately that he felt online community was not remotely the same as face-to-face conversation, could never take its place and that in general he had no use for it. To which Knabb said of Kogan's view (and I was sort of drunk on free wine in actual wineglasses, so I am paraphrasing here), "That's why I'll have a job in five years." To which the crowd freaked out as though a call to arms had been issued, and Donna Seaman -- perhaps the sweetest woman in the entire book industry -- appeared to panic and immediately ended the panel and ushered the crowd into the other room for cocktails. Well. That was a bit anticlimactic. Later, my managing editor at Other Voices Books , Kathryn Kosmeja, who is a smoker and therefore always privy to the off-stage conversations of other smokers, reported that Knabb and Kogan were congenially polluting their lungs together outside and engaging in a respectful and animated exchange of ideas. Which, of course, is no surprise. Both men have contributed a great deal to Chicago letters, and both have no doubt been subject to far bigger skirmishes than a differing view of new technology. The unfortunate part of the story is that the rest of the people at Maxim's were not privy to that discussion, which touched upon what is probably the most important issue in literary culture today. Though Knabb is no doubt more knowledgeable about the online community than I am (he is only seven or eight years younger than I am, but that gap makes a huge difference when it comes to tech-savvy among 30-to-40 year olds) and Kogan, of course, is a Chicago institution when it comes to both print and radio journalism, their dialogue -- both onstage and off -- got me thinking about what new media, and the decline of old-media, really means for writers and publishers. The issue, of course, is extremely complex and full of both pros and cons. Pros: Well, Knabb said it all, really. With Web sites, online news forums like Huffington Post , online literary sites like Bookslut and networking tools from email to Facebook to Twitter, the world has shrunk and everybody can be friends with everybody, exchanging in a free-flowing fountain of ideas ranging from political to artistic. Clearly there is no downside to that (well, unless you count members of Congress "Twittering" during a State of the Union speech, which, of course, borders on the comical and absurd.) This leveled (and free or low-cost) playing field has made it easier for writers and independent publishers to promote books and create word-of-mouth through blogs or MySpace or book trailers on YouTube, reaching thousands (or more) people in ways that once required an enormous marketing budget or publicity engine. As a result of new technology and online media, book reviewing is no longer a small, elitist club but open to anyone who can give good blog, and indie publishers are taken every bit as seriously as the Big Boys when it comes to putting out important work and getting it reviewed. Print on Demand books can sell big on Amazon and other sites, even if they have little bookstore presence, and online books can become cult phenomena. Writers around the globe, if they have access to computers, can enter dialogues and submit work to magazines (even most agents now take electronic submissions if the writer queries first) and this expands the literary world's multiculturalism in a way that is not p.c. and cloying but truly organic and vital. Yes, most of us in the over-30 generation do feel the need to draw the line at how much of this new technology we let into our lives, and not everyone wants to Twitter her every thought or replace the feel of a paper page in her hand with a Kindle. Still, these options have leveled the field in a way nothing else ever has in the dialogue-formerly-known-as-High-Culture and, as Knabb said, made true global access possible. What can there possibly be not to like about all that? As both a fiction writer and the editor of an independent press (i.e. lots of heart and energy, but almost no budget), I embrace these possibilities and regret only that my limited knowledge makes it hard to keep up with them. This is the future of publishing -- and of communications in general. The matter is no longer a debate but a given, and anyone who cannot get on board will soon become a dinosaur. So here I am: I blog; my next book will experiment with POD; Other Voices Books is talking about releasing titles electronically along with print. On Facebook, I have nearly 500 "friends," and I spend so much time on email that I need a 12-step program. Clearly, I am among the converted. Con: And yet . . . where is the money? OK, let me preface this with the disclaimer that I realize it has in fact become widely regarded as gauche for writers (unless you are Audrey Niffenegger) to even discuss money or act as though we give a fig for its existence. But let's look at the facts here: it has always, always been very difficult for artists of all stripes to make anything resembling a living with their art, and most people do need to make a living. Now, with the onslaught of online media and independent publishing, and the decline of the dominant New York publishing industry and print newspapers/magazines, what was once "difficult" is now almost impossible. These days, it has become pretty much a given that publishing your book with an independent press means no advance and -- with bookstores' outdated Depression-Era model of payment (where they can over-order books at no financial risk, the publisher later being slaughtered by the costs of returns) -- often no royalties either. But fine: it was always hard for writers to earn a buck, and at least now more can be published since indie presses are thriving, right? But what about literary journalists? What about the Rick Kogans and Donna Seamans of the future? Well, with online sites and collective blogs increasingly taking the place of any kind of paying print media, "journalism" is totally up for grabs and increasingly an unpaid gig. While your readership may knock the socks off what you'd have found writing for a small, local paper, at least that small, local paper would have paid you for your contribution, and with that payment -- and many others like it -- a book reviewer or cultural journalist could piece together a living, maybe even finding a longtime situation like writing a column or becoming a staff writer or editor. Now, with the Tribune declaring bankruptcy and layoffs afoot at one of our few thriving cultural magazines, Time Out Chicago , journalists both locally and globally need to be willing to contribute work for free if they wish to be heard at all. Gone are the days when the Trib used to pay you 400 bucks to review a book -- or the Chicago Reader may have paid you 4 grand for a long, wonderfully rambling cover story. Cover stories are shorter and book reviews are fewer (if a paper even includes them anymore at all.) More people are writing and reviewing and in literary dialogue than ever before -- but everyone is broke! And is that really "community-building?" At its worst, rather than becoming a more global and inclusive community, the cultural community becomes one where those who can afford to be most "active" and vocal are those who do not actually need money due to being supported by a well-off spouse or a trust fund -- circumstances that, in a Depression, become even more rare than they already were. So how many hours a day can someone really spend writing (or editing) fiction or poetry, blogging, or contributing articles to a non-paying forum, if that person also has to work a 50-hour week somewhere else just to pay the rent or astronomical health care costs? Looking around at Chicago's literary culture, I have to admit that a great number of its most prominent players are unpaid for the bulk of their work running lit mags and presses or churning out books. Some are also academics, but unless they have tenure, the pay is so slim that you would, frankly, earn more working full-time at McDonald's. Those of us embracing technology will have jobs in five years, yes -- but will the jobs actually pay? Or is this trend relegating the entire world of literature and journalism to the subcategory of "hobby," since it can't butter the bread in an intensely capitalist culture? These are old questions, but new media has made them more extreme. In the end, of course, there are no easy answers. Those of us wedded to the literary life have to continue to take -- and take advantage of -- the good with the bad. We have to continue talking, and disagreeing and at times haggling about the future of books and those who write them and publish them and review them, and try to transition our way out of the current disasters in New York publishing, where imprints are disappearing and longtime editors and publicists are being rampantly laid off. We have to take what appears to be calamitous and turn it to our advantage, shrinking the globe and spreading the word and letting our voices be heard in alternative forums that have made the impossible, for many writers, now possible. And this: for many years Chicago's book publishing community was almost nonexistent, but now new independent book presses like Featherproof Books and So New are popping up like wildfire to fill the gap left by New York; now Chicago is host to almost back-to-back AWP Conferences and Pilcrow Literary Festival is helping to also organize writers independent of the academy; now and organizations like the Chicago Literary Alliance are being formed and swank parties for publishers are being held. Imports from Aleksander Hemon to Cris Mazza to Elizabeth Crane have made Chicago their home, and with writers from Achy Obejas to Bayo Ojikutu, we are truly a multicultural literary city even when not online. Something is afoot here in the Second City, and the gap in New York leaves our writers and publishers a space that we are more than capable of filling. If Chicago's literary figures -- known, emerging, and yet-to-come -- truly work together, this may just be our moment to put Chicago (after a long hiatus since Algren had Kogan on his lap) strongly back on the literary map.
 
Ellen Sterling: Las Vegas' Moulin Rouge: A Reminder of How Things Have Changed Top
The history of Las Vegas is quite intriguing. Even though buildings can disappear from the skyline in the blink of an eye through the art and science of implosion, enough remains to pique the curiosity of the individual interested in the past. Take the Moulin Rouge. It wasn't imploded, but it has disappeared. The Moulin Rouge burned down in Las Vegas on Thursday. When I interviewed R&B legend Ruth Brown five years ago, she talked about the first time she came to Las Vegas in 1952. She came here to work and spend some time seeing entertainers like Sammy Davis, Jr., Nat Cole and Pearl Bailey perform. Pretty much all Brown knew about the city came from its nicknames like "Glitter Gulch" and "The Diamond in the Desert." Only, when she was told she couldn't enter the casinos where these performers were playing, she learned another nickname Las Vegas had earned, "The Mississippi of the West." The black entertainers were quite welcome to play the casinos on The Strip. But otherwise -- to eat, sleep, see shows or gamble -- they were not welcome. Brown said, "It didn't matter how famous you were, you had to stay on the west side of the city, in boarding houses." Today, of course, that has changed. But the history of that change is bound up with the Moulin Rouge, the first integrated casino. Opened on May 24, 1955 on the west side of Las Vegas, away from The Strip, the hotel/casino was a such a smashing success that by June 20 Moulin Rouge showgirls graced the cover of Life magazine. It's iconic sign was designed by Betty Willis, who also designed the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign you see as you drive into Las Vegas along Las Vegas Blvd. from the south. Interviewed when Brown was, Bob Bailey, hired as the emcee of the Moulin Rouge shows, recalled, "All the big acts would come there -- Sammy Davis, Jr., Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson. You'd see all the Hollywood people there, too. Frank Sinatra came, Cary Grant -- everyone. After the shows on The Strip were over they'd all came to the Moulin Rouge." Whatever the reason -- and depending upon whom you ask you get lots of reasons -- by November 1955 the Moulin Rouge was closed and by December it had declared bankruptcy. It passed through several different hands but never recovered the prominence it had when it first opened. However, it was not finished as a force in the local civil rights movement. Under the threat of a march down The Strip to protest racial discrimination by the casinos there, the governor of Nevada arranged a meeting between leaders of the local black community and the casinos. The upshot of the March 26, 1960 meeting was that The Strip casinos were to be integrated. That year, too, Bob Bailey recalled, Frank Sinatra emerged as a champion of the civil rights movement. He said, "People like Sammy Davis were still suffering the embarrassment of not being allowed to stay in the hotels where they were appearing. When this happened to Sammy at the Sands, Sinatra turned out to be a right kind of guy. H saw to it that Sammy received the same comforts he received and things began to get better." But not for the Moulin Rouge. It was shuttered for decades, stood vacant at times and at other times was used for cheap apartments. In 1992 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places -- the only site in Nevada on the Register that was related to civil rights -- but, despite sporadic attempts to restore it to its former glory, nothing ever happened. In 2003 the building was destroyed by arson with only the sign left intact. The next year, the Moulin Rouge Development Corporation announced plans to renovate the site and reopen it. The sign was again lit, but nothing else was completed. In February of this year a decision was made to demolish the building because it was a "public nuisance." The property was put up for auction on May 5. It failed to sell and went into foreclosure. The next day the Moulin Rouge burned to the ground. That four-alarm blaze is being investigated. Ruth Brown said it was difficult to reconcile the fable of Las Vegas with the reality she found here in 1952. In the 2004 in an interview at her home in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, she said, "Racial issues here have been settled and things are certainly better than they were. All in all, in Las Vegas there's been quite a change. But you know, honey, it was a long, long time coming." The Moulin Rouge sign was, a few weeks ago, taken down and moved to the Neon Museum for preservation. If you get here, you should drop in and see it. (Ruth Brown, who died in November 2006, lives on through her music. You can get a taste of it at Soul Patrol. )
 
Brian Dickie: Please Let Spring Stay! Top
It has been mild and beautiful -- can the weather please settle down and let us enjoy this wonderful time of the year? (Just a small cry from the heart -- and I don't really think there will be any more snow.) Now, La Tragedie de Carmen on Saturday had a large and enthusiastic house and our extraordinarily beautiful quartet of singers turned in a gripping performance. I guess some people were totally flummoxed by the thing. But there is no doubt that the audience was gripped once they got over a few questions: "Is this Carmen? I recognize these tunes, but where's the chorus? Hey, it's all over and there was no intermission?" We wait to see what the "critics" have to say. The Sun-Times sent their theater critic, not the music one. So that will be a different perspective, perhaps. One delightful outcome of this production was the arrival in Chicago of two young women from Kosovo, the sister and cousin of our Micaela, Krenare Gashi. They both live in Prishtina and have come to town for Krenare's debut in the United States, and will be staying in Chicago for two weeks. The whole family speaks completely fluent English -- entirely learned at school in Kosovo. Amazing really! Anyway, here they are at the post-performance party yesterday evening. (Krenare is in the middle.) We hope to be seeing lots of them in the coming days. And so we have another tough week as we get Owen Wingrave finished up in the rehearsal room and onto the stage. They are in good shape and we have almost two weeks before we open. But there will no doubt be the usual intense moments ahead. Pray for sunshine -- it makes all the difference.
 
Francesca Biller-Safran: "Happy Mother's Day to my Mailman, my Cat, and to my Aunt who used to be my Uncle" Top
"And now for something completely different . . . Mother's Day cards for everyone in your life, everyone who has never been in your life, and especially for those who have never been mothers, not even a whit. . ." It is that special time of year when even John Cleese might venture out in a panic to purchase just the right card for his mother, with the generic illustrations of bluebirds and daisies and sentimental prose inside. But actually, Cleese made a tad fun of his mother who is no longer with us. He said, "I did have a dreadful mother. Isn't that a terrible thing to say? And she lived to be 101- I thought I'd never get rid of her," commented in his classic Monty Pythonesque style. But I am sure that if Cleese were to buy a card for his mother, should she be around and making him feel liked a loved son, it would simply say something akin to "Happy Mother's Day to a wonderful mother," and leave it at that. But it is completely different now when looking for a card for dear old mum, as I recently discovered when attempting to purchase cards for the mothers in my life. Yes, I do mean mothers, which strangely to me still means women who gave birth, raised children and who love them and who you think quite fondly of in return. Sounds simple enough? George Carlin simply had this to say about his mother, "I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try and make us pancakes." After strolling into my local gift store with my half-calf, triple tall, non-fat, half-skimmed, double latte with a sprinkle of gender neutral, parentally-challenged political correctness, I was proven wrong. I thought I had been taken prisoner by a Saturday Night Live sketch or as if Alan Funt might jump out from behind a display of glass animals and say, "You're on Candid Camera!" But alas, I was left alone with the muzak version of The Clash's "Should I stay or Should I go," shopping alone, but really wanting to go. No such luck, as I passed by the Hello Kitty and Catholic Confirmation chatchki aisles and stumbled on what was apparently the Mother's Day card section. I immediately became confused and confounded. Was my mother actually my mother at all? Was she a woman, a man, an extra terrestrial, Jerry Springer? And was I really her daughter, her son, or someone from the recent anthology of 'Who's Who of Political Correctness? In all seriousness, some of the cards were along these lines: "Happy Mother's Day to my Friend who isn't a Mother but Wishes that She was" "Happy Mother's Day to my Sister who isn't a Mother but always acted like one" "Happy Mother's Day to my Father who always acted like the Mother we needed" "Happy Mother's Day to my Son, who I am so grateful I am the Mother of" "Happy Mother's Day to the Woman who I wish were my Mother" "Happy Mother's Day to my Aunt and Uncle who raised me when No One else Would" "Happy Mother's day to my step-mother in law, and thank god my father divorced you" "Happy Mother's Day to my Brother who is actually my Sister and can't have any Children at all now" Okay, so I made the last two up. But you get the idea, or non-ideas that now confuse the heck out of me. You can choose to look at this phenomena in several ways; you can be hysterically irritated because the term mother has now become convoluted that it one day may lose its meaning entirely--as many words in the English language have. Another option is to comprehend that it is a fact of life, sadly or not, that the picture of the American family has changed, and that it is simply a truism and necessity that different themes of motherhood have therefore emerged. Perhaps I am in fact saying 'Let them eat cake' when it comes to some people not being able to buy a simple Mothers Day card and call it a day. Perhaps I should be thankful that I have the classic mother, mother in law and grandmother whom I love, love me and that I am still able to keep my cards simple and to the point. Or one might have a sense of humor as Calvin Trillin did when he said, "The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found." And perhaps I should realize that many people today are without mothers at all; that they make mothers out of whomever they are able to, and that it is not for me to judge who anyone chooses as their mother. Whatever I take away from this, I did finally take away four copies of one perfect card just for the mammy's in my life. The card I ended up clutching as I approached the counter as if it were the last piece of bread on earth was old-fashioned and intended for a small child to their mother. It had a simple sketch of a mommy chicken fluffing up the feathers of her baby chick, in front of an old barn that said "Home Sweet Home" on its rafters. Inside the card it simply read, "Happy Mother's Day from your baby chick, Cluck Cluck Cluck." Sappy, silly and juvenile, yes. But it contained everything necessary and excluded everything that wasn't, and I am sure that mom, grandmother and mom-in-law will be happy and chirp to high heaven. I also hope other people who are thought of as mothers and wished a Happy Mother's Day are thrilled and happy with whatever cards and messages they are lucky enough to receive. After all, sometimes we should be grateful that things are completely different, as long as the constant is that we can still be cherished. By the way, "Happy Mother's Day to my cat who is a boy, but if he were a human and a woman, he would most likely be a mother and a good one at that." Oh, and Happy Mother's Day to myself, who happens to be a mother and a woman, at least for now.
 
Huff TV: Arianna Discusses Today's Political News On CNN Top
Arianna appeared on CNN Friday evening alongside Republican strategist Tony Blankley to discuss the day's political news with Wolf Bltizer. The conversation touched upon Obama's announcement that he will make his speech to the Muslim world in Egypt, whether the White House is too close to Wall Street and Dick Cheney's defense of harsh interrogation tactics. More on CNN
 
Hillary Newman : A Bit of a Mish-Mash: Meet Designers Behind Emerging Eco Fashion Line, Larsen Gray Top
I remember walking the streets of London, clothed in frocks and boots , trying my hardest to assimilate to the dramatically different style London appreciated. You see, before moving to London, I studied in Boston, where Polo was, and still is, as common as Red Sox paraphernalia. It should be noted, my roots stretch across the continent to Los Angeles, a city familiar with over-sized shirts and cut-off shorts . If I have learned one thing about traveling, it's that one of the best vehicles to learn about a place and their culture is through their dress code. Two of my favorite eco-fashion designers, Rachelyn and Nora, have a similar approach in designing their line, Larsen Gray. It isn't uncommon to find exotic patterns and stories of their travels sown into their collection. Catch my interview with the girls- What about your line is eco-friendly? R: We use organic and sustainable materials, and also recycled wools and cotton waste (called cupra). We also strive to use organic trims -- or, like our friendship bracelets from Spring 09 -- artisanal items that help support indigenous communities. N: We do a lot with organic and recycled wool, organic cotton, soybean, and anything else sustainable we can find. If Larsen Gray where a person, who would she be? N: Ourselves. Or my great grandmother. This idea is exactly who she was -- artistic, adventurous, spontaneous. R: I think maybe a Linda McCartney type person. She was a smart, brave artistic woman who is fearless and has that spirit of adventure. Or of course, Brigitte Bardot, but she is a little but crazy, no? I just love the French ladies. Where does inspiration for your line come from? N: Travel, different cultures, art. R: Fashion history, music, walking around NY and street style. Tell me an unforgettable story from your travels abroad. N: When I was in China, I was forced to sing Let It Be, alone, in front of an audience of 500 people for Chinese New Year. R: My then boyfriend, and now fiance, went to Paris for Christmas 2 years ago, and we brought my family some macarons from Laduree as well as some shadowbox insects. Filling out the customs forms, I got a nervous conscious and checked the boxes saying we had insects and food. We spent Christmas Eve in the DC airport having everything we brought back searched by customs agents. I know you two are big collectors, what do you collect? N: Rocks, Shells, South American and Caribbean things, and foreign currencies. R: Vintage T-shirts, bizarre jewelry, religious iconography, charms, books and records. What are the weirdest souvenirs you've brought home? N: Spiders. Totally by accident. I brought home a driftwood slab chair from a trip to Costa Rica. It was shrink-wrapped for the flight. When I got home and unwrapped it, 2 spiders ran out. I sort of freaked out. R: I have a bunch of Topo Gigio toys from Italy -- including one that sings and an inflatable stand up. We also love to bring home shadowboxes of taxidermy insects from Deyrolle in Paris. And my dad always brings me back bizarre Japanese baseball souvenirs. Walk us through your spring line. R: It's Beachcomber -- there is tie-dye, friendship bracelets, agate slabs, breezy sheer clothes and little shark bites in some items. N: The theme is strongly found objects influenced -- the gold buttons look like rocks; it is a bunch of different pieces that all look good together. It has a real breezy, summery feel. Favorite eco spots in NYC not to be missed? R: Central Park. And for shopping/dining the new Bird Store in Williamsburg, Marlow and Sons / Marlow and Daughters , and Egg . N: Yeah, and mainstream wise, Le Pain Quotidian . A piece of advise for Obama? N: Make the media report one positive fact about the Economy each day. The reports are all doom and gloom, and I think part of our problem is the media is causing people to be paralyzed with fear. R: Hang in there-critics will always say negative things, but you have to do what you believe is the best for all of us! -Ecowarriorr More on Travel
 
Ari Bendersky: The Dead Return ... and the Kids They Dance and Shake Their Bones Top
They say you can never go back. That you should let the past be the past. But sometimes the past becomes the present, making things a little more fresh, yet at the same time still retro. The past caught up to us the other day when the Dead returned to Chicago. Not the Grateful Dead, but the Dead. Six guys -- Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and two "new" players, Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti. Yes, we all know that Jerry Garcia is gone. You naysayers need not remind us. We get it, the glory days are over. Or are they? The way this new formation played together on May 5 at Allstate Arena outside Chicago showed a new side of the aging psychedelic rock outfit. This tour, which kicked off in Greensboro, N.C., on April 12 and runs through May 10 when the band goes "home" to play the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif., sees the Dead reaching way back into their stable of songs, many that haven't been played in decades. Throughout the tour, they've played sleepers like Alligator , Dupree's Diamond Blues and King Solomon's Marbles , but they also pulled out favorites like St. Stephen and Terrapin Station to bring crowds to dizzying heights of enjoyment. The Chicago stop on Cinco de Mayo was no different as they dusted off Throwin' Stones , I Know You Rider , Weather Report Suite and Cosmic Charlie . The thing is, the sold-out crowd of about 18,000 wasn't there to hear anything new. We wanted to hear the "classics," and to remember the good feelings we'd get every summer when the Grateful Dead would tour. Was the entire show great? No. Did everyone look like they had a blast? Absolutely. Personally, I would've liked to hear Terrapin and Scarlet Begonias and Ripple , but there was only so much time. And these guys are old. But man, can they hold their own. Whatever you may say about the Dead (or said about the Grateful Dead), you can't argue about their musicianship. Especially with Haynes on lead guitar taking Garcia's spot. The sometime Allman Brother truly brought the band's sound together and was the most talked-about addition post-show. So as we enter a new phase of the Dead, will it last? As they say, "If you build it, they will come." Deadheads are Deadheads and will always be around to support a tour. Based on the crowd response and excitement before, during and after the show (what's a Dead show without a parking lot scene?), the boys shouldn't have any problem touring if they want. One of the more interesting aspects to this Dead vs. the Dead of yore was the proliferation of technology. Not in the form of a light show or anything coming from the stage, but the amount of cell phones and PDAs prevalent throughout the venue. The last time Jerry Garcia played -- in 1995 at Chicago's Soldier Field -- hardly anyone had a cell phone. Now, who doesn't? People were texting, Twittering and taking pictures. Hell, I even sent myself a handful of emails with things I wanted to remember for this article. Does that change the band or the show experience? Not at all. But it does keep everyone better connected. In the past, you might have had to wait for some time to find out what songs the band played. Now, it's instant. And you can download all the shows. For free. So while many have written off the Dead, the rest of us just got a bit closer. And who could complain about that? The band has a few more shows before playing at the Rothbury Festival this July, their only summer show. It will be interesting to see if they continue to tour or if this was truly their last hurrah. Could they pull it off? Sure. Does anyone want to hear Phil Lesh pontificate about organ donation? Possibly, but most really just want to hear the music. And at the end of the day, it's about the music. Ok, it's also about the scene. But as long as most of us -- including the band -- are alive, the Dead can live on.
 
Joel Klein: Transforming the Teaching Profession Top
Eliminating the racial and ethnic achievement gap in our nation's public schools is the most urgent civil rights challenge for this generation. I co-founded the Education Equality Project to address the injustice and inequity that African-American and Latino students confront every day in their schools. Poor and minority students will never get their fair share of educational opportunity -- and are far more likely to lead unsuccessful lives -- until administrators and political leaders commit to fundamentally changing the way teachers are recruited, rewarded, and retained. The goal is as easy to articulate as it is hard to realize: that every classroom will one day be led by an effective instructor who demonstrably advances student learning. Here are specific ways we can do it. 1) Lower irrelevant entry barriers to the teaching profession. Advanced degrees and certification are not linked to producing effective teachers, and traditional schools of education typically attract lower-achieving college students from less competitive institutions. Alternative certification programs, like the Defense Department's Troops to Teachers initiative, are already demonstrating that mid-career and retiring professionals could provide a rich source of new teaching talent, particularly in high-need subject areas in inner-city schools like math and science. 2) The federal government should require states and districts to develop longitudinal data systems that allow school administrators and principals to use value-added data to measure and track the impact teachers have on student achievement. To move toward a performance-based system for teachers, school districts will need to have information that tracks the effect that individual teachers are having on student performance from year-to-year for a number of years. Performance-based metrics must not only be fair but transparent. 3) States and districts should be encouraged and free to use a variety of outcome-based measures to evaluate teacher effectiveness. One proviso: any system that states devise to evaluate teacher performance should include student test scores as a key measuring stick--and should not succumb to the temptation to substitute input-based measures to gauge teacher effectiveness, like licensure status and education credentials, that have been shown to have no connection to effective teaching. While student test scores over a multiyear period should figure prominently in value-added assessments of teacher performance, they should not be the only measure of effectiveness. 4) Every school and district should assess and document the impact that probationary teachers have on student learning from the moment they enter the classroom. Fledgling teachers should receive better professional development support, including on-the-job mentoring and supervision from peers and master teachers. Just as barriers to entering the teaching profession should be lowered, barriers to earning tenure must be raised. 5) To transform tenure into a progress-based prerogative, states and districts should require tenure candidates to demonstrate that they are effectively boosting student learning. At the same time, the least-effective probationary instructors should be denied tenure. 6) To stem the suburban tide, urban school districts should pay large bonuses -- on the order, perhaps, of 25 percent of annual compensation -- to effective teachers who stay to teach disadvantaged students. Teachers who raise student achievement should receive large bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools and extra compensation for teaching core subjects in shortage areas like math and science. At present, top-notch instructors often end up leaving inner-city schools to teach at suburban schools that are closer to home, less disruptive, and pay higher salaries. 7) Tenured teachers should periodically be reassessed to ensure that they are still raising student achievement. Tenured instructors who are doing a good job should receive significant merit pay hikes. But persistently incompetent teachers should be dismissed -- after getting a chance to improve their performance. In much the same spirit, unionized teachers should enjoy the due process protections and seniority rights afforded to other white-collar professionals -- but not be shielded by excessive due- process requirements from meaningful job performance assessments or layoffs. Transforming the teaching profession into a merit-based system will not be easy. But urban school reform and closing the achievement gap can no longer be secondary to protecting the prerogatives of union representatives, district bureaucrats, and professors at teachers colleges. Some of the reforms we need to create real opportunity for disadvantaged students and boost learning for all students are sure to be politically charged. They threaten a vast educational establishment that for decades has privileged the needs of adults over children. The good news is that this radical transformation of the teaching profession could again help make education the great equalizer in America -- and not an ongoing source of inequity and injustice. On Saturday May 16th, on the 55th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education I will be joining with civil rights leaders, education reformers, students, teachers, parents and concerned citizens at the White House Ellipse to issue a call to action. That call begins with improving teacher quality in our public education system.
 
Obama Wants Fed To Be Finance Supercop For 'Too Big To Fail' Companies: AP Top
WASHINGTON — The White House told industry officials on Friday that it is leaning toward recommending that the Federal Reserve become the supercop for "too big to fail" companies capable of causing another financial meltdown. According to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama's economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups, the administration made it clear it was not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators. "The idea of having a council of regulators was pretty much vetoed," said one participant. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who briefly attended the meeting but did not identify the Fed specifically as his top choice, told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk. He said such a regulator should be given better visibility into all institutions that pose a risk to the financial system, regardless of what business they are in. "Committees don't make decisions," Geithner told the group, according to another participant. Officials from the Treasury Department and National Economic Council, which hosted the meeting, told participants that the Fed was considered the most likely candidate for the job, according to several officials who attended or were briefed on the discussions. The administration officials said a legislative proposal would likely be sent to Capitol Hill in June with the expectation that the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would consider the measure before the July 4th recess. The officials requested anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced and they were not authorized to discuss it. A Treasury Department statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday confirmed Geithner's position that he wants a "single independent regulator with responsibility for systemically important firms and critical payment and settlement systems." A spokesman said Geithner also is open to creating a council to "coordinate among the various regulators, including the systemic risk regulator." Industry officials say such a council would likely serve as advisers and would not be given the authority that a "systemic risk regulator" would. The Fed itself hasn't taken a position on whether it should have the job, although Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the Fed would have to be involved in any effort to identify and resolve systemwide risk. In a speech Thursday, Bernanke said that huge, globally interconnected financial firms whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy should be subject to "a robust framework for consolidated supervision." Naming the Fed as a kind of super regulator is likely to run into at least some resistance by other federal regulators and in Congress. Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Friday that she was inclined to support the idea floated this week by the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for a new "systemic risk council" to monitor large institutions against financial threats. The council would include the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC and SEC, according to the proposal by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. Speaking to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry's biggest trade group, Schapiro said she is concerned about an "excessive concentration of power" over financial risk in a single agency. Lawmakers are divided on whether the Fed alone should assume the role of systemic regulator. Some say the Fed failed to prevent the current economic crisis and shouldn't be trusted with such a big responsibility. Others say the Fed should stay focused on its primary duty of setting monetary policy. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said this week he is "more attracted to the council idea" than having a single regulator play that role. Unlike other regulatory agencies, the Fed does not rely on appropriations from Congress for its operating funds. It finances itself through its investments. Fed Gov. Daniel Tarullo told Congress in March that the extent to which the new responsibility for systemic risk should fall to the central bank "depends a great deal on precisely how the Congress defines the role and responsibilities of the authority." "Any systemic risk authority would need a sophisticated, comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to systemic risk," he testified. "Such an authority likely would require knowledge and experience across a wide range of financial institutions and markets." ___ AP writers Marcy Gordon and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report. More on The Fed
 
Meghan O'Hara: THE FAREWELL KISS ...a look behind the headlines at the Iraqi Shoe Thrower Top
It's been about five months since George Bush went to Iraq to dodge a pair of flying shoes. It was a funny scene. Every one laughed. Well, not everyone. Muntadher al Zaidi, the guy who threw the shoe was pulled from the room and beaten, so chances are he wasn't laughing. But yes, for the most part, the incident was treated like a joke and most reports welcomed the chance for a bit of fun to ring out the Bush era. So when we were looking for a story about the ethics of journalism, we decided turn The Media Project's cameras where the media really hadn't. Obviously this shoe-throwing was a huge story, the footage was crazy, but for the most part, all anyone really remembers is just that the shoe was thrown. In a room full of cameras - it was a press conference, after all - why did we never see anything else? And in a room full of journalists, we wondered, why had we not heard more background and context to the case? Sure, a few journalists told us that in Iraq showing the sole of your shoe to someone means is to shame them, to compare them to dirt. Some of them even scratched the surface of who Muntadher al-Zaidi really was, but by and large, he was a joke and his action worth countless inches of snarky print and entire hours worth of shoddy screaming-head dialogue. We wanted to know more. We talked to other journalists who have to work in that environment. What we wanted to ask was, 'Did he cross the line?' And we wanted to know who this man really was - so we went to Baghdad, interviewed his family, his co-workers, his fellow Iraqis. What we found was a man who'd been deeply touched by the war. He had reported on the civilian cost of the war - images and stories we have so rarely seen over these past six years - and that experience enraged him. Almost everyone we talked to - from famed war correspondent Chris Hedges to independent journalist Dahr Jamail - agreed that in his action, Muntadher al-Zaidi had crossed the line from journalist to activist, but they differed on their reasons. Hedges, for example, argues that a journalist could better get the same point across by just continuing to tell the awful stories of war. Jamail, on the other hand, suggests that if we were put in this man's place - if we were to sit in a room with a foreign head of state who was responsible for mass death and destruction of our own country - it is not inconceivable to think we might do the same thing. It's an interesting debate, and one that probably better illuminates the action itself than just one more joke on top of the others. *** THE IFC MEDIA PROJECT airs Sunday night at 11pm on the Independent Film Channel. More on Iraq
 
Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley Find Ready Investors Following Stress Tests Top
A day after federal regulators ordered 10 of the nation's biggest banks to raise a total of $75 billion in extra capital, the first of them, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, each tapped the markets for billions of dollars on Friday to provide a capital arsenal to satisfy the regulators' concerns.
 
Jennifer Fox: Boredom in School and its Effects on Your Child's Health Top
Ferris Buhlers Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The high school movies of my generation resonate with our own experiences in school and one core belief about what school inevitably is. It is boring. We believe that being bored in the classroom is part of the natural order of things. Not all the time, mind you, but plenty. But is this reality one we are really willing to accept for our children? Some have argued children must learn to accept it. Learning how to get through it is part of the point, right? Wrong. Overcoming boredom isn't a matter of character development. And experiencing it may not be healthy. Boredom comes as a result of a lack of engagement. You can't learn something new if you aren't engaged in the process. Our tendency is to it is the child's responsibility to become engaged by simply "trying harder", or getting more "focused". That's like asking someone to find your bad jokes funny by practicing laughing more. Boredom causes children to become inattentive. As all parents are aware, there are negative consequences for students who are not attentive in class and the threat of these consequences can trigger stress. Bored students feel stressed when they are called on to answer questions and they haven't been listening. They may fidget, doodle or find other methods to keep their minds active and these activities are rarely acceptable. Many times teachers can't see past the behaviors that indicate boredom and rather than examining the environment and the activities, they begin to assign negatives to the child -- which only causes greater stress and does nothing to ameliorate the feeling of boredom. It becomes a vicious cycle where the child is expected to learn but is unable to become engaged in the lesson because it may too passive to provide the necessary stimulation to engage the brain in learning. When children repeatedly express boredom with their studies, what they are really saying is, "Help, my brain is starting to atrophy from lack of use!" In his 1997 book, Coping with Chronic Stress , Benjamin Gottlieb points to dozens of studies which demonstrate that under-activity in the brain may trigger a health threat by promoting atrophy of nerve cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is important for spatial and verbal memory. Without knowing it, children who complain of boredom are actually trying to stay healthy. According to Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University, when people experience too much stress the body releases a hormone called cortisol. When people experience prolonged stress, which can conceivably happen from the tension between the expectation to achieve and the reality that lack of stimulation is making it impossible to be attentive, their bodies may produce excess cortisol, causing it to cut back on its production of other hormones, such as testosterone. Without adequate levels of testosterone, it is impossible to maintain, let alone build, muscle. Armed with this information, parents and teachers should take it seriously when young people repeatedly express boredom with their studies. When students express that they are bored, they are not simply complaining, they are offering adults diagnostic information. They are telling us that they do not feel challenged, that their brains are not stimulated in healthy ways. So why don't we listen to these complaints? We don't listen to the cries of boredom because we aren't sure what to do about them. One of the main problems with our pre collegiate educational system is that while there are excellent examples of what works to engage kids, these models rarely find their way into mainstream media. If people don't know what a challenging, creative education looks like, how are they supposed to replicate it or demand it for their children? As President Obama calls for higher standards and greater accountability, it seems the time is ripe for our nation to also take up a serious conversation about what an engaging and challenging school environment looks like for the learner. Young people are aching for engagement. We should join our voices and challenge the mainstream media to fuel this conversation by providing ongoing examples of engaging classrooms and programs. We need to demonstrate to all teachers and parents the ways schools can stimulate learning. A far as I see it, for children this is a matter of health and well being.
 
Rick Horowitz: Symptoms of the Biden Flu: Running Off at the Mouth Top
WASHINGTON, Momentarily -- Thrown repeatedly off message by a series of poorly timed or ill-considered comments by the government's second-ranking official, the Obama White House is giving serious thought to putting Vice President Joe Biden on a perpetual seven-second sound delay. According to two senior administration sources who requested anonymity, the White House is weighing the benefits of implanting a computer chip just above the vice president's jawbone, where it would receive electronic impulses from Biden's brain and temporarily reroute them to a monitoring station within the West Wing for real-time review. Non-controversial statements would be relayed back to Biden's mouth for delivery, while others would simply be blanked out, even as the vice president appeared to continue speaking. "It might look a little awkward," one of the administration sources admitted, "but it sure beats the alternative." A final decision is expected within days, these sources confirmed, and will be made by President Obama himself. The president, known for his own message discipline, is reported to be quite frustrated with Biden's penchant for saying whatever comes to his mind, whether or not it squares with the administration's daily line. The latest gaffe occurred last week, when Biden momentarily undercut his boss's "concern, not panic" message about swine flu. Asked during an appearance on NBC's "Today" show whether he'd advise his own relatives to change their travel plans, Biden admitted that he had already done just that. "I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said. The vice president went on to assert that the problem had less to do with "going to Mexico" than it did with particular means of transportation, and he singled out commercial airplanes and subways as especially worrisome incubators of disease. The White House was forced into instant damage-control mode, explaining what Biden had really "meant" to say. It wasn't the first time. The concern that it won't be the last time is what has prompted the White House to look for more effective remedies for Biden's shoot-from-the-hip approach. Thus this latest attempt: a silicon "silencer." "Look, we know the guy is trying to rein himself him," said one senior official. "But he just can't do it. All it takes is one of these things, and we lose three days of coverage." And from the other senior official, more in sorrow than in anger, "He's not wired that way. So we might have to do some rewiring." By all accounts, the vice president still enjoys the president's strong support. His enthusiastic, regular-guy persona offers a helpful contrast to the president's cool, occasionally even distant, demeanor. More important, the president has come to rely on Biden's expertise in the ways of Capitol Hill, especially his ability to "read" his former colleagues in the Senate. (Arlen Specter's recent switch from Republican to Democrat, for instance, was largely credited to Biden's long relationship with the Pennsylvanian, and to many long conversations between the two men while riding Amtrak trains to and from Washington.) Still, the White House draws a clear distinction between candid advice offered to the president in private, and Biden going public with whatever random thought happens to pass through his head at any given moment. Clamping down on the latter remains a major focus of the administration, and if the seven-second delay doesn't do the trick, there are said to be even more radical alternatives in the works. "We've been all through the Constitution," says a top Obama adviser, "and there isn't a thing in there prohibiting robots." # # # Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com. More on Swine Flu
 
Barack Rising Fast On Baby Names List Top
The Social Security Administration, which tracks the nation's most popular baby names, said today that "Barack" did set what is believed to be a record by skyrocketing more than 10,000 spots -- from number 12,535 in 2007 to 2,409 in 2008. More on Barack Obama
 
Les Leopold: Obama and the Incredible Shrinking Financial Sector Top
In the movie, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957), the protagonist (played by Grant Williams) sails through a sparkly, radioactive mist which slowly shrinks him down until he's about an inch tall, having to fend off spiders with a straight pin as sword. Obama wants to supply similar pixy dust to the financial sector. As he put it, "Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the '70s and the '80s. It just won't be half of our economy....We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader." Obama's goal is on the money -- bring finance back into balance as the junior partner to the real economy rather than a bloated and tyrannical lord. But getting there requires that we understand how finance gobbled up so much of the real economy. The answer involves two basic issues. First, the financial industry is a basket case because it conjured up a whole world of fantasy finance instruments that puffed up their profits while undermining overall economic stability. Second, and at the heart of it all, these conjuring tricks were performed for the purpose of soaking up (and multiplying) the gushing excess of money that -- for more than thirty years -- has been moving out of the hands of middle and lower income families and into the hands of the economic elite. The prevailing media notion is that the economy got distended due to over-leveraging...meaning that we all borrowed too much money. Sure, consumers ran up too much debt, but that misses the real problem. Who loaned us all that money and where did it come from? Supposedly it came from banks and investment houses that mysteriously borrowed more and more from each other. But how did they get away with that? The answer is fantasy finance. This massive leveraging didn't just come from borrowing too much. The real leveraging and profiting came from creating new financial instruments (securities) based on nothing at all (meaning you owned no tangible underlying assets.) They created bets, and then borrowed against the bets as if they were real assets, and then borrowed more to make more bets -- all without owning the real thing. Think for a moment about subprime loans. Right now about $300 billion of them are in, or near, default. That's terrible, but hardly unmanageable and certainly not the stuff of a global meltdown. What created the chaos were those wildly profitable synthetic collateralized debt obligations and similar "structured" financial products, which allowed banks to virtually sell those same subprime loans again and again without owning any of them. It's like selling the Brooklyn Bridge to multiple dupes. Through fancy financial engineering those fantasy products were supposed to have very little risk. Wrong. Instead, when one subprime pool of loans grew shaky, layer after layer of fictitious securities built upon it bit the dust . That's what the Obama administration must regulate into oblivion. To stop the brain drain we need to do something about the outrageous Wall Street compensation packages that draw so many eager graduates into finance. President Obama suggests that this problem will go away as the sector shrinks - that there will be fewer overcompensated bankers once he comes down hard on fantasy finance through new regulations. But there's more to this problem, and it is symbolized not just by high salaries, but by the growing gap between CEO pay and that of the average working person. In 1970 the gap between the top 100 CEOs' average pay and the pay of average workers was 45 to 1 ($296,170 to $6,542), reflecting the restraints of lingering New Deal financial controls and mores. As those controls weakened, the gap increased to 127 to 1 by 1980. As deregulation, tax cuts, and the union bashing of the Reagan era took hold, the gap jumped to 321 to 1 by 1990. In 2000, as "financial innovation" pumped up fantasy finance, the ratio of CEO pay to the average workers' pay hit an obscene level of 1,510 to 1. And then by 2006, at the height of the fantasy finance boom, it climbed to a whopping 1,723 to 1 ($50,877,450 to $29,529). The financial sector soaked up trillions of dollars of wealth accumulated by the very rich, while average real wages remained stagnant. (Plug: This data is from new book: The Looting of America (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.) The pay gap won't go away until we find ways to increase the incomes of the poor and the middle classes ....which is precisely the opposite of what we've done for the past generation. That gap needs a strong dose of incredible shrinking pixy dust in the form of steeply progressive taxes, expanded unionization and a dramatic increase in the minimum wage, which is precisely what happened during our boom years after World War II. More on Barack Obama
 
Berlusconi Faces 'Divorce With Nine Zeros' Top
The highest financial stakes in Silvio Berlusconi's divorce are over the inheritance of his business empire, and how it is split between the two children from his first marriage, and the three younger ones from his long second marriage. More on Italy
 
David Feherty, CBS Golf Analyst, Unleashes Insane Nancy Pelosi Death Fantasy Top
Sweet sassy molassey! A column in the recent issue of D Magazine is freaking everybody out today , and with good reason! It contains the line: From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death. Here's the amazing part! The column was written by David Feherty, who is best known as CBS' golf analyst. Yes. You read that correctly. CBS' GOLF ANALYST. Talk about a good walk spoiled! OK, so: context! The line comes in a larger article about President George W. Bush and wife Laura moving to the Dallas suburb of Preston Hollow, and if I could sum up the theme of Feherty's piece in a sentence, it would be: "I, David Feherty, have an intense loathing of everyone who lives in this community and very soon, President Bush shall know of my pain and despair." And now, a mea culpa! This article by Feherty is part of a larger collection of ruminations on Bush 43's return to Texas that have been available online for a long time , and which I mentioned back in the beginning of April . Somehow, and I don't remember how, Feherty's contribution to this effort escaped my attention. I sort of feel bad about this now, I can tell you! Anyway, among the great works of Feherty that I haven't read is a book called An Idiot For All Seasons , so maybe he was encouraged to go for broke, throw every last stitch of intense, crazyfaced emotion he had in him at the page, and managed to strike gold with his insane Nancy Pelosi death fantasy. Here's a Brief and Lamentable Collection of Wackery that didn't quite rise to that level: ...I mean, what a nightmare of a time that was to be president of the United States! His two terms must have felt like the rest of the world had inserted the Washington Monument into him and it was his job to heave it out.... ...I hate my neighbors because of their very proximity, or at least I hate the ones that want to talk to me who aren't doctors or gun dealers or who don't have their own airplanes.... ...If I have to visit someone, he had better either be in jail or the hospital, and to be honest I'd prefer jail. I do golf commentary on CBS and sometimes star in television commercials wherein I jump on a trampoline while wearing a skirt.... ...No, when I make it home, I slam the door behind me and peek out the letterbox to see if I've been spotted by any of the bastards who live nearby.... ...Even with their Secret Service entourage, the Bushes are going to be besieged by herds of North Dallas McMansion-dwellers, more brown-nosed and full of BS than any longhorn. Nouveaux riche and face-lifted old-monied fossils alike will descend upon them like ants to the honeypot every time they set foot outside their door.... Feherty also offers us a brief glimpse into his political views: I believe in the death penalty, especially for pro-lifers, child molesters, those opposed to gay marriage, and for stupid dancing in the end zone. I believe in the abolition of estate taxes and the Pickens Plan. I'd lower the legal drinking age and raise the driving age to 18 nationwide, make Kinky Friedman governor of Texas, and make all schools, public and private, start earlier with one hour of physical exercise. So there you have it. Now you know what Crash Davis' "I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days" monologue would have sounded like if it had been spoken by a thoroughly insane golf analyst, and not Kevin Costner. [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 .]
 

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