Monday, February 28, 2011

The Chemist's War ANS

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Look at this. There are few things as deadly as one group of people trying to enforce morals on another group.
find it here: http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/
--Kim

The Chemist's War

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

By Deborah BlumPosted Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at 10:00 AM ET

Detroit police inspecting a clandestine underground brewery during Prohibition.It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he wasthe alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptomthe man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.
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Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination." Poisonous alcohol still kills 16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxesbut that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

I learned of the federal poisoning program while researching my new book, The Poisoner's Handbook, which is set in jazz-age New York. My first reaction was that I must have gotten it wrong. "I never heard that the government poisoned people during Prohibition, did you?" I kept saying to friends, family members, colleagues.

I did, however, remember the U.S. government's controversial decision in the 1970s to spray Mexican marijuana fields with Paraquat, an herbicide. Its use was primarily intended to destroy crops, but government officials also insisted that awareness of the toxin would deter marijuana smokers. They echoed the official position of the 1920sif some citizens ended up poisoned, well, they'd brought it upon themselves. Although Paraquat wasn't really all that toxic, the outcry forced the government to drop the plan. Still, the incident created an unsurprising lack of trust in government motives, which reveals itself in the occasional rumors circulating today that federal agencies, such as the CIA, mix poison into the illegal drug supply.

During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. … It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified." Others, however, accused lawmakers opposed to the poisoning plan of being in cahoots with criminals and argued that bootleggers and their law-breaking alcoholic customers deserved no sympathy. "Must Uncle Sam guarantee safety first for souses?" asked Nebraska's Omaha Bee.

The saga began with ratification of the 18^th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States.* High-minded crusaders and anti-alcohol organizations had helped push the amendment through in 1919, playing on fears of moral decay in a country just emerging from war. The Volstead Act, spelling out the rules for enforcement, passed shortly later, and Prohibition itself went into effect on Jan. 1, 1920.

But people continued to drinkand in large quantities. Alcoholism rates soared during the 1920s; insurance companies charted the increase at more than 300 more percent. Speakeasies promptly opened for business. By the decade's end, some 30,000 existed in New York City alone. Street gangs grew into bootlegging empires built on smuggling, stealing, and manufacturing illegal alcohol. The country's defiant response to the new laws shocked those who sincerely (and naively) believed that the amendment would usher in a new era of upright behavior.

Rigorous enforcement had managed to slow the smuggling of alcohol from Canada and other countries. But crime syndicates responded by stealing massive quantities of industrial alcoholused in paints and solvents, fuels and medical suppliesand redistilling it to make it potable.

Well, sort of. Industrial alcohol is basically grain alcohol with some unpleasant chemicals mixed in to render it undrinkable. The U.S. government started requiring this "denaturing" process in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid the taxes levied on potable spirits. The U.S. Treasury Department, charged with overseeing alcohol enforcement, estimated that by the mid-1920s, some 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were stolen annually to supply the country's drinkers. In response, in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge's government decided to turn to chemistry as an enforcement tool. Some 70 denaturing formulas existed by the 1920s. Most simply added poisonous methyl alcohol into the mix. Others used bitter-tasting compounds that were less lethal, designed to make the alcohol taste so awful that it became undrinkable.

To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to "renature" the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly.

By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisonskerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be addedup to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.

The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. "The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol," New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. "[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."

His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: "[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic," read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisonsthat long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner's office.

Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country's poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those "who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff."

And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. "Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes," proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.

Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18^th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist's war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the craziness of Prohibitionand the poisonous measures taken to enforce ithad never quite happened.

Correction, Feb. 22, 2010: The article originally and incorrectly said that the 18^th Amendment banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. It banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol, not consumption. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Annie's Quick Solution to the Labor Unrest in Wisconsin and Elsewhere ANS

Here's a touch of satire, or something. We need a bit of levity, however sad....
I recommend Annie's blog. It's called "The Gods are Bored".
Find it here: go down to Feb 18 for this post. http://godsrbored.blogspot.com/
--Kim

Annie's Quick Solution to the Labor Unrest in Wisconsin and Elsewhere

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where today we are going to offer you a modest proposal for an end to collective bargaining in the interest of balanced state budgets.

Almost every state in America is having problems with massive budget deficits. You see, in order to cover state budget deficits in the past, most of our fearless leaders everywhere either dipped into, or failed to fund, pension and benefit plans for state workers. Never mind how the money disappeared. It did, and the Republican solution is to crush the final vestiges of labor unions in order to restore budget stability and keep taxes reasonable. Public employees would be deprived of seniority, tenure, affordable health care, and the right to collective bargaining.

Teachers and other state workers in Wisconsin have converged on the state capital to protest.

I just read on the Huffington Post that the Tea Party is planning a counter-protest, also at Wisconsin's state capital, to be held on Saturday. They're bringing in Joe the Plumber and some presidential hopefuls. Their platform is that bloated government spending must be curbed, and the only way to curb it is to exact major concessions from government workers.

Well, for the love of fruit flies. Here's a simple solution to this dilemma.

The governor of Wisconsin should fire any state employee who has demonstrated or supported the demonstrations for collective bargaining. That dismissed person's job should go to a Tea Party regular. The Tea Party regular should be willing to work for whatever salary and benefits package the state can afford, with no job security and extremely high demands for improved productivity in the workplace. If a Tea Party regular wants to be a teacher, he or she would need to complete state-mandated training, to be done on the employee's own time and at the employee's own expense. While the salary and benefits and security go down, the expectations for student achievement and other state services will be higher than ever.

I mean, really. The lines are already long at Motor Vehicles. Those Tea Party replacements had better be more efficient for smaller paychecks! That's what they want, isn't it?

Oh wait. That's not what they want. They want less government.

Okay, new modest proposal. Fire all the teachers, replace with Tea Party regulars. Close Motor Vehicles completely. Anyone who can drive should be able to drive. Think of the bureaucracy that will reduce and the taxpayer money that will save! And think of all the happy teenagers who will just be able to crawl into the car and go, never having to pass a silly test!

Eliminate all environmental protection through state oversight. We don't need it. All companies have our best interests at heart and would never harm our land.

Last but not least, fire all policemen and firefighters, replace with people who are willing to work for reduced wages and benefits and no job security. I know I'll sleep more peacefully at night, thinking of all the tax dollars my governor has saved me.

Would someone please hand Joe the Plumber an oxygen mask and send him to the next five-alarm fire in a high-rise filled with senior citizens? And staff those ambulances with Tea Party regulars as well! Let's get America running by hiring real Americans, not these commie pinko union workers with their greedy paws in the taxpayer till!

In order to do my part to balance New Jersey's budget, I will now be paying you to take my free advice. Send me an invoice.

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions ANS

Here is a short article showing how the Koch brothers are behind the anti-Union movement now happening. Money as "free speech" is going to ruin our democracy (if it hasn't already).
Find it here: http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/
--Kim

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Rick Ungar

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions

Feb. 18 2011 - 6:45 pm | 217,208 views | 8 recommendations | 402 comments
By RICK UNGAR

As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here.

Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.

What's more, the plan to kill the unions is right out of the Koch Brothers play book.

Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado;

Via Mother Jones

If you are reluctant to believe that this is a coordinated attack, consider this-

This afternoon, Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Workers Union, sent a message to the Governor's office agreeing to the cuts to pension & welfare benefits sought by Walker in his bill. The governor's response was "nothing doing." He wants the whole kit and kaboodle – the end of the collective bargaining rights of the public unions.

As noted in my earlier post, this is, indeed, the first shot in the final battle to end unionism in America.

UPDATE: The Americans for Prosperity group, a Tea Party group that is a Koch Brothers front, has put up a website and petition called www.standwithwalker.com. The website attacks all collective bargaining – not just for public employees' unions. Americans for Prosperity is also organizing a rally tomorrow in Wisconsin to support Gov. Walker.

Why are the Koch Brothers so interested in Wisconsin? They are a major business player in the state.

This from Think Progress:

Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant:

Officials at Georgia-Pacific said the company is laying off 158 workers at its Day Street plant because out-of-date equipment at the facility is being replaced with newer, more-efficient equipment. The company said much of the new, papermaking equipment will be automated. [...] Malach tells FOX 11 that the layoffs are not because of a drop in demand. In fact, Malach said demand is high for the bath tissue and napkins manufactured at the plant.

You really have to wonder how long it will take for Tea Party devotees to realize just how badly they are being used.

Previous Post: The Final Battle In The War Against Unions Is Underway
Next Post: Recall In Wisconsin?

Re: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. ANS

I can understand you not wanting to give pensions to future workers, but this is what was bargained for and agreed to many years ago. They are entitled to what they have an agreement to. They gave up salary in favor of pension, and have been paid less than is reasonable for many years in order to secure that pension, and they were promised it in a legal contract. It is binding. If the bosses didn't want to do pensions, they shouldn't have agreed to it back when they did. It is dishonest and unfair to renege now.
The only reason the salaries don't look low to you now is that everyone else's salary has gone down in the ensuing years until their low salaries no longer look low. That is not a reason to reduce theirs, but to raise ours. I passed by an "all you can eat" restaurant a couple of days ago, and it was $9.99 for all you can eat. My father used to hang out at an all you can eat for $1 when I was first starting in my career. The "all you can eat" has multiplied ten-fold while my salary has gone up by less than five times in the same period. This is typical of what has been happening as the Cheap Labor Republicans have taken over and ruined America and the American Dream.
--Kim

At 03:31 AM 2/26/2011, Ted Gelber wrote:

All government employees should have pensions replaced with 401ks like the rest of us. I do not want to pay for someone retiring at 55 and getting 80% of their wage for the next 30 years. Their jobs are much more secure than people in private industry. Some of these people are even allowed to pass the pension on to their spouse after they die - GOOD GRIEF !!!

Terrible Ted

----- Original Message -----

From: Kim Cooper

To: Joyce Segal

Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 05:00 PM

Subject: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. ANS

Here's a good summary of what the fight in Wisconsin is about. I hope you are all paying attention: this is our latest chance to fight for The People in the fight of Democracy versus Aristocracy. This has been called American Revolution 2.0.

Find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=1

--Kim

Advertise on NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 24, 2011

Here's a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn't Cairo after all. Maybe it's Baghdad specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy, told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to "corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises" Mr. Bremer's words, not the reporter's and to "wean people from the idea the state supports everything."

The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein's best-selling book "The Shock Doctrine," which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.

In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor's budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state's fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions an offer the governor has rejected.

What's happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

And then there's this: "Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b)."

What's that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be "considered to be in the public interest."

If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering remember those missing billions in Iraq? you're not alone. Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker's anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it's interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?

The good news from Wisconsin is that the upsurge of public outrage aided by the maneuvering of Democrats in the State Senate, who absented themselves to deny Republicans a quorum has slowed the bum's rush. If Mr. Walker's plan was to push his bill through before anyone had a chance to realize his true goals, that plan has been foiled. And events in Wisconsin may have given pause to other Republican governors, who seem to be backing off similar moves.

But don't expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 25, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition.

Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

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The G.O.P.’s Abandoned Babies ANS

This is a good summary of how inconsistent the Regressives' position on babies is (or appears to us). But it's also fiscally stupid.
Remember, psychologically, they support fetuses because they are innocent, but don't support babies because they have original sin, so they aren't innocent anymore. We learned that in a previous post -- if you've been paying attention, and remember such details.... I bring this up, because there really is some internal logic to the Regressives' position, it just doesn't make much sense to Progressives because our viewpoint is very different.
Find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/opinion/26blow.html?_r=1
--Kim

Op-Ed Columnist

The G.O.P.'s Abandoned Babies

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Published: February 25, 2011

Republicans need to figure out where they stand on children's welfare. They can't be "pro-life" when the "child" is in the womb but indifferent when it's in the world. Allow me to illustrate just how schizophrenic their position has become through the prism of premature babies.
Enlarge This Image

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Charles M. Blow

Go to Columnist Page »

Multimedia

Graphic

Preterm Infants and Mortality

Of the 33 countries that the International Monetary Fund describes as "advanced economies," the United States now has the highest infant mortality rate according to data from the World Bank. It took us decades to arrive at this dubious distinction. In 1960, we were 15th. In 1980, we were 13th. And, in 2000, we were 2nd.

Part of the reason for our poor ranking is that declines in our rates stalled after premature births a leading cause of infant mortality as well as long-term developmental disabilities began to rise in the 1990s.

The good news is that last year the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the rate of premature births fell in 2008, representing the first two-year decline in the last 30 years.

Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, the president of the March of Dimes, which in 2003 started a multimillion-dollar premature birth campaign focusing on awareness and education, has said of the decline: "The policy changes and programs to prevent preterm birth that our volunteers and staff have worked so hard to bring about are starting to pay off."

The bad news is that, according to the March of Dimes, the Republican budget passed in the House this month could do great damage to this progress. The budget proposes:

• $50 million in cuts to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant that "supports state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs."

• $1 billion in cuts to programs at the National Institutes of Health that support "lifesaving biomedical research aimed at finding the causes and developing strategies for preventing preterm birth."

• Nearly $1 billion in cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its preventive health programs, including to its preterm birth studies.

This is the same budget in which House Republicans voted to strip all federal financing for Planned Parenthood.

It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent to insist that women endure unwanted and in some cases dangerous pregnancies for the sake of "unborn children," then eliminate financing designed to prevent those children from being delivered prematurely, rendering them the most fragile and vulnerable of newborns. How is this humane?

And it doesn't even make economic sense. A 2006 study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies estimated that premature births cost the country at least $26 billion a year. At that rate, reducing the number of premature births by just 10 percent would save thousands of babies and $2.6 billion more than the proposed cuts to the programs listed, programs that also provide a wide variety of other services.

This type of budgetary policy is penny-wise and pound-foolish and ultimately deadly. Think about that the next time you hear Republican representatives tout their "pro-life" bona fides. Think about that the next time someone uses the heinous term "baby killer."

•

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. ANS

Here's a good summary of what the fight in Wisconsin is about. I hope you are all paying attention: this is our latest chance to fight for The People in the fight of Democracy versus Aristocracy. This has been called American Revolution 2.0.
Find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=1
--Kim

Advertise on NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 24, 2011

Here's a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn't Cairo after all. Maybe it's Baghdad specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy, told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to "corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises" Mr. Bremer's words, not the reporter's and to "wean people from the idea the state supports everything."

The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein's best-selling book "The Shock Doctrine," which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.

In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor's budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state's fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions an offer the governor has rejected.

What's happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

And then there's this: "Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b)."

What's that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be "considered to be in the public interest."

If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering remember those missing billions in Iraq? you're not alone. Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker's anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it's interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?

The good news from Wisconsin is that the upsurge of public outrage aided by the maneuvering of Democrats in the State Senate, who absented themselves to deny Republicans a quorum has slowed the bum's rush. If Mr. Walker's plan was to push his bill through before anyone had a chance to realize his true goals, that plan has been foiled. And events in Wisconsin may have given pause to other Republican governors, who seem to be backing off similar moves.

But don't expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 25, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition.

Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

Room For Debate: Wisconsin's Blow to Union Power

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Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

Read All Comments (464) »

Monday, February 21, 2011

Fwd: Re: Fw: [TheNNOC] PROGRESO WEEKLY: Egypt, Cuba and The Wall Street Journal

Hi -- Here's one person's reply to the post. I guess I should have mentioned that the reader who sent me the post has been to Cuba (I believe, if I remember correctly...), and does speak Spanish.
--Kim

Interesting. I mostly agree with it, but the most striking thing about Cuba to me was how well-educated people are there. Something like half the adult population has a college degree, which is a far higher rate than the U.S. It's harder to pull the wool over people's eyes when they've been educated. Also, I do think that Cuba has its problems. I was only in Cuba for a week, but what I found is that while people mostly support the revolution, almost everyone except the hard core communist party fanatics would like to see some reform (some of which has happened). But the reform they want to see does not include the U.S. taking over their country.

--- On Sun, 2/20/11, Kim Cooper <kimc@astound.net> wrote:

From: Kim Cooper <kimc@astound.net>

Subject: Fw: [TheNNOC] PROGRESO WEEKLY: Egypt, Cuba and The Wall Street Journal

To: "Joyce Segal" <joyceck@myastound.net>

Date: Sunday, February 20, 2011, 9:39 PM

Hi -- One of our readers sent this to me. I pass it on without comment.

--Kim

PROGRESO WEEKLY
Egypt, Cuba and The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, 16 February 2011 15:50 Arnaldo HernÃƒÂ¡ndez
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By Arnaldo HernÃƒÂ¡ndez

From The Unknown Island

In its issue of Feb. 7, The Wall Street Journal expressed its hope that a social explosion might occur in Cuba like the one sparked by the Egyptian people to remove the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The editor said frankly that he did not understand something: Why did it happen in Egypt and does not happen in Cuba?

Twenty years ago, executives of that newspaper asked a similar question: Why did the Soviet Union collapse and socialism ended in Eastern Europe and the same did not happen in Cuba?

The paper's image of sobriety and power cannot hide its bigotry and hate.

There is a key question that clashes with the beliefs of the owners of the newspaper. How can a ruler who is a subordinate of the United States, a man supported by the might of the empire, be eliminated by popular will? How is it possible that the masses challenge the interests of the United States?

The counter-revolution funded and directed by the U.S. government reacts in the same way, but with so much anger that they say that the Cuban people are cowardly and stupid.

That's the picture.

There is no choice but to ask some questions beyond the limited and schematic logic of the empire:

Why don't Cubans rise against free health care? Why don't they take to the streets to demand that they be charged for the vaccines given to all children?

Why don't they protest against free education? Why don't they offer to pay US$15,000 per year for five years to obtain a degree in philology?

Why don't they demand the closure of the many special schools available free to handicapped children?

Why do they continue to concede that thousands of young people from Latin America and Africa are studying medicine in Cuba and that thousands of Cuban doctors contribute to health care in dozens of countries?

Why don't the Cubans ask for the restoration of U.S. dominance? Why don't they again include in their Constitution the right of the U.S. government to militarily occupy the nation's territory, sprinkle it with military bases like GuantÃƒÂ¡namo and take over the 3,056-square-kilometer Isle of Pines, an integral part of the nation's territory?

Why don't the Cubans demand that their country surrender its resources and economy to U.S. monopolies?

Why don't they rise to reintroduce the exploitation of man by man and discrimination against women and "non-whites"?

Why do they insist on maintaining social justice and equality between human beings and reject the inequities arising from the money amassed by the rich and not by the workers?

Why don't the Cubans help amend the principles of international law and eliminate the respect to countries' sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples?

Why don't the Cubans respect those characters who were born in Cuba and are paid by a foreign power, say, the U.S. government, in its plans to overthrow the Revolution?

These things are not well understood in the modern world – fanccy expecting the Cubans to rise up to establish in their country situations like the ones that led to the uprising of the Egyptians!

The people of a small country can be neither cowardly nor foolish if they have successfully resisted, for more than 50 years, military aggression and state terrorism, plus an economic blockade and constant massive media attacks from the most powerful empire that has ever existed and its allies.

The newspaper of the "empire of high finance," as American economist Victor Perlo called the Wall Street financial monopolies in his book in the early 1960s, cannot understand the hatred aroused by the United States' domination and interference in the affairs of other nations, or the exploitation by U.S. transnational corporations of the workers and wealth of other countries.

Those who have all the money in the world and think they can buy everything, including the conscience and stupidity of many, and impose their domination, selfishness and individualism, do not understand these things.

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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Fw: [TheNNOC] PROGRESO WEEKLY: Egypt, Cuba and The Wall Street Journal

Hi -- One of our readers sent this to me. I pass it on without comment.
--Kim

PROGRESO WEEKLY

Egypt, Cuba and The Wall Street Journal

Wednesday, 16 February 2011 15:50 Arnaldo HernÃ¡ndez

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By Arnaldo HernÃ¡ndez

From The Unknown Island

In its issue of Feb. 7, The Wall Street Journal expressed its hope that a social explosion might occur in Cuba like the one sparked by the Egyptian people to remove the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The editor said frankly that he did not understand something: Why did it happen in Egypt and does not happen in Cuba?

Twenty years ago, executives of that newspaper asked a similar question: Why did the Soviet Union collapse and socialism ended in Eastern Europe and the same did not happen in Cuba?

The paper's image of sobriety and power cannot hide its bigotry and hate.

There is a key question that clashes with the beliefs of the owners of the newspaper. How can a ruler who is a subordinate of the United States, a man supported by the might of the empire, be eliminated by popular will? How is it possible that the masses challenge the interests of the United States?

The counter-revolution funded and directed by the U.S. government reacts in the same way, but with so much anger that they say that the Cuban people are cowardly and stupid.

That's the picture.

There is no choice but to ask some questions beyond the limited and schematic logic of the empire:

Why don't Cubans rise against free health care? Why don't they take to the streets to demand that they be charged for the vaccines given to all children?

Why don't they protest against free education? Why don't they offer to pay US$15,000 per year for five years to obtain a degree in philology?

Why don't they demand the closure of the many special schools available free to handicapped children?

Why do they continue to concede that thousands of young people from Latin America and Africa are studying medicine in Cuba and that thousands of Cuban doctors contribute to health care in dozens of countries?

Why don't the Cubans ask for the restoration of U.S. dominance? Why don't they again include in their Constitution the right of the U.S. government to militarily occupy the nation's territory, sprinkle it with military bases like GuantÃ¡namo and take over the 3,056-square-kilometer Isle of Pines, an integral part of the nation's territory?

Why don't the Cubans demand that their country surrender its resources and economy to U.S. monopolies?

Why don't they rise to reintroduce the exploitation of man by man and discrimination against women and "non-whites"?

Why do they insist on maintaining social justice and equality between human beings and reject the inequities arising from the money amassed by the rich and not by the workers?

Why don't the Cubans help amend the principles of international law and eliminate the respect to countries' sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples?

Why don't the Cubans respect those characters who were born in Cuba and are paid by a foreign power, say, the U.S. government, in its plans to overthrow the Revolution?

These things are not well understood in the modern world – fancy expecting the Cubans to rise up to establish in their country situations like the ones that led to the uprising of the Egyptians!

The people of a small country can be neither cowardly nor foolish if they have successfully resisted, for more than 50 years, military aggression and state terrorism, plus an economic blockade and constant massive media attacks from the most powerful empire that has ever existed and its allies.

The newspaper of the "empire of high finance," as American economist Victor Perlo called the Wall Street financial monopolies in his book in the early 1960s, cannot understand the hatred aroused by the United States' domination and interference in the affairs of other nations, or the exploitation by U.S. transnational corporations of the workers and wealth of other countries.

Those who have all the money in the world and think they can buy everything, including the conscience and stupidity of many, and impose their domination, selfishness and individualism, do not understand these things.

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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions ANS

The counter-protesters to the Union protesters are bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. "Bought and paid for" -- What does that sound like?
the story is from Forbes.
Find it here: http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/
--Kim

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Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions

Feb. 18 2011 - 6:45 pm | 0 views | 0 recommendations | 60 comments
By RICK UNGAR

Via Mother Jones

You really have to wonder how long it will take for Tea Party devotees to realize just how badly they are being used.

Previous Post: The Final Battle In The War Against Unions Is Underway

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

How crochet solved an age-old maths problem ANS

And now for something completely different.... This is about how crochet can show something that math was having trouble modeling. It's from the London Times, so that probably explains "maths" instead of "math".
Find it here: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4243171.ece
--Kim

From The Times
July 1, 2008

How crochet solved an age-old maths problem

Hyperbolic space is so complex that no one could build a model of it - until now. Daina Taimina explains how her craftwork solved a hundred-year-old mathematical mystery

Alex Bellos

Feminine handcrafts are not known for their contribution to scientific progress. Nuclear physics has been untouched by advances in knitting. The understanding of molecular biology does not require embroidery skills. Yet basic crochet is giving new insights into centuries-old maths problems.

For this we can thank Daina Taimina, a Latvian mathematician with a talent for crochet. If you had to draw a Venn diagram with one circle representing women, one circle representing mathematicians and another celebrities, Taimina is about the only person in the intersection of all three.

When she picked up her crochet hook a decade ago, Taimina had a more ambitious goal than making a scarf or hat: her aim was to create a model of hyperbolic space, a strange world where parallel lines do not stay the same distance apart but curve away from each other. It is so conceptually challenging that for a century mathematicians were unable to visualise what this type of space might actually look like. In fact, there is no formula that accurately describes hyperbolic space, so computers cannot model it either.

Yet Taimina achieved results. Using craft skills learnt while growing up in Latvia, she invented �hyperbolic crochet� - a testament to her mathematical nous and single-mindedness. When we meet in the Greenwich flat she is staying in for the opening of the hyperbolic crochet coral reef exhibition at the Southbank Centre, she tells me that when she started to use crochet in maths, the reaction from some family members was dismissive. �They said, �You are not serious. You should do something more serious',� she recalls. This was the provocation she needed. �It is serious. And I did what I set out to do.�

It turned out that Taimina's models were not just abstract and mathematical. They looked surprisingly like many natural phenomena such as lettuce leaves, sea slugs, kelp and coral. This helped to create a movement that has spread from academia to the craft and environmental communities. The Southbank exhibition, inspired by her models, aims to highlight the destruction of coral reefs.

Taimina made her discoveries shortly after moving from Latvia to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York a decade ago, after being invited to be a visiting professor in mathematics. She still speaks with a distinctive Eastern European accent.

Hyperbolic crochet might have originated from complex mathematical ideas, but in reality it is very simple. Taimina started with a line of crochet, and for each subsequent line she increased the number of stitches. For example, adding an extra stitch in the second line for every five stitches in the first. And for every five stitches in the second line, adding an extra one in the third. The number of stitches increases at an exponential rate. As the lines are longer, but joined together, the material quickly starts to fold in interesting ways.

Once she got the hang of it, she realised that you can see just how parallel lines behave on the hyperbolic plane. On a blue model, she crocheted a white line. She then took a point that was not on the line and, through folding and tracing the contours with her finger, could find several new lines that went through the point, were parallel to the white line and also curved away from it. �I was excited that I could do this,� she says, since this was a physical representation of something that had until then been only conceptual. �Making something with my hands that cannot be made by computer was also a thrill.�

Even more excited was her husband, David Henderson, professor of mathematics at Cornell, who she met at a maths conference. �His dream was to see a hyperbolic pair of pants,� Taimina says, referring to the properties of an octagon in hyperbolic space. When you fold the sides of an octagon in the hyperbolic plane, the shape looks like a pair of trousers. And her crocheted octagon worked. She has an example and shows me exactly how it folds up to be like a woolly pair of toddler's shorts.

Word quickly got round the Cornell maths faculty. One colleague, a world expert on the hyperbolic plane, was mesmerised by Taimina's crochet models. He said that for the first time he could visualise a certain type of hyperbolic curve. �It was a happy exclamation. He had been writing about them all his career, but it was all in his imagination. The difference with the crochet is that you can touch it. You can experience it.�

Hyperbolic crochet has given new insights into old geometrical problems. One way to think about it is that the hyperbolic plane is where lines curve away from each other, in contrast to what happens on a sphere, where all lines curve towards each other. It is still not known if the geometry of the universe is spherical, flat, or even hyperbolic - although using data from satellites, scientists hope to have the answer within the next few years.

A hundred years ago, it was proved that there is no formula to describe the hyperbolic plane, so mathematicians all but gave up trying to create a physical model of one. In the 1970s, Bill Thurston, a US mathematician who went on to win the Fields Medal, the most highly regarded prize in maths, made an attempt using strips of paper and Sellotape. Yet while this demonstrated some of the properties of the hyperbolic plane, it was finicky to make, and flimsy. �We have one. It sits on our piano,� says Taimina. �You are not going to fold and investigate it. I hate glueing paper. It drives me crazy. So that is when I came up with the idea to make crochet.�

In fact, her first attempt was with knitting. But this didn't work. �If you lose a stitch, everything unravels. With crochet you can do one stitch at a time.�

David Henderson says the crochet has made deep contributions to the field: �For the first time it allows mathematicians and students to actually experience the hyperbolic plane. The genius of it is connecting craft with mathematics.�

In the last ten years Taimina has made more than a hundred examples of hyperbolic crochet. She has also invented hyperbolic sewing - she stitched hyperbolic sections of cloth together to make a dress that flares at the bottom like the edges of a leaf of kale. Her most ambitious crochet model weighs 4.5kg (10lb) and uses 5.5km (3.5 miles) of yarn. �It is probably the largest hyperbolic crochet ever,� she says. �[Making] it was a long and painful time - it is very heavy, and so it took a lot of energy to turn it.�

The connection between hyperbolic crochet and the natural world is a result of the large surface area the models produce. Hyperbolic geometry maximises area with a minimal volume. Taimina's giant coral has a surface area of about 3.2 square metres (35 sq ft). �This is about twice as much as me,� she says. When an organism needs a large surface area, for example a filter-feeding organism like coral, it grows in a hyperbolic way.

The link between the Cornell maths faculty and the Southbank Centre is the Institute for Figuring (IFF), a US-based organisation that aims to promote the aesthetic dimensions of science. It was founded by Margaret and Christine Wertheim, Australian twins who grew up near the Great Barrier Reef, and had the idea of making a global exhibition of hyperbolic crochet coral to promote ecology.

Hyperbolic crochet is also helping more women to explore maths. It is part of a new field called �mathematics and the fibre arts� which includes knitting, quilting and weaving as well as crochet.

Taimina, who is 53, is now writing a book about the connections between geometry and crochet. Her success has made her reflect on the value of maths in society. �I chose to study maths because I thought it was the least political subject,� she says. �I would never have imagined that something that was purely mathematical would touch on so many other issues.�

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is at the Hayward Gallery and the Royal Festival Hall until August 17.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Nine Pictures Of The Extreme Income/Wealth Gap ANS

This is an article about the wealth distribution in the US being worse than in Egypt. And Egypt is having a rebellion because of it! the USof A was supposed to be By the People Of the People and For the People -- if these corporationists don't like that, why don't they just go elsewhere?
Find it here: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020612/understanding-extreme-incomewealth-gap
--Kim

Nine Pictures Of The Extreme Income/Wealth Gap

By Dave Johnson

February 14, 2011 - 10:18am ET

Many people don't understand our country's problem of concentration of income and wealth because they don't see it. People just don't understand how much wealth there is at the top now. The wealth at the top is so extreme that it is beyond most people's ability to comprehend.

If people understood just how concentrated wealth has become in our country and the effect is has on our politics, our democracy and our people, they would demand our politicians do something about it.

How Much Is A Billion?

Some Wall Street types (and others) make over a billion dollars a year – each year. How much is a billion dollars? How can you visualize an amount of money so high? Here is one way to think about it: The median income in the US is around $29,000, meaning half of us make less and half make more. If you make $29,000 a year, and don't spend a single penny of it, it will take you 34,482 years to save a billion dollars. . . . (Please come back and read the rest of this after you have recovered.)

What Do People Do With SO Much?

What do people do with all that money? Good question. After you own a stable of politicians who will cut your taxes, there are still a few more things you can buy. Let's see what $1 billion will buy.

Cars

This is a Maybach. Most people don't even know there is something called a Maybach. The one in the picture, the Landaulet model, costs $1 million. (Rush Limbaugh, who has 5 homes in Palm Beach, drives a cheaper Maybach 57 S -- but makes up for it by owning 6 of them.)

Your $1 billion will only buy you a thousand Maybach Landaulets.

Here are pics of just some of Ralph Lauren's collection of cars. This is not a museum, this is one person's private collection. You don't get to go look at them.

Luxury Hotels

This is the Mardan Palace Hotel in Turkey, Burj Al Arab in Dubai.

Here is a photo gallery of some other expensive hotels, where people pay $20-30,000 per night. Yes, there are people who pay that much. Remember to send me a postcard!

A billion dollars will buy you a $20,000 room every night for 137 years.

Yachts

Le Grand Bleu - $90 million.

Some people spend as much as $200 million or more on yachts.

You can buy ten $100 million yachts with a billion dollars.

Private Jets

Of course, there are private jets. There are approx. 15,000 private jets registered in the US according to NBAA. (Note: See the IPS High-Flyers study.)

This is a Gulfstream G550. You can pick one up for around $40 million, depending. Maybe $60 million top-of-the-line.

Your billion will buy you 25 of these.

Private Islands

If the rabble are getting you down you can always escape to a private island.

This one is going for only $24.5 million – castle included. You can only buy 40 of these with your billion.

Mansions

This modest home (it actually is, for the neighborhood it is in) is offered right now at only about $8 million. I ride my bike past it on my regular exercise route, while I think about how the top tax rate used to be high enough to have good courts, schools & roads and counter the Soviet Union and we didn't even have deficits.

I ride there but that neighborhood is not like my neighborhood at all. While there is one family in that house, I live closer to the nearby soup kitchen that serves hundreds of families. One family in a huge estate and hundreds at a soup kitchen roughly matches the ratio of wealth concentration described below.

Here are a few nearby homes up for sale.

You can buy 125 houses like this one with your billion.

Luxury Items

Here is an article about ten watches that are more expensive than a Ferrari.

The one in this picture costs more than $5 million. You can buy 200 of these with your billion.

Medieval Castles

Just for fun, this is Derneburg Castle. Do you remember the big oil-price runup a few years ago that too the price of a gallon at the pump up towards $5? One speculator who helped make that happen got a huge bonus paid with government bailout money. He owns this castle. He has filled it with rare art. You can't go in and see any of the rare art.

Click here to see the layout in an aerial view. That's as close as you're going to get, peasant.

Let's Go Shopping

So you say to yourself, "I want me some of that. I'd like to place the following order, please."

One Maybach Landaulet for $1 million to drive around in. (Actually to be driven around in.)
One $100 million yacht for when I want to get seasick.
One Gulfstream G550 private jet for $40 million.
One private island for $24.5 million (castle included) for when I want to escape the masses.
One $8 million estate for when I have to go ashore and mingle with the masses (but not too close.)
One $5 million watch so I can have one.
Total: $178.5 million.

My change after paying with a billion-dollar bill is a meager $821.5 million left over. I might be hard up for cash after my spending spree, but I can still stay in a $20,000 room every night for 112 and 1/2 years.

So, as you see, $1 billion is more than enough to really live it up. People today are amassing multiples of billions, paying very little in taxes and using it in ways that harm the rest of us.

How Extreme Is The Concentration?

Now you have a way to visualize just how much money is concentrated at the very top. And the concentration is increasing. The top 1% took in 23.5% of all of the country's income in 2007. In 1979 they only took in 8.9%.

It is concentrating at the expense of the rest of us. Between 1979 and 2008, the top 5% of American families saw their real incomes increase 73%, according to Census data. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth (20% of us) saw a decrease in real income of 4.1%. The rest were just stagnant or saw very little increase. This is why people are borrowing more and more, falling further and further behind. (From the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

Income VS Wealth

There are a few people who make hundreds of millions of income in a single year. Some people make more than $1 billion in a year But that is in a single year. If you make vast sums every year, after a while it starts to add up. (And then there is the story of inherited wealth, passed down and growing for generation after generation...)

Top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined. "In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation's private wealth. That's more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." (Also from the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households: $1.6 trillion.

wealth1

Corporate wealth is also personal wealth. When you hear about corporations doing well, think about this chart:

wealth2

The top 1% also own 50.9% of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets. The top 10% own 90.3%.

Worse Than Egypt

In fact our country's concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt. Richard Eskow writes,

Imagine: A government run by and for the rich and powerful. Leaders who lecture others about "sacrifice" and deficits while cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. A system so corrupt that rich executives can break the law without fear of being punished. Increasing poverty and hardship even as the stock market rises. And now, a nation caught between a broken political system and a populist movement that could be hijacked by religious extremists at any moment.

Here's the reality: Income inequality is actually greater in the United States than it is in Egypt. Politicians here have close financial ties to big corporations, both personally and through their campaigns. Corporate lawbreakers often do go unpunished. Poverty and unemployment statistics for US minorities are surprisingly similar to Egypt's.

The Harmful Effect on The Rest Of Us

This concentration is having a harmful effect on the rest of us, and even on the wealthy. When income becomes so concentrated people who would otherwise think they are well off look up the ladder, see vastly more wealth accumulating, and think they are not doing all that well after all. This leads to dissatisfaction and risk-taking, in an effort to get even more. And this risk-taking is what leads to financial collapse.

Aside from the resultant risk of financial collapse, the effect of so much in the hands of so few is also bad psychologically. People need to feel they earned that they have earned what they have, and develop theories about why they have so much when others do not. Bizzare and cruel explanations like Ayn Rand's psychopathic theories about "producers" and "parasites" take hold. Regular people become little more than commodities, blamed for their misery ("personal responsibility") as they become ever poorer.

Teddy Roosevelt, speaking to the educators about "False Standards Resulting From Swollen Fortunes," warned that while teachers believe their ideals to be worth sacrifice and so do non-renumerative work for the good of others, seeing great wealth makes people think that obtaining wealth is itself a lofty ideal,

The chief harm done by men of swollen fortune to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to depict as springing from their actions, but the effect that their success sets up a false standard, and serves as a bad example to the rest of us. If we do not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches, this rich man would have a most insignificant influence over us.

Societies that are more equal do better. In the book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make the case that great inequality harms us physically as well as spiritually, and the these harmful effects show up across society. The book examines social relations, mental health, drug use, physical health, life expectancy, violence, social mobility and other effects and show how inequality worsens each.

Influence Buying

There is a problem of the effect on our democracy from the influence that extreme, concentrated wealth buys. In the book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson make the case that the anti-democracy changes we have seen in America since the late 1970s that led to intense concentration of wealth and income are the intentional result of an organized campaign by the wealthy and businesses to use their wealth to, well, buy even more wealth.

The secretive Koch Brothers are said to have a net worth of $21.5 billion each and are particularly influential. They financed the Tea Party movement and along with big corporations and other billionaires they financed the massive assault of TV ads in the midterm elections that helped change the makeup of the Congress. And now Congress is paying them back,

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity to oppose the Obama administration's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group's separate advertising and grassroots activity during the 2010 campaign.

... Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs' core energy businesses.

We Must Address This

We owe it to ourselves to come to grips with this problem. We owe it to democracy to begin taxing high incomes and inheritance again. We owe it to future generations to use a temporary wealth tax to pay off the debt.

Resources

The Working Group on Extreme Inequality explains why inequality matters in many more ways, and is well worth clicking through to study. They also have a page of resources for study with links to other organizations. Also, spend some time at Too Much, A commentary on excess and inequality because it is "Dedicated to the notion that our world would be considerably more caring, prosperous, and democratic if we narrowed the vast gap that divides our wealthy from everyone else." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a Poverty and Income area of research with good resources. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a research section on Inequality and Poverty.
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Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats ANS

Here is an interesting article which is trying to imply that Politifact's facts are biased. They try this three times in this article, but nonetheless, they report what Politifact says: that Regressives lie significantly more than Progressives lie. If this subject interests you, I suggest reading a few of the comments too. I have included the first few.
Unfortunately, the tables don't seem to be copying with their format intact, so go to the site to see the grids.
Find it here: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2011/02/selection_bias_politifact_rate.php
--Kim

Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats

PolitiFact assigns "Pants on Fire" or "False" ratings to 39 percent of Republican statements compared to just 12 percent of Democrats since January 2010

PolitiFact, the high profile political fact-checking operation at the St. Petersburg Times, has been criticized by those on the right from time to time for alleged bias in its grading of statements made by political figures and organizations.

The organization (and now its more than a half dozen state offshoots) grades statements made by politicians, pundits, reporters, interest groups, and even the occasional comedian (anyone 'driving the political discourse') on a six point "Truth-O-Meter" scale: True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False, and Pants On Fire for "ridiculously" false claims.

But although PolitiFact provides a blueprint as to how statements are rated, it does not detail how statements are selected.

For while there is no doubt members of both political parties make numerous factual as well as inaccurate statements - and everything in between - there remains a fundamental question of which statements (by which politicians) are targeted for analysis in the first place.

A Smart Politics content analysis of more than 500 PolitiFact stories from January 2010 through January 2011 finds that current and former Republican officeholders have been assigned substantially harsher grades by the news organization than their Democratic counterparts.

In total, 74 of the 98 statements by political figures judged "false" or "pants on fire" over the last 13 months were given to Republicans, or 76 percent, compared to just 22 statements for Democrats (22 percent).

First, it should be acknowledged that the number of public officials subjected to PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter lens from each party is fairly even during the period under analysis.

Of the 511 statements put through the Truth-O-Meter test from January 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011, PolitiFact devoted 74 percent of its attention to current and former political officeholders and elected officials (379 statements), 17 percent to ideological organizations and individuals not holding political office (85 statements), and 9 percent to other groups and individuals without a partisan or ideological agenda (28 statements). Another 20 statements came from chain e-mails, public opinion polls, bumper stickers, or "bloggers" generally (4 percent).

For those current or former political officeholders, PolitiFact has generally devoted an equal amount of time analyzing Republicans (191 statements, 50.4 percent) as they have Democrats (179 stories, 47.2 percent), with a handful of stories tracking statements by independents (9 stories, 2.4 percent).

Assuming for the purposes of this report that the grades assigned by PolitiFact are fair (though some would challenge this assumption), there has nonetheless been a great discrepancy regarding which political parties' officials and officeholders receive the top ratings and those that are accused of not telling the truth.

Republican statements were graded in the dreaded "false" and "pants on fire" categories 39 percent of the time, compared to just 12 percent for statements made by Democrats.

That means a supermajority of falsehoods documented by PolitiFact over the last year - 76 percent - were attributed to Republicans, with just 22 percent of such statements coming from Democrats.

As a consequence, Democrats have therefore been presented as much more truthful - with over 75 percent of statements receiving the top three grades of True (16 percent), Mostly True (27 percent), or Half True (33 percent).

Less than half of Republican statements graded by PolitiFact were regarded as half truths or better - just 90 out of 191 (47 percent).

Republicans were also assigned a larger percentage of "Barely True" statements than Democrats, bringing the tally of all falsehoods or near falsehoods in the bottom three categories to 52.9 percent of Republican statements to just 24.6 percent of those made by Democrats.

PolitiFact Ratings of Current and Former Political Officials, January 2010 - January 2011
Party

Pants on Fire
False
Barely True
Half True
Mostly True
True

GOP

23
51
27
30
31
29

Dem

4
18
22
59
48
28

Ind

0
2
0
1
1
5
% Pants on Fire
% False
% Barely True
% Half True
% Mostly True
% True

GOP

12.0
26.7
14.1
15.7
16.2
15.2

Dem

2.2
10.1
12.3
33.0
26.8
15.6

Ind

0.0
25.0
0.0
12.5
12.5
50.0

Data compiled by Smart Politics.

During the last 13 months, the Republicans that have led the way with the largest number of Barely True, False, and Pants On Fire grades are Sarah Palin with eight, Michele Bachmann with seven, and John Boehner, Mike Pence, and the National Republican Congressional Committee with four each.

Whereas Boehner received six "True," two "Mostly True," and one "Half True" ratings during this span, Pence and the NRCC received none in these categories, Bachmann only two, and Palin just four.

What is particularly interesting about these findings is that the political party in control of the Presidency, the US Senate, and the US House during almost the entirety of the period under analysis was the Democrats, not the Republicans.

And yet, PolitiFact chose to highlight untrue statements made by those in the party out of power.

But this potential selection bias - if there is one at PolitiFact - seems to be aimed more at Republican officeholders than conservatives per se.

An examination of the more than 80 statements PolitiFact graded over the past 13 months by ideological groups and individuals who have not held elective office, conservatives only received slightly harsher ratings than liberals.

Half of the statements made by conservatives received ratings of Pants on Fire (12.5 percent), False (16.1 percent), or Barely True (21.4 percent), compared to 41 percent for liberals.

PolitiFact Ratings of Non-Officeholder Ideologues, January 2010 - January 2011
Ideology

Pants on Fire
False
Barely True
Half True
Mostly True
True

Conservative

12.5
16.1
21.4
25.0
14.3
10.7

Liberal

6.9
24.1
10.3
24.1
17.2
17.2

Compiles PolitiFact statement ratings of ideological organizations and individual ideologues who have not held political office or worked for political parties (e.g. commentators and talk show hosts). Data compiled by Smart Politics.

These findings beg the central unanswered question, and that is what is the process by which PolitiFact selects the statements that it ultimately grades?

When PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal in August of 2009, he explained how statements are picked:

"We choose to check things we are curious about. If we look at something and we think that an elected official or talk show host is wrong, then we will fact-check it."

If that is the methodology, then why is it that PolitiFact takes Republicans to the woodshed much more frequently than Democrats?

One could theoretically argue that one political party has made a disproportionately higher number of false claims than the other, and that this is subsequently reflected in the distribution of ratings on the PolitiFact site.

However, there is no evidence offered by PolitiFact that this is their calculus in decision-making.

Nor does PolitiFact claim on its site to present a 'fair and balanced' selection of statements, or that the statements rated are representative of the general truthfulness of the nation's political parties or the elected officials involved.

And yet...

In defending PolitiFact's "statements by ruling" summaries - tables that combine all ratings given by PolitiFact to an individual or group - Adair explained:

"We are really creating a tremendous database of independent journalism that's assessing these things, and it's valuable for people to see how often is President Obama right and how often was Senator McCain right. I think of it as like the back of a baseball card. You know - that it's sort of someone's career statistics. You know - it's sort of what's their batting average." (C-SPAN Washington Journal, August 4, 2009)

Adair is also on record for lamenting the media's kneejerk inclination to treat both sides of an issue equally, particularly when one side has the facts wrong.

In an interview with the New York Times in April 2010, Adair said:

"The media in general has shied away from fact checking to a large extent because of fears that we'd be called biased, and also because I think it's hard journalism. It's a lot easier to give the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand kind of journalism and leave it to readers to sort it out. But that isn't good enough these days. The information age has made things so chaotic, I think it's our obligation in the mainstream media to help people sort out what's true and what's not."

The question is not whether PolitiFact will ultimately convert skeptics on the right that they do not have ulterior motives in the selection of what statements are rated, but whether the organization can give a convincing argument that either a) Republicans in fact do lie much more than Democrats, or b) if they do not, that it is immaterial that PolitiFact covers political discourse with a frame that suggests this is the case.

In his August 2009 C-SPAN interview, Adair explained how the Pants on Fire rating was the site's most popular feature, and the rationale for its inclusion on the Truth-O-Meter scale:

"We don't take this stuff too seriously. It's politics, but it's a sport too."

By levying 23 Pants on Fire ratings to Republicans over the past year compared to just 4 to Democrats, it appears the sport of choice is game hunting - and the game is elephants.

Follow Smart Politics on Twitter.

Posted by Eric Ostermeier on February 10, 2011 12:03 AM | Permalink ¤

Comments

Politifact's job is not to search out obscure statements that are not even making waves in the media at large in order to provide party balance. Their job is to fact-check what's being said, and often controversial and questionable statements by Republicans have driven the debate in the past 2 years.

For instance, you are close to suggesting that Politifact should ignore Sarah Palin since she isn't an "officeholder" at all (you suggest that as a criteria for the amount of ratings) -- however, that is patently ridiculous given the influence that even a Twitter message from her gets on the day's news. She and Michelle Bachmann are covered widely for their statements, revered by the right and loathed by the left -- given the press attention it is not only Politifact's option but their DUTY to report on the truthfulness of these statements that are driving media debate. Replacing them with comments from (for example) some relatively anonymous Democratic committee chairman that isn't being covered in the news anyways in order to provide sufficient "rating balance" would just be silly.

In order to prove bias at Politifact, I argue that you would have to demonstrate either 1) systematic and repeated omissions from their ratings of widely heard false statements from Democrats or 2) varied standards for rating statements, according to party. You have failed to do either.

Posted by: Vito | February 10, 2011 8:22 AM

Nonsense.

Republicans have given us "death panels," "Obama is a Muslim," and "Obama is out to destroy America as part of his anticolonialist revenge."

Not to mention "Our intelligence confirms there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" and "Saddam Hussein and bin Laden are in cahoots."

Republicans' efforts to preserve the privilege and power of the rich, white, conservative minority know few bounds of truth. Of course Republicans lie more than Democrats, at least on policy issues. Why would we expect that both parties must lie equally??

(Perhaps different party members lie equally when it comes to their personal lives, although given how many prominent Republicans have turned out to have hidden gay affairs/sex scandals/inappropriate relationships with interns, I'm not sure about that.)

Posted by: John S. | February 10, 2011 8:47 AM

Pulitzer = Progressive

Posted by: B Mc B | February 10, 2011 9:00 AM

So your argument is that there must be bias at PolitiFact, based on the assumption that Republicans can't possibly be lying that much more than Democrats. That's the extraordinary claim here, and it's incumbent upon you to prove it, not PolitiFact to disprove it. Unless you can come up with some damning examples of liberals' controversial statements going unchallenged or conservatives' words being twisted, I'm inclined to side with PolitiFact over you.

Posted by: Benjamin | February 10, 2011 11:21 AM

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By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 24, 2011

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 25, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition.

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A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 25, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition.

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