ANS -- How to Frame Yourself: A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street

This is George Lakoff's answer to the Occupy Movement, who did ask for his opinion. 
I have also linked this on my Facebook page.  If any of you want to Friend me on Facebook, let me know by email that you have requested to be friended, so I will accept the invitation, as I generally ignore most of them. 
find this here:  http://georgelakoff.com/2011/12/11/how-to-frame-yourself-a-framing-memo-for-occupy-wall-street/  
--Kim

How to Frame Yourself: A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street

Posted on December 11, 2011



By George Lakoff

I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street movement to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so far, because I think the movement should be framing itself. It's a general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you ­ the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could have large negative consequences. So I thought it might be helpful to accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might think about framing itself.

About framing: It's normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all languages are defined in terms of frame-circuits in the brain. But, ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political figure ever says, do what I say because it's wrong! Or because it doesn't matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics

Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative "democracy" is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.

A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population ­ the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.

It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement ­ whatever those particular changes might be.

A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We're Here to Fix It

I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country ­ a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That's what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.

Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, … That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.

Democracy should be about the 99%

Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.

Strong Wages Make a Strong America

Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship

America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.

Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

Nature

We are part of nature. Nature makes us, and all that we love, possible. Yet we are destroying Nature through global warming and other forms of ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.

At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms, tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves, and fires that have devastated huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and blizzards. Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm, but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of the storm and the amount of water it carries. In winter, evaporated water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow northeast over the arctic, and fall as record snows.

We depend on nature ­ on clean air, water, food, and a livable climate. And we find beauty and grandeur in nature, and a sense of awe that makes life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature. And a fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have known it.

Summary

OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from citizens caring about one another as well as themselves, and acting with both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about The Public, and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment to the preservation of nature.

From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns all flow from one moral focus.

Elections

The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it too brings its moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.

A Warning

This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral in calling for debt relief. Positive and moral in upholding laws, as they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99% as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress the positive and the moral.

Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.

I believe, and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let's find out! Shout your moral and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the same. You have to use your own language with your own framing and you have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.

Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths.

Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.

ANS -- If You Want To Attack The Volt, Try To Get Your Math Right

Now, why would the far right be attacking the Volt electric car?  And inaccurately at that....  /sarcasm
Find it here:  http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1071027_if-you-want-to-attack-the-volt-try-to-get-your-math-right  
--Kim

If You Want To Attack The Volt, Try To Get Your Math Right

 
By John Voelcker
23 2,704 views December 23, 2011



2011 Chevrolet Volt drive test, March 2011
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Few things seem to set off a certain part of the political spectrum like the Chevrolet Volt, the extended-range electric car from General Motors.

It's been on sale exactly one year, so we think it's rather too early to deem the Volt a success or a failure, though that hasn't stopped its critics.

When criticizing anything, however--the Volt included--it's usually incumbent on the critic to get the math right.

Off by a factor of 10,000

Yesterday, The Street posted a lovely takedown of the math offered by a critic who claims Volts carry quarter-million subsidies. The Street's contributor Anton Wahlman gently points out that the calculations were slightly off.

In fact, he suggests they were wrong by a factor of 10,000--or four orders of magnitude. That's what you would call an embarrassing error.

It's worth pointing out that Wahlman emphasizes that he is against government subsidies to industry, calling himself "somewhere way to the right of Rush Limbaugh" on that topic. Which makes his analysis all the more trenchant.

He also notes that, "the idea that the Volt was somehow a government invention is about as accurate as the idea that Al Gore invented the Internet. It has no relation to the truth whatsoever." He liked the Volt he tested, by the way.



2011 Chevrolet Volt

Here's the story. Four days ago, we dissected in some detail Matt Drudge's uninformed war against the Volt. He promptly posted two more anti-Volt headlines the next day.
One of them linked to an article on Michigan Capital Confidential citing a study by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

A quarter of a meeeeellion dollars !!

The report claims that every Chevrolet Volt is the beneficiary of a quarter of a million dollars of state and Federal subsidies. Yes, the car with a 2012 retail price of $39,995 carries $250,000 of Your Tax Dollars in its load bay.

Hohman added up all the known state and Federal incentives to obtain a "total value offered to the Volt," not only for General Motors but also its suppliers.

A total of "18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits" are included. The total loan amounts are apparently listed in full, even though the loans are intended to be be paid back with interest.

Hohman then divided the sum by the number of Volts sold as of November 30. The result prompted him to call the Volt "the most government-supported car since the Trabant," the East German plastic-bodied two-cylinder minicar.

The denominator problem

As Wahlman notes, the egregious flaw in this calculation is "the denominator problem"--to what base of cars do you apply the analysis?



2011 Chevrolet Volt Production Line

Dividing the number of Volts sold to date ( 6,468 as of November 30) into the total incentives that apply to all Volts past, present, and future is either dopey or intellectually dishonest.

You could as easily say that on December 15 last year, the day the first Volt was delivered to a retail buyer, it carried a stunning, incredible, unconscionable $1.5 BILLION in subsidies. You'd be doing the same thing: dividing by the number of Volts sold, or 1.

More reasonably, fast-forward to the end of next year, by which time the two-year total of Volt sales is likely to be about 60,000. The number plummets to $25,000. And so on.

Actual number: $25

Wahlman instead divides the supposed $1.5 billion in incentives by a projected total of 60 million cars over the next 25 years that will use elements of the Voltec range-extended electric drive technology in today's Volt. That calculation puts the amount at, ummm, $25. Or a dollar a year.

Slightly different, eh?

We personally tend to think that a dollar a year is a reasonable amount to subsidize a domestic battery-electric car industry. Reasonable minds may differ, however.

We can address the question of whether the $1.5 billion total in state and Federal incentives is valid another time. Critic Hohman notes that depending on various factors, it could vary from $300 million to $3 billion.

We recommend reading Wahlman's entire article on The Street (note that there are four pages, but the links are tiny).

+++++++++++

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ANS -- The Post-Truth Campaign

This article says that the Republicans most likely will get no negative feedback for lies and fabricating falsehoods about Democrats.  I got this link from Norman Goldman, the radio personality, who said about it, "

Another very good Paul Krugman piece - one disagreement: If the President DID say those things about Romney, he'd be CORRECT!! Take a look and see for yourself! "

Find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/krugman-the-post-truth-campaign.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general  
--Kim

The Post-Truth Campaign

By PAUL KRUGMAN


Published: December 22, 2011

Suppose that President Obama were to say the following: "Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people, and he believes that only corporations and the wealthy should have any rights. He wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose to pay, no matter how low."
 

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman


How would this statement be received? I believe, and hope, that it would be almost universally condemned, by liberals as well as conservatives. Mr. Romney did once say that corporations are people, but he didn't mean it literally; he supports policies that would be good for corporations and the wealthy and bad for the middle class, but that's a long way from saying that he wants to introduce feudalism.

But now consider what Mr. Romney actually said on Tuesday: "President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others."

And in an interview the same day, Mr. Romney declared that the president "is going to put free enterprise on trial."

This is every bit as bad as my imaginary Obama statement. Mr. Obama has never said anything suggesting that he holds such views, and, in fact, he goes out of his way to praise free enterprise and say that there's nothing wrong with getting rich. His actual policy proposals do involve a rise in taxes on high-income Americans, but only back to their levels of the 1990s. And no matter how much the former Massachusetts governor may deny it, the Affordable Care Act established a national health system essentially identical to the one he himself established at a state level in 2006.

Over all, Mr. Obama's positions on economic policy resemble those that moderate Republicans used to espouse. Yet Mr. Romney portrays the president as the second coming of Fidel Castro and seems confident that he will pay no price for making stuff up.

Welcome to post-truth politics.

Why does Mr. Romney think he can get away with this kind of thing? Well, he has already gotten away with a series of equally fraudulent attacks. In fact, he has based pretty much his whole campaign around a strategy of attacking Mr. Obama for doing things that the president hasn't done and believing things he doesn't believe.

For example, in October Mr. Romney pledged that as president, "I will reverse President Obama's massive defense cuts." That line presumably plays well with Republican audiences, but what is he talking about? The defense budget has continued to grow steadily since Mr. Obama took office.

Then there's Mr. Romney's frequent suggestion that the president has gone around the world "apologizing for America." This is a popular theme on the right ­ but the so-called Obama apology tour is a complete fabrication, assembled by taking quotes out of context.

As Greg Sargent of The Washington Post has pointed out, there's a common theme to these whoppers and a number of other things Mr. Romney has said: the strategy is clearly to portray the president as a suspect character, someone who doesn't share American values. And since Mr. Obama has done and said nothing to justify this portrait, Mr. Romney just invents stuff to make his case.

But won't there be some blowback? Won't Mr. Romney pay a price for running a campaign based entirely on falsehoods? He obviously thinks not, and I'm afraid he may be right.

Oh, Mr. Romney will probably be called on some falsehoods. But, if past experience is any guide, most of the news media will feel as though their reporting must be "balanced," which means that every time they point out that a Republican lied they have to match it with a comparable accusation against a Democrat ­ even if what the Democrat said was actually true or, at worst, a minor misstatement.

This isn't an abstract speculation. Politifact, the project that is supposed to enforce truth in politics, has declared Democratic claims that Republicans voted to end Medicare its "Lie of the Year." It did so even though Republicans did indeed vote to dismantle Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher scheme that would still be called "Medicare," but would look nothing like the current program ­ and would no longer guarantee affordable care.

So here's my forecast for next year: If Mr. Romney is in fact the Republican presidential nominee, he will make wildly false claims about Mr. Obama and, occasionally, get some flack for doing so. But news organizations will compensate by treating it as a comparable offense when, say, the president misstates the income share of the top 1 percent by a percentage point or two.

The end result will be no real penalty for running an utterly fraudulent campaign. As I said, welcome to post-truth politics.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 23, 2011, on page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Post-Truth Campaign.

ANS -- Chart: The sweat of your brow

this really says it.  Our economy has been bad since the '70s.  I've been saying that for years: it should only take one salary to support a family.  If it takes more, something is wrong with the economy. 
Find it here:  http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/21/9612512-chart-the-sweat-of-your-brow#.TvI_dQLG0Y0.twitter
--Kim

Chart: The sweat of your brow

By Laura Conaway
 - 
Wed Dec 21, 2011 3:02 PM EST


Robert Frank chart by way of Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein today runs a year-in-charts post that's purely the excellent. It includes the Toil Index, by the excellent economist Robert Frank. Basically, it shows why it's so hard for working people to live decently these days. Working families are running faster and faster just to afford the same things their parents enjoyed, namely decent homes and decent schools for the kids.

This is the same territory Elizabeth Warren began mapping in the early 2000s, with The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. The thesis from Ms. Warren was that families need to have two parents cranking away all the time in order to stay in the middle class. If something happens to one parent, she wrote, like a layoff or an injury, then it all falls apart.

Here's betting you can relate.

ANS -- Empathy Disorders

This is a short piece about empathy and empathy disorders and homeless people.  If you find the subject and the article interesting, I strongly suggest you go to the site and read the comments too.  They go into more depth. 
Find it here:  http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/454817.html?view=8778401#t8778401   
--Kim

Empathy Disorders

• Dec. 20th, 2011 at 2:24 PM

Doctors call one of the things I have an "empathy disorder." That has always left me confused and very angry, because it seems to me that I have MORE empathy than neurotypicals. I finally got it through my head that there are two conflicting definitions of empathy. Sometimes, "empathy" means being able to sense other people's emotions without being told about them. That, I definitely can't do. Other times it means caring about other people's feelings and emotions, as in "having empathy for them." And as far as I can tell, when it comes to anybody other than their closest friends and family members, this, most neurotypicals cannot do.

I finally developed my own terms for the two conflicting definitions. I gave in, and let the doctors and the neurotypicals keep their word "empathy" to mean emotional mind-reading. Okay. I have an empathy disorder. What they have? Is a sympathy disorder. I can't tell what strangers are feeling. You can tell what strangers are feeling; you just don't care. Merry fucking Christmas.

I've been meaning to bring this up for a while; I get around to mentioning it now because of how sick to my stomach I feel, how much hatred for humanity is suddenly choking off my Christmas spirit, reading about the abuse the audience heaped on three former homeless teens who told their stories at a public panel, including now successful blogger, columnist, and author Violet Blue: " Booksmith Community Forum on Homelessness, Aug 24, 2009," un-bylined article on "Hope in Haight" blog.

Edited to add:

I find that I have more to say about this; something that's obvious to me but no, it probably isn't obvious to some of you.

There's a guy I used to hang with in college, a fellow CS grad, fairly right wing back then, now some god's own personal fool for every hoax, prank, and propaganda lie that trickles from various hate groups into the Republican commentariat via WorldNewsDaily. (Reporter Dave Neiwert, America's #1 expert on right wing death squads and death-squad wannabes in America, has written extensively about this: they brag to him, openly, that they learned ages ago that they can make up any lie they want, drop it into WND, watch it bubble up to the front page on page views and comments, watch it get picked up by Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly from there, watch Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity get forced to comment on it when their listeners who overlap ask them about it, and watch it, from them, go straight onto Fox News and into comments by Republicans in power. They say it works every time.) Ever since we reconnected on Facebook, he bounces this crap off of me, and I serve as the fact check, for him, that 30 seconds on Google would be. It's inefficient, but personal. Anyway, I didn't bring this up to dish on the Aryan Nations or WND or Glen Beck or my friend Doc, I brought this up to introduce my friend Doc and explain something related to homelessness that I just had to explain to him.

You see, in the years since we were in college together, my old friend Doc has ended up on the board of directors of a religious charity that serves the homeless. And it occurred to him, the other day, to ask me why it is that no matter how good they make the services they offer the homeless people in his hometown, no matter how string-free they make them, at least half of the homeless people in his town just flatly refuse to have anything to do with them. He wanted to know if, as someone who's been borderline homeless himself and who sees the world through different eyes from him, I could give him any advice on what his church could be doing differently. As I expected, I bumped my head very quickly into the first hurdle: despite years of working with, and on behalf of, the homeless, he had no better idea than most Americans do of how in the hell anybody, whether it's a teenager or a single mother or a combat veteran, ends up homeless. It was the first thing I had to explain to him:

We threw these people away, because nobody wanted them for anything.

And that is the first thing we have to fix. You can't fix anything for a homeless person, whether it's an unparented or mal-parented homeless teenager trying to stay out of sex work or a homeless woman whose children's father left her for a younger model, or couldn't deal with her health issues, or who ran away because he was out of work too long and lost his own self-respect, or who is in jail, or who is dead, and she's spending 140 hours a week trying to keep her children alive without any help, or whether it's a Vietnam War, Gulf War, Yugoslav Civil War, Afghan War, or Iraq War veteran whose physical and mental health problems render him completely unemployable, you can't fix anything for that person if you can't find them someone who wants them to live, who needs them to live, who has a useful purpose for them.

And ever since Ronald Reagan got elected in November of 1980, we have solved every single problem we've had in America, every problem we've had since Lyndon Johnson's hare-brained idea of fighting a deficit-financed entirely optional land war in Asia, every problem we've had since we used up all but the last trickle of our own oil and oil producers discovered that a shattered, used up US Marine Corps could no longer come and take the oil away from them by force, every problem we've had since then, we have solved by human sacrifice: identifying more people to throw away, and throwing those people away; sending them away to sleep in alleys or under overpasses, to live off of stolen food and handouts and scavenged trash, to slowly rot away of completely untreated health problems. Never mind how much needs to get done and isn't getting done; we can't afford the energy cost or raw materials cost to do those things, so we can't afford to hire people to do them, so the people who would have done them are disposable, destined to end up in human landfills

So, if you're one of them, would you please stop depressing the rest of us by reminding us of this? Would you please go find some place to go where none of us can see you as you slowly freeze, starve, and rot away to death? The rest of us, the fortunate ones, have to get on with our lives somehow. That requires some modicum of morale. We do know, on some level, that the first time we slow down, or the first time we get sick, or the first time something goes seriously wrong, or the first time we end up losing someone we were depending on to survive, that we'll be joining you. But if we think about that too much, it'll happen all that much sooner. And you're bringing us down. That's what we, in America, say to them every day with our actions, with the way we complain about and hate on our homeless.

I didn't have a lot of advice for my friend Doc. Knowing he was a conservative, I appealed to Ronald Reagan. One thing Reagan wasn't wrong about is this: "the only effective anti-poverty program is a job." I reminded Doc that I've seen homeless, mentally ill drug addicts instantly and suddenly sober up, and rise to never seen before (albeit temporary) levels of functionality, when they found a kitten that needed to be rescued. I told him about a news story I saw a while back about a halfway house for about to be released, at best partially rehabbed, female drug addicts that more or less accidentally turned those women's lives around when one of the women staying there came up with the idea of volunteering, during the hours they were confined to their group home, to raise puppies that are destined to be trained as service dogs. What do those stories have in common? Somebody needed them. And we all need that. Maslow was wrong, you know: that need to be needed? It's more profound than the need for food and water and sleep; we can live better with occasional deprivation of food, water, and sleep than we can without having anybody need us, or without being able to meet that need. My suggestion to him was to find jobs that his church needed done, that they couldn't afford to do, and to go to those men and ask them, "can you please help us?" Not to bribe them with food and shelter to do it, not as some paternalistic way to rehab them into a "culture of work;" just tell them, honestly and humbly, "we need you for this; if someone doesn't help us, we're in trouble." Watch them rise up.

We won't do that. Oh, Doc might; he's easily fooled, but he's good people, his heart is in the right place. Or he might not; he's only one man, and the social and economic pressures to do nothing effective are overwhelming. We as a country won't. We took the homeless teens and homeless bums of 1932 and turned them into the Greatest Generation of 1944 by needing them that badly; we won't admit that we need the homeless teens and homeless bums of 2011, because we're not scared enough. So they know damned well that we (at least think that) we don't need them. Providing services to them? Is like taking aspirin to deal with the fact that you have a broken leg you can't afford to get set, or an infected tooth you can't afford to get pulled; it may make life momentarily better, but it doesn't stop the problem from getting worse. I hate painkillers for just that reason; they remind me that I can't get whatever it is that's broken, that's sick, that hurts, I can't get it fixed. I hate homeless services, whether government or private charity, the same way.

And they say I have an empathy disorder.

• Mood: depressed

ANS -- 8 Stories Buried By the Corporate Media That You Need to Know About

These are some articles you may or may not have seen.  Our mainstream media is really biased these days.  Why is that legal?
Find it here:  http://www.alternet.org/news/153455/8_stories_buried_by_the_corporate_media_that_you_need_to_know_about/?page=entire
--Kim

8 Stories Buried By the Corporate Media That You Need to Know About

Not all news stories are treated equally.
December 15, 2011  |  
 
 
 
 
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As 2011 comes to a close, we will see lists of the year's most memorable events and most important people, as is the pattern every year. But not all stories are created equal. When the corporate media bury significant developments in the back pages of the paper or the second to last paragraph of an article, it's easy for stories to go unnoticed.

As usual, this year was packed with critical, newsworthy and insufficiently covered stories that should have, but didn't, make the front page. Below are eight explosive must-read stories of 2011 that you may have missed.

1) Our Planet Saw the Largest Increase in Carbon Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution

Global emissions of carbon dioxide increased 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest increase on record, according to Global Carbon Project, an international group of scientists tracking the numbers. This increase, reports the New York Times, is "almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003."

Another study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, traces an estimated three-quarters of the planet's warming since 1950 to human activities. On top of that, the World Meteorological Organization warned that 10 of the hottest years ever recorded have occurred in the last 15 years, with temperatures this year registering as the 10th highest on record.

It's obvious that the world is getting warmer at an accelerating rate and it's our fault. What are world leaders going to do about it? Wait another eight years to cut emissions.

These statistics were released before last week's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, which ended with an agreement to kick the can down the road – they will negotiate a new climate treaty by 2015, which would postpone emission cuts until 2020.

To avoid the most devastating effects of climate change, we must limit the earth's warming to 2°C. For that to happen, emission volumes cannot exceed 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. Since emissions have already reached 390 ppm, higher than any other time in recorded history, the International Energy Agency warns that action cannot be delayed past 2017. Based on the Durbin agreement, emissions won't be cut until 2020.

Unless something drastic pushes our leaders to change the destructive path we're on, 2011 may go down in the history books as the year that humans irreversibly screwed themselves and the planet.

2) Widespread Trafficking Of Iraqi Women And Girls Thanks To The Iraq War

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and another 4.4 million displaced, leaving many women and girls widowed or orphaned.

As a result of the conflict more than 50,000 Iraqi women find themselves trapped in sexual servitude in Syria and Jordan, giving rise to a lucrative and growing sex industry that feeds off the chaos from the Iraq war.

Women and girls inside Iraq fare no better, often working in brothels run by female pimps. In an interview with the Inter Press Service, Rania, a former trafficker who now works as an undercover researcher for a women's support group in Iraq, detailed a visit to "a house in Baghdad's Al-Jihad district, where girls as young as 16 were held to cater exclusively to the U.S. military. The brothel's owner told Rania that an Iraqi interpreter employed by the Americans served as the go-between, transporting girls to and from the U.S. airport base."

Although human trafficking is illegal in Iraq, the country lacks a robust criminal justice system to enforce the law. Sadly, the victims of trafficking and prostitution are often the ones who are punished.

3) More Iraq Veterans Committed Suicide Last Year Than Active-Duty Troops Died In Combat

In 2010, 468 active duty and reserve troops committed suicide while 462 died in combat, marking the second year in a row that more US soldiers killed themselves than died at war, according to Congressional Quarterly's John Donnelly.

Over the past decade, over 2,000 soldiers have taken their own lives, yet they receive little attention in our corporate media. In August the New York Times ran a story with the celebratory headline, " Iraq War Marks First Month With No U.S. Military Deaths." That same month, the Department of Defense reported19 possible suicides among active-duty soldiers. In July, that number reached a record high of 32. America's decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan leave troops with deep emotional scars that can be just as dangerous as a combat wound. Perhaps it's time we gave them the attention they deserve.

4) Drone Strikes Kill Innocent Civilians, Not Just 'Militants'

After Jon Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, claimed in June that no civilians had been killed in US drone attacks in nearly a year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 US attacks during that period.

Overall, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 780 civilians, including 175 children. The bureau documents 309 CIA drone strikes carried out since 2004 that have killed as many as 2,997 people. Over 85 percent were launched by the Obama administration, an average of one strike every four days. Yet the casualties of the US drone war rarely receive mention in the corporate media, except when described as "Islamic militants" or "suspected terrorists." This is challenged not only by the bureau's data, but also by gruesome photographs of drone victims taken by local journalists.

The Guardian described the images captured by Noor Behram, a journalist from the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, whose work appeared in an exhibition at London's Beaconsfield gallery in August:

The photographs make for difficult viewing and leave no doubt about the destructive power of the Hellfire missiles unleashed: a boy with the top of his head missing, a severed hand, flattened houses, the parents of children killed in a strike. The chassis is all that remains of a car in one photo, another shows the funeral of a seven-year-old child. There are pictures, too, of the cheap rubber flip-flops worn by children and adults, which often survive: signs that life once existed there. A 10-year-old boy's body, prepared for burial, shows lipstick on him and flowers in his hair – a mother's last loving touch.

Spencer Ackerman recently featured a number of Behram's disturbing photographs at Wired, which can be seen here.

5) Record Number Of US Kids Face Hunger and Homelessness

A report released by National Center on Family Homelessness finds that one in 45 US children (1.6 million) are homeless, the majority under the age of seven. The Christian Science Monitor reports, "The number of homeless children in 2010 exceeded even the total in 2006, when thousands of families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced a historic spike in homelessness."

It doesn't stop there. According to recent figures released by the USDA, 17.2 million American households (14.5 percent) are "food insecure," one of the highest recorded rates since surveys were first conducted in 1995. As a result, 16.2 million American children – one in five-- face the threat of hunger. According to emergency room doctors in cities around the country, this is leading to a dramatic spike in malnourishment in babies.

Over the summer, the Boston Globe reported on shocking levels of infant malnourishment in Massachusetts. Doctors at the Boston Medical Center (BMC) reported seeing "more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families." Pediatricians in other large cities, including Baltimore, Little Rock, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia, have also seen a rise in infant and child malnourishment since 2008.

BMC doctors also warn that "rising chronic hunger threatens to leave scores of infants and toddlers with lasting learning and developmental problems."

The Globe likened child malnourishment and hunger among Boston's poor to levels seen in the "developing world."

6) Prisoners Are People Too

This summer, more than 6,000 California prison inmates went on a month-long hunger strike in solidarity with those held in solitary confinement at the Secure Housing Unit in California's Pelican Bay State Prison. Pelican Bay is notorious for holding nearly half of its 1,111 prisoners in solitary confinement for longer than 10 years. The strike was suspended in July when inmates entered negotiations with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). They expected change, but prisoners who organized and participated in the strike were instead retaliated against by prison guards.

By September 26, the strike was back on, with 12,000 inmates throughout California and out-of-state facilities participating. But those numbers quickly dwindled as the CDCR disciplined those involved by limiting access to visiting family members and isolating participants from other prisoners. A string of prisoner suicides committed by inmates who participated in the hunger strikes followed. Colorlines' Julianne Hing reported:

In recent months Alex Machado and Johnny Owens Vick, who were both housed in Pelican Bay's notorious solitary confinement Security Housing Unit, and Hozel Alanzo Blanchard, who was incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison's Administrative Segregation Unit, all committed suicide. Prisoner advocates say all three participated in a statewide hunger strike this summer to protest, among other things, prison discipline policies intended to identify prison gang members which punish innocent, unaffiliated inmates with decades of confinement to segregated units.

7) US Deports 46,000 Parents, Kids Left Behind In Foster Care

Under the Obama administration, deportations of immigrants have skyrocketed, with a record 397,000 people removed in 2011 alone and families torn apart as a result. According to an investigation carried out by Colorlines, the United States deported over 46,000 parents whose children were U.S. citizens between January and June of this year. With their parents detained or deported, at least 5,100 children have been placed in foster care, and many may never see their parents again. Our draconian immigration system is creating orphans. Investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler writes:

These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.

8) FBI Teaches Agents That Muslims Are Violent Radicals

In September, Spencer Ackerman reported some disturbing findings about the FBI's counterterrorism training materials. He revealed, among other things, that the FBI's Training Division depicts all Muslims as potential terrorists. Ackerman writes:

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that "mainstream" American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a "cult leader"; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a 'funding mechanism for combat.

At the Bureau's training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more "devout" a Muslim, the more likely he is to be "violent." Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: "Any war against non-believers is justified" under Muslim law; a "moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah."

Ackerman also came upon an alarming description of Sunni Muslims, which is included in the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces mandatory online orientation material:

Sunni Muslims have been prolific in spawning numerous and varied fundamentalist extremist terrorist organizations. Sunni core doctrine and end state have remained the same and they continue to strive for Sunni Islamic domination of the world to prove a key Quranic assertion that no system of government or religion on earth can match the Quran's purity and effectiveness for paving the road to God.

The FBI immediately apologized for the derogatory training materials, promising to comprehensively review all training materials. But it turns out that the FBI's counterterrorism culture is soaked in Islamophobia, as demonstrated by the inclusion of books by Islamophobic authors Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes in the FBI Quantico library.

This comes on top of a troubling pattern in counterterrorism law enforcement training -- the use of Islamophobic "terrorism consultants" to school agents on the Islamic faith. According to the Washington Monthly, this "growing profession" of consultants rakes in taxpayer cash to educate our cops about evils of Islam. One example is Walid Shoebat, who reportedly told an audience at a counterterrorism conference last year that the way to solve the threat of Islamic extremism is to "kill them…including the children." Shoebat's extreme denunciations of Islam helped fuel the paranoia of right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik, who massacred some 90 people in Norway earlier this year. According to the American Prospect, Shoebat is cited in Breivik's manifesto 15 times.
Rania Khalek is an associate writer for AlterNet. Follow her on Twitter @RaniaKhalek.

ANS -- Worker-Owners of America, Unite!

this is good news.  I hope it continues and expands.  It would get America back to work and restore the middle class. 
Find it here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/opinion/worker-owners-of-america-unite.html?_r=3&hpw  
--Kim


Advertise on NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor

Worker-Owners of America, Unite!

 
Ross MacDonald

By GAR ALPEROVITZ


Published: December 14, 2011

 

College Park, Md.

THE Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public�s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country�s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.

But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.

Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.

And worker-owned companies make a difference. In Cleveland, for instance, an integrated group of worker-owned companies, supported in part by the purchasing power of large hospitals and universities, has taken the lead in local solar-panel installation, �green� institutional laundry services and a commercial hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing more than three million heads of lettuce a year.

Local and state governments are likewise changing the nature of American capitalism. Almost half the states manage venture capital efforts, taking partial ownership in new businesses. Calpers, California�s public pension authority, helps finance local development projects; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each resident with dividends from public investment strategies as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Moreover, this year some 14 states began to consider legislation to create public banks similar to the longstanding Bank of North Dakota; 15 more began to consider some form of single-payer or public-option health care plan.

Some of these developments, like rural co-ops and credit unions, have their origins in the New Deal era; some go back even further, to the Grange movement of the 1880s. The most widespread form of worker ownership stems from 1970s legislation that provided tax benefits to owners of small businesses who sold to their employees when they retired. Reagan-era domestic-spending cuts spurred nonprofits to form social enterprises that used profits to help finance their missions.

Recently, growing economic pain has provided a further catalyst. The Cleveland cooperatives are an answer to urban decay that traditional job training, small-business and other development strategies simply do not touch. They also build on a 30-year history of Ohio employee-ownership experiments traceable to the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and �80s.

Further policy changes are likely. In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent others states could easily follow. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is developing legislation to support worker-owned strategies like that of Cleveland in other cities. And several policy analysts have proposed expanding existing government �set aside� procurement programs for small businesses to include co-ops and other democratized enterprises.

If such cooperative efforts continue to increase in number, scale and sophistication, they may suggest the outlines, however tentative, of something very different from both traditional, corporate-dominated capitalism and traditional socialism.

It�s easy to overestimate the possibilities of a new system. These efforts are minor compared with the power of Wall Street banks and the other giants of the American economy. On the other hand, it is precisely these institutions that have created enormous economic problems and fueled public anger.

During the populist and progressive eras, a decades-long buildup of public anger led to major policy shifts, many of which simply took existing ideas from local and state efforts to the national stage. Furthermore, we have already seen how, in moments of crisis, the nationalization of auto giants like General Motors and Chrysler can suddenly become a reality. When the next financial breakdown occurs, huge injections of public money may well lead to de facto takeovers of major banks.

And while the American public has long supported the capitalist model, that, too, may be changing. In 2009 a Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under 30 years old were �essentially evenly divided� as to whether they preferred �capitalism� or �socialism.�

A long era of economic stagnation could well lead to a profound national debate about an America that is dominated neither by giant corporations nor by socialist bureaucrats. It would be a fitting next direction for a troubled nation that has long styled itself as of, by and for the people.

Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland and a founder of the Democracy Collaborative, is the author of �America Beyond Capitalism.�

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 15, 2011, on page A39 of the New York edition with the headline: Worker-Owners of America, Unite!.

ANS -- The Secret That 'Job Creators' Like Walmart Won't Tell You

this is just a little snapshot of what's going on in the USA today. 
Find it here:  http://front.moveon.org/the-secret-that-job-creators-like-walmart-wont-tell-you/?rc=fb.fan  
--Kim

The Secret That 'Job Creators' Like Walmart Won't Tell You

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Brandon

Share this now!

Can you help share it so that it�s no longer a secret?

Found on Facebook. Originally submitted by Jayne C.

ANS -- GOP Objects To 'Millionaires Surtax'; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much

Here is a short article about the journalist looking for business people who will hire fewer people if their taxes go up.  No one seemed able to find any, including the journalist and right-wing groups.  However, in the comments, there were people who claimed to be those people who would hire less if their taxes go up -- though one of them admits it's political rather than economic..... Somehow, I think the rest of those in the comments are fabricating....
Find it here:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/09/143398685/gop-objects-to-millionaires-surtax-millionaires-we-found-not-so-much   
--Kim

GOP Objects To 'Millionaires Surtax'; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much

05:00 am

December 9, 2011



For the second week in a row, the Senate on Thursday voted down proposals to extend the payroll tax holiday through next year. In the case of the Democrats' proposal, Republicans objected to the "millionaires surtax" that would be used to pay for it.

Ever since the idea of the surtax was introduced weeks ago, Republicans in Congress have railed against it, arguing that it is a direct hit on small-business owners and other job creators.

The argument is that many small-business owners report company profits on their individual taxes because of the way their businesses are structured. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., says the surtax would hurt their ability to hire.
 
Enlarge J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota says the "millionaires surtax" would hurt small-business owners' ability to hire new workers.

"It's just intuitive that, you know, if you're somebody who's in business and you get hit with a tax increase, it's going to be that much harder, I think, to make investments that are going to lead to job creation," says Thune.

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.
 

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

So next we put a query on Facebook. And several business owners who said they would be affected by the "millionaires surtax" responded.

"It's not in the top 20 things that we think about when we're making a business hire," said Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management.

Tortoise is a boutique investment firm in White Plains, N.Y. Yankwitt has 10 employees and in recent years has done a lot of hiring.

As a result, Yankwitt says he's had many conversations about hiring, "both with respect to specific people, with respect to whether we should hire one junior person or two, whether we should hire a senior person."

He says his ultimate marginal tax rate "didn't even make it on the agenda."

Yankwitt says deciding to bring on another employee is all about return on investment. Will adding another person to the payroll make his company more successful?

For Jason Burger, the motivation is similar.

"If my taxes go up, I have slightly less disposable income, yes," said Burger, co-owner of CSS International Holdings, a global infrastructure contractor. "But that has nothing to do with what my business does. What my business does is based on the contracts that it wins and the demand for its services."

Burger says his Michigan-based company is hiring like crazy, and he'd be perfectly willing to pay the surtax.

"It's only fair that I put back into the system that is the entire reason for my success," said Burger.

For the record, both Burger and Yankwitt have made campaign contributions to Democrats in the past, but they say their views on the surtax are about the economics of their businesses and not their politics.

And they're not alone.

"I, like any other American, especially a business owner, I want to make as much money as I can and I want to keep as much money in my pocket as I can, but I also believe in the greater good," says Deborah Schwarz, who owns LAC Group, an information management firm with offices nationwide and in London.

Surtax or no, Schwarz says she hopes to keep hiring.

"We're going to keep on writing proposals, going after contracts, hopefully winning them, and when we do we're going to continue to hire people," says Schwarz.

All of this contradicts the arguments about job creators being made by Republicans in Congress.

"Those I would say were exceptions to the rule," responds Thune. "I think most small-business owners who are out there right now would argue that raising their taxes has the opposite effect that we would want to have in a down economy."

But those small-business owners apparently don't want to talk.

Tags: payroll tax cut extension, Congress

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ANS -- Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand Problem

This was sent to me by one of our readers.  It's about some of  Christianity's response to the GOP's devotion to the "godless atheist" Ayn Rand.   It seems they are finally figuring out good ways to counter this stuff. 
go to the site to see the videos. 
Find it here:  http://swampland.time.com/2011/06/03/paul-ryans-ayn-rand-problem/  
--Kim



Religion

Paul Ryan�s Ayn Rand Problem

By Amy Sullivan | @sullivanamy | June 3, 2011 | 528
inShare38

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

I am fairly certain that when Paul Ryan first decided to publicly share his admiration of Ayn Rand, he could not have imagined it would lead to him speed-walking to his SUV to avoid a young Catholic trying to give him a Bible and telling him to pay more attention to the Gospel of Luke. But that�s what happened Friday morning in downtown Washington after Ryan spoke to the surprisingly smallish crowd gathered for Ralph Reed�s Faith & Freedom Conference.

These days, when people question a politician�s �morality,� they usually mean his or her personal behavior and choices. But an interesting thing is happening right now around the GOP budget proposal. A broad coalition of religious voices is criticizing the morality of the choices reflected in budget cuts and tax policy. And they�ve specifically targeted Ryan and his praise for Rand, the philosopher who once said she �promote[d] the ethic of selfishness.� ( Why Ayn Rand is the GOP�s godless philosopher.)

Across the street from the Faith & Freedom Conference Friday afternoon, a group of religious leaders continued the attack on what they now consistently refer to as �The Ayn Rand Budget.� Father Cletus Kiley, a Catholic priest, declared the Ryan budget �does not pass our test� of Catholic teachings, and suggested that supporters of the budget �drop Ayn Rand�s books and pick up their sacred texts.�

Rand�s influence on Ryan�s politics is also the subject of a new ad produced by the religious group American Values Network, which hopes to run the spot in Ryan�s district. It�s a stinging attack, and again, one that was wholly unanticipated by the Republican rising star. (Is Paul Ryan a coward?)
Related Topics: Ayn Rand, gop, paul ryan, Religion

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/06/03/paul-ryans-ayn-rand-problem/#ixzz1h1jR4CQs

ANS -- Christopher Hitchens and the Politics of Atheism

Here is an article, by Doug Muder, about Christopher Hitchens, the recently deceased noted Atheist.  I never paid much attention to him, but apparently he was a right-wing war-monger politically, and didn't acknowledge the existence of real liberal religion. 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.com/2011/12/19/christopher-hitchens-and-the-politics-of-atheism/#comment-1541  
--Kim

Christopher Hitchens and the Politics of Atheism

I could write a long article about the strange way we mythologize the recently dead (especially if they die mid-career), and how particularly inappropriate it is to treat Christopher Hitchens that way, given how much of his writing was devoted to breaking down mythology. But since Glenn Greenwald already wrote that article, I'll just take those ideas as a place to start.

Hitchens himself was never one to make a socially-required saccharine comment if it got in the way of driving his point home. Interviewed after the death of Jerry Falwell, he lamented that "there isn't a hell for him to go to." And his farewell to Jesse Helms article includes the phrase "senile racist buffoon".

So, in honor of the spirit he didn't believe in, I'm here to bury Christopher Hitchens, not to praise him.

The New Atheists. I have never been a fan of Hitchens or any of other New Atheists. (My review of two new-atheist classics preceded Hitchens' God is Not Great, which I would have included.) By treating all religion as either full-throated fundamentalism or watered-down fundamentalism, they overlook the most interesting contemporary religious thinking and also misrepresent a lot of the history of ideas.

Plus, something about Islam makes them crazy. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris found torture in the context of the War on Terror to be "not only permissible, but necessary". (It's hard to imagine a position more out-of-step with the tradition of the Humanist Manifestos.) And Hitchens was one of the most outrageous apologists for any abuses the Bush administration could come up with, as long as they were targeted at Muslims.

But at the same time, I get where the New Atheists are coming from, and I think they're a necessary phase in the development of a more reasonable humanism. To put it bluntly: You are not really equal until you are allowed to as a big a jackass as anybody else.

Put that idea in racial terms: As long as they had to be Booker T. Washington or Martin Luther King to get respect, black Americans were nowhere near equality. Real equality would mean that blacks can be just as obnoxious as whites and get away with it ­ and nearly half a century after Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, we're still not all the way there.

Christopher Hitchens was an atheist Muhammad Ali. He didn't just politely ask to be included, like Jackie Robinson or Joe Louis; he loudly pointed out that he was better than you. If he was an obnoxious jerk at times, well, that in itself was a step towards equality. During Hitchens' career, how many high-profile Christians got away with being loud obnoxious jerks? Lots.

Anti-atheist discrimination in politics. Many American atheists are (like Hitchens) economically and educationally above average. But politically they're still an oppressed class, ranking well behind blacks and even gays. (Let's not even talk about the Christians who fantasize that they are oppressed because they losing their right to oppress others or to use public resources to promote their faith.)

Last time I checked, there was exactly one admitted atheist in Congress. The constitutions of several states either explicitly ban atheists from holding public office (Tennessee, Article IX), or exclude atheists from the protection of a no-religious-test-for-office clause ( Maryland Declaration of Rights, Article 37).

(I haven't verified the exact number of states that have such clauses. Some articles claim eight, but a few of their links point to obsolete constitutions.)

Bans on atheist office-holders are unenforceable because of the federal constitution, as North Carolinians found out in 2009 when they tried to keep Cecil Bothwell from taking his seat on the Asheville city council by quoting Article VI, section 8 of their constitution. But keeping them on the books is like leaving up the "whites only" signs.

And what exactly is the point of printing "in God we trust" on the money or saying "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Is any public good achieved other than to remind atheists that they aren't really Americans?

Stereotypes of atheists. In addition to discriminatory laws, personal prejudice against atheists is still socially acceptable. In polls taken over the last 30 years, the number of people who admit they would refuse to vote for an atheist candidate has stayed stuck at around 50%. (A 2007 poll by Newsweek got a 62% refusal.) Compare that to the 17% who said in 1999 that they wouldn't vote for a Mormon or the 38% who wouldn't vote for a Muslim.

In that same Newsweek poll, 26% thought it was not possible for an atheist to be moral. And this opinion is based on what, exactly? Have atheist leaders been raping children, like Catholic priests have? Have well known atheists been caught doing crystal meth with gay prostitutes, like a certain high-profile televangelist? Have they assassinated doctors in the name of their beliefs? Crashed airplanes into skyscrapers? What?

Mostly, American atheists have just been doing their jobs and raising their families. According to research by the evangelical Barnes Group, 21% of atheists have been divorced, compared to 24% of Mormons and 29% of Baptists. Funny how you never hear about the Baptist threat to American family values.

The immoral atheist is like the shiftless Negro or the greedy Jew ­ a stereotype. But it's a stereotype you can still voice in respectable company.

The Overton window. Whether you loved Christopher Hitchens, hated him, or found him embarrassing, you've got give him this: He stretched the Overton Window. In the same way that the crazy ravings of Glenn Beck and virulent nastiness of Rush Limbaugh have made previously beyond-the-pale conservatives look like statesmen, Hitchens' in-your-face style has created some space in the mainstream for softer-spoken atheists and agnostics.

Anybody whose beliefs are more complicated that just "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." owes a little bit to Hitchens. As long as he was the guy sitting furtherest out on the limb, you didn't have to be.

So I guess, in my own grudging way, I've gotten around to praising him after all.

ANS -- Charging ahead

Here's a sweet little story of a man driving his electric vintage car around Australia, trying to get into the Guinness book of world records. 
If you follow the link there's a picture of the bright blue MG.  Notice, even Australia is pulling ahead of us in energy technology.
Find it here:  http://www.warrenadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/charging-ahead/2397863.aspx   
--Kim


 News 
 Local News 
 News  
  General 
 Charging ahead 

Charging ahead

JULIE LINCOLN
19 Dec, 2011 02:02 PM
Glen George has just completed a 19,500 kilometre journey around Australia, without having to stop and fill up at a bowser.

The three-month road trip, in the 1956 MG TF did, however, require an occasional 240 volt charge, plugging in at Warren Caravan Park, one of the last stops on the final leg of the journey from Perth to Mackay.

He uses renewable sources where possible and CO2 tallies are recorded.

The trip by the semi-retired renewable energy expert was also an official Guinness World Record attempt at the longest distance travelled in an electric vehicle. He predicts electric cars will be commonplace in five years� time.

�The MG is a bit of a mongrel; I was looking for a classic car to convert from petrol,� Mr George said.

�It travels at speeds of 60 to 70 kilometres an hour towing the trailer, but the car is capable of doing 160 kilometres per hour, with 109 the top speed recorded on the GPS.�

Mr George set out from Perth on August 23 and originally intended to just travel �the circuit� around the coast and back to Perth, but decided to continue the journey to include the hinterland finishing in Mackay. His sister followed in a support vehicle for the initial part of the trip but he travelled solo for the second leg and slept in a tent.

Mr George considers the electric car to be the way of the future; something he says the Lord Mayor of Adelaide agrees with, with plans to eventually make Adelaide an electric city.

Progress is tracked by a GPS system with Mr George also visiting council offices at each stop to have his log book stamped with each council�s seal.

Apart from being �cheap to run�, the vehicle makes no sound but �will leave them at the lights��.

�Torque is at the bottom end providing immediate power,� Mr George said. �The car requires almost no maintenance; in the last 30,000 kilometres I only needed to oil the back axle.�

The vehicle can travel up to 500 kilometres on one charge with a trailer in tow increasing the capability and, as with a fuel-driven vehicle, slowing the speed increases the distance.

A member of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association, Mr George retired from the solar business in 2009. He was building the car at the same time and the idea for the trip grew from there with some sponsors also coming on board.

The vehicle is open air except for small windscreens that help keep the bugs out and Mr George also wears a helmet and goggles while driving.

ANS -- Talking About the American Dream: Drew Westen and Celinda Lake

Sara Robinson is back posting at Campaign for America's Future again.  This post is advice for how to speak about the issues -- and I wish all Democratic politicians would read and heed it. 
Find it here:  http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011104004/talking-about-american-dream-drew-westen-and-celinda-lake
--Kim


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Talking About the American Dream: Drew Westen and Celinda Lake

By Sara Robinson

October 4, 2011 - 8:36am ET

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How do we talk about the American Dream? And is this a story Americans are ready to hear?

According to communications experts Drew Westen and Celinda Lake, they're beyond ready to hear it; in fact, they've been waiting for years for progressives to speak to them with the muscular populism that marked earlier progressives like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. This is the kind of language that actively challenges old Republican frames, and stands strongly for the interests of the middle class.

Westen and Lake got down to the details of what this kind of language sounds like during their presentation at Take Back the American Dream on Monday afternoon. "Without vision, the people will perish," said Westen, quoting from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. And right now, he continued, the right wing's vision for America seems limited to death and no taxes.

"That's the GOP's solution to everything," he said. No health insurance? Serving your country? Facing the death penalty? Fry 'em. "Two years ago, they were against death panels; now, they seem to be their answer for everything."

Unfortunately, Westen continued, Democratic politicians aren't doing much better. They consistently repeat right-wing formulations of problems, accepting both their facts and their moral assumptions without question. The upshot is that the country's dominant narrative is that government is still the problem, and still not the solution. Given that, it's small wonder that Americans can't see the differences between the left and the right.

How do we get past this? Westen pointed to research that showed that frankly populist messages -- strong, assertive descriptions of the conflict between the people and the powerful -- poll surprisingly well, even in the most nominally conservative parts of the country, among audiences ranging from far left to far right. People are ready to hear their problems described this way. Now, the challenge is to produce political leaders who are capable of doing it. "This should have been the horse we rode in on, " Westen said. "But nobody's getting on the horse."

Getting down to specifics, Westen noted that "there's no red or blue America -- just a confused and angry one." Talking about that means taking several key steps:

* Talk about morals. "Our vision is the opposite of 'every man for himself.'" Offer a new vision for how we treat each other -- rich and poor and middle class, and what our communities can be like.

* Tie stories back to core principles. This is key to taking back the progressive brand.

* Tell stories not just about who we are, but also about who the Republicans are. "Glenn Beck was doing a better job of branding us than we do. The right spends hundreds of millions of dollars in branding progressives." President Obama is currently doing some of this in his rhetoric around the jobs issue and GOP obstructionism, but we need to be doing much more of it.

* Make stories visceral and personal. For example, rather than getting wonky talking about revenues versus entitlements, talk about "raising taxes versus kicking granny out of the nursing home." (And stop using the word "entitlements," which implies that people are getting something they don't deserve.) Likewise: when we talk about Medicaid, we should point out that it's insurance -- something you've paid into for years. When the time comes to file a claim, nobody had better deny it. Social Security, likewise, is insurance that we pay for through our taxes.

Other phrases that resonate in Westen's polling:

* I want to see the words 'made in America' again

* Government of, by, and for the people -- not of, by, and for the corporations

* It's time our major import was something other than foreign oil, and our major export something other than American jobs

* Americans should be working their way into the middle class, not falling out of it

* Most of us don't expect to be rich or famous, but do expect a living wage and good American benefits for a hard day's work

* You can't have a vibrant economy without a vibrant middle class. Because somebody's got to build things, and somebody's got to buy them.

* The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work fixing our schools, roads, and bridges.

* The question isn't who's going to cut your taxes -- it's whose taxes they're going to cut.

* In tough times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.

Pollster Celinda Lake presented research that further proved Westen's point. According to her research, only 17% of Americans agreed that "the American Dream is still very much alive" -- though specific talk about the American Dream as an idea resonates strongly across the board. "The American Dream is a powerful frame," she said. "It's both aspirational, and it also allows us to attach progressive policies and goals to it."

In particular, Lake's research has found that stories focused on economic security, middle-class populism, investment in America, and having a balanced approach to our economic problems all resonate strongly. And she agrees with Westen that relentlessly connecting these ideas with small, personal, kitchen-table issues is critical to having them be understood. A few examples:

* We're not just opposed to tax breaks for the rich; we oppose them because they come at the expense of our kids' public educations.

* We're not just opposed to tax breaks for big corporations; we're opposed to them because they encourage those corporations to send American jobs abroad.

"The American dream is modest," Lake pointed out. "People are willing to work hard for it; they don't expect to win the lottery. They just want a fair chance to own a home, educate their kids, and retire. It's not too much to ask that our government support those goals, or that our politics be reformed to help make that happen."

Populist rhetoric is working now because a strong majority of Americans -- 71%, according to Lake's research -- think that the younger generation will be worse off than the current ones. Forty-nine percent say that unemployment is the most important economic issue, because they believe that the American Dream is anchored to their jobs. If the job disappears, so does your shot at the dream.

The core piece of the American Dream is economic security. Lake has found that this includes a living wage, health care, a secure retirement, and creating opportunities for the next generation. A majority of Americans still see these things within reach --but are also terrified of losing that access in the near future, and have grave concerns about whether or not they'll be there for their kids. This is a deep and motivating set of fears that Democratic candidates are failing to address, both in their campaigns and in their policies. That has to change.

Lake has found three themes that consistently poll over 80% -- even among conservatives and people in red zones of the countrys. The first is family economic security -- hard work leading to success and the chance for the next generation to do better. The second is the need for a strong middle class -- a goal all Americans agree strongly on, given that 85% of us consider ourselves members of the middle class. The third is equal opportunity: there should be no barriers to success built into the economic system; and those that exist should be removed.

She also offered some language that should be avoided. Talk about "the less fortunate" should be brought back and grounded in specifics (like "throwing Granny out of the nursing home"). Talk about "the right to clean air and water" instead of abstractions like "the environment." Avoid policy minutia; keep it personal and specific, and tell stories about real people. Don't talk about the past, or project too far in the future -- people are terrified about what's happening to them right now, and are worried about how they're going to even get to the future.

Finally, she said, stay away from ideas that don't fit the larger progressive populist frame. "People can reject facts, " she pointed out; "but they won't reject the larger frame."
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