Saturday, May 12, 2012

ANS -- 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

This is, I think, supposed to be a humor piece. But it's too true to really be funny. It's about our myths about being rich, and it's very telling. You might enjoy it, as it is couched in humorous language....
Find it here: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/#ixzz1ugBdEEEQ
or http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/#ixzz1uNkAjWMQ
"Bad" word warning!
--Kim

6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

By: David Wong March 05, 2012 3,212,107 views
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All of a sudden, it's like you can't make huge amounts of money without people getting all pissed off about it. And it's only going to get worse -- with the election coming up and the weather getting warmer, this whole "Occupy" movement is probably going to come back strong. The 1 percent will feel even more besieged than before.

"What the hell?" you're probably thinking, if you're somehow both rich and reading an article with this title, "I didn't crash the economy!" You might even be tempted to take to a microphone, to defend yourself and your wealthy friends. But before you do, I want you to stop and ask yourself, "Will this make me sound like an out-of-touch douchebag?"

#6. "Well, $500,000 a Year Might Sound Like a Lot, but I'm Hardly Rich."

"The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 ... and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over ..."

-- Congressman John Fleming

Pictured here with his poverty.

"It is hard to ask more of households making $250,000 or $300,000 a year. In large parts of the country, that kind of income does not get you a big home or lots of vacations or anything else that is associated with wealth."

-- Senator Chuck Schumer

What They Think They're Saying:

"Come on, we're all in this together! It's not like I have infinite money."

What We Hear:

"When my family's Aruba vacation went over budget, that was exactly like you being unable to afford medication for your child's excruciating chronic illness!"

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"Look at how tiny my yacht is!"

I'm going to try to only quote politicians and pundits and other public figures for this article, but don't take that to mean they're the only people saying this stupid shit. Regular rich folk aren't exactly reluctant to offer this as a defense ( here's an article on why it's hard to get by on $500,000 a year in New York, and here's one on why $200,000 a year isn't rich in Toronto), and you can go to the comment section of any article that mentions taxes or welfare or income inequality (including this one!) and hear this same bullshit.

"It's gotten to where I can barely afford my daily cigar rolled in the tanned flesh of a forsaken child."

Hell, you've probably heard it in real life, from a boss or some guy sitting nearby at Starbucks. "I guess I'm considered rich now! Well, if I'm so 'rich,' why am I broke at the end of the month?!?" Uh, I think it's because your mortgage is $3,000 a month, since you live in a fucking palace. And because you took your family on that Disney cruise last summer. And because you pay for your kids' college, so that, unlike us, they won't be crushed under six figures of student loan debt at age 22. And because you eat all the best foods and drink the finest liquids.

Or, as Hamilton Nolan at Gawker put it, "'Sure, it's an objectively large sum of money,' they say. 'But it is far smaller after I spend it.'"

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"Once I pay for the helicopter, the helicopter fuel, the townhouse and the Lexus, I barely have more spending money than your entire yearly salary."

For people who are grinding through overtime just to keep up with their bank's late fees, this induces an urge to storm a gated community with pitchforks and torches and make those people go spend a year in a trailer park or in a city apartment so small that when you flush the toilet, little droplets of piss splatter onto the bed.

But don't get too mad at the rich for saying this -- we shouldn't, as a rule, get as angry at people for being oblivious as we should when they're being intentionally evil. Besides, they can't help it -- that obliviousness is hard-wired, a product of evolution that, really, kind of explains all class tension in the world. The rich, along with all of us, are biologically programmed to not notice their advantages.

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"This stuff? I guess I could use it to prop up the table."

This came up a while back in a previous Cracked article. Basically, your brain drains the pleasure from the current things you own and do in order to motivate you to keep hunting and gathering. And I don't care where you are on the economic ladder, you've experienced this yourself.

You remember that scene from Big, where the boy-in-an-adult-body Tom Hanks gets his first paycheck at his shitty data entry job and screams in celebration, "A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN DOLLARS!" When you're a kid begging mom for 10 bucks at a time so you can buy some stickers for your Trapper Keeper (this is still 1984, right?), $200 seems like the kind of money that should come on a huge novelty lottery check. But then just a few years later, you get that first fast food job and watch your paycheck evaporate on just one car payment (the insurance takes the next one).

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That leaves just enough extra money for a Netflix subscription and a bowl to cry into.

It is apparently entirely possible to stay in that mindset, ignoring each new asset, right up until you're sleeping on a platinum bed under covers made of fur from a cloned woolly mammoth. If someone tries to offer you a little perspective and remind you of the tremendous advantages you no longer even notice, you'll reply with something like ...

#5. "Hey, I Worked Hard to Get What I Have!"

"I became a self-made millionaire by the age of 30 by working grueling hours, being relentless and risking my own money. My success was earned with blood, sweat and tears."

-- Wayne Allyn Root

"I used the tears as hair gel."

"Why, oh why, does the media bolster President Obama's rhetoric by using his term: 'the rich'? Would it not be more appropriate to say 'the successful,' or 'those who work harder?"

-- Letter to the Editor, Feb 21, 2012 Wall Street Journal

What They Think They're Saying:

"I'm not Paris Hilton! I work 70-hour weeks to make this salary!"

What We Hear:

"The only reason I have a hundred times more money than you is because I work a hundred times as hard!"

This will be the entry that prompts many a reader to skip right to the comment section after only reading the entry header ("I'm tired of these hippies saying the rich just got lucky and don't work hard!"). So let's get this out off the way right now, and make them look like assholes for not reading far enough:

Most high-income earners do put in a ton of hours. Bill Gates seemed to never sleep (an employee once said that putting in 81 hours in four days still couldn't keep up with Gates' schedule). So yes, it's unfair that we tend to think that "being rich" means "lounging by the pool while an albino tiger massages our feet with his tongue." So, "Hey, I work hard for what I have!" is perfectly true. It's also insulting.

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"You guys just need to work hard in a lucrative field."

It's insulting for the exact same reason "Hey, I love my country!" is insulting: It implies that the listener doesn't. Otherwise there'd be no reason to say it.

It implies a bizarre alternate reality where society rewards you purely based on how much effort you exert, rather than according to how well your specific talents fit in with the needs of the marketplace in the particular era and part of the world in which you were born. It implies that the great investment banker makes 10 times more than a great nurse only because the banker works 10 times as hard.

He doesn't.

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And he gets pooped on less than half as often.

And even stranger, it implies that money earned is a perfect indicator of a person's value to society -- if you're broke, it must mean you're a loser who contributes nothing to anyone's life. And that's downright bizarre when it comes from the same people who also go on and on about the importance of parenting and family values. Surely they've noticed that being a great stay-at-home parent makes you exactly zero dollars a year.

And volunteering to work at a shelter for battered women? Doesn't pay shit! Diving into a creek to save a toddler from drowning? It pays infinitely less than throwing a touchdown pass during the Super Bowl.

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I mean, babies are important, but c'mon ...

So, mister rich person who clearly is not reading this, when we say you're "lucky," we're not saying you're lucky in the way that a lottery winner is lucky. We're saying that you're lucky if you were born in a time and place where the hard work you're good at (say, stock speculation) is valued over the hard work that other people are good at (say, landscaping, or poetry).

You can reply that if some other field paid more, you'd have just simply switched to it and been equally successful, due to your smarts and determination. You know, like how the smart and determined Michael Jordan was equally successful as a basketball player (six titles, $70 million a year) and baseball player (batted .202 in the minors) and team owner (his Charlotte Bobcats are currently 4-28).

Hmm ... wait a second. Man, it's almost like Michael's hard work and determination wouldn't have made him rich if he hadn't happened to have been born in the one place and one time in human history where a man could get rich throwing a rubber ball through a small metal hoop.

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On the other hand, that sweater vest makes us think he has potential as the next face of Jell-O.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I would have ever heard of Shaquille O'Neal if he'd skipped basketball to go right into rap. If you think I'm just being mean to athletes, hell, let me use myself as an example. I failed at three different careers before I struck gold with list articles and dong horror. I suck at everything else -- take away the Internet and I'm a 37-year-old man doing data entry in a cubicle instead of promoting a brand new sequel about boner monsters. Or, if you don't believe me, let billionaire investor Warren Buffett tell you: "If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil ... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well -- disproportionately well."

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"And yet I do all my shopping at Goodwill."

So to sum it up: If you make good money, but have to work 80-hour weeks to get it, you're still lucky. Just swallow your pride and fucking acknowledge it.

#4. "If I Can Do It, So Can You!"

"We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves."

-- Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana

"The road to wealth is paved with self-delusion."

What They Think They're Saying:

"This is the land of opportunity, where anyone can make it! Instead of complaining, just go out there and get rich!"

What We Hear:

"If everyone at my country club makes good money, it can't be that hard!"

This is such an impossibly strange idea that I'm not sure if the people saying it actually believe it.

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At the best parties, the words "social mobility" are the only punchline you need.

But ... I guess our entire philosophy about money kind of revolves around this premise -- that there is no poor or working class, but only people who have chosen to not buckle down to the task of getting rich (and thus deserve whatever salary, insecurity or poor work conditions they get). So there should be no talk about improving the lives of the non-rich, since any of them can simply choose to elevate themselves out of that group, right?

Seriously, now. How much time do you really have to spend off your goddamned yacht to see that this isn't true? You don't even need to leave the dock -- there's a guy standing right there who you pay to fix your boat's engine. You know that 1) you absolutely need guys like him and 2) he will never get rich doing what he does. He could be great at his job, he might be the Michael Jordan of mechanics, he might work 100 hours a week -- it doesn't matter. Sure, if that one guy somehow also has the head for management and finance and the networking skills, he could maybe open his own chain of yacht repair shops. But they can't all do that.

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This dress could have fed starving interns.

So "anyone can get rich" isn't just untrue, it's insultingly untrue. You can't have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can't have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?

Or alive.

You're intentionally conflating "anyone can have the moonshine" with "everyone can have it." And you are doing it because you're hoping that we will all be too busy fighting each other to ask why there was only one jar.

But if we do ask, the response will probably be something like ...

#3. "You're Just Jealous Because I Made It and You Didn't!"

"I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent -- and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent -- [it] is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God."

-- Mitt Romney

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Cracked Exclusive: Mitt Romney's hair isn't as nice as he thinks it is.

"Part of it is jealousy. I stand by that. And here's why I don't have a lot of patience for that. My parents, they never played the victim card. My parents never said that we hope the rich people lose something so that we can get something."

-- Herman Cain

What They Think They're Saying:

"It's wrong to tear down others instead of improving your own life!"

What We Hear:

"All complaints about unfairness in the system are the equivalent of 12-year-old girls spreading mean rumors about the popular ones!"

Look, I get it. You worked your nuts off to start a business (or get your MBA or become a lawyer or whatever) so that you can finally have what you dreamed about when you were in high school: a huge swimming pool in the shape of the Van Halen logo. You obey the law, you pay your taxes. Then suddenly, this Occupy Wall Street freak show declares you to be the "one percent," and therefore the enemy. Obviously you've done nothing wrong, so their hatred must be irrational. They only hate you because you're rich!

To that, as the senior editor of a site that should goddamned well know, I can only offer one word:

Batman.

"That's Mr. Batman to you."

Fucking Batman. Pop culture's greatest hero. Search Cracked.com for "Batman" and 70 percent of the site comes up. Our culture loves him, and he 1) is rich as hell and 2) can only do what he does because he's rich.

Hell, let's look at the annual poll of the most admired people in America for 2011. There are 20 people on that list, and all 20 are rich enough to be in the "hated" 1 percent. I count four billionaires on that list, and another person who is a member of a billionaire family.

Above: The 99 percent and the 1 percent. Guess which one gets the badass car.

Now go into the bedroom of any child in America. Even before the parents have the chance to call the cops, you'll see posters of pro athletes and Disney pop stars and famous actors dressed as action heroes. Millionaires, all.

That's because all of our fucking heroes are millionaires.

Hell, every Christmas we celebrate the tale of the wealthy Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. We hate him in the first part of the story, and then we love him by the end. Not because he gave away all of his wealth and became poor (he didn't), but because he stopped acting like a shithead. Do you get the incredibly subtle and nuanced message of that story?

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A few million donated to the right dinosaur-cloning company would totally change this man's legacy.

You might be tempted to say, "What business is it of yours what I do with my money! Whether I use my cash to give to the poor or for gold paint to spread on naked women like goddamned Goldfinger, it's none of your business!"

Oh, dude, wouldn't life be easier if that were true? If we didn't have to answer to anybody, or feel social pressure based on the choices we make?

But, sadly, all civilization and morality rests on the fact that we have to answer to each other -- the only reason I haven't murdered a dozen people in traffic is because society will bring consequences if I do. And when you're powerful (due to being a politician, or a rich man, or having a position of authority like a priest or police officer), we turn up the heat even more. See, your power eliminates many of society's checks on your shitheadery (i.e., you can afford better lawyers), and so we have to make up for it in other ways. It's how we keep you in line. The fact that you don't like it only proves that you need it.

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"Not allowing the wealthy to hunt man for sport removes all motivation to succeed."

And when we hate people, it's always for the same reason: They refuse to acknowledge that their power brings with it any responsibility. It's why we hate bullies and dictators and supervillains. It's why we hate people who benefit hugely from society and then pretend like they're living on an island with a population of only them.

Which leads us nicely to ...

#2. "You Shouldn't Be Punishing the Very People Who Make This Country Work!"

"There is a deeply disturbing message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement ... Simply put, it boils down to this: We must punish success ..."

-- John E. Kramer, Washington Times

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He must speak really fluent Hippie.

"There'll always be those who earn more than I do, and I say, God bless them. I'm sure they work hard, did what was necessary to get ahead and should not be penalized for or feel ashamed of their accomplishments."

-- Bernard Goldberg

"The top 1 percent of wage earners in the United States pays 40 percent of the income taxes and the top 10 percent of wage earners pay 90 percent of the income taxes ... the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy and to create jobs in our country."

-- Speaker of the House John Boehner

"I never got a job from a poor person."

-- Sean Hannity

"I also can't lick my elbow and hop at the same time. Life's funny, huh?"

What They Think They're Saying:

"If you punish success, society will collapse into communism!"

What We Hear:

"I have to pay higher taxes than my gardener! Waaaah!"

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"I'm pretty sure he's either smoking pot or shooting up insulin back there. I forget which is which."

There are two elements to this, and I don't want to get too much into the first one because it gets into a tedious debate about tax policy and shit that nobody comes to Cracked.com to read. But, very briefly, it's the concept of "You have your job because of a rich person."

This is true, I suppose, if that rich person inherited their money and you are personally working for them as a gardener. But if you are working at a Toyota factory, your paycheck doesn't come from under the mattress of the owner of the company. That money came from lots and lots of regular Joes who bought Toyota cars. The guys in suits are just middlemen between the supply and the demand.

So as for the popular talk radio joke, "I've never gotten a job from a poor person"? Well, Sean, a lot of your listeners are poor, and your advertisers are paying you with money they made by selling goods to those poor people. So, yeah, the cash you make does in fact bear the smelly fingerprints of the lower classes. It's the same for somebody working at Walmart, or a grocery store, or a liquor store. You didn't get your job from a poor person, but collectively their money made it happen. Which is just a long way to say the obvious: That rich people don't make the world go around. It takes everybody.

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Even -- no, especially -- this guy.

But the second part is this idea that asking the rich to pitch in is "punishing" them.

So, Rich Guy, let me explain this as calmly and logically as I can:

Are you fucking 6 years old? Do you still think mom made you clean up your room because she was mean? In the adult world, we get asked to do things because shit needs to get done. It has nothing to do with fairness, it has nothing to do with judging you. It has nothing to do with you at all. There's a whole world out there, with people who need helping and projects that need accomplishing.

You're only being asked to pitch in because you have the resources. You're not a tall person who us dwarfs are jealously trying to cut down to size. You're a tall person being asked to get something down from a very tall shelf because nobody else can fucking reach it.

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The step stool is ... welfare?

Really ... I'm not trying to be condescending. We're all adults here.

Just ... here, how about this: Remember when Yoda told Luke he had to confront Darth Vader if he wanted to be a true Jedi? Do you think that was because Yoda hated Luke and assigned him that awful task to punish him? Was it because Yoda was jealous? Of Luke's ... height, or whatever?

Or was it because it needed to be done and Luke was the only one who could do it? Because he had the Force?

See, in our society, money is the Force.

We can't decide if the lightsabers should be lobbyists or lawyers.

Yes, I know you think you already give more than your fair share. So did Luke. So does everyone. Welcome to the human race -- we all think we're getting the shit end of the deal.

#1. "Stop Asking for Handouts! I Never Got Help from Anybody!"

"I've been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No."

-- Craig T. Nelson

"I expect nothing to be handed to me, and will continue to work my @$$ off for everything I have. I am NOT the 99 percent, and whether or not you are is YOUR decision."

-- Anonymous

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"Unless you were born in Haiti. Then the deck is kinda stacked against you."

What They Think They're Saying:

"I pulled myself up by my bootstraps!"

What We Hear:

"Because I didn't inherit millions of dollars, impoverished children don't need food stamps!"

All right.

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You "never got help from anybody."

Nothing was "handed to you."

All right.

Let's say you scratched and you clawed and climbed the ladder of success. You never took a welfare check or charity, you worked three jobs to get through college. And at the end of it you look back on your labors and feel justified in saying, "I never got help from anybody."

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"Wow. When you put it like that, the vast majority of my life sounds terrible."

So ... you were never a child? From birth, you were hunting and gathering your own food? You never had a mother to "hand" you milk?

You're completely self-educated? At age 4, you sought out your own knowledge, and paid teachers out of your own pocket?

I don't think you did. I'd have seen something about it on the news.

I think your parents poured untold resources into your hungry mouth. I think you had a roof over your head that was paid for by other people, I think you went to schools that were built and staffed and paid for by other people, I think you felt safe because the streets were patrolled by other people, I think you drove to your three jobs on roads paved by other people, in a car built by other people and burning oil that was drilled by other people in a nation whose borders were defended by other people.

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"Don't mention it."

Look, I understand why "I ain't asking for help from nobody!" individualism works as an attitude, or a philosophy. No, you shouldn't wait for help to come along. I'll even agree that we don't impress that message hard enough on kids when they're growing up. Kids, if you're reading this, and you fucking shouldn't be, but if you are, let me tell you now:

The world doesn't give a shit about you, and you'll have to wrestle it for every good thing you get. Hell, I've written an entire article about how grown-ups don't tell us how freaking hard everything is, and how the shock of unexpected effort trips us up.

But, for the rich, this somehow gets extended to the absolutely delusional idea that they exist on a purely self-sufficient island, in an ocean full of shiftless layabouts always asking to borrow their stuff.

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"More soup? Next you'll be asking to borrow one of my 12 golden Xboxes."

And you literally hear people express it this way -- in libertarian circles they refer to it as "Going Galt" (as in John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged) -- fed up rich people just disconnecting from this annoying "society" thing that's bleeding them dry. If you live in my part of the country, you'll hear hard-working, rural farmer types say, "I got my own piece of land, I grow my own food, all I want is to be left alone." All right, well tell me this, cowboy:

Let's say some mean, even richer guy, like a wealthy gangsta rapper, hired a bunch of armed thugs to come take your farm. What would you do? Your shotgun won't fend them off -- they have a hundred bigger shotguns. What will you do, call the cops? That is, other people, who will risk their lives while being paid with still other people's tax money, who will try these bad guys in a court funded by yet other people's tax money, under laws passed by legislators paid with other people's tax money? Whoa, slow down there, welfare queen!

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Now fight off these Nazis with your bootstraps.

But if none of that stuff existed, there would be nothing stopping Jay-Z from taking your farm. In other words, you don't "own" shit. The entire concept of owning anything, be it a hunk of land or a house or a fucking sandwich, exists purely because other people pay other armed men to protect it. Without society, all of your brave, individual talents and efforts won't buy you a bucket of farts.

So when I say "We're all in this together," I'm not stating a philosophy. I'm stating a fact about the way human life works. No, you never asked for anything to be handed to you. You didn't have to, because billions of humans who lived and died before you had already created a lavish support system where the streets are all but paved with gold. Everyone reading this -- all of us living in a society advanced enough to have Internet access -- was born one inch away from the finish line, plopped here at birth, by other people.

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"On your mark, get set -- hey! Anybody else want to watch The Office?"

So when somebody else asks for your help, in the form of charity or taxes, or because they need you to help them move a refrigerator, you can cite all sorts of reasons for not helping ("I think you're lying about needing help" or "I don't care" or "I'm too tied up with my own problems"), but the one thing you can't say is, "Why should you need help? I've never gotten help!" Not unless you're either shamefully oblivious, or a lying asshole.

Hell, if anybody could play the "I did this myself!" card, it's me. I mentioned earlier that I've made an unfair amount of money due to writing a novel about a zombie detective who only solves crimes of paranormal romance and then selling the film rights to said novel. If anything is a one-man show, it's writing a book. Nobody helped me with that. Well, I mean other than the friend who created the title character. And the publisher who spent the money to print up the copies and publicize it. And all of the previous novelists who established the medium and genre. And the public school system that taught me how to read and write, and that taught all of my readers how to read. And the people who built and maintain the Internet so that I would have a place to promote it, and the people who maintain the roads so that the books could be shipped from Amazon ...

You get the idea.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Wong is the Senior Editor of Cracked.com and the author of John Dies at the End and the even more ridiculously titled sequel This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don't Touch it, available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, etc.

For more from David, see How the Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World and 5 Reasons the Future Will Be Ruled by B.S.

Read more: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying_p2/#ixzz1uhIkOUYa

Thursday, May 10, 2012

ANS -- Conservative Thinktanks Launch Campaign to Turn Americans Against Wind Energy

the oil industry is trying to discredit wind power, just like they discredited hydrogen. They have no compunction about being dishonest, as, if corporations are people, they are sociopathic people: no consciences.
Find it here: http://www.alternet.org/story/155359/conservative_thinktanks_launch_campaign_to_turn_americans_against_wind_energy?page=entire
--Kim

The Guardian / By Suzanne Goldenberg

31 COMMENTS

Conservative Thinktanks Launch Campaign to Turn Americans Against Wind Energy

Documents show for the first time that local anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry.
May 9, 2012 |

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/WDG Photo

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A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda.

A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.

The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.

The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled 'wind warriors' from across the country in Washington DC last February.

"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.

Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing "subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it."

It suggests setting up "dummy businesses" to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a "counter-intelligence branch" to track the wind energy industry. It also calls for spending $750,000 to create an organisation with paid staff and tax-exempt status dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry.

The proposal was reviewed by John Droz Jr, a senior fellow at ATI, for discussion at the Washington meeting, which he also organised. ATI's executive director, Tom Tanton, said Droz had acted alone on the memo, although he confirmed he remains a fellow at the thinktank.

Droz is a longtime opponent of wind farms, arguing that the technology has not yet been proven and that wind technology should not receive government support. He claims 10,000 subscribers to his anti-wind-power email newsletter.

In a telephone interview, Droz said the Washington strategy session was his own initiative, and that he or any of the participants had been paid for attending the session.

Their main priority was co-ordinating PR strategy. "Our No 1 reason for getting together was to talk about whether there should be agreement to talk about a common message."

The strategy session is the latest evidence of a concerted attack on the clean energy industry by thinktanks and lobby groups connected to oil and coal interests and free-market ideologues.

ATI is part of a loose coalition of ultra-conservative thinktanks and networks united by their efforts to discredit climate science and their close connections to the oil and gas industry, including the Koch family. Those groups include the Heartland Institute, the John Locke Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity, the organising arm of the Tea Party movement.

ATI is a relatively new entrant, coming to national attention only last year when it filed lawsuits against climate scientists including Michael Mann and James Hansen.

Campaign groups and spokespersons for the wind industry say there has been a sharp rise in organised opposition since early 2009 when Obama put investment in renewable energy at the heart of his economic recovery plan.

"We do see evidence of co-ordination," said Peter Kelley a spokesman for the American Wind Energy Assocation. "The same rhetoric pops up all over the place. Things that are disproven, that are demonstrably untrue, continually get repeated."

Recent developments in the campaign against wind power include:

• A new $6m election ad buy by the ultra-conservative group Americans for Prosperity attacking Barack Obama's support for wind and solar power.

• An email and telephone campaign by the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform to repeal or alter clean energy mandates requiring electricity companies to get a share of their power from renewables.

• Putting forward Alec-drafted bills overturning those measures in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado, Montana and Washington state.

Droz, in the telephone interview, confirmed that he had enlisted support for telephone campaigns from Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks – both of which have received funds from the Koch family. He also appeared at an anti-wind forum sponsored by the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina last December.

But he dismissed any idea of a co-ordinated effort. "We happen to have common interests on some things," he said. "But it's not collusion."

But conservative activists describe the ramp-up as critical to the effort to defeat Obama in the elections. "It's absolutely a campaign issue and it's a big one," said Dave Schwartz, who heads the Maryland chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group with Koch funds. "It absolutely is a contentious issue," he said.

Kert Davies, Greenpeace research director, agrees. "They are going back to the states to create the space for an anti-Obama, anti-green energy thing. It is really a political attack," he said. " What the right wing wants to perpetuate is that this is a type of energy that never works and requires massive government handouts."

More than 30 local wind farm opponents, all selected by Droz, came to Washington at his invitation. Participants included members of conservative groups such as Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and Tea Party Patriots.

A number said they had come to DC for strategy tips and PR advice. Three used the same phraseology as Droz who said the decision to meet and pool strategies was to avoid having to continually "reinvent the wheel".

"Everybody is amateur and everybody is learning from the ground up and re-inventing the wheel and the discussion among some of us was as to whether or not we could be a little more efficient and share resources and information," said Carolyn Gerwin an attorney and Tea Party activist from Pontiac Illinois who was among the participants.

Gerwin has been active in both Illinois Wind Watch and the Tea Party Patriots, and lobbied against wind energy at the state and federal level, her sign-in questionnaire for the February meeting said. "I'd like to see us develop a nationwide network of wind warriors that can be mobilised on very short notice," she wrote in a questionnaire distributed to participants.

There is evidence that network is already coming into being. Since the meeting, participants have pooled efforts to make phone calls and send email to members of Congress.

Opposing Obama's energy policies was a natural fit for conservatives, said Marita Noon, a conservative activist from New Mexico who was at the meeting. "The American way, what made CostCo and Walmart a success, is to use more and pay less. That's the American way," The president's green policies however were the reverse, she said.

"President Obama wants us to use more and pay less."

That set the stage for a confrontation over wind farms and other clean energy issues in the elections, Noon argued. "I would say it's almost the issue," she said. "It's going to be huge."

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

ANS -- Colin Powell's New Book: War With Iraq Never Debated

so, it looks like some truth might leak out after all, concerning the W.Bush years.
Find it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/colin-powell-book_n_1503592.html?fb_action_ids=3540836650848&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline
--Kim

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Colin Powell's New Book: War With Iraq Never Debated

Posted: 05/09/2012 3:23 pm Updated: 05/09/2012 3:55 pm

Colin Powell with vial he said could contain anthrax, at the United Nations in 2003.

WASHINGTON -- In his new book, former Secretary of State Colin Powell provides what may be the most authoritative confirmation yet that there was never a considered debate in the George W. Bush White House about whether going to war in Iraq was really a good idea.

In a chapter discussing what he calls his �infamous� February 2003 speech to the United Nations where he authoritatively presented what was later exposed as gross misinformation about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Powell notes that by that time, war �was approaching.�

�By then, the President did not think war could be avoided,� Powell writes. �He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met -- and never would meet -- to discuss the decision.�

The National Security Council, which was at the time led by Condoleezza Rice, is the president�s foremost advisory body for national security and foreign policy.

The book, �It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership,� which will be released May 22, is largely a series of leadership parables from Powell, who now spends a lot of time on the lecture circuit. The Huffington Post obtained an advance copy.

Bush insisted in his own 2010 memoir, "Decision Points," that the invasion was something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. During his book tour, he even cast himself as �a dissenting voice� in the run-up to war. �I didn't wanna use force,� he said.

But Powell supports the increasingly well-documented conclusion that there was actually no decision-making point -- or decision-making process -- during the events between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with those attacks.

Former CIA Director George Tenet made an admission similar to Powell�s in his own 2007 memoir. "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," he wrote. Nor "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Indeed, history shows that Bush had long wanted to strike out at Saddam Hussein and was trying to link Iraq to 9/11 within a day of the terrorist attacks.

The first concrete evidence was the Downing Street Memos first published in 2005, which documented the conclusions of British officials after high-level talks in Washington in July 2002 that �[m]ilitary action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.�

An analysis of the historical record by the National Security Archives in 2010 concluded that, �In contrast to an extensive record of planning for actual military operations, there is no record that President George W. Bush ever made a considered decision for war. All of the numerous White House and Pentagon meetings concerned moving the project forward, not whether a march into conflict was a proper course for the United States and its allies. Deliberations were instrumental to furthering the war project, not considerations of the basic course.�

The war, which President Barack Obama officially brought to an end Dec. 31, cost the U.S. government around $3 trilllion, left 4,487 U.S. servicemembers dead and killed more than 100,000 Iraqis. The Pentagon counts 32,226 U.S. servicemembers wounded, but the toll, including cumulative psychological and physiological damage, may be as high as half a million.

In Powell�s explanation of how he came to provide the misleading and inaccurate account of Iraq�s WMD capability at the UN, the former secretary of state points an incriminating finger at Vice President Dick Cheney�s office -- confirming previous reports such as the one by Karen DeYoung, in her Powell biography.

In the new book, Powell describes his reaction to the initial �WMD case� from the White House. �It was a disaster. It was incoherent,� he writes. �I learned later that Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, had authored the unusable presentation, not the NSC staff. And several years after that, I learned from Dr. Rice that the idea of using Libby had come from the Vice President, who had persuaded the President to have Libby, a lawyer, write the �case� as a lawyer's brief and not as an intelligence assessment.�

Powell gives himself credit for rejecting continued appeals from Cheney to add �assertions that had been rejected months earlier to links between Iraq and 9/11 and other terrorist acts.�

All in all, Powell acknowledges that the speech was �one of my most momentous failures, the one with the widest-ranging impact.� But he also concludes that �every senior U.S. official would have made the exact same case,�

He adds: �I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying -- of knowing the information was false. I didn�t.�

The lesson of all this, Powell writes, is to follow these guidelines: �Always try to get over failure quickly. Learn from it. Study how you contributed to it. If you are responsible for it, own up to it.�

But Powell didn�t exactly own up to this for years. His former chief of staff, Col. Larry Wilkerson, first went public in 2005 with details of a secret cabal led by the vice president which hijacked U.S. foreign policy and hoodwinked the president. Wilkerson also argued for years that there was never a formal decision to go to war. Powell conspicuously failed to back him up at the time.

So what does Wilkerson make of Powell�s conclusory lessons? �Powell�s rules are for everyone else,� he told HuffPost on Wednesday.

Monday, May 07, 2012

ANS -- Banksters Are Stifling Manufacturing’s U.S. Comeback

the Banksters want to ruin America. Here's proof.
Find it here: http://www.politicususa.com/banksters-are-stifling-manufacturings-u-s-comeback.html
--Kim

Banksters Are Stifling Manufacturing�s U.S. Comeback

By: Ray Medeiros May 7, 2012 see more posts by Ray Medeiros
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Manufacturing companies based in the United States are realizing an increase in demand for their products and want to expand, that�s the good news. The not so good news is the banking sector is holding all the money and they are not letting it out.

In a report by CNN they cite �lack of capital to grow� as their biggest challenge at a time when they need loans �to hire more workers, buy new equipment and aggressively market themselves.�

Anyone in business understands that cash flow is the key to success, and when the cash flow is dammed up, everything downstream dries up. This is precisely what is happening now and what happened during the financial crisis of 2008 under President Bush.

Unlike back in those days of 2008, the banks have the capital to lend. In the CNN report, a small business manufacturer, Matt Henderson, president of Performance Machine & Manufacturing, operates two machine shops in Tennessee that make parts for the automotive industry.

Business has been increasing at his shop and is reaching over 80% of what they did last year, essentially almost doubling his business. As his company continues to see an increase in demand for his product, he needs banks to loan him cash to expand and hire more workers.

He is asking for a $140,000 in financing to expand and hire more workers. Unfortunately he is hitting a brick wall, even after showing the banks his financials proving his business is increasing.

He currently has a thirty person staff and they are working 6-7 days a week. Henderson said, �If I get the loan, I can hire three full-time and two part-time workers and buy new equipment, I also want to do a heavy marketing campaign to bring in more business.�

Perhaps if this trend continues, our country should start talking about opening state banks to compete with the banking institutions. It has worked in North Dakota for 100 years, so why not do the same in every other state in the nation? Access to capital in North Dakota is great and small businesses get the cash they need to increase hiring and expand their business.

In fact, the financial crisis didn�t really affect North Dakota much. They were insulated somewhat due to their state bank. As credit dried up across the country, North Dakota kept chugging along, never really getting nailed by the tsunami coming from Wall Street.

ANS -- Those Revolting Europeans

Here's a short, easy to read, article about economics and what's happening in Europe. Things are looking up -- it's good news for a change.
Find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html?_r=2&ref=europeansovereigndebtcrisis
--Kim

Op-Ed Columnist

Those Revolting Europeans

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 6, 2012

The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It's far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity and that's a good thing.

Needless to say, that's not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace. He is "rather dangerous," declared The Economist, which observed that he "genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society." Quelle horreur!

What is true is that Mr. Hollande's victory means the end of "Merkozy," the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a "dangerous" development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn't and doesn't; it's time to move on. Europe's voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent's best and brightest.

What's wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe's ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn't exist that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe's policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover.

But it hasn't. And although you'd never know it from much of the press coverage, Irish borrowing costs remain much higher than those of Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. So what are the alternatives?

One answer an answer that makes more sense than almost anyone in Europe is willing to admit would be to break up the euro, Europe's common currency. Europe wouldn't be in this fix if Greece still had its drachma, Spain its peseta, Ireland its punt, and so on, because Greece and Spain would have what they now lack: a quick way to restore cost-competitiveness and boost exports, namely devaluation.

As a counterpoint to Ireland's sad story, consider the case of Iceland, which was ground zero for the financial crisis but was able to respond by devaluing its currency, the krona (and also had the courage to let its banks fail and default on their debts). Sure enough, Iceland is experiencing the recovery Ireland was supposed to have, but hasn't.

Yet breaking up the euro would be highly disruptive, and would also represent a huge defeat for the "European project," the long-run effort to promote peace and democracy through closer integration. Is there another way? Yes, there is and the Germans have shown how that way can work. Unfortunately, they don't understand the lessons of their own experience.

Talk to German opinion leaders about the euro crisis, and they like to point out that their own economy was in the doldrums in the early years of the last decade but managed to recover. What they don't like to acknowledge is that this recovery was driven by the emergence of a huge German trade surplus vis-à-vis other European countries in particular, vis-à-vis the nations now in crisis which were booming, and experiencing above-normal inflation, thanks to low interest rates. Europe's crisis countries might be able to emulate Germany's success if they faced a comparably favorable environment that is, if this time it was the rest of Europe, especially Germany, that was experiencing a bit of an inflationary boom.

So Germany's experience isn't, as the Germans imagine, an argument for unilateral austerity in Southern Europe; it's an argument for much more expansionary policies elsewhere, and in particular for the European Central Bank to drop its obsession with inflation and focus on growth.

The Germans, needless to say, don't like this conclusion, nor does the leadership of the central bank. They will cling to their fantasies of prosperity through pain, and will insist that continuing with their failed strategy is the only responsible thing to do. But it seems that they will no longer have unquestioning support from the Élysée Palace. And that, believe it or not, means that both the euro and the European project now have a better chance of surviving than they did a few days ago.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on May 7, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Those Revolting Europeans.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

ANS -- Aspen Ski Area Rallies To Highlight Climate Change

Well, in Aspen Colorado they believe in climate change. It's hurting their business. (Very short article, sent to me by a reader.)
Read it here: http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/05/05/aspen-ski-area-rallies-to-highlight-climate-change/
--Kim

Aspen Ski Area Rallies To Highlight Climate Change

May 5, 2012 6:34 PM

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Aspen (credit: Aspen/Snowmass)

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Aspen Ski Area, Aspen Skiing Company, Climate Change, McKibben

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) – Aspen Ski Area hosted a ski race without snow Saturday to highlight the effect climate change has on the outdoor recreation industry.

Auden Schendler, Aspen Skiing Company's vice president of sustainability, says "climate change is already pounding businesses and communities, whether you're a ski resort, an insurance agency or a raft business."

Saturday's event also included a photography contest, and participants wearing white formed a giant white dot on the snowless slope to draw attention to the effects of climate change.

Organizers say the gathering in the Colorado ski town was part of more than 1,000 rallies taking place in more than 100 countries in an effort to "connect the dots" between extreme weather and climate change. The day's events were organized by 350.org, an environmental group co-founded by Vermont activist Bill McKibben.

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Thursday, May 03, 2012

ANS -- French CEOs to feel the pinch if Hollande wins

Here is an article about what is going on in France -- we have been watching as Sarkozy looks less and less like a winner, and Hollande, his socialist rival, is looking like he might win.
Find it here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-france-elections-salaries-idUSBRE8420HZ20120503
--Kim

<a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh%3Dv8/3c6b/3/0/%2a/m%3B251808479%3B0-0%3B198%3B43270794%3B4307-300/250%3B47151805/47167978/1%3B%3B%7Eokv%3D%3Btype%3Dmpu%3Bsz%3D300x250%3Btile%3D2%3Bvbc%3Dxerox%3BarticleID%3DUSBRE8420HZ20120503%3BU%3DNC%3B%3Bbsg%3D1156843%3Bbsg%3D1161283%3Bbsg%3D1165723%3B%7Eaopt%3D2/1/1a/1%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://servedby.flashtalking.com/click/20177;274221;0;209;0/?url=1596004" target="_blank"> <img border="0" src="http://servedby.flashtalking.com/imp/3/20177;274221;205;gif;ReutersUS;BRKReutersAudienceSelectTargetSegmentMPUBannerFT300x250CPM/?"></a>

French CEOs to feel the pinch if Hollande wins

Francois Hollande, Socialist party candidate for the 2012 Frenc

By Christian Plumb and Sinead Cruise

PARIS/LONDON | Thu May 3, 2012 7:26am EDT

(Reuters) - For Henri Proglio, outspoken chief executive of French utility EDF ( EDF.PA), a victory for Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande in Sunday's presidential poll could prove particularly costly.

Proglio, who earned 1.6 million euros ($2.1 million) last year, could be one of the most prominent victims of the cap on CEO pay at state-controlled companies Hollande advocates, but many more top French executives will also have a wary eye on the forthcoming vote.

The cap is one of several measures - also including a top income tax rate of 75 percent on income above 1 million euros -Hollande says are necessary to restore fairness in France, part of his rebuke to incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for policies allegedly favoring the rich.

Critics call the cap, which could mean the EDF CEO's pay would slump at least two thirds to no more than about 500,000 euros - assuming no potentially controversial legal challenge - a piece of electioneering that could detract from companies' ability to attract top talent.

That in turn could tighten a sometimes incestuous circle between the French state and corporations, since it could become much easier to lure executives from government than private sector employees already enjoying generous pay packages.

Already, as of last year, 26 percent of French CEOs had had their first jobs in government, a much higher percentage than in Germany, Britain or the United States, according to a study by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

"If a country like France imposes an arbitrary (salary) cap, they are almost going back in time in terms of how executives of state-owned companies and enterprises are paid," said Simon Wong, a partner at shareholder lobby group Governance for Owners.

"One of the key reforms of the past decade or two was to free the salary structure of these firms so they could better compete with the private sector," Wong said.

Even some who applaud the broad goal of restraining executive pay worry that Hollande's proposal is like swinging an axe in a situation that calls for a scalpel.

"I'm not against rethinking CEO pay," said Vincente Cunat, a professor at the London School of Economics. "This looks too simplistic to me and driven by the wrong incentives."

WHAT THEY DESERVE

Hollande's vow to bar the top-paid executives in public companies from making more than 20 times the lowest-paid employee's salary could unsettle the boardrooms of a broad swathe of companies and industries.

And the breadth of the potential impact highlights the extent to which the country's government still wields influence over France Inc.

While a new French government would be free to slash CEO pay at companies in which it has majority stakes - like nuclear power plant builder Areva ( AREVA.PA) and airports operator Aeroports de Paris ( ADP.PA), as well as EDF - it could also strongly influence other companies where it has more than 25 percent.

That means CEOs of companies ranging from GDF Suez ( GSZ.PA), in which the government has a 36 percent stake, to France Telecom ( FTE.PA), in which it holds 27 percent, could see their paychecks slashed if the Hollande proposal becomes law.

GDF CEO Gerard Mestrallet was paid 3.3 million in 2011, including a 1.4 million base salary. France Telecom's Stephane Richard made 1.6 million.

Officials from the Hollande campaign insist the proposal is nuanced, that the pay ceiling would vary depending on the salary of its lowest-paid employees and that their goal is less to cut CEO compensation than to make sure the rank and file get what they deserve.

"The modern left handles things in a modern way," said a source close to Hollande's campaign team, emphasizing that the ceiling would be calculated differently at each company.

"There is the law, and there is the management's thinking on compensation, and that's what needs to change in France," the source said. "Regulation on its own isn't enough, we need to change mentalities."

The source pointed to Volkswagen's ( VOWG_p.DE) recent decision to grant bonuses to its rank and file factory workers of 7,500 euros each as one which effectively muffled outrage over CEO Martin Winterkorn's 17 million euro salary in 2011.

MARKET FRIENDLY?

Elsewhere in Germany, Proglio's counterpart at utility E.ON ( EONGn.DE) made 4.5 million euros last year, more than 10 times what Hollande would allow EDF to pay and a possible sign of how the French company could struggle to lure talent.

While the proposed cap has a good chance of becoming law, many economists say an essentially market-friendly Hollande team will likely make the law flexible enough so its final impact is less dramatic.

Even with reduced salary, perks can be offered to lure talent, such as chauffeured cars or even housing.

Still, the prospect of pay curbs has executive search firms warning of consequences such as the likelihood that French companies would be even less likely to attract foreign CEOs.

"If they want to find a CEO outside of government, that will be very difficult," said Didier Vuchot, chairman of Korn/Ferry International for Europe. "They won't be competitive ... You'll lose the possibility of having non-French candidates."

So despite being designed as a measure to foster equality, the proposal could further increase the dominance of a narrow upper crust - of which Hollande himself is a member - of home-grown technocrats trained in the nation's most selective universities.

Proglio, Richard and Mestrallet are members of this narrow circle, although their days of seven-figure salaries are almost certainly at an end.

Not everyone in the business community thinks a bit of salary moderation is such a bad idea.

Sympathizers point out that even the United States, known for a hands-off stance toward the private sector, capped pay at several companies including insurer American International Group ( AIG.N), albeit this was after taxpayer-funded rescues.

And Proglio, though praised by some analysts for bringing a more market-friendly approach to EDF, has also presided over a 59 percent drop in the utility's share price. That makes his 1.56 million pay for 2011 - including a 555,708 bonus - look generous in many eyes.

"Being at the head of a publicly owned company and losing touch with reality by having a huge salary is not a good thing," said Laurent Maruani, chairman of the marketing department at French business school HEC.

"When your salary is that high you become a sort of abstraction," Maruani said. "You don't have a real understanding of your customers." ($1 = 0.7561 euros)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Caroline Jacobs; Editing by Geert De Clercq and David Holmes)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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ANS -- He-Men, Virginity Pledges, and Bridal Dreams: Obama Administration Quietly Endorses Dangerous Ab-Only Curriculum

Is this true? Sounds all wrong to me, so maybe it is true.... ("Ab-Only" means abstinence only. ) I got the link from Brad Hicks.
--Kim
Find it here: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/04/30/he-men-virginity-pledges-and-bridal-dreams-an-hhs-endorsed-curriculum

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He-Men, Virginity Pledges, and Bridal Dreams: Obama Administration Quietly Endorses Dangerous Ab-Only Curriculum

See all our coverage of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education here.

Sometime this month, an updated list of "evidence-based" teen pregnancy prevention programs was endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and posted to the website of the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH).

No notice, not even a press release to announce the addition of three programs to the coveted list of 28 deemed effective and carrying the HHS seal of approval. Until now, this list was the holy grail of the Administration's commitment to a science-based approach to teen pregnancy prevention and a directive for grantees of the President's Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI).

So why the secrecy about the new additions? What does the Administration have to hide?

We have been around long enough to expect politics as usual in Washington, D.C. The backroom deals and secrecy should not surprise us. The jettisoning of young people and their sexual health for political expediency is not new. But, this blatant hypocrisy needs to stop. This latest example is just too much.

Perhaps the Administration realized that the inclusion of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education on this select list would call into question its commitment to young people and their sexual health. Once again, they have succumbed to the political pressure of social conservatives and allowed the ideology of the right to prevail over the health and well-being of the nation's youth. The Obama Administration's endorsement of this abstinence-only-until marriage program runs in direct contradiction to its stated commitment to the health and well-being of young people and, quite possibly, its promise to uphold science and evidence.

The Trampling of Young People's Sexual Health

The President has talked about his administration's commitment to LGBT health and rights by recording his own "It Gets Better Video" and announcing support for both the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act. And, the CDC has recognized the disproportionate impact of the HIV epidemic on young men who have sex with men and has committed millions of federal dollars to reducing the burden of disease on this population.

Yet, at best Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education ignores LGBT youth – and at worst it promotes homophobia. The stigmatization of LGBT youth throughout the program reinforces the cultural invisibility and bias these students already face in many schools and communities. The curriculum's focus on marriage as the only appropriate context for sexual behavior further ostracizes LGBT youth and the children of LGBT parents who still cannot legally marry in most states.

The Director of the CDC has called teen pregnancy prevention and HIV prevention two of the country's six "winnable battles," and recent analysis of National Survey of Family Growth data trends indicates that significant reductions in teen births have been primarily fueled by increased contraceptive use.

Today roughly 40 percent of high school students have had sex and young people under age 29 continue to account for approximately 30 percent of all new cases of HIV infection.

Yet, Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education does not include information about the health benefits of contraception or condoms.

Igniting Fears and Spreading Misinformation

In fact, Heritage Keepers contains little or no information about puberty, anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, or sexual behavior. Instead, most of its lessons are devoted to promoting the importance of heterosexual marriage and the value of abstinence before marriage. Students are asked to take virginity pledges and class time is devoted to having students envision and plan their wedding days. Heritage Keepers also teaches students that:

"Males and females are aroused at different levels of intimacy. Males are more sight orientated whereas females are more touch orientated." The implications of this difference are explained further: "This is why girls need to be careful with what they wear, because males are looking! The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason, girls have a responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn't invite lustful thoughts." (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 46)
"Sex is like fire. Inside the appropriate boundary of marriage, sex is a great thing! Outside of marriage, sex can be dangerous." (Heritage Keeper, Student Manual, p. 22)
"Cohabitation (when two people live together before marriage) is not like marriage! [Heritage Keepers, p. 30] When couples live together outside of marriage, the relationships are weaker, more violent, less [equal], and more likely to lead to divorce" (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 26)
"One reason may be that when people bond closely through sexual activity, then break up and bond with someone else, and then someone else, it may become increasingly difficult to maintain a lasting bond." (Heritage Keepers, Teacher Manual, p. 56)
Sexual activity outside of marriage can lead to:"Sexually Transmitted Viruses, Sexually Transmitted Bacteria, Cervical Cancer, AIDS, Legal and financial responsibility for a child until he or she is at least 18, Raising a child alone, Emotional hurt and regret, Increased chance of abuse from a partner." (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 35)

When planning their weddings during class:

Young men are asked to envision their wedding day: "The doors swing open and there stands your bride in her white dress…This is the woman you have waited for (remained abstinent for) who has waited for you…This woman loves you and trusts you with all that she is and all that she has. You want to be strong, respectful and courageous for her. With all your heart, you want to protect her, and by waiting (sexually) you have." (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 59)
Young women are asked to envision their wedding day: "Everything is just as you have seen it in a million daydreams…" When the bride takes her father's arm: "Your true love stands at the front. This is the man who you have waited for (remained abstinent for) and who has waited for you…This man wants to be strong and courageous for you, to cherish and protect you… You are ready to trust him with all that you have and all that you are, because you have waited (sexually) you have it all to give." (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 49)

Limited Evidence of Effectiveness

Not only does the Heritage Keepers program ostracize LGBT youth, withhold life-saving information from sexually active and HIV-positive youth, and use fear-based messages to shame sexually active youth, youth who have experienced sexual assault, and youth living in "nontraditional" households, there are also questions about the effectiveness of this program to delay sexual initiation or favorably impact sexual behavior among youth. The original evaluation by Stan Weed, et al., of the Heritage Keepers program in 2005 was criticized by other researchers for having a flawed design and was never published, much less published in a peer-reviewed journal. Next, the program was reviewed in a congressionally mandated study of Title V abstinence-only-until marriage programs conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and published in 2007. Mathematica found no evidence to support the effectiveness of the program. Specifically, their interim report stated:

…the [Heritage Keepers] Life Skills Education Component did not have significant impacts on 11 of the 12 intermediate outcomes related to sexual abstinence. The one exception is a significant impact among middle school youth on their friends' support for abstinence.

Mathematica's final report concluded:

Findings indicate that the [Heritage Keepers Abstinence Program's] Life Skills Education Component had little or no impact on sexual abstinence or activity.

But, we are expected to believe that the third time must be a charm? This winter, Mathematica was contracted by HHS to review evaluations for their rigor, and this time they recommended Heritage Keepers for inclusion on the list of HHS-approved programs. To date, there is still no published peer-reviewed manuscript to help assess what, if anything, changed for the program to make the list. Was a new study conducted? Did the authors submit new data or simply rework the old?

A Call for Evidence and Rights

Whether the data exists to support the program's effectiveness is still in question, but the egregious content of the program is crystal clear. The Administration's hypocrisy must end. It is time to embrace both an evidence- and a rights-based approach to youth sexual health promotion. Evidence of effectiveness is important, but it should not be sufficient. It is not enough to help some students delay sexual initiation while leaving others ill-equipped to protect themselves when they do have sex. It is unacceptable to promote teen pregnancy prevention at the cost of ostracizing LGBT youth, survivors of sexual assault, or youth who are sexually active. Thirty years of public health science clearly demonstrates that providing young people with information about the health benefits of both abstinence and contraception and condoms, does not cause young people to initiate sex earlier or have sex more often. Abstinence-only-until marriage programs leave young people unprepared. They are unethical.

Young people have the right to honest, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexual health information to help them protect their health and lives. The Administration should immediately remove Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education from the HHS-endorsed list of evidence-based programs currently posted on the Office of Adolescent Health's (OAH) website. America's youth deserve better.

Follow Debra Hauser on Twitter, @AdvocatesTweets
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ANS -- Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years

You've probably all heard this before, but here's a nice summary of the info.
Find it here: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/03/475952/ceo-pay-faster-worker-pay/
--Kim

Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years

By Travis Waldron on May 3, 2012 at 9:35 am

Compensation for chief executives at American companies grew 15 percent in 2011 after a 28 percent rise in 2010, part of a larger trend that has seen CEO pay skyrocket over the last three decades. Workers, on the other hand, have been left behind.

Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725 percent, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute:

From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.

In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn't always tied to the performance of their businesses as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company's stock price plummets and jobs are cut.

Workers' wages aren't tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011.

As a result, American income inequality has skyrocketed, growing worse than it is in countries like Pakistan and Ivory Coast. Wealth inequality is worse than it was even in Ancient Rome. And, as pay skyrockets and tax rates fall for the richest Americans, the rising inequality has left the bottom 95 percent of Americans saddled with more debt than ever before.