Blacks Must Confront Their Homophobia

Other Views

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

''The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.''
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

That's for Marion Barry, who seems to need the reminder.

The former mayor and current city councilman of Washington, D.C. is a longtime supporter of gay rights. So observers were stunned last week when a bill committing the city to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere passed the council on a vote of 12-1.

The ''one'' was Barry.

Wait, it gets worse. Barry said his position hasn't changed but warned that the council needs to move slowly on this issue. ''All hell is going to break loose,'' Barry said. ''We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.'' Indeed, after the vote, a group of black ministers reportedly ''stormed'' the hallway outside the council chambers, vowing political reprisals.

The Washington Post quotes Barry as saying he voted as he did because ''I am representing my constituents.'' He reminded reporters that ``98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents.''

That's a lot of words to say what he could have said in three: I punked out.

There's something to be said for representing one's constituents. But there is more to be said for leading them. Barry's failure to understand the difference is galling in light of the fact that he was once a leader in the civil-rights movement.

One wonders how differently that movement might have turned out had white people such as Clifford Durr, Viola Liuzzo, Ralph McGill, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and Lyndon Johnson allowed themselves to be cowed by the angry voices of white men and women saying, ''All hell is going to break loose.'' For that matter, how much longer might the long night of slavery have lasted had white people like Elijah Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott and Thaddeus Stevens bowed to the fact that the white community was ''just adamant'' against freedom.

One wonders, too, whether those black ministers in the hall see their mirror image in generations of white ministers who have used the Bible to condone the evil of slavery (''Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.'') and the fiction of African-American inferiority (the ''curse'' of Ham).

At day's end, though, the great tragedy here is neither historical amnesia nor moral cowardice. No, the tragedy is embodied in Barry's description of African Americans as a people for whom open homosexuality is rare. That description is, unfortunately, too accurate -- not simply for black Washington, but for black America. We are a socially conservative people.

And our conservatism is, quite literally, killing us.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1039247.html

Martians Learn about the Free Market from the Oil Industry

Posted by rushkoff: permalink

Here's another great cartoon we found on archive.org when we were researching corporatism propaganda for Life Inc. In Destination Earth, sponsored by the American Petroleum Industry in 1956, Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great.

In spite of its unfaltering market bias (or maybe because of it) the film is still quite an entertainingly assembled piece of work.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/10/martians-learn-about.html

The Bush Administration Homicides

by John Sifton

For five years as a researcher for Human Rights Watch and reporter, John Sifton helped investigate homicides resulting from the Bush administration's torture policy. His findings include:

• An estimated 100 detainees have died during interrogations, some who were clearly tortured to death.

• The Bush Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute alleged murders even when the CIA inspector general referred a case.

• Sifton's request for specific information on cases was rebuffed by the Bush Justice Department, though it was "familiar with the cases."

• Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to investigate and prosecute homicides, not just cases of torture.

A simple fact is being overlooked in the Bush-era torture scandal: the number of cases in which detainees have been tortured to death. Abuse did not only involve the high-profile cases of smashing detainees into plywood barriers ("walling"), confinement in coffin-like boxes with insects, sleep deprivation, cold, and waterboarding. To date approximately 100 detainees, including CIA-held detainees, have died during U.S. interrogations, and some are known to have been tortured to death.

The bottom line is that many detainee homicides in Iraq and Afghanistan were the direct result of approval and orders from the highest levels of government, and that high officials in the government are accomplices.

A review of homicide cases, however, shows that few detainee deaths have been properly investigated. Many were not investigated at all. And no official investigation has looked into the connection between detainee deaths and the interrogation policies promulgated by the Bush administration.

Yet an important report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, declassified in April 2009, explains in clear terms how Bush-era interrogation techniques, including torture, once authorized for CIA high-value detainees, were promulgated to Guantánamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where (as reporter Jason Leopold recently noted at The Public Record) the policies have led to homicides.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-05/how-many-were-tortured-to-death/full/

The U.S. Army's Telepathy Battle Command

Artificial Telepathy

A thoughtful exploration of mind control technologies, with particular emphasis on psychotronics and V2K (voice-to-skull) weaponry

A declassified FY 1999 Army budget estimate submitted to Congress in February 1998 indicates that, more than 10 years ago, the U.S. Army was planning to group all of its telepathy operations into a single Telepathy Battle Command. See the PDF at this link: http://www.asafm.army.mil/budget/fybm/fy99/rforms/vol3.pdf

Volume 3 Page 1197 lists the budget for Project D985 - Concepts Evaluation 0f Materiel - and indicates among its FY 1997 Accomplishments a simple, one-line project designated "Telepathy Battle Command." No fooling. The Army was testing out the concept of a Telepathy Battle Command.

There was no reason for the U.S. Army to test the concept of a "telepathy battle command" if it had not already tested or fielded telepathic weapons themselves. At the very least, this line item of the 1998 budget indicates that the U.S. Army takes the threat of telepathic battle and telepathic weapon systems seriously. They certainly were throwing serious money at it.

For more on how the U.S. Army has organized its conventional "Battle Command" system, see this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Battle_Command_System

Is There An Active and Operational Telepathy Battle Command?

If the U.S. Army has built an active and operational Telepathy Battle Command center, it may be part of the Army's strategic "Command Post of the Future" (CPOF) system. However, CPOF places a greater emphasis on computers and digital imagery than "exotic" systems like telepathy. For more on CPOF, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_Post_of_the_Future

Paul Smith's book Reading The Enemy's Mind and Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats both suggest that the DoD runs its telepathy programs through the Defense Intelligence Agency and Army INSCOM (Intelligence and Security Command). Both Army INSCOM and the National Security Agency are located at Ft. Meade, MD, which makes that town the most likely "hub" location.

It is also possible that elements of an Army "Telepathy Battle Command" have been placed at highly classified "black" facilities near Ft. Bragg, NC, headquarters of the Army Special Operations Command and home of the Army's Psychological Operations Directorate.

 

http://artificialtelepathy.blogspot.com/2009/01/us-armys-telepathy-battle-command.html

Bush May Haunt Republicans for Generations

 

by Nate Silver

Gallup has some fascinating data out, based on more than 120,000 interviews they've completed over the past four months, on the way that partisan identification breaks down by age:



Democrats, somewhat unsurprisingly, have the largest partisan ID advantage among Gen Y'ers, followed by among Baby Boomers. Republicans do relatively well (although are still at a net disadvantage) among Generation X'ers.

What's interesting, though, is what happens when we look at not these abstract generational categories, but rather at the following question: who was President when you turned 18? As annotated in the chart below, the popularity -- or lack thereof -- of the President when the voter turned 18 would seem to have a lot of explanatory power for how their politics turned out later on:

Partisan ID Gap, Based on Identity of President When Voter Turned 18


It's become common knowledge that the younger generation is highly predisposed toward Democrats. (Actually, that's not quite right -- they're more predisposed against Republicans than they are toward Democrats -- but the net effects on their voting behavior are probably about the same.) What's more remarkable, though, is how sharp the increase in the partisan ID gap becomes at about age 25. People aged 26-34 are pretty Democratic, put people aged 18-25 are really Democratic.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/bush-may-haunt-republicans-for.html

 

Church deacon, soccer coach, father -- bank robbery suspect

CNN) -- Bruce Windsor is known as many things: church deacon, soccer coach, father of four. But facing potential financial problems, he's now known as something else: suspected bank robber.

Bruce Windsor listens Friday as a judge tells him he faces kidnapping and robbery charges.

Police say the 43-year-old owner of a real estate company walked into the Carolina First Bank in Greenville, South Carolina, late Thursday with a mask and a handgun.

In court documents filed Friday, police said he forced two bank employees into an office at gunpoint and demanded money. Police arrived minutes later with the suspect still inside, touching off a tense 90-minute standoff before he released the hostages and surrendered.

His actions were "out of character" for a man who has never been in trouble with the law before, friends and relatives said. His tearful sister, defending him as he stood before a judge, said, "He must have just snapped under the pressure."

In his initial appearance for a bond hearing, Windsor was in an orange jail jumpsuit, shackled and with his hands cuffed. In a quiet voice, he answered "yes, sir" as the judge explained the charges to him: two counts of kidnapping, one count of robbery and two counts of pointing firearms at a person, charges that could carry more than 30 years in prison if convicted.

A police detective told the judge Windsor said he had been experiencing financial problems. But police spokesman Cpl. Jason Rampey told CNN they could not yet say for certain whether money problems were the motive for the alleged robbery.

His attorney said in court Windsor had been married for 16 years and was the father of four children. Reports say the oldest is 11. Attorney Sidney Mitchell told the judge he was "a model citizen up until yesterday,' and we've obviously got a lot of talking to do with him," Rampey said.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/27/sc.bank.robbery.suspect/index.html

 

The American Press on Suicide Watch

by Frank Rich

IF you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That's when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq). To prove the point, the partying journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom could be seen (courtesy of C-Span) fawning over government potentates — in some cases the very "sources" who had fed all those fictional sightings of Saddam Hussein's W.M.D.

Colbert's routine did not kill. The Washington Post reported that it "fell flat." The Times initially did not even mention it. But to the Beltway's bafflement, Colbert's riff went viral overnight, ultimately to have a marathon run as the most popular video on iTunes. The cultural disconnect between the journalism establishment and the public it aspires to serve could not have been more vividly dramatized.

The bad news about the news business has accelerated ever since. Newspaper circulations and revenues are in free fall. Legendary brands from The Los Angeles Times to The Philadelphia Inquirer are teetering. The New York Times Company threatened to close The Boston Globe if its employees didn't make substantial sacrifices in salaries and benefits. Other papers have died. The reporting ranks on network and local news alike are shriveling. You know it's bad when the Senate is moved, as it was last week, to weigh in with hearings on "The Future of Journalism."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10rich.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=opinion

If Moses had GPS

Chicken Frogs flown from Montserrat to flee deadly fungus

By DANICA COTO

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Scientists are airlifting dozens of one of the world's largest frogs off of Montserrat island to save them from a deadly fungus devastating their dwindling habitat.

The dense forest of the tiny British Caribbean territory is the last remaining stronghold of the endangered mountain chicken frog, a 2-pound, frying pan-size amphibian that got its name because locals say its meat tastes like — you guessed it — chicken.

Once eaten as a delicacy, the frog was hunted and much of its habitat on Montserrat was destroyed by the temperamental Soufriere Hills volcano. Now experts fear a virulent fungus could decimate the few thousand frogs they estimate survive.

"Its impact has been catastrophic," Andrew Cunningham, senior scientist with the Zoological Society of London, said of the Chytridiomycosis fungus. "The mountain chicken frog has been virtually wiped out."

http://www.freep.com/article/20090508/NEWS07/90508079

 

But do they taste like chicken?

Scientists find 200 new frog species in Madagascar

PORT LOUIS (Reuters) – Scientists have found more than 200 new species of frogs in Madagascar but a political crisis is hurting conservation of the Indian Ocean island's unique wildlife, a study shows.

The discovery, which almost doubles the number of known amphibians in Madagascar, illustrates an underestimation of the natural riches that have helped spawn a $390-million-a-year tourism industry.

However, months of instability culminating in a change of government after street protests, have compromised gains in conservation.

"The political instability is allowing the cutting of the forest within national parks, generating a lot of uncertainty about the future of the planned network of protected areas," David Vieites, researcher at the Spanish National Natural Sciences Museum, said in a statement.

The world's fourth-largest island, known for exotic creatures such as the ring-tailed lemur and poisonous frogs, is a biodiversity hotspot.

More than 80 percent of the mammals in Madagascar are found nowhere else, while all but one of the 217 previously known species of amphibian are believed by scientists to be native.

"People think that we know which plant and animal species live on this planet," team member Miguel Vences, professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig, said in the statement.

"But the centuries of discoveries has only just begun -- the majority of life forms on Earth is still awaiting scientific recognition."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090506/sc_nm/us_madagascar_frogs;_ylt=AkQ_8yt_Yugw9GdE_RO0O2wDW7oF

 

Living Rock: Massive Monuments Sculpted In Situ

The Giant Buddha, Leshan

China has many a Buddha dotted throughout its extraordinary landscapes but the Giant Buddha of Leshan is unique in that it was carved directly out of the cliff face - just look at the people at the feet of the statue.  The sculpture, which is seventy one meters (or over three hundred feet) tall dwarfs the tourists that flock to see it.  It is positioned so that it faces Mount Emei and stands at the meeting place of three rivers.  Although the Government of China has promised a restoration program, the statue has suffered from the effects of pollution, particularly over the last twenty years. Fortunately, the statue was not damaged in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.

The Church of Saint George, Lalibela

Lalibela in Ethiopia is the home of eleven churches, hewn from the rock.  The most famous is that of Saint George, which was built in the thirteenth century.  As demonstrable a point as you can get that Africa was not the 'dark continent' many suppose until the arrival of Europeans, it shows that technology there was virtually on a par with that of the western world.  The site is a UNESCO world heritage center and has often been referred to as the eighth wonder of the world.   Its dimensions - 25 times 25 times 30 give it is rectangular shape.

Somapura Mahavihara, Parhapur

Bangladesh has a long and vibrant history and is dotted with religious sites that simply take the breath away.  Among them is the Somapura Mahavihara, which was a Buddhist monastery (otherwise known as a vihara).  It is thought that it was carved at the end of the eight century CE.  The site covers twenty seven acres and was an important academic center for people of three religions (showing that we can all get along when we have to, surely).   You could think of it as a kind of contemplative university.  Monks from as far afield as Tibet regularly visited it in its heyday.

Crazy Horse Memorial, South Dakota

Although the USA is a comparative newcomer to massive sculptures which have been carved in situ, Mount Rushmore is among the most famous statues in the world and will no doubt withstand the millennia as it was designed to do.  When finished, however, the Crazy Horse Memorial should be the largest sculpture in the world and stand over one hundred and seventy two meters (that's five hundred and sixty three feet).  In other words, it will be almost ten times taller than each of the Presidents' heads at Rushmore.  Started in 1948, it remains unfinished and there is no date which has been fixed for its completion either.  The face, however, was completed in 1998.

Naqsh-e Rustam, Persepolis

Iran is not exactly out of bounds to western tourists but is not as such in the top fifty destinations.  This is a shame as the country holds some astonishing archaeological secrets.  One of these is the Naqsh-e Rustam, dating from the sixth century BCE.  They are all carved at great heights and the technology and manpower needed for such tasks must have been unimaginable then as they are still astonishing today.  They are known as the Persian Crosses by local people as the facades are carved in such a shape.  The center of each of the crosses leads to a small chamber where the king would have been laid in a sarcophagus.

http://www.quazen.com/Arts/Architecture/Living-Rock-Massive-Monuments-Sculpted-In-Situ.690189

Verbalization

The Big "Con": Taliban About to Defeat Pakistan, Take Control of Nukes, and It's Another 9/11

By Michael Collins

(The Intelligence Daily) -- A strange feeling of déjà vu arises while listening to the administration sell further U.S. military intervention in Pakistan (our Predator drones are already there).

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen claimed in late March that Pakistan's intelligence service has "close links with al Qaeda and the Taliban network."  In fact, Mullen warned, the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, is "offering logistical support to them (the Taliban)."

In early April, veteran foreign policy icon and special advisor to the president on Afghanistan and South Asia, Richard Holbrook, let us know what this meant.  There is a fundamental difference between the Pakistan conflict and the Viet Nam war, he argued.  Pakistan has nuclear weapons.  Holbrook went on to say this:

"And the people who are in this area who we are fighting either pose a direct threat, having committed 9/11, having done Mumbai, having killed (Benazir) Bhutto, and they have publicly said they are going to do more of the same. That is: al Qaeda of course and their allies the Taliban."  Richard Holbrooke, May 5, 2009 (Repeating April 19, 2009 statement)

On May 9, General David Petraeus supported his superiors as he announced that Pakistan was now "the world headquarters for the al Qaeda senior leadership."

There is even talk in the U.S. media that Pakistan is at risk of becoming a failed state controlled by Muslim extremists.  Using Holbrooke's logic, the U.S. would then be faced with a nation of 170 million Hell bent on more 911's, Mumbai massacres, and nuclear blackmail.

This threat accounts for the use of unmanned drone aircraft to bomb Taliban fighters.  The Pakistan's government opposes the unauthorized drone attacks as destabilizing and counterproductive.  This is a recent example of U.S. policy that results in majorities of Pakistani's opposing al Qaeda's terrorist goals but, at the same time, favoring the goal of "driving U.S. forces out of their country."

Pakistan has a different take on events.

Fundamentalists in the rural, mountainous regions have sought Muslim law (Sharia) for decades.  The largely urban population of Pakistan and its central government oppose this.  Armed conflict has ebbed and flowed over time.  This issue and conflict is a distant second to Pakistan's overriding focus on its hostile relationship with India.  Three major wars with India and an ongoing tension between the nations since Pakistan was formed on August 14, 1947 account for this.

Pakistani fundamentalists in the volatile northwestern provinces gained strength during the 1980's due to their utility in fighting the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained this to Congress on April 25, 2009, "Let's remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union."

Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, worked with the United States to fund religious extremists from Pakistan and elsewhere that were willing to fight the Soviet Union's forces occupying Afghanistan.  Billions of dollars were committed to this effort by the United States.

Respected journalist Ahmed Rashid noted that, "CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujahideen."  A prime recruiting area was the sparsely populated, conservative Muslim population in Pakistan's border provinces.

That cooperative effort became old news after September 1, 2001. 

http://www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10646/2009-05-09.html

 

Sea 'snake' generates electricity with every wave

by Colin Barras

Anaconda, a giant rubber "snake" that floats offshore and converts wave energy to electricity, is a step closer to commercialisation. An 8-metre long, 1/25th scale version is currently undergoing tests in a large wave tank in Gosport, UK, and a full-size working version could be a reality in five years.

Harnessing the power of waves is an attractive proposition because they are much more energy dense than wind. But wave power remains the poor relation of the renewable energy sector due to the difficulties of cheaply operating machinery in the harsh marine environment. The world's first commercial wave farm only began operating last year, off the northern coast of Portugal.

A variety of other designs are in testing around the world, but none are as unusual as the Anaconda. The rubber snake is filled with freshwater – to help deter sea creatures from setting up a home inside – and sealed at both ends to create a semi-rigid balloon that floats at the sea's surface.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17090-sea-snake-generates-electricity-with-every-wave.html

Attendees at Obama's Health Care Meeting

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________­­­­­­­­­­­­
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 11, 2009

Below is a list of health care reform stakeholders who will meet with the President and administration officials today.

Meeting Participants:

Stakeholders:

Insurers
George Halvorson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan
Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)
Jay Gellert, President and CEO of Health Net Inc.

Hospitals
Thomas Priselac--President & CEO, Cedars-Sinai Health System
Rich Umbdenstock-- President & CEO, American Hospital Association (AHA)
Ken Raske--President,Greater New York Hospital Association
Physicians
J. James Rohack, M.D.-- President-Elect, American Medical Association (AMA)
Rebecca Patchin, M.D.-- Chair-Elect of the AMA
Rich Deem-- Senior Vice President of the AMA

Medical Device Companies
Michael Mussallem--Chairman & CEO, Edwards Lifesciences
Steve Ubl-- President & CEO, AdvaMed
David Nexon-- Senior Executive Vice President, AdvaMed

Pharmaceutical Companies
Richard Clark--Chairman, President & CEO, Merck
Billy Tauzin—President & CEO, PhRMA
Rick Smith--Senior Vice President, PhRMA

Labor
Andy Stern, SEIU
Dennis Rivera, SEIU Health

Administration Officials:
Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the Office of Health Reform
Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council
Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary

After the meeting, the following stakeholders will join President Obama for his remarks:

·        George Halverson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan
J. James Rohack, M.D., President-Elect, American Medical Association
Richard Clark, Chairman, President & CEO, Merck
Michael Mussallem, Chairman & CEO, Edwards Lifesciences
Dennis Rivera, SEIU
Tom Priselac, President and CEO of Cedars- Sinai Health System

http://thepage.time.com/attendees-at-obamas-health-care-meeting/

Noticeably missing...

History Lesson from hell: Faith-Based Government & American Indians

by Ojibwa

Promoted by Rain

As the United States continues down the road of privatizing government services to faith-based organizations, it might be a good idea to review an earlier excursion into this area. Under the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, the United States turned over the administration of Indian reservations to Christian missionary groups.

• Ojibwa's diary :: ::

President Grant inherited a mess with regard to the administration of Indian affairs. The Indian Office (later to become the Bureau of Indian Affairs) was notoriously corrupt and ineffective. As a first step in cleaning up the mess, Grant did two things: (1) he created a Board of Indian Commissioners composed on sincere Christian philanthropists to advise him, and (2) he appointed an Indian, Ely Parker, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Parker was the first Indian to hold this position and was the last for nearly a century.

In their initial report, the Board of Indian Commissioners recommended that Christian missions and their schools should be established on every reservation. According to the Commissioners: "The religion of our blessed Savior is believed to be the most effective agent for the civilization of any people."

Following the advice of the Board of Indian Commissioners, President Grant established his Peace Policy in which the administration of services on the Indian reservations where turned over to Christian groups. These services included schools, health care, and the distribution of rations. As a result young Indians were required to attend mission schools which include daily instruction in Christianity. Native religious practices and speaking Indian languages were prohibited. There was absolutely no concern for any possible religious views of Indians.

With regard to the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion, it was generally felt that these did not apply to American Indians for two reasons. First, Indians were not citizens nor could they become citizens and therefore the constitution did not apply to them. Second, the United States Indian policy was (and still is) guided by an international legal doctrine known as the Discovery Doctrine which states that a Christian nation has a right to govern a non-Christian nation. According to the Supreme Court in the 1823 McIntosh decision, under the Discovery Doctrine, the United States gave the "gift" of Christianity to Indians in exchange for title to their land.

http://www.streetprophets.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/1585/86894

 

Obama does standup at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner

Highlights

 

The whole thing

RIAA Filed 62 New Cases In April Alone

by kdawson from the what-part-of-stop-do-you-not-understand dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Based upon a quick examination of the records in PACER, I detected 62 new cases brought by the RIAA against individuals in the month of April alone. In December, 2008, the RIAA had represented to Congress that they had 'discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August [2008].'"

 

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/10/1932247

It’s Time for Plan B

By Scott Burns

Call it the Automated Monkey Project. More than 30 years ago, a Richmond, Va.-based company, Media General, started an unusual project.  Their Portfolios Without Management was intended as a performance-measuring tool for Wall Street.

Media General programmed a mainframe computer to randomly select thousands of stock portfolios, calculate the performance results and then rank order the portfolios, in percentiles, from the best performer to the hindmost. They automated the old joke about having monkeys pick stocks by throwing darts at the financial page.

The result was embarrassing for professional money managers.

A majority of the randomly selected portfolios delivered higher returns than the pros. Like the earlier studies of institutional portfolios that led to the first institutional index fund, about 70 percent of the automated monkeys beat the pros.

Sometimes the pros did a little better. Sometimes they did a little worse. But the performance gap has existed for more than 40 years of research by multiple researchers. It was part of the 1980s. It was part of the 1990s.  And it is alive and well this century.

Today, if you visit the Standard & Poor's website and check its SPIVA (Standard & Poor's Indices Versus Active funds scorecard) page, you'll find a list of reports going back to the third quarter of 2002. That report, in turn, measures performance from the third quarter of 1997.

The SPIVA report corrects performance measures for "survivorship bias"--- the tendency of average trailing returns to be higher than what most investors actually experienced. This happens because the funds with low returns disappear, like early cuts from a football squad.

And what is left? Only the better-performing funds.

Although few in financial services talk about this, one out of every four funds is likely to disappear over a five-year period. As a consequence, the five-year average performance figures are really averages of the "best three out of four" when 5 year performances are discussed. The other funds, like names on Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord High Executioner list, "won't be missed."

Morningstar, now the standard in mutual fund performance reporting, doesn't correct for survivorship bias. Its figures show the relative performance of the surviving funds for any time period. Even so, the Morningstar rankings consistently show that index funds regularly beat the majority of their managed competitors.

What's true for equity funds is true in spades for fixed-income funds. The most recent SPIVA report shows that managed funds in only one of 13 fixed-income categories--- emerging market debt funds--- did better than the appointed index over the trailing five-year period. For the other 12 categories, the managed funds trailed their indexes from 64.7 percent of the time (global income funds) to a whopping 98.39 percent of the time (long-term government funds).

The Texas phrase "ain't worth shooting" comes to mind.

Mix stocks and bonds, and the record is still terrible. Vanguard's Balanced Index fund (ticker: VBALX) has done better than 85, 82, 77, 66 and 75 percent of its managed balanced fund competitors over the last 12 months, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years and 15 years, respectively, while charging investors only 0.19 percent a year.

Its long and dismal history notwithstanding, the mutual fund industry skims off billions of dollars in fees each year. According to a recent Investment Co. Institute study, for instance, 80 percent of all 401(k) plans have average expenses that range from 1.72 down to 0.35 percent. Workers in 403(b) plans often suffer far higher expenses.

Where does this money go?

It goes to feed the managers and the distribution system. It does not go to building more secure retirements for American workers. The difference in fees goes to build houses in the Hamptons, Nantucket, Jackson Hole and a few other spots favored by the very rich.

It doesn't have to be this way.

The future of working people can be solved with a simple step: I call it plan B.

http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2009/05/01/it-s-time-for-plan-b.aspx

RNC Clown College

John Boehner (Rep. R-OH):: Obstructionist Republican Clown	Michele Bachmann (Rep. R-MN):: Obstructionist Republican Clown
John Boehner RNC Clown All rights reserved Uploaded on Feb 20, 2009 7 comments	Michele Bachmann RNC Clown All rights reserved Uploaded on Feb 22, 2009 13 comments
Bobby Jindal (Gov. R-LA):: Obstructionist Republican Clown	Haley Barbour (Gov. R-MS):: Obstructionist Republican Clown
Bobby Jindal RNC Clown All rights reserved Uploaded on Feb 24, 2009 11 comments	Haley Barbour (Gov. R-MS):: Obstructionist Republican Clown All rights reserved Uploaded on Feb 27, 2009 12 comments
Michael Steele (Chair R-RNC):: Obstructionist Republican Clown	Mark Sanford (Gov. R-SC):: Obstructionist Republican Clown
Michael Steele RNC Clown All rights reserved Uploaded on Mar 2, 2009	Mark Sanford (Gov. R-SC) - Cheney Approved! All rights reserved Uploaded on Mar 4, 2009

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30835791@N07/sets/72157614241935013/detail/

Newspaper Narcissism

Our pursuit of glory led us away from readers

By Walter Pincus

American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.

Some long-term reporting projects have been undertaken, and multiple-part series published, simply because they might win prizes. Over the past ten years, The Washington Post has won nineteen Pulitzer Prizes. But over that same period, we lost more than 120,000 readers. Why? My answer, unpopular among my colleagues, is that while many of these longer efforts were worthwhile, they took up space and resources that could have been used to give readers a wider selection of stories about what was going on, and that may have directly affected their lives. Readers have limited time to spend on newspapers. The number has been twenty-five minutes, on average, for more than thirty years. In short, we have left behind our readers in our chase after glory.

Editors have paid more attention to what gains them prestige among their journalistic peers than on subjects more related to the everyday lives of readers. For example, education affects everyone, yet I cannot name an outstanding American journalist on this subject. Food is an important subject, yet regular newspaper coverage of agriculture and the products we eat is almost nonexistent unless cases of food poisoning turn up. Did journalists adequately warn of the dangers of subprime mortgages? I don't think so. (CJR's answer to that question is on page 24.)

We have also failed our readers in the way we cover government. The First Amendment not only guaranteed freedom of the press from government interference, it also gave American journalists the opportunity—I believe the responsibility—to find and present facts on issues that require public attention. Our press is not protected in order to merely echo the views of government officials, opposition politicians, and so-called experts. Too often, though, that's what occurs.

One of my basic concerns is that American journalism has turned away from its own hard-won expertise, and at the very time when readers are looking to us to explain the context of what is happening and what will happen next.

Most newspapers and the broadcast media have cut the number of reporters on beats. Meanwhile, young reporters are increasingly shifted from beat to beat, never having enough time to master complex subjects such as health care, public education, or environmental policies. As a result, more of their stories are based not on reportorial expertise, but on pronouncements by government sources or their critics.

Reporters are shifted around in part because of decreasing resources, and in part because within the profession, reporters are encouraged to become editors, editors to become publishers, and publishers of small papers pushed to manage bigger ones. This results in less expertise at the most important level—where reporters gather information.

Meanwhile, we have turned into a public-relations society. Much of the news Americans get each day was created to serve just that purpose—to be the news of the day. Many of our headlines come from events created by public relations—press conferences, speeches, press releases, canned reports, and, worst of all, snappy comments by "spokesmen" or "experts." To serve as a counterpoint, we need reporters with expertise.

Consider the worst of recent examples. I believe the Bush administration sold the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to the American people beginning with a public-relations campaign that started in August 2002. Vice President Dick Cheney kicked it off with a series of speeches on the growing threat from Saddam Hussein, and it continued almost daily, with key members of the administration giving speeches, statements, or press conferences. The result was that the threat from Saddam Hussein—his alleged nuclear weapons, the idea that he would give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists—dominated news coverage right up to the time the first missiles hit Baghdad on March 19, 2003.

Manipulation of the media was taken to its highest form by George W. Bush's administration.

http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all

What Came First? The Good Egg or the Bad Egg?

 by Marilynn Preston

One big fat reason Americans tend to eat more and weigh more than other citizens of the world is because the media has spoon-fed us so many confusing and contradictory health and nutrition messages over the years.

Eat carbs to lose weight. Avoid carbs to lose weight. Live fat-free. Love olive oil. Never eat fried foods. Enjoy anything in moderation. Avocados are bad for you. Avocados are good for you. And so it goes ... for more years than I can remember … which may or may not involve how many avocados I've eaten in my life.

This kind of mind-numbing back-and-forth — confusing medical statements, contradictory media messages, the latest speculation about the causes and cures of cancer — creates confusion in our brains about what we should eat and how we should live. And it has certainly scrambled our understanding of eggs.

Eggs 'R' Us.

Undisputed, it's where we all came from, and I felt very unnerved, some years ago, when eggs were lowered so drastically in the pecking order of healthy foods. The eating of yolks was linked to high cholesterol. High cholesterol! Oh, no! Most M.D.s — who sadly spend almost no time studying the link between food and health — instantly flipped eggs onto their forbidden foods list. Suddenly, in certain circles, egg-white omelettes were all the rage. Even the most perfectly made cheese souffle fell flat as a heart-healthy dessert.

So here's the latest. It turns out that fresh eggs are a wonderful food. And eggs that emerge from happy and well-fed chickens who run free and listen to Mozart all day, and never have to do taxes or apply to college, are even more wonderful.

One large hard-boiled egg — a level of cooking that anyone with a stove can aspire to — contains only 78 calories. Two of these babies and you're still well under the calorie count of most manufactured nutrition bars.

And calories are only a part of the reason we love eggs and read labels. You also have to pay attention to the amount of protein, fat and sugar in a food, and this is where the egg takes the cake. It gives you 6 grams of protein, 5 grams of total fat (only 2 grams of saturated fat), and a big fat goose egg on sugar. No fructose, glucose or sucrose. And yet, eggs can be so sweet, so satisfying. You almost can't ruin an egg. Hard or soft, hot or cooled, poached or frittatad, eggs have a nutritional profile that hamburgers and processed foods would die for. So crack out that carton soon, and let moderation lead the way. Eggs have been reborn. No yoke.

http://www.creators.com/lifestylefeatures/marilynn-preston-energy-express/what-came-first-the-good-egg-or-the-bad-egg.html

J.G. Ballard R.I.P. (11/15/1930-4/19/2009)

by – V. Vale, RE/Search founder back in 1977, San Francisco

J.G. Ballard and V. Vale 2008

 I particularly hate it when "rebels" die — there are already so few of them/us. Sometimes it seems like virtually everyone you meet these days in the world is a slave to the profit motive/capitalist imperative: "What's the meaning of life?" "To make money!" J.G. Ballard, and another of my relatively recently deceased role models, W.S. Burroughs, both refused to prostitute their writing, and they both refused to shmooze and "network" merely to further their "careers." Both had a hatred of bourgeois hypocrisy and phony politeness, while at the same time being deeply polite and courteous, almost to a fault …

But for now, let us think of ways to publicly mourn one of the greatest thinkers and poets of the past century. By some irony, "The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard" is reportedly soon to be published in the United States, complete with two additional stories not included in the U.K. edition. Short stories, more than novels, may appropriately suit the trend of the increasingly shorter attention span of the human populace, who demand more flash ads, tiny videos and music quotations as they read their two-minute, two-page articles on the Internet. I suggest that for the next month (or year), readers shut out everything else and read ONLY J.G. Ballard novels, short stories, essays, interviews and reviews. Your mind, language, and outlook are guaranteed to be permanently altered…

http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/index.php

Health Care: Will Democrats Ride Camel or Horse?

 by Froma Harrop

A camel, the old saying goes, is a horse made by committee. We don't want camel health reform. We don't want Washington lawmakers debating whether it should have one hump or two. We want a horse — a sleek machine that performs with efficiency.

One may prefer that landmark legislation enjoy wide bipartisan support. That's the ideal. But the health-care system has too many moving parts to allow for much ideological tinkering, particularly by those who are not wild about reform to begin with. Better that Democrats go it alone than help create an ungainly beast in the name of compromise.

The Medicare drug benefit was a camel of a program. It mated a liberal proposition — expanding a government entitlement — with a conservative solution — having private insurers dispense the coverage and forbidding the government to negotiate drug prices. The result was a complicated benefit that cost taxpayers a lot more than it had to.

Democrats are now firmly in charge and can push through legislation without a single Republican vote (and even the loss of a few conservative Democrats). All they have to do is use the budget reconciliation process, which lets a bill pass the Senate with a simple majority vote.

Thus, Democrats have the freedom to design an effective program that reaches two essential goals. One is to bring coverage to everyone. The other is to contain spiraling health-care costs while maintaining quality of care. The second goal is much harder to meet than the first. You can't cut medical spending without stepping on a lot of economic interests happy with the way things are.

Controlling costs hinges in large part on a proposal that Republicans and the insurance industry detest. This is the public option, a government-run plan that would compete with the private insurers.

Critics call it a deal-killer. The insurance companies complain that a government alternative would stack the deck against them. Its supporters hold that the public plan would keep the private ones honest.

In hopes of winning over some public-plan skeptics, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, has proposed to level the playing field by forcing any government-run plan to abide by the rules applicable to private insurers. The government would also have to reimburse doctors and hospitals at higher rates than does Medicare, so there's no beating down of providers on price.

This offer has not appeased the insurance-industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans. Its members clearly don't want to compete against an entity that doesn't have to spend billions enriching executives and marketing its wares.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/health-care-will-democrats-ride-camel-or-horse.html

The Ticker - Actual U.S. Unemployment: 15.8%

By Frank Ahrens

This morning's news that U.S. unemployment has hit 13.7 million, pushing the rate to 8.9 percent, tells only half the story of this recession.

The total number of Americans who are not working full-time but ought to be is actually about 22 million, or 15.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Who are those other 8.3 million Americans? Call them the unofficially unemployed.

As The Ticker points out each time the Bureau releases the monthly unemployment figure, it does not include many out-of-work Americans.

There are many reasons for this.

The bureau, which is under the Labor Department, cannot use unemployment compensation records to count the out-of-work, because they are not reliable or up-to-date enough. The bureau also cannot count every out-of-work person.

Instead, as The Ticker reported here in December: "In the case of the monthly jobs report, the Labor Department contacts 60,000 households to determine the unemployment picture for the entire workforce, which consists of about 154 million Americans."

The problem with this methodology is that it does not include millions of Americans who are not working full-time who ought to be. Those, in the bureau's words, who are "marginally attached to the labor force."

Those numbered an additional 2.1 million Americans in the first quarter of this year, the bureau said. Alarmingly, that number was up 35 percent from the first quarter of 2008.

Of this number, the bureau categorized 717,000 as "discouraged" workers, or those that have simply given up looking for work for any number of reasons. That number was up 70 percent from the first quarter of 2008.

"Discouraged" workers include a disproportionate number of young people, blacks, Hispanics and men, the bureau said.

On top of all of this, add an additional 3.6 million unemployed Americans who say they want a job but have not looked for work in the past 12 months.

The remaining 2.6 million or so officially unemployed Americans include part-time workers who would prefer to have full-time jobs, those who have not looked for work because of illness or transportation reasons and those who believe they have other impediments.

But even though these workers don't count toward the official monthly unemployment number, they are nevertheless a true weight on the economy.

They don't pay payroll tax, or as much of it as they would; they don't contribute to Social Security or other government entitlement entitlements and they don't spend as much.

The 15.8 percent figure is the highest since the bureau began keeping these figures in 1994.

 

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