The Digital Gazette

Quote of the Day

2011-11-24T01:00:00.007-05:00

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.
- Johannes A. Gaertner

Quote of the Day

2011-11-08T01:00:00.004-05:00

The price of apathy toward public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
- Plato

Quote of the Day

2011-10-16T01:00:00.005-04:00

In a political sense, there is one problem that currently underlies all of the others. That problem is making Government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy.
- Gerald R. Ford (1913 - 2006)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-15T01:00:00.004-04:00

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-14T01:00:00.005-04:00

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile.
- Hunter S. Thompson (1939 - 2005)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-13T01:00:00.004-04:00

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-12T01:00:00.004-04:00

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
- Dick Cavett

Quote of the Day

2011-10-11T01:00:00.004-04:00

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-10T01:00:00.004-04:00

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

Quote of the Day

2011-10-09T01:00:00.003-04:00

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
- Edward Abbey

Quote of the Day

2011-10-08T01:00:00.004-04:00

It's amazing what a little courage in the right place at the right time can accomplish.
- John Scherer

Quote of the Day

2011-10-07T01:00:00.003-04:00

I simply cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards.
- Patricia Moyes

Quote of the Day

2011-10-06T01:00:00.003-04:00

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
- Horace Walpole

Quote of the Day

2011-10-05T01:00:00.004-04:00

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
- Michel de Montaigne

Quote of the Day

2011-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

I do not pretend to know what ignorant men are sure of.
- Clarence Darrow

Quote of the Day

2011-10-03T01:00:00.004-04:00

There are three classes of men: lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
- Plato

Quote of the Day

2011-10-02T01:00:00.003-04:00

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy

Quote of the Day

2011-10-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
- Greg Anderson

Quote of the Day

2011-09-30T01:00:00.004-04:00

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
- Herm Albright

Quote of the Day

2011-09-29T01:00:00.004-04:00

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote of the Day

2011-09-28T01:00:00.004-04:00

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

2011-09-27T01:00:00.005-04:00

Only when we see that we are part of the totality of the planet, not a superior part with special privileges, can we work effectively to bring about an earth restored to wholeness.
- Elizabeth Watson

Quote of the Day

2011-09-26T01:00:00.005-04:00

Every man is guilty of the good he didn't do.
-Voltaire

Quote of the Day

2011-09-25T01:00:00.006-04:00

Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
- Ron McManus

Quote of the Day

2011-09-24T01:00:00.005-04:00

Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote of the Day

2011-09-23T01:00:00.004-04:00

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

2011-09-22T01:00:00.004-04:00

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde

WWD: Oktoberfest - Great Lakes Brewing Company

2011-09-21T13:00:00.099-04:00

What we're drinking: Oktoberfest from the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland, Ohio.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

Our favorite time of the year brings with it one of our favorite styles, the Märzen / Oktoberfest lager. Rich in toasty malts and copper in color, it announces the return to cooler temps and more flavor-filled brews.

One of the best of this style we've tasted is this rather complex version from Great Lakes. A freshly poured pint offers aromas of rich, lightly toasted malts, caramel, and brown sugar with just a hint of hops in the background. The taste is just like the nose, but a tad earthier. The toasted malts and caramel really stand out along with a hint of toffee. There's also a pinch of bitter citrus, like orange zest. A touch of hops appear at the end of the finish to add a dash of spice. This beer offers crisp, good carbonation that starts a little fizzy and then gives way to a soft creaminess. With a medium body, it has a well-blended, well-balanced structure. Its clean finish is a tad dryer than the nose suggests and lingers, too.

One of the (many) benefits of drinking a richer profile Märzen is how well it pairs with traditional fall fare. Fire up the grill and lay down some brats and spicy sausages into thick buns with onions and sauerkraut. This beer is the perfect complement to the bounties of the end of summer.

Will we be drinking this again?: And again. And again. And again.

Quote of the Day

2011-09-21T01:00:00.003-04:00

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
- Albert Camus

Quote of the Day

2011-09-20T01:00:00.006-04:00

Man lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
- Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

Quote of the Day

2011-09-19T01:00:00.008-04:00

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams

Quote of the Day

2011-03-28T01:00:00.005-04:00

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
- Elie Wiesel

Quote of the Day

2011-03-27T01:00:00.005-04:00

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
- Isaac Asimov

Quote of the Day

2011-03-26T01:00:00.004-04:00

Conscience, in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.
- Taylor's Statesman

NFL Owners Finally Admit How Little Difference They Make

2011-03-25T13:00:00.165-04:00

NFL owners, otherwise known as the Billionaires Boys Club, apparently want to have it both ways. As this article on the Huffpost Business site reports, this was current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell back in 1997, arguing for taxpayer dollars to be spent on new playgrounds for privately owned NFL franchises: "A new stadium provides more than just a new place to watch a game. It can revitalize and stabilize both a team and a city."

This kind of argument has been used over and over to justify the funnelling of public funds into private facilities, the economic benefits of which flow almost entirely to NFL team owners. These new stadiums are part of the reason league revenues top $9 billion annually.

In the past two decades, National Football League owners have received at least $5 billion from local governments to build and maintain football stadiums for their lucrative franchises. The argument was almost always the same: With a little taxpayer investment, the city would get a big boost in economic activity. With no investment, the team would up and leave.

Twenty-eight of the league's 31 stadiums (the Jets and the Giants share the New Meadowlands Stadium) have been built with some amount of public financing, according to the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University's law school. Eleven have been 100 percent publicly financed. Taxpayers have put up more than $5 billion since 1990.

Economists, however, have repeated debunked these claims that 'investing' taxpayer dollars in facilities for private professional sports franchises has any material affect on a community's economy.

Economists have debunked claims that a shutdown would devastate a stadium's host city, or that a new stadium offers the kind of windfall that would justify significant public contributions.

Analyzing economic data from local Florida economies during professional sports strikes and lockouts -- like the one that may be at hand for the NFL -- economists Robert A. Baade, Robert Baumann and Victor A. Matheson concluded in a 2006 paper (PDF), that a team's presence or absence does not have a measurable impact on the surrounding local economy, despite the estimates by "sports leagues, franchises, and civic boosters" using "league and industry-sponsored studies."

"An analysis of taxable sales in Florida cities demonstrates that none of the 6 new franchises or 8 new stadiums and arenas in the state since 1980 have resulted in a statistically significant increase in taxable sales in the host metropolitan area," they wrote. "In addition, using the numerous work stoppages in professional sports as test cases, again no statistically significant effect on taxable sales is found from the sudden absence of professional sports due to strikes and lockouts."

In the past, the position of the NFL owners who claim the presence of their private enterprise bestows great financial windfalls to the community and therefore deserves generous corporate welfare has stood in opposition to these economic analyses. Apparently, however, now that these same owners intend to scuttle the 2011 season unless their employees accept substantial pay cuts so the owners can make even more money, they've finally seen the light. It turns out that NFL owners now believe that refusing to actually conduct the business they claimed was so vital to their communities won't have much of an economic impact after all.

Local officials and players are raising concerns that a canceled season could deprive cities of needed economic activity -- as much as $160 million per city, according to the NFL Players Association -- at the worst time possible. But now that the argument is working against it, the NFL calls such concerns "fairy tales."

When HuffPost first asked the NFL to respond to various mayors' complaints that a lockout would hurt their cities, a league spokesman sent a link to a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that rate the $160 million claim "false." The story suggested Baade's more modest estimate of a $16 million impact would be more accurate.

Some are calling this rather sudden reversal ironic.

"For them to be dismissive of the NFLPA's claims now is sort of ironic," said Dennis Howard, a business professor at the Lundquist College of Business in Oregon. "Many of them have used the economic benefit argument as a way of extracting significant public support for new stadiums."

"This is a classic case of the NFL talking out of both sides of its mouth," Tim Chapin, an associate professor in the department of urban and regional planning at Florida State University, wrote in an email. "The economic benefits are HUGE when the NFL needs a stadium built, but the benefits are minuscule when the numbers don't reflect well on the league. The truth is that the economic benefits are relatively small, but they are almost certainly in the millions."

We, however, don't see the irony at all. This is just another example of how taxpayers have been taken advantage of by their legislators who receive large political ~~bribes~~ contributions from private corporations in exchange for funneling public funds into private coffers. It's been well-known for a long time that the only people who really benefit from these subsidies given to private professional sports are the owners. What's ironic about these owners now finally admitting it? Their only concern is to not be blamed for economic problems their lockout is going to cause for those on the periphery, such as stadium vendors. While such loss is regrettable, it hardly justifies giving billions of taxpayer dollars away. If communities are willing to do that, they should just hand out the money directly to those who supposedly benefit. Not only would it be a lot cheaper, no one would have to worry about what happens when a bunch of billionaires fight with a bunch of millionaires over who gets how much of an enormously large pie.

Government exists to provide vital services to the community at large, like police and fire protection and maintaining roads. It's not for collecting money by force from citizens so it can be given away to the owners of professional sports franchises. Not only are these individuals the absolute least in need of more money, the importance of what their private businesses do in the daily lives of those being forced to hand over their money to them is, when it comes right down to it, essentially nil. We hope that now that NFL owners have finally admitted that what they do really has no economic effect on the communities in which they do it, they'll stop demanding to slop at the public trough and compete in the marketplace like the private entertainment businesses they are.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-25T01:00:00.005-04:00

It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

The Case for Paying Teachers More

2011-03-24T13:00:00.072-04:00

Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a great op/ed piece in the NYT making the case for paying teachers more. We wholeheartedly agree.

From the debates in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions, you might get the impression that we’re going bust because teachers are overpaid. That’s a pernicious fallacy. A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.

Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher.

Look, I’m not a fan of teachers’ unions. They used their clout to gain job security more than pay, thus making the field safe for low achievers. Teaching work rules are often inflexible, benefits are generous relative to salaries, and it is difficult or impossible to dismiss teachers who are ineffective.

But none of this means that teachers are overpaid. And if governments nibble away at pensions and reduce job security, then they must pay more in wages to stay even.

Moreover, part of compensation is public esteem. When governors mock teachers as lazy, avaricious incompetents, they demean the profession and make it harder to attract the best and brightest. We should be elevating teachers, not throwing darts at them.

Consider three other countries renowned for their educational performance: Singapore, South Korea and Finland. In each country, teachers are drawn from the top third of their cohort, are hugely respected and are paid well (although that’s less true in Finland). In South Korea and Singapore, teachers on average earn more than lawyers and engineers.

We all understand intuitively the difference a great teacher makes. I think of Juanita Trantina, who left my fifth-grade class intoxicated with excitement for learning and fascinated by the current events she spoke about. You probably have a Miss Trantina in your own past.

Indeed we do. Several, in fact. But then, we were lucky enough to attend public schools during a time when teachers were respected and valued. Now, they've simply become just another scapegoat for the challenges our communities face in funding the basic services that define the quality of life of its citizens. Regrettably, there are some people who received public education from grade school all the way through a state college who, now that they no longer directly benefit from what a strong public education system brings to a community, no longer want to financially support it.

What we don't understand is why some politicians and their media supporters want to demonize the very people who are entrusted with the care and education for most of children of America. These are the adults with whom our country's future spends most of their meaningful, formative hours. We would think, in a country so seemingly obsessed with "The Children", that we would be willing to move heaven and earth to ensure that if nothing else, our children's teachers were among the best and brightest our nation has to offer, and the only way to do that is to make sure we pay them as such.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-24T01:00:00.005-04:00

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
- Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)

WWD: Double Bastard Ale - Stone Brewing Co.

2011-03-23T13:00:00.079-04:00

What we're drinking: Double Bastard Ale from the Stone Brewing Company in Escondido, California.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

What's more arrogant than an Arrogant Bastard? How about a Double Bastard? One of Stone Brewing's most popular releases is its Bastard series, made up of the Arrogant Bastard, the Oaked Arrogant Bastard, the Double Bastard, and the Lucky Bastard, which is a blend of the first three (and mighty delicious, too). While we're not huge hopheads who seek out the most explosively bitter beer ever brewed, we do enjoy this piece of the craft beer scene from time-to-time, and big hops are what give the Bastards their well-deserved reputations.

With an ABV of over 11%, the Double Bastard is a sipping hopfest. The nose comes at you in waves of grapefruit hops, while the toasted malts and caramel sit well in the background. When it's time to drink it, you'll find hops, hops, and more hops, from bittering to aromatic. There's lemon and orange rind mixed in with the grapefruit and it all stays firmly planted in the middle of the tongue for a long, lingering finish.

Will we be drinking this again?: It's a very well-made beer, but not the style we like to keep in our own fridge. This would be an excellent selection to take to a hophead friend's house to pair with a dinner coming off the Weber. Do this, and you'll definitely be invited back again.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-23T01:00:00.005-04:00

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
- George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

Shocking The States

2011-03-22T13:00:00.058-04:00

Paul Krugman recently wrote of how the principle of the Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein's theory of how crisis is used to grab control and loot government, is being used against the citizens of Wisconsin.

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

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

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

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

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

Far from being reassured, we watch here in Ohio as its new governor attempts to sell public assets, including the value of future income streams, to his own set of cronies for pennies on the dollar. It's the same kind of mentality that's going on in Wisconsin. These activities aren't about balancing the budget. Rather, they're about using the fiscal crisis brought about from a decade of financial fraud in an environment of deregulation and lax oversight as an excuse to destroy political opponents and loot the public treasury.

When individuals aspire to public office, they assume a fiduciary responsibility to the communities they claim they wish to serve. In Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states where public assets are being given away at fire sale prices to well-connected insiders who financed campaigns, this fiduciary responsibility is being blatantly violated. We can only hope that the citizens, who are the rightful owners of these common assets, will put a stop to this looting before it's too late.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-22T01:00:00.004-04:00

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
- Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

The John Kasich Corporate Welfare Program

2011-03-21T13:00:00.093-04:00

The real agenda of Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is becoming very apparent. It's not cutting back on spending; rather, it's all about shifting spending away from programs that invest in Ohioans and provide much-needed services to its citizen and toward corporate welfare. Since Kasich is a former Lehman Bros. bankster and Faux News shill, this should come as no surprise. Like his Republican brethren, he believes government assets exist to be looted.

Take the case of Bob Evans Restaurants, for example. It's currently located in a section of Columbus that can use all the economic activity it can get its hands on. But the CEO lives in New Albany, wants to move his office there, and wants the taxpayers of Ohio to foot the bill. So in these difficult economic times when public school teachers and single moms have to sacrifice to help Ohio balance its budget, can we count on the Governor to apply his same strict principles to this request and say no? Well, of course not! The only principle John Kasich has is handing out whatever state money he can get his hands on to his corporate patrons.

Plunderbund's been covering Kasich's hypocrisy quite well.

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the State of Ohio is spending nearly $8 million ($8,000,000) in incentives to help Bob Evans move its corporate headquarters roughly 20 miles from Columbus to New Albany. That works out to about $400,000 in State tax dollars per mile. Folks, and that’s not to create a single job. For a company that made last year over $1,700,000,000 in sales and made $70,000,000 in profits, you’d think they could handle their own move.

We can find $8 million to relocate 350 jobs in Ohio, but Kasich concluded that we couldn’t afford the 3C passenger rail system that even conservative estimates said wouldn’t need any state funding until 2017 and the most conservative estimate was it would create 4,000 jobs (other estimates had it over 10,000)?

When you hear John Kasich talk about jobs in Ohio, what he really means is increasing the take-home pay of his CEO buddies who write the checks for his ~~bribes~~ campaign contributions. He couldn't care less about creating jobs that pay a living wage to average Ohioans.

There there's the case of American Greetings, who also made noises about moving if it, too, didn't receive a huge chunk of corporate welfare, courtesy of Ohio taxpayers. John Kasich was only happy to comply.

What was American Greetings’ explanation for considering to move? Well, it was supposedly the .5% (yes, you read that correct, half a percent) increase in the City of Brooklyn’s payroll tax. When they announced over a year ago that they were exploring moving, they said they wanted to move to community that paid lower taxes.

Which is precisely why Illinois was never a threat, they just increased their corporate tax rate by nearly 3%. American Greetings needed a bigger corporate welfare package in Illinois just to break even with Ohio. Given that was the only State bidding for American Greetings, it really wasn’t under any threat of leaving. But that didn’t stop Kasich and the GOP legislature in giving a massive tax giveaway to American Greetings this week in legislation that was hurried passed with bipartisan support to keep American Greetings from moving to a State where it would have to pay more in taxes.

In total, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that American Greeting is getting a package of loans, grants, and tax credits “worth a potential $93.5 million over 15 years” to a company that still hasn’t committed to staying in the same Ohio community because it’s still engaging in a bid war with those Cleveland suburbs.

According to Clips & Comments, American Greetings has $883 million and saw its profits go up 9% last quarter! And yet, it was able to take a .5% payroll tax increase (i.e. what it withholds to pay their employees’ tax obligations) and panic this new Administration and the Ohio General Assembly that we taxpayers are on the hook for the next 15 years to give $93.5 million to an already profitable company for no other reason that an elected leaders feared it might move to a State where taxes are already higher and going up even faster!

This is government under Republican control. Loot the public treasury for the benefit of well-connected cronies while simultaneously destroying the public programs, assets, and infrastructure that have been a part of our society for generations. These people should be tarred and feathered. When are people going to wake up to what is really going on?

Quote of the Day

2011-03-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
- Franklin P. Jones

Quote of the Day

2011-03-20T01:00:00.005-04:00

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Quote of the Day

2011-03-19T01:00:00.005-04:00

You've got to be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for?
- Bernadette Peters

Hydro-Fracking The Drinking Supply

2011-03-18T13:00:00.034-04:00

Continuing our coverage of what the scramble to unlock buried reservoirs of natural gas is doing to our nation's water supplies, we want to share this story from the NYT. It explains how the process of hydrofracking, which is used to release gas trapped in rock, produces large quantities of toxic, radioactive wastewater and how that wastewater is winding up in the drinking supplies of millions of Americans.

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”

The article notes that the issue is especially pronounced in Pennsylvania and surrounding states because of the significant increase in hydrofracking drilling sites in the past several years.

In Pennsylvania, these treatment plants discharged waste into some of the state’s major river basins. Greater amounts of the wastewater went to the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to more than 800,000 people in the western part of the state, including Pittsburgh, and to the Susquehanna River, which feeds into Chesapeake Bay and provides drinking water to more than six million people, including some in Harrisburg and Baltimore.

Lower amounts have been discharged into the Delaware River, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million people in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania.

It's one thing when the techniques used in the industrial pursuit of energy ruin the drinking supply for some ranchers out West. The argument can be made that this is a trade-off society is willing to live with for the benefits of large supplies of natural gas. Besides, they live in some far-off place that's isolated to which no one pays attention, so as long as it's not going on in our backyard, who cares, right?

Well, for many, many more people than most realize, it is going on in their backyards. And coming out of their faucets. And unless we insist on extraction methods and waste treatments that respect our environment and our basic biological needs, we're all going to wind up with water supplies too toxic to use.

P.S. While we don't want to lose the primary focus of the problem with hydrofracking - that it's destroying the quality of our nation's water supplies in the pursuit of (now relatively) cheap energy and that's a trade-off whose long-term costs are going to be devastating - we want to point out that the process is also polluting the air.

Air pollution caused by natural-gas drilling is a growing threat, too. Wyoming, for example, failed in 2009 to meet federal standards for air quality for the first time in its history partly because of the fumes containing benzene and toluene from roughly 27,000 wells, the vast majority drilled in the past five years.

In a sparsely populated Sublette County in Wyoming, which has some of the highest concentrations of wells, vapors reacting to sunlight have contributed to levels of ozone higher than those recorded in Houston and Los Angeles.

We've been through Sublette County. It's an understatement to say there's nothing there. That such a place of rugged, wild emptiness can have ozone levels higher than two of the four largest cities in the nation only serves to emphasize how much damage is being done to our environment by these practices. We hope our children and their children understand.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-18T01:00:00.009-04:00

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
- Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)

March Madness

2011-03-17T13:00:00.088-04:00

The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament tips off today (those needless solely-for-more-money play-in games don't count), so it's time to make some predictions. Our brackets are done and submitted and here's what our crystal ball says.

In the East, we like Ohio State to bounce Syracuse. The Buckeyes are in a pretty easy region and have no excuse not to make the Final Four. Kentucky on a very good day might be able to give them a tussle, but UNC is too young to make it to the regional final.

In the West, we see San Diego State advancing to take on OSU. Despite what the President thinks, it's folly to pick all #1 seeds to make the Final Four, and it's always a pleasure to be rooting against Dook. Look out for underrated Missouri. And we like Oakland to surprise Texas.

In the Southwest, we simply can't come up with a bracket that doesn't have Kansas cutting down the nets. VCU over GTown would hardly be a surprise and everyone should know about the Spiders by now. We see this as a straight 1-4 Sweet Sixteen with the Domers bowing out in the end.

Every year has one region that's full of upsets and surprises. This year, we think it will be the Southeast. First, there's the perennial disappointment called Pitt who always under-performs its seeding. There's Utah State flying under the radar looking to finally push into week two. BYU is struggling. And it's a serious mistake to bet against Tom Izzo, no matter how many losses MSU has. We see Pitt finally ending Utah State's Cinderella run and lining up against MSU after they beat St. John's. In the end, it's another Final Four for Michigan State.

So how does it all eventually unfold? This is Ohio State's year to finally win its first championship since 1960, when Jerry Lucas led a team that included John Havlicek and Bobby Knight. But it won't be easy. Kansas is every bit as talented and will give them a battle that will be talked about well after CBS rolls One Shining Moment. And remember, as TMQ always says, all predictions guaranteed or double your money back.

If you have brackets submitted on ESPN and would like to join TDG's group, send us an email and we'll forward the necessary information.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-17T01:00:00.000-04:00

A good beginning is half the work.
- Irish proverb

WWD: Conway's Irish Ale - Great Lakes Brewing

2011-03-16T13:00:00.065-04:00

What we're drinking: Conway's Irish Ale from the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland, Ohio.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

Tomorrow, everyone's Irish. Short of celebrating on the Emerald Isle itself, it would be difficult to improve on a day that included this excellent take on an Irish red ale. Bready, toasted malts and caramels give way to a subtle but present finish of citrus hops that is nicely balanced. Toffee appears on the tongue in the finish as it warms. It's especially tasty on draft, where the carbonation is a tad crisper.

Will we be drinking this again?: There's a reason this beer won a Gold Medal at the World Beer Championships four years in a row. A corned beef sandwich, a tumbler of Bushmills, and a pint or two of Conway's is a great way to honor Saint Patrick. Sláinte!

Quote of the Day

2011-03-16T01:00:00.004-04:00

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Let Them Eat Cake

2011-03-15T13:00:00.084-04:00

The Center for American Progress recently compared a variety of tax breaks for the wealthy that are not being considered for rescission to help reduce our nation's deficit with matching social safety-net programs that are. CAP noted,

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that tax breaks are not on the table during any budget negotiations. In fact, Congress has the Congressional Budget Office prepare an official spending estimate for the cost of all programs or their expansions. Meanwhile, Congress enacts and continues tax breaks without any requirement that the cost of tax breaks be calculated and shared with members before a vote.

In 2011 the mortgage interest deduction will help families who purchase a vacation home avoid taxes to the tune of $800 million. Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee chairman’s 2011 budget bill included $730 million in cuts to housing programs for the elderly and disabled.

There are many other examples where the cost of tax breaks are skyrocketing and disproportionately benefiting companies and people who don’t need them:

* Congress should rein in the $4.6 billion in tax breaks given to companies who move jobs offshore instead of making cuts to the $4 billion in job-training programs.
* Oil companies get more than $2 billion in tax write-offs for drilling expenses yet Congress is considering cutting the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the $2 billion federal program that helps poor families pay their winter heating bills.
* Large biofuels companies, such as Archer Daniels Midland, benefit from the ethanol tax break that now costs nearly $5 billion a year. And oil companies such as ExxonMobil benefit from more than $9 billion in tax breaks for oil exploration.

It’s regrettable that the congressional budget process doesn’t permit a robust debate about the choices we can and must make to bring the budget into balance. The Center for American Progress is thus pushing for a process where tax breaks are “scored” so members of Congress know and consider the cost of tax breaks as part of the annual congressional process to pass a budget.

A transparent budget process approach should be instituted now given the enormity of the budget challenge. It makes no sense to eviscerate safety-net supports when billions in unnecessary tax entitlements can be cut to preserve these important and socially responsible federal expenditures. Congress must face up to the cold hard fact that it’s time to make the tough choice to end tax entitlements—such as the one for “NASCAR racing facilities”—so federal funding for critical items such as child-nutrition programs are spared.

Here's a chart that shows how the cost of vital social programs could be paid for by simply eliminating unnecessary and unneeded tax breaks whose only purpose is to help the wealthy avoid paying taxes.

Note the final row in the chart. By simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the top tax brackets and returning to the rates that were effective during the last time our country balanced its budget, all the programs listed on the left could be funded. Instead of this approach, Republicans insisted, and President Obama complied (as he always does), that it would be the wealthy who continue to benefit from the actions of our government and that those most in need would shoulder the burden. Even during normal economic times, such an approach is nothing but Robin-Hood-in-reverse where government steals from the middle class and hands it out to those who least need it. But to do so now, during the hardest economic conditions since the Great Depression, is unconscionable. It's a very clear demonstration of who our government serves.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-15T01:00:00.005-04:00

If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
- Red Adair

Sharing Needed Sacrifices Fairly

2011-03-14T13:00:00.236-04:00

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a very rare specimen in Congress. His constituents are the citizens of his state rather than lobbyists and corporations, and he represents his constituency with a sense of common decency and fairness so clearly lacking in most proposals from both major parties.

Yesterday, Sanders published an editorial on the HuffPo calling for sharing the economic sacrifices that must be made in order to get our country's financial situation back into order, which is where it was when Clinton left office.

The rich are getting richer. The middle class and poor are getting poorer. What is the Republican solution to the deficit crisis? More tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Savage cuts in programs that are desperately needed by working families.

There is another approach, which is why I've just introduced legislation imposing a surtax on those households earning a million dollars or more and the elimination of tax loopholes which the big oil companies take advantage of.

Everyone agrees that this country has a major deficit crisis, but few discuss how we got there. When George W. Bush inherited the White House from Bill Clinton we had a significant surplus. Now we have a $1.5 trillion deficit. How did that happen?

Sanders explains how the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress pursued programs that were specifically designed to solely benefit the wealthy and launched two wars we're still fighting without having any intention of paying for them. Now that our country is reaping what was sown by eight years of gross fiscal mismanagement, and, as some people believe, the outright looting of the national treasury by special corporate interests who essentially own Congress, it's finally being recognized that this orgy of borrow-and-spend needs to stop.

Rather than acknowledge the causes of these massive deficits, Republican servants of the ruling oligarchy have apparently decided to simply finish off the underclasses of our nation. Across the country, Republican-controlled states are handing out even more tax cuts for corporations while at the same time insisting that middle class workers who barely make enough now to get by be the ones to give up wages and benefits. At the federal level, Republicans are insisting that the path to a strong and healthy future is to eliminate funding for children, health care, education, and Social Security. One point Sanders makes is particular striking as it speaks to what has become the niggardly attitude of "I've got mine, so fuck you" that dominates discussions of how to reduce deficits.

At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, the Republican solution is to slash Head Start by 20 percent, throw 218,000 children off the program and lay off 55,000 Head Start instructors.

That's right. The United States of America has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Whatever one might think of another's ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps or how much one is responsible for his own economic condition, has our national attitude toward each other grown so cold and anti-social that we are no longer willing to ensure that children - the future of our country and a group clearly not at fault for the poverty in which they live - be protected from the harsh economic realities so many in our country face today? It's certainly not a case of not being able to afford to do so; it's simply a matter of priorities. Or is it really just an extension of the Republican mantra which says, "My kids got theirs, so fuck yours."?

Sanders concludes,

In my view, we do need to boldly address our deficit crisis, but we need to do it in a way that is fair -- that is not on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the children and the poor. In other words, we need shared sacrifice. The wealthiest people in this country, who are now doing phenomenally well, are also going to have to help us with deficit reduction. That is why I introduced legislation which would place a 5.4 percent emergency surtax on income over $1 million. The revenue would go into an Emergency Deficit Reduction Fund. Just doing that - asking millionaires to pay a little bit more in taxes after all the huge tax breaks they have received -- will bring in up to $50 billion a year.

I think that is a good idea, but it is not just me. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll recently asked the American people about the best ways to go forward on deficit reduction? Eighty-one percent of the American people believe it is totally acceptable or mostly acceptable to impose a surtax on millionaires to reduce the deficit. My legislation also would eliminate tax loopholes that enable the big oil companies from avoiding their fair share of taxes.

The American people get it. They understand that we cannot move toward deficit reduction just by cutting programs that working families, the middle class, and low-income people desperately need. They understand that serious, responsible deficit reduction requires shared sacrifice. They know that at a time when the top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent, that when the effective tax rate for the rich is now lower than at any time in recent history, that it is absurd not to ask the wealthiest people in this country to provide additional revenue to help us lower the deficit.

The federal budget is not just a bunch of big numbers. It is the document that speaks to the values of our country, our national priorities and our hopes for the future. At a time when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, it is a moral abomination to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, while cutting programs for the most vulnerable people in our society -- the children, the elderly, the sick and the hungry. The Republican budget proposal must be defeated.

Sanders is absolutely right about what the federal budget represents. Are we to be a nation of dog-eat-dog where it's every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, or are we to be a nation of one for all and all for one? Our country has the means, even during these challenging times, to provide a strong safety net for least among us, to invest in the promises of our children's futures, and to repair the neglect of our nation's infrastructure. And doing so in no way requires the dismantling of our economic system and trading it in for something akin to communism, in spite of the rantings from the rabid lunatic fringe whose only goals are stirring the pot of ignorant anger and media ratings.

No, what it does require is acknowledging that American-style capitalism, while preferable than alternatives, is, as an economic system, just one component of society, and therefore must be judged against the effect it has on the society in which it operates. It requires acknowledging that it's not perfect and produces a number of destructive byproducts along with its benefits. And it requires acknowledging that those who earn obscene incomes wholly out of proportion to effort or skill do so not because they are inherently better people who deserve them, but because they get to participate in a system in which such outcomes are possible for no other reason than they are.

One other little secret needs to be mentioned, too. What passes for capitalism today in America is hardly the real thing. Our governments take tax dollars from their citizens and hand them out to corporations who are supposed to succeed or fail on their own merits. Our governments permit the privatization of profits but the socialization of costs, especially in terms of widespread environmental pollution and destruction. Most importantly for the present discussion, our governments answer not to the needs and desires of their citizenry to improve the general welfare, but rather to the demands of corporate special interests whose single refrain is, "More! More! More!"

It's time to spread the needed sacrifices fairly. It's time to say, "No more!"

Quote of the Day

2011-03-14T01:00:00.006-04:00

The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
- Doug Larson

Quote of the Day

2011-03-13T01:00:00.004-05:00

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance - it doesn't come every day.
- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Quote of the Day

2011-03-12T01:00:00.004-05:00

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
- Hypatia of Alexandria (370 AD - 415 AD)

When The Well Went Bad

2011-03-11T13:00:00.099-05:00

Yesterday, we introduced the process of hydrofracking, which injects under great pressure massive volumes of water laced with highly toxic chemicals into the ground with the intention of breaking up rock to release trapped natural gas. Recently, ProPublica told the story of one man's experience with the effects of hydrofracking on the water supply of his small Wyoming ranch.

Meeks used to have abundant water on his small alfalfa ranch, a 40-acre plot speckled with apple and plum trees northeast of the Wind River Mountains and about five miles outside the town of Pavillion. For 35 years he drew it clear and sweet from a well just steps from the front door of the plain, eight-room ranch house that he owns with his wife, Donna. Neighbors would stop off the rural dirt road on their way to or from work in the gas fields to fill plastic jugs; the water was better than at their own homes.

But in the spring of 2005, Meeks’ water had turned fetid. His tap ran cloudy, and the water shimmered with rainbow swirls across a filmy top. The scent was sharp, like gasoline. And after 20 minutes — scarcely longer than you’d need to fill a bathtub — the pipes shuttered and popped and ran dry.

Meeks suspected that environmental factors were to blame. He focused on the fact that Pavillion, home of a single four-way stop sign and 174 people, lies smack in the middle of Wyoming’s gas patch. Since the mid 1990’s, more than 1,000 gas wells had been drilled in the region — some 200 of them right around Pavillion — thousands of feet through layers of drinking water and into rock that yields tiny rivulets of trapped gas. The drilling has left abandoned toxic waste pits scattered across the landscape. It has also disturbed the earth itself.

The circumstances near Meeks’ property in Pavillion all pointed to drilling.

Three months before his water went bad, EnCana had laid pipe down into a gas well about 500 feet from Meeks’ front door. The well, called Tribal Pavillion 24-2, had “circulation” problems during its construction — meaning that the cement may not have filled all the space between the well and the earth, and that its walls had to be strengthened. EnCana says the problems were minor and had nothing to do with the deterioration of Meeks’ water. “There is no evidence to suggest the well bore integrity was in any way or at any time compromised,” Hock said. But over time Meeks’ water had become undrinkable. His neighbors stopped filling up their bottles with it. Soon they were afraid to touch it.

It was with good reason no one wanted to touch the water anymore. What was once clear and clean now smelled like a gas station, looked dirty, and caused a myriad of health problems simply as the result of using it for bathing or washing dishes. No one dared to actually drink it. Something had ruined the aquifer and the only thing that had changed in Meeks' part of Wyoming, a state where change comes slowly to everything if it comes at all, was all the new drilling for natural gas wells and the hydrofracking that goes with them.

This is a story well worth reading. If it hasn't already, hydrofracking will more likely than not be coming to your water supply, too. What are you going to do if the water that flows through the pipes in your home is no longer safe? Or can actually be set on fire, as has happened in Pennsylvania? By then it will be too late to save the most precious natural resource we know. It already is for some.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-11T01:00:00.007-05:00

Beware the fury of a patient man.
- John Dryden (1631 - 1700)

Don't Drink The Water

2011-03-10T13:00:00.190-05:00

Listening to the latest ads from the hydrocarbon industry, one might be tempted to conclude that natural gas is the magic bullet for American energy independence. It's abundant. It burns more cleanly than coal and oil, producing substantially less carbon dioxide. It doesn't leave byproducts like ash in the atmosphere. Over half the homes in the country are already served by natural gas pipelines.

There's a problem with natural gas, however. A big problem. It tends to be trapped in little pockets surrounded by rock. To get to that gas, the rock needs to be broken up so the gas can be captured by wells. Unfortunately, the process for breaking up the rock seems to be polluting one of the few natural resources even more important than hydrocarbon-based energy: water.

This process is called hydrofracking. What hydrofracking does is pump, under extremely high pressure, huge amounts of water, sand, and noxious chemicals into the rock formations hundreds to thousands of feet below the surface. The physical force blows apart cracks in the rock, releasing trapped natural gas and allowing it to flow back up the same path from which the hydrofracking mixture came.

Theoretically, the toxic brew that gets pumped into the earth also comes back up, gets collected, and then gets safely processed and disposed. Theoretically. What really happens, however, is that some of the mixture stays in the ground and winds up in aquifers. Some of it gets spilled around the wells at the surface. And some of it gets dumped into water treatment facilities that were never designed to process these chemicals, which in turn dump them into our nation's rivers and major water supplies.

This is both a very serious and urgent issue our country needs to address. The use of hydrofracking has increased exponentially in the last few years and the technique is being used in areas where the affected water supplies serve major population centers. Drilling companies refuse to identify the chemicals used in the process, citing the need to maintain competitive trade secrets. Individual ranches and other large properties in the West as well as entire communities in the East have become essentially worthless because of polluted aquifers. The EPA, under enormous political pressure from the industry, has had to tread very lightly as it works to understand what, exactly, is going on and what the regulatory response should be.

Going forward, we'll be keeping an eye on the issue of hydrofracking. While large amounts of clear cut, scientifically verifiable data don't yet exist that prove pumping millions of gallons of chemically laden water into the ground under extreme pressure is the cause of the ruined drinking supplies people living near such operations are experiencing, it's clear that something is very, very wrong. Those stories need to be told.

There's nothing more valuable to the long-term health of all living things than water. Destroying abundant, clean supplies of it for the sake of profitable hydrocarbon extraction is something that any society that cares about its future cannot allow to happen.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-10T01:00:00.003-05:00

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
- Shana Alexander

WWD: Winter White Ale - Bell's Brewery

2011-03-09T13:00:00.074-05:00

What we're drinking: Winter White Ale from Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

Not every winter beer has to be big on the spices, malts, and alcohol. This brew is modeled on the style of Belgian white ales to produce a lighter but still flavorful option. The nose presents a hefeweizen-style clove/banana presence with soft citrus and pine hops in the background. When it's time to taste, banana really jumps to the front, showing off the fruit. Bell's doesn't use any spicing in this beer, which is interesting because there's subtle hints of cinnamon, coriander, and nutmeg in the finish, which lasts longer than was expected. This beer shows off what can be accomplished simply fine-tuning the yeast.

Will we be drinking this again?: A different twist on a winter beer, it's very much in the hefeweizen style but doesn't have the crispness in the finish you'd want in the summer. We enjoyed a couple on draft recently and will be on the lookout to do so again.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-09T01:00:00.005-05:00

Strive for excellence, not perfection.
- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Mission Creep & Psy-Ops in Afghanistan

2011-03-08T13:00:00.041-05:00

Last year, Michael Hastings wrote in Rolling Stone about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was at the time commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. In that story, Hastings explained how McChrystal leaned hard on President Obama to "ramp up the war."

After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn't send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of "mission failure." The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president's ass.

Also contained in that story was an explanation of the United States military's rather controversial counterinsurgency strategy called COIN and the news that McChrystal wanted to use the military presence in Afghanistan as a laboratory in which to test it, just as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had wanted to use the invasion of Iraq to test his theories on the rapid deployment of smaller invasion forces.

COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military's preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare.

Essentially, what 'COINdinistas' want is for the military to take over the implementation of American foreign policy wherever conflict is involved. Needless to say, such an approach has a bevy of critics.

"The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people," says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. "The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense."

It is utter nonsense. Utter incredibly expensive nonsense. It's essentially a 21st century version of the Crusades, where instead of forcing Muslim populations to convert to Catholicism at the end of a sword, the US military intends to force them to convert to capitalism-democracy (with the emphasis no doubt on the capitalism) at the end of an unarmed drone. But the military has decided that it wants that mission, along with all the money and power that come with it. And we're pretty confident so do the private special interests that make up the 'industrial' part of the military-industrial complex.

To what lengths will the military go to secure American political acceptance of this mission? Last month, Hastings told that story, too.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

The original mission of military efforts in Afghanistan was to remove al Quaeda, neutralize Osama bin Laden, and prevent the Taliban from future support of international (meaning, directed at the West) terrorism. It's now metamorphosed into a mission of rebuilding one of the most inhospitable countries on the planet based on values completely foreign to its population, and doing so using the typically American approach of throwing huge sums of money around and then blowing up anyone who doesn't comply. So desperate is the US military to continue this mission, a mission so absurd that even Samuel Beckett would find it puzzling, it's decided that the facts are so obviously in opposition to it that it needs to employ psy-ops against our own country's political decision makers.

Our country needs an exceptionally well-armed and well-trained professional military capable of defending its territory. And no more. It doesn't need a comprehensive political juggernaut capable of occupying and ruling the world, especially given that the only purpose for doing so is to protect international corporate interests. It's time for our country's military leadership to get back to the business of executing the military strategy decided upon by our civilian leadership, to which it reports, and get out of the business of trying to expand its market share.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-08T01:00:00.001-05:00

I am not young enough to know everything.
- J.M. Barrie

The Cost of War

2011-03-07T13:00:00.008-05:00

In the midst of the Great Recession, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has suddenly decided that, after a generation of record-setting deficits under every Republican president, it's time to cut spending. And not just any spending, or the kind of spending that consumes large slices of the budget pie, but rather programs specifically designed to aid those in our country who have the least. Struggling women who can't afford health care. Hungry children who never get enough to eat. Dedicated students who can't afford higher education.

Never mind that taxes for the wealthiest of our country are the lowest they've been since WWII and should be raised - substantially raised - in response to the ever-widening income gap in America. Never mind that it's well understood that the surest way to kill a recovery in these fragile economic times is to suppress demand from the one entity big enough to see us all (rather than just the wealthy few) through these hardships - the United States federal government. Never mind that banksters and corporations continue to socialize the costs of their recklessness and pollution while receiving substantial amounts of subsidies and welfare.

Let's accept for the moment, for the sake of this discussion, the premise that our government does need to spend less; that this is really about national fiscal policy and not just another Republican attack on the have-nots of our country. What does our country spend money - huge amounts of money - on that the vast majority of average American citizens could do without?

How about war?

The website Cost of War is remarkable for two things. One is its simplicity. The home page just shows two constantly updated numbers and a running total. The other is how staggeringly large the numbers it shows are.

The Iraq War has cost American taxpayers over 3/4 of a trillion dollars. The war in Afghanistan is approaching $400 billion. And not shown is the Department of ~~War~~ Defense request to increase spending by another 5%, bringing the cost of simply maintaining the military-industrial complex to over another 1/2 trillion dollars in FY2011 alone, which is ~$7,000 for every single household in our country.

The simple truth is that America cannot afford to continue to spend this kind of money on conducting wars of choice in foreign countries, nor can it afford to maintain a military that does everything except protect the physical borders of our nation. Moreover, Republicans have made it clear that they have no intention of raising the money required to pay for these wars, choosing instead each and every year to borrow to fund them.

This is insanity, bankrupting our nation's treasury and economic future while pouring a trillion dollars into destroying and rebuilding countries that are not and never were a threat to us, especially since nothing discernible has been accomplished other than to funnel huge sums of taxpayer dollars to a few privileged corporations.

Imagine what could have been accomplished in our own country had even half of this money been spent rebuilding its deteriorating infrastructure and investing in its own citizens. Imagine how many people who are now in dire straits could be helped until their lives and the economy of our nation get turned around. Imagine what America could be like if we would only remember, "Charity begins at home."

So let's accept that our country needs to cut back on its spending. But let's also remember we don't have to do it on the backs of American citizens who need help the most. We can simply turn off the war machine and pretty much balance the budget tomorrow.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-07T01:00:00.005-05:00

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
- Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

Quote of the Day

2011-03-06T01:00:00.005-05:00

As we think, so we become.
- Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)

Quote of the Day

2011-03-05T01:00:00.006-05:00

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)

Republican Contempt for the Legislative Process

2011-03-04T13:00:00.202-05:00

Actions by Republican-controlled chambers in both the Wisconsin and Ohio state legislatures during the past two weeks demonstrated quite clearly the contempt that party has for the legislative process. When in the minority, it's non-stop obstructionism. But when in the majority, it's all about chicanery, deceit, and raw abuse of power.

First, there's the case of the Wisconsin Assembly acting on the bill whose purpose is to strip collective bargaining rights from those public employees who didn't support Scott Walker's campaign for governor. Here's the AP report of the underhanded tactics Republicans employed in order to cut off debate and ram the bill through the chamber.

The Assembly debate had reached 60 hours, with 15 Democrats still waiting to speak, when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. The voting roll opened and closed within seconds. Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time.

Republicans marched out of the chamber silently. Democrats rushed at them, pumping their fists and shouting "Shame!" and "Cowards!"

Here's a clip of the Assembly leadership suddenly calling for the vote and then closing it after only 17 seconds as stunned Democratic representatives who aren't in on the scheme try to figure out what's going on.

At the end of the clip, Democrats can been seen shouting "Shame!" as the cowardly Republicans slink out of the chamber. Here's a clip that focuses on the aftermath of the sudden, surprise vote.

We don't think there's any doubt that had a Democratic majority tried the same tactic in order to pass a piece of legislation, especially legislation as radical and controversial as this one is, the right-wing media army that dominates our nation's airwaves would be ablaze with calls for Second Amendment solutions and other various acts of violence to address the grievous attack on the legislative process. But since it's Republicans, it's all in a day's work.

A week later over in the Ohio Senate, SB5 was finally scheduled for a vote after massive protests at the capitol building and in other cities across the state. This bill is even more draconian than the Wisconsin version, as it completely eliminates collective bargaining for all public employees and makes it crime to strike. It also contains a number of other onerous provision snuck in at the last minute that most Senators weren't even aware of prior to voting.

Because of both the protests, most notably on the Tuesday and Saturday before the vote, and the fact that most legislators hadn't even had time enough to read the bill much less debate it or solicit comments about it from constituents, a number of Republicans expressed unease with going forward. Two in particular sat on committees where an affirmative vote was needed to bring the bill to the floor.

So what did the Republican leadership in the Ohio Senate do? Did it leave the bill in the committees until everyone had a chance to absorb its content and import and accept input from constituents? Did it hold the votes with the committees' memberships as assigned from the start of the session and risk the bill not coming to the floor?

Well, of course it did neither. What it did do was remove the two wavering Republican Senators who might not toe the party line from their committee assignments to ensure the bill would reach the floor, which it did by 7-5 votes.

The Republicans have a 23-10 majority in the Ohio Senate. SB5 is so radical, and the process by which it came to a vote only a day after 98 pages of amendments were added to it so troublesome, that it passed by only a single vote, 17-16. That almost a third of the Republican caucus rejected the bill Senate President Tom Niehaus called his most important priority tells us just how terrible both its substance and the process by which it was enacted is.

Ohio political blog Plunderbund noted that even the conservative Cincinnati Enquirer objected to how the Ohio Senate passed SB5.

Today, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s editorial board blasted the Senate in how it conducted itself on SB 5:

"It is shameful that Ohio Republicans pushed the SB5 collective bargaining bill through the Senate on Wednesday using the sort of tactics that congressional Democrats were justly criticized for using during the health-care reform debate.

What’s doubly shameful is that this process is tainting an overhaul of public employment practices that is eminently worthwhile and necessary – in fact, long overdue – but should be done in a more reasoned, collaborative manner. The process should produce at least a credible level of buy-in."

It’s noteworthy that even traditionally conservative media outlets aren’t turning a blind eye to the extraordinary lengths Governor Kasich’s allies in the legislature is going to ram his extremist agenda into law.

In fact, the tactics the Republicans employed are so odious, even Teabaggers are objecting. Plunderbund also reported on this.

Here’s a statement on the Portage County Tea Party website:

"TEA PARTY CONDEMNS REPLACEMENT OF SEITZ ON SENATE BILL 5 COMMITTEE

Kent, Ohio - The Portage County TEA Party announced today that it condemns the move by Ohio Senate Republicans to replace Republican Senator Seitz with Republican Senator Hite to get Senate Bill 5 out of committee. After his replacement they then passed the bill out of committee by a 7-5 vote. Tom Zawistowski, Executive Director of the Portage County TEA Party said “Speaking as the leader of the Portage County TEA Party, I want to say that we condemn this type of political maneuvering, just as we condemned the same type of political maneuvering that the Democrats used last year to pass the Health Care bill. If they can not pass a bill based on it’s merits, by getting even their own members to vote for it, then their is something wrong with the bill in the first place. Senator Seitz accused Senate leadership of doing exactly what the Democrats have been doing, which is passing bills before people have the chance to read them and understand them. For that he was removed from the committee. This is just plain wrong and the Portage County TEA Party condemns this type of behavior by our elected officials on both side of the isle and at all levels of government.”

Zawistowski went on to say, “In our opinion, the Republican Senate leadership has mismanaged this process from the beginning. While we support the fact that changes had to be made in the relationship between the tax payers and government workers, we also believe that the entire process needed to be more transparent and more inclusive from the beginning. . .”"

What’s really, really, really interesting about this press release is that Zawistowski isn’t just any Tea Party activist. He is known in the local media as a major supporter of Governor Kasich.

Even Tom Zawistowski can’t hide his utter contempt at the shameless procedural tactics to keep SB 5 on parliamentary life support long enough to get it passed through the Senate yesterday.

Finally, there's this reaction from Lawrence O’Donnell on SB5. O'Donnell has considerably above-average exposure to the hardball that is politics, having served as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and as the staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Finance. He's seen first-hand how twisted things can get. Said O'Donnell, "I have never seen a more corrupted legislative process."

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Let's give credit where credit is due. Ohio Senator Bill Seitz (R-8th) is to be commended for his principled stand against his own party's leadership for the way SB5 was handled. He's one of the few Republicans in both the Wisconsin Assembly and the Ohio Senate who can go home and look his family in their eyes and himself in the mirror. Those that participated in these charades deserve to hear "Shame!" reverberate for a long, long time.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-04T01:00:00.003-05:00

You can’t go anywhere in neutral but downhill.
- Geoff Badenoch

A Well-Needed Rant

2011-03-03T13:00:00.105-05:00

After watching events unfold the past couple of weeks in Wisconsin and Ohio, and with all the frustration building up as governors behave like dictators and the legislative process is corrupted and turned into a bad joke of cynical lip service instead of honored and respected, it feels like it's time for a good, comprehensive, heartfelt rant about how our country wound up in the mess it's in today and how an absurdly large slice of it seems determined to remain woefully ignorant and make it worse. Fortunately, we have David Michael Green providing that very thing as he contemplates "The Sole Remaining Stupidpower in the World". We encourage reading the entire piece. Here's some snippets.

This is country that, for all its multiple stumbles and bumbles, pioneered for the world crucial advances in democracy, human rights, diversity, tolerance, class relations, social mobility, civil rights and civil liberties (not so much in our treatment of other people, though – but that’s another story). This is a country that succeeded in bringing mass prosperity to its people on a scale never seen before, creating a giant middle class where one of that proportion had never remotely existed before. Whatever else one can say about America (and, regrettably, there is a lot), its place in human history is secure. These are remarkable achievements individually, and they are astonishing collectively.

Which just makes it all the more jaw-dropping to watch such a country commit national suicide, and especially to do so for all the stupidest of reasons. And which makes it hard to imagine that the same country that can rightly boast so many great achievements is capable of such idiocy.

.....

What I do know is that we’ve spent the last generation or so hell-bent to self-destruct. And what I do know is that the deeper we get into our self-inflicted pit of national devastation, the more – not less – we turn to the same ideas, brought to us by the same discredited monsters, and inquire, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

But here we are, a mere two years later, having brought back the same crowd in record-setting droves, only this time they’re even worse, as unimaginable as that seems, like a tribe of political crackhead vampire zombies, locked in mindless unrelenting pursuit of sucking dry the national blood supply.

Who votes for that, man? Huh? Who says to the wife on election day, “Honey, be sure to pull the lever for the guys who want to rape our family and leave us in the ditch, naked, jobless, impoverished and homeless!”? Who thinks to himself, “Why should I have a tiny little suburban house and a ten year-old rusted Chevy when thousands of millionaires each day suffer the humiliating stigma of not being billionaires? Let me vote for the nice people who will hand my meager earnings up to the overclass.” Who sits there and thinks, “Those guys sure messed up bad last time, but maybe if they double down on their plans it’ll get a lot better for people like me!”?

For that matter, who thinks at all? Evidently, no one in America. This country’s problem is that it continues to believe that lazy detachment is the surest way to solve our national problems.

.....

What Reagan did was to begin the process of destroying the American middle class, working class and poor, in order to feed the insatiable greed of the wealthy. He began the process of changing tax and trade and regulation and privatization and labor relations policies, all for the purposes of transferring wealth from non-elites to elites, an effort which continues right down to this moment. Worst of all, he did it through the deepest forms of national deceit, which only served to legitimize his destructive ideas in the minds of far too many people who should know better. His project has been enormously successful. The man who claimed to be restoring America’s greatness was in fact facilitating its plunder, and that process is now nearly complete.

The latest chapter in the Age of Reagan is transpiring in Wisconsin right now, where public sector unions, the last vestige of middle and working class prosperity, are under lethal assault.

The long-term plan of the oligarchy has been fairly masterful, chipping away simultaneously at all the bulwarks of American prosperity while maintaining a constant narrative that legitimates otherwise ridiculous concepts, at least for those folks who know nothing and find that whole thinking thing altogether onerous. The same people who brought you McCarthy and Nixon, who exploded the national debt, who have presided over thirty years of transfer of wealth from all of us to the rich, who told us how great and easy the Iraq invasion would be, who blew up the economy, and who have pretended that climate change is a hoax – these same people are now standing before us insisting that public sector unions (about the only kind remaining after they destroyed the others as well) have to go. Apart from the lunacy of the argument itself, my question is why are these people standing before us at all? Why aren’t they in jail? Why aren’t they at least minimally hated for their crimes? Why did they win huge in the last election cycle?

.....

Again, the maniacal brilliance of the scheme has been something to behold. Smash private sector unions, export jobs overseas, devastate communities, pin people to the wall economically, and then tell them that somebody else is doing better than they are. Worse, that those people are doing better and being paid for it off of your tax dollars!

But it only works for stupid people, those who cannot recognize the real culprits in this national crime, those who not only don’t think several moves ahead in a chess match, but play only checkers instead.

Where do you think we all wind up? We devastate the public sector unions and then, and then... What? You get rich? You get a tax break? You get bratwurst? Cheese? Jesus Christ.

Wisconsin 2011 (or at least that part of it) demonstrates the sheer stupidity of the people living in the world’s only superpower, the richest country on the planet. Over and over again, it’s Jesus, war, tax cuts, Jesus, war, tax cuts. And when that formula brings us only despair, what then? Jesus, war, tax cuts.

It's one thing when billionaires like the Koch brothers buy their politicians wholesale and then get the self-serving legislation and corporate welfare they demand. There's never a shortage of whores like Scott Walker around to take their money and do what they want.

But it's very much quite another when average Americans making average wages (which have risen barely, if at all over the past 30 years) think that the solution to our country's economic crisis is to hand out more tax breaks for the wealthy and bust up the only thing that's given working men and women any real say in the value of their labor. It's not and it never was.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-03T01:00:00.005-05:00

"He means well" is useless unless he does well.
- Plautus

WWD: 12 Dogs Of Christmas Ale - Thirsty Dog Brewing

2011-03-02T13:00:00.056-05:00

What we're drinking: 12 Dogs Of Christmas Ale from the Thirsty Dog Brewing Company in Akron, Ohio.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

We missed this one during the height of the holiday season, regrettably it turns out, and didn't get around to tasting it until the new year was well under way. The very first impression came right after the pour, when the bottle smelled like a gourmet ginger ale had just left it. There's lots of ginger in the nose, followed by nutmeg and cinnamon. Tasting it finds nicely toasted malts infused with ginger, followed by caramel and cinnamon. The finish has subtle bittering hops mixed with honey. It's really quite delicious.

Will we be drinking this again?: We love the Great Lakes Christmas Ale. This is its big brother - a bit bolder with both the spices and malts but every bit as enjoyable. We'll be sure to have both on hand when this year's holiday season rolls around; they'll make a perfect pair.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-02T01:00:00.007-05:00

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Our Single Party Government

2011-03-01T13:00:00.139-05:00

Yesterday, we noted the comments of director Charles Ferguson at the Academy Awards who reminded his audience, upon accepting the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary, that no one responsible for the massive financial fraud that caused the global economic collapse has been prosecuted. In a follow-up editorial published on the HuffPo, he addresses the fact that we are now living in a country where both major parties serve the interests of the financial oligarchy running it, not its citizens.

What unites the midterm election results, the Federal Reserve's decision to spend another $600 billion to keep interest rates down, the failure to address the foreclosure crisis, and America's worsening relations with its G-20 partners? And, more generally, what explains the Obama Administration's toothless response to the financial crisis, in particular its reversion to status quo regulatory and economic policies, over the past two years?

My answer is this: far from being in an era of brutal partisan warfare, as conventional wisdom holds and as watching the nightly television news might suggest, the United States is now in the grip of a political duopoly in which both parties are thoroughly complicit. They play a game: they agree to fight viciously over certain things to retain the allegiance of their respective bases, while agreeing not to fight about anything that seriously endangers the privileges of America's new financial elites. Whether this duopoly will endure, and what to do about it, are perhaps the most important questions facing Americans. The current arrangement all but guarantees the continuing decline of the United States as a nation, and of the welfare of the bottom 90% of its citizens.

The financial services industry and the most successful American multinational firms now obtain rapidly increasing fractions, often already the majority, of their investment, employees, and revenues from (a) other wealthy individuals and corporations and/or (b) outside the United States. Over the last two decades their political interests, contributions, and lobbying have gradually followed these larger trends. As a result, the political duopoly has overseen a massive disinvestment in the future of the United States and the American people, and a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. Taxes on dividends, high incomes, capital gains, and estates have sharply declined, while tuition at public universities, hours worked per family, household debt, and government deficits have all increased.

The losers, of course, are the American people, and particularly America's younger generation. For at least the bottom half of the population, America's educational system is a disaster, with our high school graduation rate at 78 percent and declining (versus, for example, 96 percent for South Korea and over 90 percent for most developed nations); broadband infrastructure generally rated at about 20th in the world; and gradually deteriorating physical infrastructure. Quietly, as inequality has grown and the financial sector rose to political power, the wealthy in America have constructed increasingly separate, parallel, and private infrastructure systems for themselves - elite private schools and universities, gated communities, private planes, the hedge fund universe.

Ferguson's editorial points to two significant conclusions. First, part of what explains policy desires on the part of Republicans who strive to loot state and national treasuries for private, elite interests is that they are doing so in order to fund this separate society. In typical Republican fashion, they want someone else to pay for it, and they've pretty much exhausted borrowing against future generations. Thus, the program now is to collect more from what's left of America's non-elite, continue to cut their own contributions, and funnel as much as they can into their own pockets and/or the pockets of their patrons. This is why the push is for 'privatization' (which really means selling public assets to special interests at fire-sale prices) and programs such as vouchers for exclusive private schools. Unfortunately, instead of vigorously opposing this systematic takeover of the public sphere, Democrats have meekly rolled over in acquiescence as they chase the same ~~bribes~~ campaign contributions while also chasing the Republican's reactionary social agenda to the right in a principle-free quest to capture 'moderates' while abandoning an ever-increasing population they assume will always, in the end, support them.

The second conclusion, which addresses the question of how the financially disenfranchised 90% of our country should respond to this political duopoly that's destroying it, is the need to coalesce around a third party committed to the kind of middle-class economic values for which America used to stand. To be sure, there are significant structural barriers to be overcome, especially in our winner-take-all political system where corporations are now people. Still, it's been done before when a large segment of the population has found itself disenfranchised by the political establishment. Clearly, it's time again. The alternative is simply accepting the demise of our once-great democratic republic, created for the purpose, among others, of "promoting the general welfare". At the very least, we shouldn't go down without a fight.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-01T01:00:00.005-05:00

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
- Michael Crichton (1942 - 2008)

Nobody Goes To Jail

2011-02-28T13:00:00.135-05:00

Last night at the Academy Awards, the documentary "Inside Job" won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary. It's about the comprehensive fraud and financial crimes that caused the global recession as well as the pervasive political corruption that not only permitted it to happen but refuses to hold those who are responsible accountable.

During his acceptance speech, director Charles Ferguson reminded everyone that no one's doing any time for destroying millions of people's lives, not to mention wiping out $20 trillion of equity.

Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong.

Yes, it's immensely, totally, absolutely wrong. But because our national government is run by financial industry insiders and politicians who were long ago purchased by the very firms that ran the scams, this isn't going to change.

Over at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has been filing story after story detailing how the various crimes were committed and explaining quite clearly how a financial oligarchy now controls our government. Earlier this month, his latest story was published. In it, he explains why nobody (except Bernie Madoff, who's own fraud was exposed by the collapse of this much, much, much larger one) is going to be so much as charged with a crime.

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail.

The rest of the story goes on to explain why, providing sickening detail after detail that lays bare the culture of money and political corruption that makes financial regulation and accountability impossible. That's why the banks that were too big to fail are now even bigger. That's why taxpayer money is being used to maintain an environment in which profits and bonuses are at record highs while millions struggle to keep a roof over their heads and can't find decent-paying (or any) work. And that's why nobody is going to jail.

Whatever else one thinks government should or shouldn't do, at the very least it must use its enforcement powers on behalf of our country devastated by these fraudulent, criminal activities. After all, the consequences have been far more destructive - by several magnitudes - than what happened on 9/11. Instead, the DOJ and regulatory agencies have taught the perpetrators that they live above the law and need not fear any repercussions for their behavior. Is there any doubt that, at the earliest opportunity, they'll do it again?

Quote of the Day

2011-02-28T01:00:00.001-05:00

More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within himself.
- Kevin Smith

Quote of the Day

2011-02-27T01:00:00.004-05:00

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
- Herbert Agar

Quote of the Day

2011-02-26T01:00:00.004-05:00

No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.
- Gerald White Johnson

The Monsters of Main Street

2011-02-25T13:00:00.089-05:00

Over at The Smirking Chimp, there's a very timely comparison of a well-known Twilight Zone episode and what's going on in our nation these days. It's about how invading monsters accomplish their takeover by manipulating average citizens and get them to turn on each other instead of identifying who the real culprits are. This post spells it out clearly.

The monsters aren't Wisconsin's public employees whose right to collective bargaining has helped their families lead middle-class lives, and who have repeatedly declared their willingness to return to the table and negotiate a shared sacrifice. The monsters are on Wall Street, where state pension funds were sunk into toxic sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. The monsters are on K Street, where lobbyists are fighting financial industry oversight. The monsters are the politicians who are using Wisconsin's deficit as a pretext to demonize public employees and bust their unions.

The monsters aren't low-income pregnant women and mothers who can't afford adequate nutrition for their families; or sick Americans who can't find health insurance to cover them; or blue-collar workers who want to retire at an age when there's still some life left in their bodies; or students who can't afford college without Pell Grants; or people who think their government's job includes preventing their air and water from poisoning them.

They're the bankers who've extorted trillions of public treasure, blowing up the deficit while awarding themselves inconceivably fat bonuses.

They're the billionaires who've benefited from a massive transfer of wealth from the middle to the top, and whose political puppets protect them from paying their fair share of taxes.

They're the corporations whose cash has convinced Congress to deregulate industry after industry, despite all evidence that it is the enforcement of rules -- not the magic of the marketplace -- that protects the public's rights.

They're the defense contractors and pork appropriators who've used the cover of "national security" to shield the Pentagon's budget and its procurement process from the cuts and reforms that even Republicans like the Secretary of Defense are advocating.

They're the front groups and propagandists, like FreedomWorks and Fox, who use class warfare and culture wars in order to turn Americans against their own economic interests.

They're the Supreme Court justices whose Citizens United decision, overthrowing a century of settled law, has made our campaign finance system an open sewer, and whose indifference to conflicts of interest in a coming case promises to throw sick people back onto the tender mercies of insurers and to destroy our best hope to curb Medicare costs - further ballooning the deficit and providing cover for even more draconian cuts.

The game in Washington is to use the deficit as camouflage for destroying government's capacity to promote the general welfare. The game in Wisconsin and other states whose new Republican governors and legislative majorities are feeling their oats is to shelter the income of the wealthiest, and to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class.

There's a takeover happening in our country today. It's the endgame of a generation of attacks that began with the Reagan administration designed to demonize how we run our country for the common good, as well as loot its treasury in the process. When Reagan took office, the top 1% of the nation took in 10% of its income. Today, it takes almost 25%. The effect of this has been to eviscerate our country's middle class. And for good measure, our nation's debt under Republican rule has been increased almost ten fold, saddling future generations with the responsibility to pay for all this looting, and to do it working for wages that are actually less than what their parents made at the same age.

It's time to identify the monsters that have made this happen and demand they pay for it. It's time to stop handing out tax breaks to the wealthy few at the top and demand they share in the sacrifices that need to be made, especially since they're the only ones whose incomes have risen. It's time to stop handing out corporate welfare such as the $3.5 billion American taxpayers give the oil and gas industry each year in subsidies. It's time to stop lending money from our nation's Federal Reserve to banks too big to fail at effectively zero interest rates so they can turn around and begrudgingly lend it back at rates that would make a loan shark blush.

We need to make government work for most American citizens again, the vast majority of whom are decent, hard-working people who do what's right by one another. What's going on in our country today isn't right. It's time to join together and go after the monsters who are destroying it.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-25T01:00:00.002-05:00

It makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place, or in the second place.
- John Morley

Attacking the Middle Class

2011-02-24T13:00:00.053-05:00

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explains why it's so important to fight back against Republican attacks on our country's middle class.

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At the end of the clip, it's asked, "Where are the Democrats?". It's a great question. The fact that so many are silent as Republicans attempt wide-spread union busting and further government giveaways to the wealthy goes a long way to confirming that there's really no difference between the two major parties running our country. Members of both exist to serve wealthy corporate interests, the same interests that buy their loyalties through bribes call campaign contributions and promises of high-paying directorships once they leave office.

Average Americans have virtually no voice inside government anymore. Their tax dollars are collected and then spent on corporate welfare, Wall Street bailouts, interest payments on the borrowing that funds tax breaks for the wealthiest, military adventurism replete with blatant private contractor corruption where billions upon billions go unaccounted for, and a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with building, repairing, securing, and promoting the general welfare of our country. America is being pillaged by Republicans and the most Democrats will do is look the other way.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-24T01:00:00.005-05:00

Unencumbered capitalism is not a substitute for social policy. On its own, without a social compact, raw capitalism is destined to serve the few at the expense of the many.
- David Simon

WWD: Winter Ale - Smuttynose Brewing

2011-02-23T01:00:00.070-05:00

What we're drinking: Winter Ale from the Smuttynose Brewing Company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

Brewed in the style of a Belgian Dubbel, toasted malts with a light roast edge, spice, and caramel greet the tongue. Nicely structured with a good body, there's plenty of carbonation without being fizzy. Pine and citrus hops linger in the finish.

Will we be drinking this again?: It's a quite enjoyable winter warmer. This time of year is perfect for two or three of these while sitting around a crackling fire with the snow piling up outside.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-23T01:00:00.002-05:00

Your reputation is made by searching for things that can't be done - and then doing them.
- Vern McLellan

The Republican War on the Middle Class

2011-02-22T13:00:00.104-05:00

Robert Reich outlines the Republican strategy to destroy the middle class of our country and to deflect attention from the fact that our nation's wealth continues to flow increasingly to the richest one percent and away from everyone else.

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class - pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans hope to deflect attention from the big story. That's the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.

The strategy has three parts.

* The battle over the federal budget

* The assault on public employees

* The distortion of the Constitution

These three aspects of the Republican strategy - a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy - fit perfectly together.

They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.

Read the entire article for the details of each part of this strategy. One point is, however, worth featuring on its own.

Last year, America's top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains - at 15 percent - due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.

If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society - thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let's make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?

Indeed, who is more valuable? Any economic system that pays an individual more than a billion dollars in a year is fundamentally broken, especially given that it's almost certain that some of the profits that support such compensation came from a variety of illegal trading activities such as front-running. These illegal activities are widely acknowledged, but the regulatory agencies of our government are woefully understaffed and underfunded, and even if they weren't, those engaging in these activities are members of the ruling oligarchy who live above the law and therefore aren't going to be investigated regardless of what they do.

More importantly, a tax system that allows a billion dollars of income to be taxed at a rate lower than anyone earning more than minimum wage is simply corrupt. Warren Buffet has pointed out many times that his effective tax rate of 16% is lower than his secretary's, and that this is absurd. It is absurd, but such a situation exists because it's one of the payoffs Republicans have made to their financial industry patrons.

There is simply no way to say anyone has "earned" one billion dollars and have the word retain any logical, coherent meaning. It's even more absurd to claim this about the activities of hedge fund managers, people who make absolutely nothing and contribute nothing to society. The money they acquire comes not from adding any value, but from siphoning it from the pension funds and investment assets of millions of average Americans. They don't educate our society. They don't protect it. They don't repair it or build it. No, instead they leach from it, and from those who actually do things of value.

These are the people who Republicans serve. If you happen to be one of them, then supporting their socially destructive policies and programs might make sense, at least until the other 99% decide to take it back. If you're not, then continuing to support Republicans is directly, immediately, and significantly acting against your own best interests. Why in heaven's name would you choose to do so?

Quote of the Day

2011-02-22T01:00:00.005-05:00

Inner harmony is attained only when, by some means, terms are made with the environment.
- John Dewey

Targets of the Oligarchs

2011-02-21T13:00:00.169-05:00

Glenn Greenwald recently posted an excellent piece about what happens to those who dare challenge the oligarchs now running our country. He, himself, became a target of their surreptitious campaigns. More importantly, these revelations demonstrate what can happen to individuals when vast amounts of personal details are collected in databases and analyzed as well as how the nexus of private corporate interests and those holding governmental power exist not constrained by law, but above and beyond it.

The specifics read like some techno-geek spy novel. The largest bank in the country, Bank of America, is fearful that WikiLeaks is going to publish documents detailing corruption and fraud by the bank (like this is some sort of secret), so it decides to launch a preemptive strike. Around the same time, the national Chamber of Commerce also decides it wants to silence its critics. An extremely well-connected DC law firm puts out the word it's looking for a bag of 21st century dirty tricks for some clients and several tech companies join together and cook up some pretty nasty scenarios. Ego gets the better of one of the tech CEOs, who brags about the efforts. In response, one of the targets demonstrates who really has the hacker chops and publishes tens of thousands of the CEO's emails laying out all the sordid details.

Greenwald, not being terribly tuned into the world of technological espionage, at first finds this tale absurd. Nobody is really this amoral and unethical, right? This is really just the work of some people with overactive imaginations and grandiose fantasies trying to grab some media attention, right? And should someone actually float such ideas for consideration, they'd be shot down immediately not only because they're simply the wrong way to conduct business - as well as most likely illegal - but they're also the kind of behavior that, at least until recently, would be a public relations disaster. Right? Right???

Wrong. And it appears that not only is this what private organizations consider an acceptable response toward those who dare to question them, our own country's Department of Justice is a participant. The entire column, as well as related links, needs to be read to fully appreciate the scope of the schemes. Here's some of the important points Greenwald makes about these revelations.

The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self-evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely.

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity in lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.

The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites.

There are supposed to be institutions which limit what can be done in pursuit of those private-sector goals. They're called "government" and "law." But those institutions are so annexed by the most powerful private-sector elites, and so corrupted by the public officials who run them, that nobody -- least of all those elites -- has any expectation that they will limit anything. To the contrary, the full force of government and law will be unleashed against anyone who undermines Bank of America and Wall Street executives and telecoms and government and the like (such as WikiLeaks and supporters), and will be further exploited to advance the interests of those entities, but will never be used to constrain what they do. These firms vying for Bank of America's anti-WikiLeaks business know all of this full well, which is why they concluded that proposing such pernicious and possibly illegal attacks would be deemed not just acceptable but commendable.

This is what our country has become. A small consortium of extreme private wealth seeks to own everything, including the government. It is unconstrained in what it will do to achieve that goal. Some will rush to curry the favor of these oligarchs in the hope that doing so will bring protection and table scraps and perhaps a menial position of authority over the masses. Others will object and work for a return to a government of laws rather than men that will limit the destructive effects of unbridled, greed-ridden capitalism and reverse the transfer of our country's wealth to a select and almost always thoroughly corrupt few. When the history of this struggle is written, on which side of ledger will your name be found?

Quote of the Day

2011-02-21T01:00:00.005-05:00

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Quote of the Day

2011-02-20T01:00:00.004-05:00

Unless we learn the lesson of self-appreciation and practice it, we shall spend our lives imitating other people and deprecating ourselves.
- Aida Overton Walker

Quote of the Day

2011-02-19T01:00:00.006-05:00

There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.
- Frederick William Farrar

Where The Money Isn't

2011-02-18T13:00:00.038-05:00

Paul Krugman cuts to the heart of all the budget posturing.

There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents — and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.

The bottom line, then, is that while the budget is all over the news, we’re not having a real debate; it’s all sound, fury, and posturing, telling us a lot about the cynicism of politicians but signifying nothing in terms of actual deficit reduction. And we shouldn’t indulge those politicians by pretending otherwise.

Real deficit reduction will come from cutting unproductive expenditures, especially in the grossly bloated defense budget, getting a handle on the cost of basic health care by implementing Medicare For All, and ending tax breaks and corporate welfare for the wealthy, a group that has easily benefited the most from decades of government programs and policies. Unfortunately, we have no leadership in Congress, so it postures and fiddles while our country burns.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-18T01:00:00.005-05:00

Stop organizing life around the people who don't get the joke.
- Bill Maher

The Real Spending Problem

2011-02-17T13:00:00.049-05:00

This post on ThinkProgress notes that the Obama administration is requesting the largest amount of tax dollars since World War II for the Defense Department. It's good to know that it's "the minimum level of funding we can live with.”

The Pentagon’s $553 billion price tag for 2012 actually marks “the largest request ever” since World War II.

In inflation-adjusted dollars, this figure is higher than at any time during the Bush years or during the Cold War.” In fact, the total military budget this year “comes in at a thumping $750 billion — an annual tax of more than $7,000 on every household in the country.”

Just imagine the kind of investment in our country that could be made if every household could put even half of that $7,000 back into their own pockets. Instead, it's spent on the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about 50 years ago.

This is the budget monster that needs to be starved. Our country needs to stop using the military to secure the business interests of private corporations and return to using it to simply and solely defend its own territory. Among other benefits, doing so will go a very long way to getting federal spending under control.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-17T01:00:00.005-05:00

Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.
- François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld

WWD: Mad Elf Ale - Tröegs Brewing

2011-02-16T13:00:00.048-05:00

What we're drinking: Mad Elf Ale from the Tröegs Brewing Company in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Where we got it: Wine Works in Springfield, Ohio.

We opened this mirthful concoction over the holidays, which is the most appropriate time to pour a snifter or three. It's a delicious winter warmer to be savored and enjoyed. The alcohol (11% ABV) is nicely hidden behind the malts, sugars, and fruits, but there to make it drink more like a brandy than a beer.

Will we be drinking this again?: We're pretty sure there's still a bottle left in the back of the fridge. It's not going to stay there much longer.

Quote of the Day

2011-02-16T01:00:00.007-05:00

Adventure is rarely determined by the destination you choose, but by the method of travel and the route you take to get there.
- Willie Weir