The Cow Tax Causing a Stink

by  Brittany Smith

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), proposing new rules for greenhouse gas emissions. If passed the new rules would mean that the EPA would have sole power to regulate greenhouse gases and define what constitutes as a greenhouse gas.

Under the proposed rule businesses that use fossil fuels would be regulated, products and buildings would have requirements and even farm animals would be subject to taxes.

So far this new rule -- which would have enormously negative effects on our economy -- has sat on the back burner. But under an Obama administration, with the environment a hot button issue, the new rules could become a reality. That's why some in Congress are taking steps to try and stop action before it happens.

H.R. 391 is a bill being spearheaded by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). This amendment to The Clean Air Act would provide that greenhouse gases are not subject to regulation by the EPA.

Blackburn is concerned that the rules proposed by the ANPR would have devastating effects on all taxpayers, but farmers in particular. Blackburn made it clear that "everybody would be subject to this."

Since cows produce a certain amount of methane. And methane would be regulated under The Clean Air Act, then cows and pigs would be subject to a tax. Blackburn said projections she has seen suggest that for dairy cows the tax would be about $175 a head, $20 per pig and $88 for beef stock.

Plus, a tax on farmers would also mean something to consumers. Blackburn said, "the cost of milk is going to go up and all of your dairy products."

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30738

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What would AIG's $62 billion loss buy?

The monumental quarterly loss revealed by U.S. insurance giant AIG of $62 billion is the largest in corporate history, amounting to about $460,000 per minute. The loss caused jaws to hit the floor around the world and left us wondering, what else would $62 billion buy?

1. It could pay off the combined national debts of China, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, according to 2008 estimates by the CIA Factbook, and still have plenty left over for a good night out.

2. Shareholders could use the money they lost to buy a great fleet of planes. $62 billion would buy almost 250 Boeing 747 jumbos at about $250 million each, although they would need plenty left over to run them.

3. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II might not be moving any time soon, but the money could buy 46 Buckingham Palaces, according to a 2008 estimate of its market value by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. And still leave some remaining to buy her weekend retreat, Windsor Castle.

4. AIG shareholders might wish a black hole would swallow up the company's executives so why not send them into space? At $30 million a go, you could send 2,000 of them to the International Space Station -- and back if you so wished.

5. The world's 10 top-earning celebrities, including J.K. Rowling, Oprah Winfrey and 50 Cent, would only have to work for 40 years to repay AIG's losses.

6. The money would provide the income for 210 seasons of the world's richest football club, Manchester United. Although not if the players crashed their cars every week.

7. Divided equally, America's population of 303 million people would have to pay $204 each to repay AIG's losses.

8. Given an average used car price of $13,900 in the United States and an average car length of 5 meters, $62 billion will buy enough of them to create a traffic jam from New York to Beijing AND back.

9. AIG lost $460,000 per minute -- which would pay about half the annual pension of former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin.

10. If you exchanged the $62 billion losses for dollar bills the cash would carpet an estimated 595 square kilometers -- the same approximate area occupied by Baghdad.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/03/02/markets.whatlossbuys/index.html?eref=rss_latest

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Me travel?

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No Action Comics

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The Third Interstate Highway System

And a few Words About Taxes

 

by Andrew Tobias

 

Be honest:

 

Is the reason you're not investing in stocks these days (a) the prospect of having to pay 15% capital gains tax?  Or (b) the fear of further losses?  (Well, or – c – that you don't have any money?)

 

Is the reason you don't start a new business that (a) if it made you a lot of money you'd have to pay a lot of taxes?  Or that (b) you can't get anyone to risk the funds you need to finance it?

 

Is the reason you don't hire new workers that (a) you're paying so much in taxes?  Or that (b) with business down so much, you don't need them?

 

Is the reason you're not spending money as freely as you used to that (a) your taxes are too high?  Or that (b) you're afraid of losing your job?  (Well, or – c – that you've lost half your net worth and suddenly realize you'd better get serious about saving for a decent retirement?)

 

Is the reason you're unemployed that (a) taxes are too high to make you want a job?  Or that (b) you've sent out 400 resumes and called every connection you have, but no one's hiring.

 

If the answer to all – or any – of these questions is (a), then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and his fellow Republicans may have a point in trashing the President's strategy and pushing tax cuts to get us out of this mess. 

 

Otherwise, can we please stop with that? 

 

http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/090226.html

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New charges on Ryanair

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Kellogg's Stock Takes Big Hit After Phelps Bong Controversy

Posted in Chronicle Blog by Scott Morgan

I'm no expert on the stock market, but this doesn't look good for Kellogg's:

Kellogg Co. Stock -- February 2009:

As the chart shows, the company's stock took an immediate dive following its decision to drop Michael Phelps over the infamous bong hit photo. What began as a coordinated boycott by drug reform organizations quickly escalated into a full-blown media frenzy as major news outlets picked up the story. Pot-friendly websites like Digg.com began directing massive traffic to news coverage that was critical of Kellogg's anti-marijuana posturing, thereby increasing the campaign's visibility among likely supporters.

The cumulative impact of all this negative publicity is helpfully illustrated by The Vanno Reputation Index, which monitors the public image of leading corporations:

Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it's ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company's reputation. [Business Insider]

In the current economic climate, it would be silly to think we're solely responsible for Kellogg's falling stock. Still, the Vanno data clearly shows that we've dealt a substantial blow to the company's reputation at the worst possible time. Whether or not we actually had a considerable impact on Kellogg's bottom line is beside the point. What matters is that we sent an unprecedented message to corporate America that reefer madness is bad for business.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/kelloggstock

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Scientists' stem cell breakthrough ends ethical dilemma

Experts in Britain and Canada find way to make stem cells without destroying embryos

by Ian Sample

Scientists have found a way to make an almost limitless supply of stem cells that could safely be used in patients while avoiding the ethical dilemma of destroying embryos.

In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.

The work has been hailed as a major step forward by scientists and welcomed by pro-life organisations, who called on researchers to halt other experiments which use stem cells collected from embryos made at IVF clinics.

Sir Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep and heads the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University where the work was done, said: "This is a significant step in the right direction. The team has made great progress and combining this work with that of other scientists working on stem cell differentiation, there is hope that the promise of regenerative medicine could soon be met."

Stem cells have the potential to be turned into any tissue in the body, an ability that has led researchers to believe they could be used to make "spare parts" to replace diseased and damaged organs and treat conditions as diverse as Parkinson's disease, diabetes and spinal cord injury.

Because the cells can be made from a patient's own skin, they carry the same DNA and so could be used without a risk of being rejected by the immune system.

Scientists showed they could make stem cells from adult cells more than a year ago, but the cells could never be used in patients because the procedure involved injecting viruses that could cause cancer. Overcoming the problem has been a major stumbling block in efforts to make stem cells fulfil their promise of transforming the future of medicine.

Now, scientists at the universities of Edinburgh and Toronto have found a way to achieve the same feat without using viruses, making so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell therapies a realistic prospect for the first time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/01/stem-cells-breakthrough

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Americans can do anything

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Republicans against tax cuts!

Political Irony

Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics

One of the interesting ironies about the economic stimulus bill that just passed is that by most any measure it is the largest tax cut in US history. It includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years. In comparison, Bush's largest tax cuts (in 2004/2005) totaled $231 billion.

So why did the Republicans just vote overwhelmingly against the largest tax cut in history? Obama's tax cuts are aimed mostly at the middle class, families and people who work. While Bush's tax cuts primarily benefited the rich.

http://politicalirony.com/2009/02/15/republicans-against-tax-cuts/

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Red states consume more porn?

Posted by David Pescovitz

According to a new Harvard Business School study, eight of the top ten states in terms of online porn consumption were ones where McCain won in the presidential election. Professor Benjamin Edelman analyzed anonymised credit cards receipts from a large online porn company. Based on their limited data, the largest consumer is Utah. Other interesting possible correlations emerged too that Edelman outlines in his paper, "Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?" published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. From New Scientist:

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

"Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers" (New Scientist),

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The message: The Rebuttal:

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REVEALED: 'There was no Cabinet debate in run-up to war,' says Short as Government refuses to release minutes

By Simon Walters

"...the main reason for the 'scandalous' decision not to publish the minutes was not to protect confidential discussions about the war, but to cover up the fact there was no such discussion. At the last Cabinet meeting, no debate on the legality of the war was allowed and Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, said brusquely: 'That's it.'"

The Government is refusing to release minutes of Cabinet meetings before the Iraq War because they would reveal there was no discussion on the issue.

Details surrounding two crucial meetings on the eve of the conflict were laid bare for the first time yesterday when former Cabinet Minister Clare Short, who was present at both, gave a full account of what happened.

She told The Mail on Sunday the main reason for the 'scandalous' decision not to publish the minutes was not to protect confidential discussions about the war, but to cover up the fact there was no such discussion.

At the last Cabinet meeting, no debate on the legality of the war was allowed and Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, said brusquely: 'That's it.'

The official records would also put an end to claims by Gordon Brown's supporters that, in private, he had grave doubts about the war, said Ms Short. In fact, he led the Cabinet campaign to accuse France of sabotaging British and American attempts to win United Nations support for the attack on Saddam Hussein.

'It is extraordinary when you hear people like Jack Straw say that the Cabinet minutes cannot be published because you have to preserve Cabinet confidentiality and robust decision-making,' said Ms Short, who resigned as International Development Secretary after the war.

'The bitter irony is that what they are doing is concealing the fact there was no robust decision-making. The minutes will reveal there was no real Cabinet discussion about the Iraq War. That is the real scandal.'

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40354

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Your Wealth Is Not Your Standard of Living

By Scott Burns

Here's a challenging thought: Things aren't as bad as they seem.

Since there is plenty of bad news out there, how can I say this?

We see things dark and hopeless because we are looking at the world through a wealth window, not an income window. Wealth changes faster than income. It also changes more than income. But when push comes to shove, the standard of living that most Americans enjoy is determined by flows of income and benefits, not wealth.

The wealth destruction figures, which are reported ad nauseam, are scary.

• Home prices are down enough that one homeowner in six is "upside down"--- they owe more than their house is worth.
• According to the Case-Shiller indexes, home prices have declined about 25 percent in the 20 largest urban areas since the July 2006 market peak.
• The Federal Reserve consumer balance sheet figures showed that Americans lost $7 trillion between the third quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2008, a decline of 11 percent. When the figures for the first quarter of 2009 are released in June, we will probably learn that we've collectively lost over $10 trillion.
• The recently released figures from the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances estimate that since the survey was done, we've all lost enough wealth that our collective net worth is below what we had when the 2004 survey was done.

It's all very scary. But let's ask a rude question: Has your standard of living dropped by 20 percent? Has it fallen by 25 percent? Unless you've lost your job or lost your house, the answer is no. You may be worried. You may feel poorer. You may be poorer. But your standard of living hasn't dropped much. More important, it probably won't.

http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2009/02/27/your-wealth-is-not-your-standard-of-living.aspx

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Newspapers on the couch

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As banks tighten lending, borrowers turn to mafia

The Mafia and its loan sharks, nearly everyone agrees, smell blood in the troubled waters.

By Mary Jordan

ROME — When the bills started piling up and the banks wouldn't lend, the white-haired art dealer in the elegant tweed jacket said he drove to the outskirts of Rome and knocked on the rusty steel door of a shipping container.

A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two big pockets, one stuffed with checks and the other with cash. The wad of bills he handed over came at 120 percent annual interest.

As banks stop lending amid the global financial crisis, the likes of Mauro are increasingly becoming the face of Italian finance. The Mafia and its loan sharks, nearly everyone agrees, smell blood in the troubled waters.

"It's a fantastic time for the Mafia. They have the cash," said Antonio Roccuzzo, the author of books on organized crime. "The Mafia has enormous liquidity. It may be the only Italian 'company' without any cash problem."

At a time when businesses most need loans as they struggle with falling sales, rising debt and impending bankruptcy, Italian banks have "absolutely closed the purse strings," said Gian Maria Fara, the president of Eurispes, a private research institute.

That is great news for loan sharks. Confesercenti, the national shopkeepers association, estimates 180,000 businesses recently have turned to them in desperation. Although some shady lenders are freelancers turning profits on others' hard luck, very often the neighborhood tough offering fat rolls of cash is connected to the Mafia, the group said.

"Office workers, middle-class people, owners of fruit stands, flower stalls are all becoming their victims. ... We have never seen this happen," said Lino Busa, a top Confesercenti official.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008801000_mafia02.html

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Iraqi museum reopens six years after looting

BAGHDAD - Iraq's restored National Museum reopened yesterday with a red-carpet gala in the heart of Baghdad nearly six years after looters carried away priceless antiquities as American troops largely stood by in the chaos of the city's fall.

The ransacking of the museum became a symbol for critics of Washington's post-invasion strategy and its inability to maintain order as Saddam Hussein's security network disintegrated.

But Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Maliki chose to look ahead - calling the reopening another milestone in Baghdad's slow return to stability .

"It was a dark age that Iraq passed through," Maliki said at a dedication ceremony. "This spot of civilisation has had its share of destruction."

The museum - which holds artefacts from the Stone Age through the Babylonian, Assyrian and Islamic periods - opened to the public on Monday, but only for organised tours at first, officials said.

"We have ended the black wind [of violence] and have started the reconstruction process," Maliki told hundreds of officials and guardians of Iraq's rich cultural heritage as Iraqi soldiers with red berets stood guard.Once the home of one of the world's leading collections of artefacts, the museum fell victim to bands of thieves who rampaged through the capital after the Americans captured Baghdad in April 2003. It was among many institutions looted across Iraq, including universities and cultural offices. But the richness of the museum's collection - and its importance as the caretaker of Iraq's historical identity - brought outcry around the world.

United States troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticised for not protecting the treasures at the museum and other cultural institutions like the national library and the Saddam Art Centre, a museum of modern Iraqi art.

When asked at the time why US troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, then-Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld famously said: "Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10558492

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New employee

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Black citizens have reported a disturbing 350% increase in interracial high-fiving since January 20

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Holder Vows To End Raids On Medical Marijuana Clubs

 

 

by Ryan Grim

 

Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Wednesday that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law. His declaration is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, and marks a major shift from the previous administration.

After the inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continued to carry out such raids, despite Obama's promise. Holder was asked if those raids represented American policy going forward.

"No," he said. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally and technically and by law my boss now. What he said during the campaign is now American policy."

The exchange takes place at about the 25:00 mark here.

Holder's declaration is a high point for the movement to legalize medical marijuana, which has been growing for decades despite federal hostility.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/26/holder-vows-to-end-raids_n_170119.html

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Stimulus

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Time to rethink US sanctions on Cuba: top Republican senator

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The time is right for reevaluating US sanctions on Cuba, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says in a new report, calling for allowing Cuba to buy US goods on credit, US media reported Sunday.

Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana's opinions are attached to a report due to be released Monday that could add fuel to momentum toward change in almost five decades of US policy seeking to isolate Cuba, the Americas' only communist country.

The United States and Cuba do not have full diplomatic relations. And Washington has had a full economic embargo on Havana since 1962.

Former US president George W. Bush in recent years however allowed Cuba to purchase US food, as long as it was purchased in cash. US food sales to Cuba have surged, but US farm producers would sell much more if Cuba could get credit for its purchases.

The report due out Monday stops short of recommending an end to the US embargo, The Washington Post reported.

Lugar supports "lifting Bush administration restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, reinstituting formal bilateral cooperation on drug interdiction and migration, and allowing Cuba to buy US agricultural products on credit," the Post said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised a "review" of Cuba policy without providing details.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090222/pl_afp/uscubapoliticssanctionsdiplomacy;_ylt=ArhURdqV3.jZZQCWIXlYPY.yFz4D

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Yes We Scan

Prepared Statement of Carl Malamud

When FDR was elected president, Augustus E. Giegengack, a working printer and regular leather apron man was inspired to public service, aspiring to be be appointed Public Printer of the United States, head of the Government Printing Office.

Augustus E. Giegengack

Give it up for Gus in this 3-part New Yorker Series.

Giegengack didn't know FDR, he didn't run in those circles. In WWI, he was the printer for Stars and Stripes, later on he ran operations for other print shops. So, to make his case, he went on the Rotary Club circuit in up-state New York and gave talks about his vision for the GPO. At the end of each talk, Augustus asked people to send him their letters of endorsement. Pretty soon he had a pile of 200 letters.

Gus Giegengack took those letters, bound them up real pretty, and sent them to the White House. He got the job, and went on to become the greatest public printer since Ben Franklin, printer to the pre-united states.

Gus had the gumption to go for the gold, and I am inspired by his example to tell you my vision for the GPO, an agency which opened its doors the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, an agency which has worked to "Keep America Informed" for 148 years.

If I were given the honor to be nominated by the President and the further honor to be confirmed by the Senate, my platform for revitalizing the GPO and rebooting .gov is spelled out in in a detailed series of policy papers submitted to the Presidential Transition Team.

Please allow me to highlight a few of the items that I think we all need to pay attention to, and I invite you to contact me so we can continue to talk about these issues. Publication is a two-way street, and I hope this is the beginning of a long-term dialogue about the public domain and how the United States of America presents itself to the world:

Carl Malamud

To endorse Carl Malamud for the office of Public Printer of the United States, comment on any blog post or, send your endorsement or any questions directly to Carl by email:
     carl@media.org
or by twitter:
     @carlmalamud

Thank you for your support.

1. America's Operating System. The Government Printing Office serves all 3 branches of government and prints the Official Journals of Government. GPO should lead the effort to make all primary legal materials produced by the U.S. readily available. [ more ]

2. Librarians. Librarians are the bedrock of the public domain and the defenders of our fundamental right to access knowledge. GPO should work even more closely with our libraries and reform the Federal Depository Library Program to support them better. [ more ]

3. Jobs. As commodity printing goes the way of the PDF file and the copy machine, GPO must retrain and refocus its workforce, working with the unions and the employees so we may face the challenges of the future. If nominated and confirmed, I would work to establish a United States Publishing Academy, reviving the grand tradition of GPO being in the lead for workforce development, vocational training for students, and educating the rest of the U.S. government on how to print and publish effectively. [ more ]

4. Security. GPO produces passports and other secure documents. The current design for passports uses an RFID chip, which means that an American can be picked out of a crowd merely by having a passport in their pocket. If nominated and confirmed, I would ask security expert Bruce Schneier to form a Blue-Ribbon Commission to reexamine the design of passports and other secure documents so we can better protect the privacy and security of all Americans.

Benjamin Franklin

Learn about Ben Franklin
—Our 1st Public Printer—
at the Library of Congress.

5. Jobs. The GPO workforce includes some of the best master printers, bookbinders, and other professionals of the publishing profession. With our cultural institutions, writers and other artists, and using the historical archives of the United States, the GPO should create more materials for the public domain, both as fully produced books as well as freely available master files for others to use and remix. [ more ]

6. Rebooting .Gov. There is no reason why the U.S. Government should not be one of the top 10 destinations on the Internet! GPO should work with the rest of the U.S. Government to radically change how we present information on the Internet. Some of the initiatives would include installing a cloud for .gov to use, enshrining principles of bulk data distribution into legislation, and a massive upgrade in the government's video capabilities. [ more ]

7. Full Transparency. GPO serves all 3 branches of government. As the nation's service bureau, GPO must be fully transparent in its own financial affairs and should be a forceful and effective advocate for the public domain. Most importantly, the GPO must be fully transparent to its clients—the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary. If nominated and confirmed, I would pledge to serve on the front lines of customer service, working to understand the needs of our clients and the public.

http://yeswescan.org/

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Mardi Gras Obama

A carnival float caricaturing U.S. President Barack Obama lifting the Statue of Liberty is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Mainz, Germany, on Monday.

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Authors´ Guild vs. reality: Kindles and read-aloud

Posted by Cory Doctorow

 

In yesterday's New York Times, Author's Guild president Roy Blount Jr. rails against the Kindle's text-to-speech feature, opining that it infringes copyright because it provides a "derivative work" by creating audio editions of your textfiles. Blount says that eventually, text-to-speech will be so darned perfect, the audiobook market will be destroyed by it, so he aims to do something about it right now.

He doesn't actually say what that thing is. Presumably, he'd like Amazon to simply remove the feature. But if you take Blount at his word, then we can only assume the feature will spread to other platforms -- does he think that iPhones shouldn't be able to read your email to you as you jog? And if it can read your email, what's to stop it from reading your ebooks? Blount implies that there's a simple solution to his technological problem, but if you truly believe that it should be illegal to ask software to produce audio of copyrighted works, then Blount's lining himself up to fight the entire future of technology that can convert text to speech.

Continuing to take Blount at his word, let's assume that he's right on the copyright question, namely, that:

1. Converting text to speech infringes copyright

2. Providing the software that is capable of committing copyright infringement makes you liable for copyright infringement, too

1. is going to be sticky -- the Author's Guild is setting itself up to fight the World Blind Union, phone makers, free software authors, ebook makers, and a whole host of people engaged in teaching computers to talk.

But 2. is really hairy. If Blount believes that making a device capable of infringing copyright is the same as infringing copyright (something refuted by the Supreme Court in Betamax in 1984, the decision that legalized VCRs), then email, web-browsers, computers, photocopiers, cameras, and typewriters are all illegal, too.

Time and again, the Author's Guild has shown itself to be the epitome of a venal special interest group, the kind of grasping, foolish posturers that make the public cynically assume that the profession it represents is a racket, not a trade. This is, after all, the same gang of weirdos who opposed the used book trade going online.

I think there's plenty not to like about the Kindle -- the DRM, the proprietary file format, both imposed on authors and publishers even if they don't want it -- and about Amazon's real audiobook section, Audible (the DRM -- again, imposed on authors and publishers even if they'd prefer not to use it). But if there's one thing Amazon has demonstrated, it's that it plans on selling several bazillion metric tons of audiobooks. They control something like 90 percent of the market. To accuse them of setting out to destroy it just doesn't pass the giggle-test.

One of the most powerful weapons in the publishing industry's arsenal is that it isn't the record or film industry. By and large, publishing is undertaken by bookish people who love books and bookselling and readers and writers. By and large, writers get a decent deal from their publishers -- especially relative to recording artists; most writers don't have to sign over their copyrights, don't have the promotion of their books deducted from their royalties, etc. By and large, publishers don't sue tool-makers or accuse readers of being crooks.

Unlike the record and film industries, who seem bent on doing everything in their power to build the moral case for ripping them off -- to convince the public that they are a passel of greedy, clueless technophobes who deserve to have their industries killed, if only to protect the 21st century from them -- there are very few people who feel this way about publishing and authorship.

Unless, that is, groups like the Authors' Guild continue to make us all out to be cut from the same cloth as media execs like Universal Music's Larry Kenswil, who once bellowed "FAIR USE IS THE LAST REFUGE OF THE SCOUNDREL" at me from a stage at the RSA in London.

Dear Mr Blount: you don't represent me. You don't represent the future of authorship. You and your group are jeopardizing the future of authorship and of society with your petty little grabs and ridiculous posturing. Cut it out before someone gets hurt.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/authors-guild-vs-rea.html

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Poll: Majority Doesn’t Want Obama To Be Bipartisan

Greg Sargent's blog

You routinely hear it asserted that the public wants bipartisan comity in Washington, but some striking numbers buried in the internals of the new New York Times poll find that in the current context, precisely the opposite is true:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Barack Obama right now — working in a bipartisan way with Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign:

Working bipartisan way: 39%

Sticking to policies: 56%

So a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with our without Republican support. Meanwhile, a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now — working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress or sticking to Republican policies?

Working bipartisan way: 79%

Sticking to policies: 17%

I'm not sure I've ever seen poll numbers suggest this clearly that the public has no interest in bipartisanship for its own sake. The public doesn't seem to care about the preoccupations of process-obsessed Beltway pundits, and seems to be looking at the "bipartisanship" question through the prism of what they want their leaders to accomplish in policy terms.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/poll-majority-doesnt-want-obama-to-be-bipartisan/

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Anti "clean coal" short by the Coen brothers

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U.S. Energy Department Cannot Account for Nuclear Materials at 15 Locations

By Katherine McIntire Peters

WASHINGTON -- A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records.

That's just one of the findings of a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."

Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.

"Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant," the report says. "Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards."

Auditors also found that waste processing facilities could not locate or explain the whereabouts of significant quantities of uranium and other nuclear material that Energy Department records showed they held. In another case, Energy officials had no record of the fact that one academic institution had loaned a 32-gram plutonium-beryllium source to another institution.

http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090224_7895.php

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Clinton's U.S. bond push could fill China's jails

by AMITY SHLAES

The Obama administration is too young to be cynical. Yet one of its leading figures has just struck a deal so cynical as to qualify as Nixonian.

That's the deal Hillary Clinton struck with the Chinese leadership.

The new secretary of state materialized in Beijing to ask the Chinese to shore up the tottering American economy by buying more U.S. bonds. On her way there, she made clear what we trade for China's economic support: The U.S. will henceforward downgrade human-rights priorities.

The ongoing push for such rights in China, she told reporters, "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate crisis and the security crisis." (Read: can't interfere with bond auctions.)

The U.S. has long been uneven in its attitude toward China's abuse of its own citizens. Still, Clinton's move constitutes a devastating shift. It is a special betrayal for the hundreds of lawyers, journalists and rights advocates whom U.S. presidents, Democratic and Republican, encouraged to take the lead in reforming their country.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_shlaes&sid=a4wok76PhtdA

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A million dollars a day

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Denver's Rocky Mountain News publishing last edition

The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper and a Denver fixture since 1859, will publish its last edition today, and industry analysts said it won't be the last to be pulled under by financial woes.

By The Washington Post and The Associated Press

Rocky Mountain News employees react Thursday as executives announce its closing,

which will leave Denver a one-newspaper town.

The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper and a Denver fixture since 1859, will publish its last edition today, and industry analysts said it won't be the last to be pulled under by financial woes.

E.W. Scripps officials said Thursday that closing the Rocky, which has won four Pulitzer Prizes in the past decade, leaves Denver, like most U.S. cities, a one-newspaper town. The officials said the newspaper lost $16 million last year and the company was unable to find a buyer.

These are dark days for the newspaper business. Hearst threatened this week to close the San Francisco Chronicle unless major budget cuts are imposed or a buyer is found, and is prepared to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if it cannot be sold before April. Gannett is looking for a buyer for the Tucson Citizen in Arizona.

Four owners of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 ½ months. This past weekend, there were separate bankruptcy filings by New Haven (Conn.) Register publisher Journal Register Co. and by the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008791505_rocky27.html

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Yet another modest proposal to save papers

by MIKE HENDERSON

...the proposal:

The federal government would create an agency pertaining to online news organizations unaffiliated with other media entities (print, television, radio, etc.). It could be that such a gesture would be made easier given an administration led by a president far more cyber-savvy than any of his predecessors (combined). The agency, a minimal bureaucracy in size and budget, could be called the Federal Journalism Administration. It would have just three functions: to collect revenue, to audit online-only news organizations and to distribute revenue, to wit:

Collection. The administration would receive money from two sources. Both are directly related to online news organizations; each makes billions not just by being conduits for entertainment but for conveying news and other information. The administration would receive all money from a 5 percent surcharge on the sales in the United States of all new computer hardware; it also would receive the 5 percent surcharge added to the fees we pay to Internet providers. (The latter could be allowed to set the surcharge at, say, 6 percent, keeping the extra 1 percent for their trouble.) A computer retailing for $800 would then cost $840; Internet service of $50 a month would cost $52.50 or $53.

Auditing and distribution. FJA auditors would determine the amount of money distributed to online-news organizations (definition pending) according to a formula including volume of traffic to a news website and percentage of original, staff-produced content. An online-only P-I might carry 100 percent original content and might, because of this, generate a high volume of traffic to the site. If so, it would qualify for more of the distributed money than, say, Crosscut.com (which -- full disclosure -- I have written for since the site first posted in April of 2007). This is because Crosscut, as it now exists, has a lot of linked content to go with its original journalism. Those at recently launched news organizations such as Crosscut would have the incentive to enhance quality by striving to provide a growing percentage of original content.

It's worth noting that such a plan would tend to reward news organizations monetarily precisely as they have been remunerated for the better part of two centuries. The unalterable formula for fiscal success has been that advertising (generating perhaps 80 percent of newspapers' revenue) grows with circulation and circulation is a function of quality (or the perception of quality: some like The New York Times; others prefer the Post). Staffers at this online-only P-I, then, like those at Crosscut, would have the incentive to produce quality because it would bring more traffic to the website and thus generate more from the FJA pot of distribution funds.

Such a cyber P-I also would be welcome to create and maintain its own stream of advertising revenue. Gone, of course, would be a lot of the expense of production and distribution (ink, paper, delivery trucks, etc., now provided to the P-I by the Times under service/revenue/cost-sharing terms of a joint operating agreement).

Would such a plan produce enough money to save 150 journalists' jobs at the P-I? It might. The U.S. Department of Commerce indicates that $150 billion was spent on computer hardware in 2007. At about the same time PEW/Internet reported that 150 million individuals in the U.S. subscribed to online services. If 90 million American homes have Internet service, then Americans may be paying $5 billion a year for the utility. Conservatively, then, such a plan might generate -- fairly painlessly and cleanly -- as much as $7.5 billion a year to help support online-only journalism. Paying 150 quality journalists each $60,000 a year (benefits included) each is $9 million, less than a third of what Alex Rodriquez is slated to make this baseball season.

How many other online-only news enterprises could be supported with the rest of the $7.5 billion? Well, divide it by $70,000. The sum would support about 107,000, interesting given that the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported less than a year ago that there were at the time only 52,000 working journalists in the U.S. A lot of them make a lot less than $60,000 a year; many facing unemployment would gladly accept less.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/401558_hendersononline27.html

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The last newspaper to fold

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Support the Troops

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Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote

The answer to the problems of free speech is always more free speech

by Johann Hari

 

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

 

Here's how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be "respected" – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them.

This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics – Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim – I am accused of "prejudice", and I am not alone. But my only "prejudice" is in favour of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence none of us can pass.

That's why I wrote: "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman – one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country – thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth – especially in a democracy of a billion people riven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-despite-these-riots-i-stand-by-what-i-wrote-1608059.html

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Do we still pretend that we abide by treaties?

by Glenn Greenwald

On Friday in Salon, Joe Conason argued that there should be no criminal investigations of any kind for Bush officials "who authorized torture or other outrages in the 'war on terror'."  Instead, Conason suggests that there be a presidential commission created that is "purely investigative," and Obama should "promis[e] a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly."  So, under this proposal, not only would we adopt an absolute bar against prosecuting war criminals and other Bush administration felons, we would go in the other direction and pardon them from any criminal liability of any kind.

I've already written volumes about why immunizing political officials from the consequences for their lawbreaking is both destructive and unjust -- principally:  the obvious incentives which such immunity creates (and, for decades, has been creating) for high-level executive branch officials to break the law and, even worse, the grotesque two-tiered system of justice we've implemented in this country (i.e., the creation of an incomparably harsh prison state for ordinary Americans who commit even low-level offenses as contrasted with what Conason calls, approvingly, "the institutional reluctance in Washington to punish political offenders").  Rather than repeat those arguments, I want to focus on an issue that pro-immunity advocates such as Conason simply never address.

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994.  When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)).  And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute:  "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).  By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/16/treaties/index.html

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