The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism

by Henry A. Giroux

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: geishaboy500, marttj)

We live at a time that might be appropriately called the age of the disappearing intellectual, a disappearance that marks with disgrace a particularly dangerous period in American history. While there are plenty of talking heads spewing lies, insults and nonsense in the various media, it would be wrong to suggest that these right-wing populist are intellectuals. They are neither knowledgeable nor self-reflective, but largely ideological hacks catering to the worst impulses in American society. Some obvious examples would include John Stossel calling for the repeal of that "section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bans discrimination in public places." And, of course, there are the more famous corporate-owned talking heads such as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, all of whom trade in reactionary world views, ignorance, ideological travesties and outlandish misrepresentations - all the while wrapping themselves in the populist creed of speaking for everyday Americans.

In a media scape and public sphere that view criticism, dialog and thoughtfulness as a liability, such anti-intellectuals abound, providing commentaries that are nativist, racist, reactionary and morally repugnant. But the premium put on ignorance and the disdain for critical intellectuals is not monopolized by the dominant media, it appears to have become one of the few criteria left for largely wealthy individuals to qualify for public office. One typical example is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who throws out inanities such as labeling the Obama administration a "gangster government." Bachmann refuses to take critical questions from the press because she claims that they unfairly focus on her language. She has a point. After all, it might be difficult to support statements such as the claim that "the US government used the census information to round up the Japanese [Americans] and put them in concentration camps." Another typical example can be found in Congressman Joe Barton's apology to BP for having to pay for damages to the government stemming from its disastrous oil spill.

This "upscaling of ignorance" gets worse. Richard Cohen, writing in The Washington Post about Sen. Michael Bennett, was shocked to discover that he was actually well-educated and smart but had to hide his qualifications in his primary campaign so as to not undermine his chance of being re-elected. Cohen concludes that in politics, "We have come to value ignorance."

http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwinism61287

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Harvey Pekar Dies; Authored 'American Splendor'

by Neda Ulaby

Comic book writer Harvey Pekar was found dead Monday morning at his home in Cleveland. He immortalized that city in his work, which critics compared to that of Chekhov and Dostoyevsky.

The cause of death is not yet known, but Pekar suffered from prostate cancer, high blood pressure, asthma and depression. He was 70 years old.

Pekar was a shlub, as ordinary as a pair of old twill pants — the sort of thing he usually wore. But he translated his life into art: comic books, plays, an opera, even a movie. The 2003 film American Splendor was an adaptation of Pekar's autobiographical comic series of the same name; it revealed the darkly prosaic life of a file clerk who yells at old ladies in the supermarket, loses his keys, and feels rejected and alone.

His comic ideal was articulated in the film by actor Paul Giamatti, who portrayed Pekar: "There's no idealized sh - -. This is the real thing, man."

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128465797

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A handy visual guide to who plays who on the Simpsons

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The Medium Is the Medium

By DAVID BROOKS

Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.

Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students' test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the "summer slide" — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.

This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power of books. We already knew, from research in 27 countries, that kids who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer and do better. This new study suggests that introducing books into homes that may not have them also produces significant educational gains.

Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09brooks.html

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Agent provocateurs of Russia

© Matt Bors

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Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona

By Dana Milbank

 

Jan Brewer has lost her head.

The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she announced on local television.

Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they're also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.

But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.

The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.

Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.

This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they've had to step in because federal officials aren't doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070902342.html

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Anti-immigrants don't know their own history

 

By Robert O'Connor

In their quixotic attempt to create their shining white city on a hill, anti-immigrants have decided to try and remove citizenship from "anchor babies" - children born to migrant workers in the US, who are US citizens, and thus eligible for various government programs.

This granting of citizenship to children born in the US - regardless of what nationality their parents are - is in the first section of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. That section also bans the denial of rights without due process and forbids states from giving anyone unequal protection of the laws. Good luck at overturning that.

Wil Wilkinson tries defending this in the normally intelligent The Week.

But here's my question: suppose everyone had to earn citizenship the same way immigrants do? You couldn't register for the army, vote, or do any of your civic duties unless you pass the same tests that immigrants do? How would Americans measure up to the standards they place on those wanting to become Americans?

(here's a list of sample questions)

In a 2006 survey held by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, 23% of respondents knew freedom of religion was one of the freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment. 21% thought the right to own a pet was one of them, and 17% thought the right to drive a car was one. Only one tenth of one percent was able to name all five (speech, press, religion, assembly, petition for redress of grievances).

2/3rds of respondents in a later poll couldn't name a single branch of government.

 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Anti-immigrants-don-t-know-by-Robert-O-Connor-100708-51.html

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One Big Thing Congress Can Do to Improve the Economy Before Election Day

 

 

by Robert Creamer

Members of Congress see it in their town meetings, their mail, their polls and focus groups: the voters are angry. Of course at any given time, some set of voters are always unhappy. But right now it's different. Right now most people are unhappy.

The level of anger and unhappiness does not arise from disagreement with some government policy. It is not because they don't like the new health care law, or "big government". Voters are angry and unhappy because from their perspective the economy still stinks. Vast numbers of those who lost their jobs when the recklessness of the Wall Street banks sent the economy over the cliff, are still out of work. Those who are working have experienced stagnant incomes. Everyday Americans are worried about the economic futures of their families.

And it's no wonder. A recent study showed that more than half of Americans have been directly affected by the recession.

When Congress returns from its Fourth of July recess, there are not many things it can actually do to improve the economic picture in the four short months before Election Day. But there is, in fact, one thing Congress can do that will have a big impact right away: pass a jobs bill that provides fiscal relief to state and local government and extends unemployment benefits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/one-big-thing-congress-ca_b_642449.html

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Zombie Social Security lies: Retirement age must be raised because people are living longer

by Susan Gardner

Earlier this week, Ezra Klein voiced a strong argument against raising the age for receiving Social Security benefits to 70:

I'm not surprised to hear there's energy behind pushing the retirement age at which you get full Social Security benefits back to 70. It's been in the discussion for a long time, people have grown comfortable talking about the idea, and perhaps most importantly, it seems like a no-brainer to pundits and politicians who would happily pay you to keep working to age 70, and in fact beyond.

But I've never liked it. The customary justification is that when Social Security was created, people died younger, and so it was never meant to stretch this far in the first place. But that argument works in the other direction, too: Our country has become far richer than the architects of Social Security could have possibly imagined. It would make perfect sense for us to give ourselves more leisure time, if we chose to take it, at the end of our lives.

This is a strong and civilized argument that carries a lot of weight, and one with which I think most progressives can heartily agree. However, there is a stronger argument, not based on an appealing philosophy but on solid statistics, that is getting very, very short shrift in this debate, and it's laid out best by Nancy Altman in her excellent (and highly recommended) history of Social Security, The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble:

Related to issues about retirement age are questions about life expectancy. Many people are under the mistaken impression that Americans receive retirement benefits for considerably longer than they did when the program was created. The misconception results from looking at life expectancies from birth, which have changed dramatically because of the medical success achieved in conquering childhood diseases. But those numbers reflect changes in the numbers of those who survive to retirement, not what happens thereafter. The statistics regarding children distort the overall average ....

For Social Security purposes, the correct question is not how many live to age 65, but rather how long those reaching age 65 live thereafter. Here the numbers are not as dramatic. In 1940, men who survived to age 65 had a remaining life expectancy of 12.7 years. Today, a 65 year old man can expect to live not quite three years longer than he might have in 1940, or 15.3 years beyond reaching age 65. For women, the comparable numbers are 14.7 years beyond age 65 in 1940; 19.6 years in 1990. [Emphasis added.]

Clearly, despite the common misconception that we're all living a dozen or so years longer than the 65-year-old retiree did 70 years ago, it's just not true.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/10/882664/-Zombie-Social-Security-lies:-Retirement-age-must-be-raised-because-people-are-living-longer

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Christianist Professor Calls for Religious McCarthyism

 

Although I've learned not to expect much from the right-leaning Supreme Court, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of their recent decisions. First was Holy See v. John Doe, in which the court upheld a ruling that the Vatican isn't immune from lawsuits over its protection of pedophiles. The second was Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, in which a Christian student group sued a California law school to demand - what else? - the legal right to discriminate against gays.

The law school has a policy that all official student groups must accept all comers and may not turn anyone away on grounds of race, gender, or sexual orientation. The Christian group claimed that they should be able to exclude gays and still receive all the benefits granted to officially recognized student groups: university funding, the use of university facilities for meetings, and the right to use the university's newsletter for their communications. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed:

The court held that the all-comers condition on access to a limited public forum was both reasonable and viewpoint neutral, and therefore did not violate CLS's right to free speech. Nor, in the court's view, did Hastings impermissibly impair CLS's right to expressive association: Hastings did not order CLS to admit any student, nor did the school proscribe any speech; Hastings merely placed conditions on the use of school facilities and funds.

This decision was both simple and reasonable, and is the obvious consequence of state and federal laws forbidding the government to cooperate in discrimination. Since the activity fee that funds student groups is mandatory, Hastings' policy ensures that no student is "forced to fund a group that would reject her as a member". As the court points out, other groups such as fraternities and sororities don't have official school recognition, yet they continue to thrive, and CLS is also still in existence and still holding its own events.

Departing Justice John Paul Stevens summed up the issue at hand in his concurrence, in a praiseworthy reminder that religiously inspired bigotry is no different than any other kind of bigotry:

Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women — or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.

All well and good, and I look forward to this decision being applied across the country.

http://www.daylightatheism.org/2010/07/christianist-professor-calls-for-religious-mccarthyism.html

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Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them

Backlash over threat to outlaw supporters of boycott movement aimed at ending the continued occupation of the West Bank

by Rachel Shabi

A Palestinian woman shouts at an Israeli soldier as clashes erupted with Palestinian protesters on Friday during a demonstration against the expansion of the Israeli settlements at Nabi Salih village near the West Bank City of Ramallah.

Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA

How much a country's leader is paid compared to GDP per person

 

Leaders of the fee world

ON MONDAY July 5th Raila Odinga, Kenya's prime minister, rejected the pay increase he was awarded by the country's parliament last week. MPs had granted Mr Odinga a rise to nearly $430,000 a year, while giving themselves a 25% increase to $161,000. This boost would place Mr Odinga among the highest-paid political leaders in the world. More worryingly, his salary would be some 240 times greater than the country's GDP per person (measured on a purchasing-power parity basis). Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, tops our list of selected leaders' salaries. He is paid more than 40 times the city-state's GDP per person. At the other end of the scale, Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, reaffirms his reputation for saintliness by taking a modest sum from Indian taxpayers.

http://www.economist.com/node/16525240?story_id=16525240

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Palestinian villagers battle plans to wall them in

By Selim Saheb Ettaba

AL-WALAJAH, Palestinian Territories — Omar Hajaj says he will soon be caged "like a zoo animal," with an electric fence encircling his house and his village hemmed in by the notorious West Bank barrier.

The rumble of bulldozers has become a common sound around this Palestinian village on Jerusalem's southern outskirts as earthmovers work on a huge trench which will be filled with towering slabs of concrete.

After years of interruptions, work finally got under way in April to lay the foundations for another stretch of Israel's "security fence" — a section which will completely encircle this southern West Bank village.

At the moment, villagers have more or less open access to the nearby city of Bethlehem. But not for much longer.

"It is the only village in the West Bank that will be completely surrounded by the wall," says Willow Heske, of the Oxfam humanitarian group, which is helping villagers make their voices heard.

Since the 1967 Middle East War, half of Al-Walajah was annexed by Israel as part of municipal Jerusalem, while the other half remained in the West Bank.

The initial route would have sliced the village in two but following intervention by Israel's high court, it was changed to incorporate the rest of the village — with one exception: the Hajaj family.

When the towering concrete wall is erected, it will cut directly through Hajaj's property, leaving half on the Al-Walajah side, and the rest — including his house and nine acres of land — on the Israeli side.

This would normally have given him free access to Jerusalem.

But last week, government officials told Hajaj his property would be hemmed in by an additional barrier — a five-metre (16-feet) high electric fence.

His only way into the village will be via a gate in the concrete wall.

From his house, Hajaj can just make out Jerusalem's biblical zoo — and fears his fate will soon be like that of the animals.

"Anyone one seeing my house closed off will think they are looking at a zoo with caged animals."

http://waronyou.com/topics/palestinian-villagers-battle-plans-to-wall-them-in/

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Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are the Rich

 

By DAVID STREITFELD

No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/business/economy/09rich.html?src=mv

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How Many Workers Can You Hire for the Price of One CEO?

By DOUGLAS MCINTYRE

 

Not all CEOs are as generous as Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs. The company's founder makes a mere $1 a year, while a starting sales associate at one of his Apple stores makes more than $31,200. But Jobs is an anomaly.

Even though the gap between executive and entry-level worker pay has shrunk ever so slightly in the past couple of years, it's still not unusual for the CEO of a large public company to earn more per day than some of his employees earn over the course of an entire year.

Interestingly, some industries have much larger pay gaps than others. In technology, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing, the differences between worker and CEO salaries tend to be smaller, thanks to higher worker pay. In retail and other consumer-facing industries (where employees work directly with consumers to sell a good or provide a service), the gap tends to be bigger, due in part to the low pay of entry-level workers.

We looked at more than a dozen companies where the difference between what the CEO makes and what an entry-level worker makes is unusually large. We obtained the CEO total compensation figures (which include cash, bonuses, stock options and any other perks -- like say a corporate jet), from the most recent proxy statements. Employee salary figures, many of them based on hourly wages, came from the companies, as well as from interviews we conducted with unions and workers themselves.

One CEO stands out on the list. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan (JPM), made "only" $1.3 million largely because of pressure on Wall Street CEOs to keep management compensation low in response to the financial crisis and government bailout. What may be forgotten is that Dimon made over $35 million in 2008 as the global credit system was falling apart along with the JPMorgan stock price.

Don't feel so bad for Jobs, either. He's incredibly wealthy thanks to his Apple stock holdings.

To get a sense of how the CEO of a company you regularly do business with pays his or her employees compared to themselves, we've broken it down for you below:

CVS Caremark (CVS)
Thomas M. Ryan: $30.4 million (2009 Compensation)
Starting Cashier: $8/hour, $20,800/year
One CEO = 1,461 entry-level employees

AT&T (T)
Randall Stephenson: $29.2 million (2009 Compensation)
Starting Sales Associate: $10/hour, $26,000/year
One CEO = 1,123 entry-level employees

The Walt Disney Co. (DIS)
Robert Iger: $29 million (2009 Compensation)
Disneyland Hotel Housekeeper: $10/hour, $26,000/year
One CEO = 1,115 entry-level employees

McDonald's (MCD)
James A. Skinner: $17.6 million (2009 Compensation)
Starting Cashier: $7.25/hour, $18,850/year
One CEO = 933 entry-level employees

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/bxw0Og

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Obama Wouldn’t Have Done This for You

Ed Stein

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A Bozo Idea

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If I weren't white...

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Obama Decried, Then Used, Some Bush Drilling Policies

By NEIL KING JR. And KEITH JOHNSON

Reuters

Choppy seas have limited the ability of 'skimmers' to collect oil in the Deepwater Horizon spill. Above, TMT Group's converted super tanker 'A Whale' in the Gulf on Sunday.

Less than four months after President Barack Obama took office, his new administration received a forceful warning about the dangers of offshore oil drilling.

The alarm was rung by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea, relying on an "irrational" environmental analysis of the risks of offshore drilling.

The April 2009 ruling stunned both the administration and the oil industry, and threatened to delay or cancel dozens of offshore projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite its pro-environment pledges, the Obama administration urged the court to revisit the decision. Politically, it needed to push ahead with conventional oil production while it expanded support for renewable energy.

Another reason: money. In its arguments to the court, the government said that the loss of royalties on the oil, estimated at almost $10 billion, "may have significant financial consequences for the federal government."

The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed its decision and allowed drilling in the Gulf to proceed—including on BP PLC's now-infamous Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The Obama administration's actions in the court case exemplify the dilemma the White House faced in developing its energy policy. In his presidential campaign, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on the oil industry and vowed to support greener energy forms.

But, once in office, President Obama ended up backing offshore drilling, bowing to political and fiscal realties, even as his administration's own scientists and Democratic lawmakers warned about its risks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575342843359124882.html?mod

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Protons are smaller than we thought...could the entire universe be wrong?

 

 

By Alasdair Wilkins

 

Protons are 0.00000000000000003 meters smaller than we thought. That sounds like nothing, but it means one of these things must be true: Undiscovered particles are lurking, quantum mechanics needs recalculating...or the universe is impossible. (Here's hoping it's the first two.)

 

The measurements find that the proton is actually about 4% smaller than what decades of previous experiments had found. This new data, the result of years of testing by a team of European physicists, has left scientists baffled. The mathematics of quantum mechanics rely on some fairly finely tuned values for the measurements of various particles, and unless this discrepancy can be explained the entire discipline is in danger of falling apart. Ingo Sick, a physicist at Switzerland's University of Basel, puts the matter in no uncertain terms:

"It's a very serious discrepancy. There is really something seriously wrong someplace."

Measuring the size of protons can't be done directly, but the laws of quantum mechanics provide a very effective indirect approach. The energy levels that electrons occupy in the atom are partially described by the size of the proton, and physicists have keyed in on this fact to arrive at incredibly accurate measurements of the proton radius. Before this experiment, that figure was thought to be about 0.8768 femtometers, a little less than one quadrillionth of a meter.

 

The new experiment substituted a different subatomic particles for the electrons. Instead, the physicists used the muon, which is very similar to the electron except about 200 times heavier. This much greater relative weight makes them much more sensitive to the effects of protons on their energy level. The research team fired muons at a cloud of hydrogen, displacing the electrons from the atoms and leaving the muons in their place. They then used lasers to figure out the muonic energy levels, and that's how they arrived at their impossible new figure.

 

How impossible? The measurement falls so far outside what the scientists expected that it actually took them six years to even notice it. The first two times they ran the experiment, in 2003 and 2007, they didn't find anything in the tiny range in which they thought the proton radius would be founding. They figured there was something wrong with their laser systems, but on the third try in 2009 they decided to expand the range of where they looked. They quickly found the energy signature far, far away from where they figured it would be.

 

These findings might mean some of the constant values of quantum mechanics are incorrect, which would entail some fairly major recalculating.

 

http://io9.com/5581945/protons-are-smaller-than-we-thoughtcould-the-entire-universe-be-wrong

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American Legacy: The Extrajudicial Killing of Unarmed Peoples by the State

by Justashotaway

One could write a tome on America, race, guns, and justice.  But here, a tome is unnecessary.  These are simple things, really.

Today, in Los Angeles, a jury convicted BART officer Johannes Merhserle of involuntary manslaughter.  Last year, Merhserle shot and killed an unarmed, already subdued black man in the back.  While Oscar Grant lay prostrate on his stomach, with another cop's knee on his neck, Merh tserle drew his pistol, and shot Grant in the back at point blank range.  Grant died in the hospital hours later.  

• Justashotaway's diary :: ::

The death of unarmed civilians at the hands of trigger-happy police officers has become tragically routine.  

In the past year alone, the pages of newspapers around the country are plastered with the same sad story.  

Aaron M. Campbell, shot and killed by police officers in Portland, Oregon.  Unarmed.  While surrendering to police, walking backwards, hands in the air, police opened fire on Campbell with bean-bag rounds.  After being repeatedly struck in the back, Campell reached down to clutch his lower back.  The police officer on the scene immediately opened fire.  In 2007, that same officer was reprimanded for tasering a citizen journalist who was standing in his own front yard, recording the officer's activities.

Steven Eugene Washington was shot and killed by LAPD in March.  When police approached Washington for "looking suspicious", he approached them and - they say - appeared to reach for something around his waistband.  The cops immediately opened fire, striking him in the head.  He died instantly.  Steven was autistic and, his family said, afraid of stranges.  He was unarmed.  

In Virginia, a cop shot and killed David Masters during a routine traffic stop.  He was a retired Army Green Beret.  And he was unarmed. There's dash camera footage of the incident, but the Fairfax police refuse to release that footage to the media.  In fact, they refuse to say anything about the execution of David Masters:

The man who was shot and killed by a Fairfax County police officer Friday did not have a gun, police acknowledged Wednesday, and police again declined to say why the officer fired on the man.

The beat marches on.  

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/8/882838/-American-Legacy:-The-Extrajudicial-Killing-of-Unarmed-Peoples-by-the-State-

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Woman denied health insurance over one-cent shortfall

 

By Daniel Tencer

 

'If this is how you treat people, you need spiritual training'

 

A Colorado single mother of two suffering from leukemia says her health insurer discontinued her coverage because she was one cent short on her premium payment.

According to local news reports, La Rosa Carrington of Colorado Springs says it was her threat to take her story to the media that got North Dakota-based Discovery Benefits to change its mind about the cancellation. She says when the company notified her they were discontinuing her coverage, the letter didn't mention how much she was short.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

"My medical bills are coming in like locusts, and you're holding up my benefits because of one red cent?" an incredulous Carrington said from her hospital bed last week as she recalled her conversation with a customer service rep at Discovery Benefits....

Carrington said she talked twice to a customer service representative, who told her it was policy that the penny be received before the benefits could be reinstated. Write a check or send a money order, Carrington said the representative told her.

"'I'm in the hospital receiving chemotherapy; I can't get you a money order,'" Carrington said she told the rep. "If this is how you treat people, you need spiritual training."

Carrington says she lost her job as an administrator at Alta Colleges in May, and since then she has been receiving benefits under COBRA, which allows her to keep her employer-provided health plan as long as she pays a larger share of the total premium.

Carrington says she calculated her new monthly premium herself, and sent Discovery Benefits a check for $165.15. But when she called to ask how much she was short, she was told the payment due was $165.16.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0707/woman-denied-insurance-one-cent/

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Let Steele Speak

by E.J. Dionne Jr.

Washington - It's easy to understand why Democrats want Michael Steele to stay in the news. The Republican National Committee chairman is a wonderful distraction, a constant source of gaffes, laughs, clarifications and denials.

But Steele recently scored a victory of sorts, even though you wouldn't know it from the coverage: His comments on Afghanistan got Democrats to recite GOP talking points from the Bush era. Of course, those can be turned against anyone in either party who dares to question the direction of the war.

The most incendiary words came from the indefatigable Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic National Committee spokesman, who accused Steele of "betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan."

Woodhouse added: "It's simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement."

I have some empathy for Woodhouse, who must be weary of dealing with the other side's demagoguery day after day. He probably couldn't resist giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine. But this is dangerous stuff in a democracy and particularly perilous from a party that, less than two years ago, rightly insisted it could oppose the Bush administration's foreign policy on thoroughly patriotic grounds.

And Woodhouse's statement came shortly after 60 percent of House Democrats -- 153 in all -- voted for an amendment sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and two of his colleagues that would have required President Obama to present a plan by April for the "safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment" of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The amendment, which drew support from nine Republicans, would also have allowed for a vote in Congress to stop additional war funding if withdrawal does not start by next July, when the administration has said it would begin reducing forces in Afghanistan.

It's thus not surprising that one person who took issue with Democrats who piled onto Steele was McGovern. "The reaction to Steele from some Democrats sounded like Dick Cheney," he said in an interview. "Democrats need to understand that our base is increasingly uncomfortable with this war."

http://www.truth-out.org/ej-dionne-jr-let-steele-speak61137

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Alvin Greene wants a Toy Story

Guardian interview with Senate candidate Alvin Greene reveals his economic policy: making Alvin Greene action dolls

 

Life on the doll: Alvin Greene's plan for getting America back to work. (Pictured are Michelle and Barack Obama action figures from 2008.) Photograph: Reuters

My colleague Ed Pilkington makes the trip to South Carolina to interview the now famous Alvin Greene about his bizarre US Senate candidacy and Democratic primary election victory. Ed does unearth this gem from Greene's fertile brain:

It is clear, too, in the course of the two hours I spend with Greene that he has some pretty wacky ideas that, were he to win in November, would put him among the more unpredictable members of the Senate. At one point, he lurches off on his big idea for how to create jobs in South Carolina.

"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."

Except that those sorts of things – plastic childrens' toys – are all made in China these days.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/jul/07/alvin-greene-dolls-south-carolina

Paul plays with Ringo

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M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F

Today's question:  How the heck does the Greenland ice sheet survive accelerated disintegration from projected 20°F warming by the 2090s?

I previously blogged on how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists — the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe (see "Hadley Center: "Catastrophic" 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path" and below).

Back in January, the Program issued a remarkable report in January, by over a dozen leading experts, doubling their 2095 warming projection to 5.2°C. The media mostly ignored it, which is no surprise, since the media generally ignores the realists in general (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: "Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised" — 1000 ppm).

Now, the MIT study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal — The American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (subs. req'd) — which obviously it makes it much more credible and high-profile.  Reuters has a good story on it, "Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast."  The study concludes:

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.2°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20^th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios.

[Note:  That rise is compared to 1981-2000 temperature levels.  So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, which I did in the headline -- see "A (Hopefully) Clarifying Note on Temperature."]

The MIT press release calls for "rapid and massive" action to avoid this. 

http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/20/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections-2/

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Men active around the household are more attractive, survey says

From: mX

Tony Abbott shows blokes everywhere how it's done. Picture: Ray Strange Source: The Australian

DOING household chores is a far better way to woo a woman than giving chocolate or flowers, a survey has said.

Just under half of the females surveyed by appliance group DeLonghi said helping around the house was the way to their heart admitting they'd be more impressed if their partner did the ironing than took them for a weekend away or a romantic candlelit dinner.

The results come alongside the revelation that women spend 5472 hours of their lives ironing, compared with 4680 hours for men, the Daily Mail reports.

A psychologist said the findings showed women were looking for a man willing to be more active in the household.

Cary Cooper, professor at the University of Lancaster, said women still thought men didn't pull their weight at home.

"Many women are still working the double shift, doing the household chores and having a career, whereas men still have a working role primarily," he said. "What women obviously want to see is somebody who will do the chores but also have an active domestic role in the family."

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/men-active-around-the-household-are-more-attractive-survey-says/story-e6frfkyi-1225889438390#ixzz0tCvxTIn3

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Extending unemployment

 

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Attacks on census workers nearly triple since 2000

 

By Agence France-Presse

More than 500 incidents reported, up from 180 in 2000

WASHINGTON — More Americans chose to participate in this year's US census than in the 2000 survey, but workers going door-to-door to follow up have also faced more harassment, a US official said Wednesday.

Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said 72 percent of occupied US households had returned the mailed questionnaires dispatched as part of the decennial survey, up from a 67 percent response rate in 2000.

"This was a glorious success given that all survey professionals expected a lower rate," he said.

But the work of following up with those who chose not to respond proved more difficult than in 2000, with workers facing a rise in assaults and finding it harder to track people down at their homes.

Follow-up census workers went to some 47 million homes to conduct face-to-face interviews with people who failed to respond to the mailed questionnaires.

At around 22 percent of those homes, repeated efforts to elicit information failed, forcing surveyors to rely on a neighbor or building manager for information about the tenants. That was up from 17 percent in 2000.

"There are a lot of different reasons, this tracks trends in surveys," Groves said. "It's harder to get a hold of us than it used to be."

"And then there's a reluctance in that contrast between 17 and 22 (percent)... people who open the door, they're at home, and they say 'I don't want to do this.'"

The percentage of people who refused to fill out the form, compared with those who simply weren't at home, was not yet clear, Groves said. But the number of attacks on census workers appeared to be on the rise.

"I believe the up-to-date figure is now over 500," Groves said, cautioning that the figure included a wide range of incidents.

"Some of those are minor things. An angry duck attacked one of our enumerators and she has bites on one of her ankles, she will survive," he said.

But other cases were more serious, he acknowledged, and the figure appeared to be a substantial increase from the estimated 180 incidents in 2000.

"Others are horrible events, there have been carjackings, there have been assaults, folks have been shot at," he said.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0707/attacks-census-workers-triple-2000/

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Boehner Invites Lobbyists To Help Form GOP Agenda In Intimate Meeting At His Office

A few months ago, House Republicans launched an effort called Americans Speaking Out, which purports to give average Americans the ability to offer their input on what Congress should do. It became quickly apparent that the enterprise was little more than a taxpayer-funded PR gimmick to help Republicans market their agenda for this fall's elections, even as they ignored any ideas they didn't already support.

Now, under the banner of Americans Speaking Out, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has summoned advice from those who he truly seems interested in listening to: lobbyists. Roll Call reports that Boehner has invited "senior Republican lobbyists and top officials from several large trade groups" to a meeting at Boehner's office to discuss "their suggestions for a new GOP agenda":

The meeting is part of the House leaders' initiative called America Speaking Out, which is intended to draw broad input to create a new policy agenda for the party to launch in the fall.

An e-mail invitation sent to more than 20 trade representatives and obtained by Roll Call summoned guests to Boehner's second-floor office on July 16 "to discuss House Republican efforts to produce a new policy agenda with a small group of trade association leaders."

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/08/boehner-lobbyists-meeting/

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Republican Logic...

© Rob Rogers

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