Tomorrow Night: CHASING ICE

If you missed this during its brief stay at the wonderful Salem Cinema, don't despair, you can see it tomorrow night, January 10, at 7 pm at the Grand Theatre in downtown Salem, part of the Salem Progressive Film Series, one of the many great things going on in Salem.

Speakers

Evelyn Sherr Is a Professor of Oceanography, in the Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences Department at Oregon State University. Prior to coming to OSU, she graduated from Emory University in Georgia with a B.S. in Biology. She went on to receive her PhD in Zoology from Duke University and did her Post Doctoral work at the University of Georgia in the Microbiology Department. Professor Sherr’s research work focuses on aquatic microbial ecology, pelagic food webs, heterotrophic microbes and the ecology of the arctic and sub arctic marine ecosystems. Her work in the Arctic Ocean coincided with the period when summer sea ice loss was becoming increasing evident. Professor Sherr has participated in numerous field programs in the Arctic beginning in 1994, conducting research in Alaska, the Bering Sea and the North Pole, to name a few. She continues to conduct research in the Arctic and has over 100 publications. She lives in Corvallis with her husband Barry.

Ed Brook Ed Brook is a professor of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and studies climate history to understand how the earth system responds to climate change. His work uses polar ice cores as recorders of past climate change, and focuses on the relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change, on time scales of decades to hundreds of thousands of years. One clear outcome of ice core studies is the recognition that human activities have radically altered the levels and cycles of major greenhouse gases, pushing the atmosphere toward a state it has not seen for at least 50 million years. Ed Brook’s work has also contributed to our understanding of how quickly climate can change. For example, during the last ice age climate in many parts of the world shifted from cold to warm conditions over just several decades, and sometimes faster. The mechanisms behind these abrupt shifts are only partly understood. Ed’s research group is involved in further studies of their timing and impact, to better understand the probability of similar events in the future. From 1996 to 2004 Ed was a faculty member at Washington State University before moving to his current position at Oregon State University. Ed has conducted field research in Antarctica, Greenland, Scandinavia, northern Canada, and the western U.S. and runs one of a handful of analytical laboratories devoted to greenhouse gases in polar ice cores. His research group is currently involved in projects at both poles, including the WAIS Divide Drilling project in Antarctica and the NEEM ice core in Greenland. Ed is a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Google Science Communication Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A sobering talk on what's really going on in the financial world

About 20 minutes. Well worth the time.

How a school district blows $172,000 over Wi-Fi “hazards”

Fear is the mind-killer.  With so many very real threats to our well-being today, it's sad and scary that people obsess over phony threats like this -- and force others to respond to their delusions.

Amen: David Cay Johnston

Johnston deserves a Pulitzer or two.  Sadly, none of what he writes about will change until we stop corporations from writing the rules

America's long slope down Posted: 20 Jun 2012 12:18 PM PD

A broad swath of official economic data shows that America and its people are in much worse shape than when we paid higher taxes, higher interest rates and made more of the manufactured goods we use. The numbers since the turn of the millennium point to even worse times ahead if we stay the course. Let's look at the official numbers in today's dollars and then what can be done to change course.

First, incomes and jobs since 2000 measured per American: Internal Revenue Service data show that average adjusted gross income fell $2,699 through 2010 or 9 percent, compared to 2000. That's the equivalent of making it through Thanksgiving weekend and then having no income for the rest of the year. Had average incomes just stayed at the level in 2000, Americans through 2009 would have earned $3.5 trillion more income, the equivalent of $26,000 per taxpayer over a decade. Preliminary 2010 data show a partial rebound, reducing the shortfall by a fifth to $2.8 trillion or $21,000 per taxpayer. Wages per capita in 2010 were 4.3 percent less than in 2000, effectively reducing to 50 weeks the pay for 52 weeks of work. The median wage in 2010 fell back to the level of 1999, with half of workers grossing less than $507 a week, half more, Social Security tax data show. The bottom third, 50 million workers, averaged just $116 a week in 2010. Social Security and Census data show that the number of people with any work increased just 1.5 percent from 2000 to 2010 while population grew 6.4 times faster. That's why millions of people cannot find work no matter how hard they try. In May, nearly 23 million workers, 14.8 percent, were jobless or underemployed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. At shadowstats.com, a website dedicated to exposing and analyzing flaws in government economic data, economist John Williams also counts people who have given up hope of finding work. His figure for May brings the total to almost 30 million people, one in five. PRESSURE ON WAGES An economy with many millions more workers than jobs puts downward pressure on wages, especially for those without highly developed skills. Now let's look at debt per American since 2000 using Federal Reserve data: Mortgage debt grew 51 percent through 2010, even though incomes and wages fell, which should result in steady or lower housing prices, not higher prices. (In 2011, as banks foreclosed on more homes, mortgage debt per capita declined, but was still 42 percent greater than in 2000.) Consumer debt was virtually unchanged, at nearly $8,300 in 2010, helping explain weak sales of automobiles, furniture and appliances. Now how about trade? Exporting more than we import creates jobs and riches. From 2000, the year before China joined the World Trade Organization, to 2011 imports from China grew 62 percent faster than exports to China, Census data show. The annual trade deficit soared to $302 billion from $112 billion. U.S. exports to China in 2011 ($106 billion) were smaller than US imports from China back in 2000 ($133 billion), showing the lopsided nature of trade with China, where workers lack rights, safety rules are minimal and pollution rampant. Some 56,000 American factories have closed since 2000, as jobs and the knowledge that goes with those jobs moved to China. Trade with China has destroyed every 55th job in America, nearly 2.8 million positions, analysis of government data by Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute shows. That equals wiping out every job in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area. Nearly two million of those jobs were in manufacturing, Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. International Trade Commission data show. SHRINKING TAX REVENUE And what of taxes? The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were promoted as keys to prosperity. Now Mitt Romney, virtually all Republicans and a fair number of Democrats say more tax cuts will make us prosper. President Barack Obama wants to cut corporate tax rates by a third. Again, measured per capita, the IRS data show a pattern of shrinking numbers, with modest upticks in 2010. Individual income taxes in 2010 averaged $2,995, down $1,654 or almost 36 percent from 2000. Use 2001 as the base year — because it was both a recession year and the first year of the temporary George W. Bush tax cuts — and in 2010 per capita income tax revenues were down one third. In 2011, as the economy improved slightly, income tax revenues rose, but were still 26 percent smaller than in 2000. The bottom line: less income, hardly any more jobs, sharply increased mortgage debt and Washington ledgers awash in red ink as voters are asked to endorse even more tax cuts. How many years of evidence does it take to establish that a policy worked or failed? Will continuing our current tax, credit and trade policies produce favorable results in the future? Will they produce higher incomes? My reading of this and tons more data is that the Bush tax cuts utterly failed, the Fed's artificially low-interest rate policies under presidents Bush and Obama do far more damage than good (especially to savers), and that the United States is harmed both by the imbalance in the trade relationship with China and scores of trade agreements with South Korea and other low-wage countries that are deeply flawed at best. We need to recognize that the tax cutters were snake oil salesmen, the Federal Reserve an enabler of damaging debts and that bilateral trade deals are written of, by and for global financiers, not workers. To paraphrase the Huey Lewis song, we need a new policy.

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The Handmaids tale arrives in FL

Court-Ordered Care--A Complication of Pregnancy to Avoid

Julie D. Cantor, M.D., J.D.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:2237-2240 June 14, 2012
 
 Samantha Burton was 25 weeks pregnant when her membranes ruptured. Burton's obstetrician admitted her to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH) and prescribed continuous inpatient bed rest. But with two young children and a job to consider, Burton found the prospect of a 3-month hospital stay overwhelming. She decided to go home. When she tried to leave, authorities barred her exit.

 Soon, the machinery of court-ordered care started rolling. TMH's outside counsel, deputized by the local state attorney to act on Florida's behalf, petitioned for judicial approval to force Burton to follow doctors' orders. Within hours, the court heard argument from the hospital, state attorney and testimony from the obstetrician, now considered the unborn child's attending physician.1 Burton testified by phone from the hospital, without counsel.

 The next day, the judge gave TMH, any attending health care provider, and members and employees of the original obstetrician's practice permission to administer any care they deemed necessary to preserve the fetus's life and health.1 He ordered Burton to comply and denied her request to change hospitals. Within days, doctors delivered a dead fetus by cesarean section. . . .

Moreover, the due-process considerations are profound. Because these cases are usually heard on an emergency basis, judicial decisions are made without full briefing on relevant law, medicine, and policy. Unlike alleged criminals, patients have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and they cannot instantaneously find expert witnesses to testify on their behalf.  And hospital lawyers acting as state attorneys have a clear conflict of interest: as even the Supreme Court of Florida has noted, it is inappropriate for a hospital to argue zealously against the wishes of its own patient, and it cannot act on behalf of the State to assert the state interests when a competent adult refuses care (Matter of Dubreuil).

Coerced care also devalues the inherent risks to maternal health and life. Cesarean sections and blood transfusions are not risk-free, and bed rest is neither benign nor evidence-based. Obstetricians aren't omniscient and may defer to culture over data. Forced care also ignores individuals' and families' values, reinforces inequality between the sexes, threatens to drive women from care, and condones a culture of coercion. And the notion that court-ordered care will insulate providers from litigation seems misguided -- courts should be unsympathetic to patients with refusal remorse, lest they eviscerate the concept of informed consent, and an informed refusal, unaccompanied by malpractice, should be a shield from civil and criminal liability. Of course, subjecting a patient to forced care, even court-ordered care, may lead to a lawsuit for violations of civil and constitutional rights.

Finally, there's the slippery slope. As a Florida Supreme Court justice explained, forced care that is designed to protect the health of the fetus creates its own universe of troubling questions. Should the State have the authority to prohibit a pregnant woman from smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol, both legal activities with recognized health risks to the unborn? (In re Guardianship of J.D.S.). Should pregnant women be prosecuted for adverse outcomes when they reject medical care? Should they be jailed until delivery? Such cases have already arisen. . . .

In 1976, a man dying of aplastic anemia sued his cousin, asking a court to order the forcible extraction of his potentially matching and lifesaving bone marrow. The court refused and explained, For our law to compel defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual and raise the spectre of the swastika and the Inquisition, reminiscent of the horrors this portends (McFall v. Shimp).
Those horrors are no less salient here. Forced interventions undermine the liberty, privacy, and equality of pregnant women. But they are far more insidious. Because they betray foundational legal principles of our free society, they endanger the liberty of us all.

For Oregon farmers, oil-rich canola is either promise or peril | OregonLive.com

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2012/02/for_oregon_farmers_oil-rich_ca.html

Take action against this disastrously horrible idea. More effort to place the needs of rich auto drivers over humanity's need for real food. Growing rapeseed to make motor fuel in the Willamette Valley is like putting an oil refinery in the Vatican or the Louvre, only much more serious. Art can be recreated ... Getting those genes back out of the fields would be like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube while on fire.

Is there no level too low for the biofuel-mad subsidy seekers? Apparently not.

Tell Oregon Dept of Ag to do their job, and protect the future of food in the Willamette Valley.

Word: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Image via WikipediaThe insightful Naomi Klein.

But the effects of the right-wing climate conspiracies reach far beyond the Republican Party.  The Democrats have mostly gone mute on the subject, not wanting to alienate independents. And the media and culture industries have followed suit.  Five years ago, celebrities were showing up at the Academy Awards in hybrids, Vanity Fair launched an annual green issue and, in 2007, the three major US networks ran 147 stories on climate change.   No longer. In 2010 the networks ran just thirty-two climate change stories; limos are back in style at the Academy Awards; and the “annual” Vanity Fair green issue hasn’t been seen since 2008.

This uneasy silence has persisted through the end of the hottest decade in recorded history and yet another summer of freak natural disasters and record-breaking heat worldwide. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is rushing to make multibillion-dollar investments in new infrastructure to extract oil, natural gas and coal from some of the dirtiest and highest-risk sources on the continent (the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline being only the highest-profile example).  In the Alberta tar sands, in the Beaufort Sea, in the gas fields of Pennsylvania and the coalfields of Wyoming and Montana, the industry is betting big that the climate movement is as good as dead.

If the carbon these projects are poised to suck out is released into the atmosphere, the chance of triggering catastrophic climate change will increase dramatically (mining the oil in the Alberta tar sands alone, says NASA’s James Hansen, would be “essentially game over” for the climate).

All of this means that the climate movement needs to have one hell of a comeback.  For this to happen, the left is going to have to learn from the right.  Denialists gained traction by making climate about economics: action will destroy capitalism, they have claimed, killing jobs and sending prices soaring.  But at a time when a growing number of people agree with the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, many of whom argue that capitalism-as-usual is itself the cause of lost jobs and debt slavery, there is a unique opportunity to seize the economic terrain from the right.  This would require making a persuasive case that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more enlightened economic system—one that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work and radically reins in corporate power.  It would also require a shift away from the notion that climate action is just one issue on a laundry list of worthy causes vying for progressive attention.  Just as climate denialism has become a core identity issue on the right, utterly entwined with defending current systems of power and wealth, the scientific reality of climate change must, for progressives, occupy a central place in a coherent narrative about the perils of unrestrained greed and the need for real alternatives.

Building such a transformative movement may not be as hard as it first appears. Indeed, if you ask the Heartlanders, climate change makes some kind of left-wing revolution virtually inevitable, which is precisely why they are so determined to deny its reality. Perhaps we should listen to their theories more closely—they might just understand something the left still doesn’t get. . . .

Apparently growing food is not a "21st Century Skill"

Which -- in an era of ecological and economic meltdown -- might mean that eating isn't either.  (This is a headnote -- an idea abstracted from a legal opinion -- much like the one that first caused the corporate personhood zombie to start wreaking havoc on our country.)

78 Civil Rights

78II Employment Practices

78k1199 Age Discrimination

78k1200 k. In General.

In employment discrimination context, phrase "21st Century skills" refers to nationally-recognized skill set, the primary focus of which concerns the integration of modern technologies for research, organization, evaluation, and communication of information.
Marlow v. Chesterfield County Sch. Bd., 749 F. Supp. 2d 417 (E.D. Va. 2010)

TUESDAY, PDX: Margaret Kripke Speaks on Environmentally Caused Cancers

Image by The Mayor of Worldwide Breast Cancer via FlickrThe Lund Report is a rare gem -- someone with a lot of knowledge about the medical-industrial complex doing the deep, hard work in the trenches to report on the whole gamut of issues that coalesce under the heading of health.

The editor, who funds this shoestring operation mainly out of her own pocket, consistently runs rings around the captive media outfits who dare not annoy advertisers, which include both the big hospitals and many polluters who would be happiest if we kept thinking that cancer is the fault of genetics or personal bad choices.  These people prefer it if we don't recognize that cancer is primarily an environmental illness.


Hat tip to Lund Report for bringing news of this:

Margaret Kripke, PhD, a co-author of that report, speaks in Portland next Tuesday, October 11 at an event sponsored by Rachel's Friends Breast Cancer Coalition in collaboration with the Oregon Environmental Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility. This free lecture takes place at 7 p.m. at Kaiser Town Hall located at 3704 N. Interstate.

According to the report, 'The incidence of some cancers, including those most common among children, is increasing for unexplained reasons,” while environmental cancers disproportionately affect women and members of disadvantaged social groups, who are more likely to be exposed to carcinogenic materials at work or who live in polluted environments.

Not only is more research needed into environmentally caused cancer, but environmental contaminants should be better regulated, and the methods of measuring such exposures improved, the report states. Currently such research is a low priority and receives inadequate funding, resulting in an inadequate number of environmental oncologists. Instead, most research emphasizes the genetic and molecular mechanisms in cancer.
The report is also critical of existing environmental cancer research, noting that most of that research investigates the effect of specific chemicals on adolescent laboratory animals – which doesn't really mirror real-world exposures to environmental contaminants. In addition, animals in these studies are exposed to doses substantially higher than those likely to be encountered by humans.

“These data – and the exposure limits extrapolated from them – fail to take into account harmful effects that may occur only at very low doses,” according to the report. “Further, chemicals typically are administered when laboratory animals are in their adolescence, a methodology that fails to assess the impact of in utero, childhood, and lifelong exposures. In addition, agents are tested singly, rather than in combination.”

Since Americans are exposed to tens of thousands of foreign chemicals throughout their lifetimes, studies should be designed to look at the effects of specific groups on contaminants in the communities most likely to be affected.

The report also calls for stronger regulation of environmental contaminants, saying that U.S. regulation is rendered ineffective by inadequate funding, fragmented and overlapping authorities and uneven enforcement, excessive regulatory complexity, weak laws and regulations and undue industry influence: “Too often, these factors, either singly or in combination, result in agency dysfunction, and a lack of will to identify and remove hazards.”

The panel advised President Obama “to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation's productivity and devastate American lives.”
Kripke is currently serving her second three-year term on the President's Cancer Panel – comprised of three people including Lance Armstrong, and LaSalle D. Lefall, Jr., the report's co-author. The panel,  created by former President George W. Bush, advises the President on the status and needs of the cancer problem in America.

Kripke is a professor of immunology and executive vice president and chief academic officer to the University of Texas MD Anderson Medical Center in Houston. Her research focuses on the immunology of the skin and skin cancer, skin cancer's relationship to ultraviolet light, and how the immune system influences the development of skin cancers. She holds a PhD in immunology from the University of California at Berkeley.

When I am sad about the people I've known and lost to cancer, I give to only those groups that recognize that blaming the victims for their cancers lets the polluters off the hook.  The group that has been sounding the warning about the environmental roots of the cancer pandemic the longest:  Breast Cancer Action.

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Quick, get this man a Pulitzer!

Yikes again! 

For those in Portland next Monday afternoon/evening:

Image via WikipediaHead over to the White Stag block for an important talk about what is perhaps the most insidious, scary part of pumping millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere:  It makes the oceans into big vats of carbonic acid, acid that eats at the base of the food chain at the most vulnerable point.

Ocean Acidification Event in Portland

Learn more about our "other" carbon problem.

Care about the Pacific Northwest’s oceans? Worried our fossil-fuel addiction is jeopardizing our marine and shellfish industries? Learn more about ocean acidification in the Northwest at E2′s event, the Acid Test: Ocean Acidification and the Pacific Northwest.

Speakers will include Washington Representative Brian Baird, NRDC oceans attorney Leila Monroe, and commercial fisherman Amy Grondin. E2 will also screen NRDC’s new short film, Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification.

Where: White Stag Block, University of Oregon – Portland
When: Monday, September 12, 6:00-8:00 PM.

More info.
It’ll be a great, informative event about the Northwest’s “other” carbon problem.

Think climate change is a hoax?

Sure wish you were right.

Meanwhile, as the world burns . . .

Image via Wikipedia(Tip of the hat to Sam Smith for this.)

Climate change update

Dahr Jamail, Aljazeera - The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland's largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes "dead", meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades….

Professor Cindy Parker co-directs the Programme on Global Environmental Sustainability and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . . .

"Everything that affects our environment affects our health," Parker said, "As fancy as our technology is, we still cannot live without clean water, air, and food, and we rely on our environment for these.". . .

"People think technology is going to save us from climate change, but there is no technology on the horizon that will allow us to adapt ourselves out of this mess," Parker said, "We can physiologically adapt to higher temperatures, but all that adaptation is not going to save us unless we also get the climate stabilized."

"If this continues unabated this planet will not be habitable by the species that are on it, including humans," she concluded, "It will be a very different planet. One that is not very conducive to human life."

The world's population is growing by roughly 80 million people per year, and at the current rates of birth and death, the world's population is on a trajectory to double in 49 years.

William Ryerson is the president of the Population Institute, a non-profit organisation that works to educate policymakers and the public about population, and the need to achieve a world population that is in balance with a healthy global environment and resource base. . .

"We have 225,000 people at the dinner table tonight who weren't there last night, so to maintain our current population we're already over-pumping underground aquifers," [said]Ryerson, "India is over-pumping, and we have over 100 million people in India dependent on over-pumping, so this can't be sustained. “

Unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency recently revealed that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year to the highest carbon output in history, despite the most serious economic recession in 80 years.

This means that the aim of holding global temperatures to safe levels are now all but out of reach. The goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius, which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change" is now most likely just "a nice Utopia", according to Fatih Birol, a chief economist of the IEA.

"Population is the multiplier of everything else," explained Ryerson, who believes climate change cannot adequately be addressed until the overpopulation problem is solved.

The evil of the "Health Insurance" mafiosi

There are no words to fully capture the evil of the health insurance gangsters who have worked tirelessly to line their pockets at the expense of the rest of us, producing things like this: forcing people to hold bake sales and benefits to help pay for the medical costs of accident victims.

Two things to note:

1) Cars are deadly weapons. Inattention, fatigue, zoning out, cell phone conversations (hands free or not) -- all these things can make you a murderer or a person guilty of disfiguring and maiming someone else.

2) The suits in the insurance industry, every last one, should tremble at the thought that there might be a just God in Heaven. For, if so, they will all fry in Hell for eternity for conspiring feverishly to preserve our "free market" health care financing system, where the only "free market" is for those with the cash to pay their bills.

Why we must amend the Constitution to abolish Judicially Invented Corporate Personhood

Image by vj_pdx via FlickrThe Right in this country loves to whine about "judicial activism" whenever there's a decision that they don't like -- forgetting entirely that, in the whole history of the United States, nothing compares to the judicial activism of a former railroad president who was serving as chief clerk for the US Supreme Court and who, with the issue never briefed or argued, inserted a "headnote" (a shorthand synopsis of a point of law) into a case where the point of law in question --- whether corporations had the rights guaranteed to persons under the 14th Amendment --- was never even discussed, much less decided.

This cataclysmic and radically destabilizing notion wildly metastasized throughout the 20th Century, to the point where now, the US high court is best described as the "Supreme Court, Inc." -- happily willing to see even fully innocent people executed, but ever solicitous for the needs of corporations.

This is why we need a pro-human movement all over America, to amend the Constitution to reject the bizarre concept that a corporation . . . a fictitious legal being that consists, essentially, of nothing but a pile of money . . . has the rights of real persons.

Sam Smith nails it:

Judge puts another nail in constitutional coffin

Alternet - Reagan-appointed federal Judge James Cacheris just ruled that corporations have a constitutional right to contribute money directly to political candidates.

Today’s decision extends beyond the egregious Citizen United decision because Citizens United only permits corporations to run their own ads supporting a candidate or otherwise act independently of a candidate’s campaign. Cacheris’ opinion would also allow the Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries, for instance, to contribute directly to political campaigns.

If today’s decision is upheld on appeal, it could be the end of any meaningful restrictions on campaign finance ­ including limits on the amount of money wealthy individuals and corporations can give to a candidate. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. Thus, under Cacheris’ decision, a cap on overall contributions becomes meaningless, because corporate donors can simply create a series of shell corporations for the purpose of evading such caps.

Although the corporate media will deny this, assuming the Supreme Court backs this decision, it will be absolutely accurate to describe America now as a semi-fascist state.

Sam Smith, 1990 - The S&L solution has the hidden goal of moving America towards increasing financial oligopoly. The government is prepared to guide, assist, regulate and tax to accomplish this goal. This sort of economic policy has been seen before in fully developed form and it has a name: fascism, described by Mussolini biographer Adrian Lyttelton as "the product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly." As Italian fascist economic theorist Alfredo Rocco put it, such an economy "is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the state."

Post-Constitutional America, Exhibit 1,384,588,911

Shorter FBI: "If you oppose the corporate takeover, you must be a terrorist."

Cassandra's curse

Image via WikipediaI am often caused to think of Cassandra, who is popularly derided as someone who kept issuing warnings about things that others couldn't see -- a sort of "chicken little" type. The most important point, the one that is so often forgotten, is that Cassandra's curse was that she would be able to see the future calamities, but that none would believe her and, thus, none would respond in time.

Salem, Marion County, the entire Willamette Valley, and all of Oregon have a lot to lose from the climate chaos we're sowing. Try farming when the weather is unpredictable one year to the next, and when all your exquisitely bred strains are suddenly wrong for your climate.

And it appears that we've decided that we're simply going to roll the dice and see what happens. Oh well, so it goes.

Truly bizarre

Image via WikipediaThere's an unpleasant odor coming from the Marion County Commission, where the rule seems to be "settle your suits and sign away your claims first, investigate second:"

For immediate release: November 30, 2010

Contact: Peggy Mitchell, Contracts Compliance Analyst, (503) 588-5047
Jolene Kelley, Public Information Officer, (503) 566-3937

County and Transit District Officials Release RFP for Forensic Investigation on Courthouse Square

SALEM - The Marion County Board of Commissioners and Salem Area Mass Transit District Board of Directors have released a request for proposals for a forensic investigation of Courthouse Square. The building and adjacent transit center formerly housed several county departments, transit administration offices and bus mall, and retail businesses.

The building and transit mall have experienced significant structural deficiencies that required immediate closure of the bus mall in July, followed by a full building closure in September. A structural analysis is currently underway to determine the full extent of defects, as well as provide options for remediation.

The firm selected will conduct an independent forensic investigation of the integrity of the original construction process and determine what may have gone wrong during the design, planning, and construction of Courthouse Square. In addition, the county and transit district want to ensure that future public projects are managed to prevent similar situations from occurring. Board of Commissioners Chair Janet Carlson said, "As elected officials and residents of Marion County, we are all disappointed in the closure of Courthouse Square. In order to move ahead, it is important that we fully understand the circumstances that led to this unfortunate situation."

Firms with expertise in forensic investigation are invited to respond to the request for proposals. A mandatory pre-proposal walk through of the building will be held at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 8, 2010, with final proposals due by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 23, 2010. Project details may be obtained by contacting Peggy Mitchell at (503) 588-5047 or pmitchell@co.marion.or.us. For more information regarding Courthouse Square please visit www.co.marion.or.us.

WORD: America just going through the motions on reforms

Fake ice is just as real as our commitment to dealing with reality. Image by Kyle May via FlickrSad but true.

A kind word for Obama: At least he's not insane

Image by yksin via FlickrBarry O. has been a terrible disappointment, a man who never went into a negotiation without first giving his opponent all his bargaining chips.

UPDATE: Alas, it is true that he has a spine of overcooked pasta. He doesn't even know how to turn aggressive overreaching by his opponents to his advantage. Pitiful.

But then you read something like this and you realize how lucky we are that John McCain and Sarah Palin aren't in charge.

An Unknown Soldier

. . . Several U.S. senators had gathered at the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual gathering that is the brainchild of Peter MacKay, Canada's defense minister. One of them, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, immediately put President Obama on notice.

Resurgent Republicans would be looking for him to "be tough with Iran beyond sanctions." If it came to war, the United States should "sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime."

Sure, Graham conceded, "you can expect, for a period of time, all hell to break loose." Another war is the "last thing America wants." But a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable and containment "off the table."

This is dangerous talk from an influential Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee. The United States, in its current depleted state, cannot afford another war in a Muslim country. It cannot find itself fighting across a 2,000-mile front stretching through Arab, Persian and Central Asian worlds. You could forget about the tenuous progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran can flick switches. From Lebanon to Gaza, on Israel's borders, tensions would boil.

But Graham's words were instructive. The pressure on Obama from Congress is going to grow. David Broder of the Washington Post even suggested recently that a war in Iran might spur the U.S. economy, just as World War II did.

The United States does not need the stimulus package from hell. This is a moment of great American uncertainty, a volatile passage. Sunni Pakistan has nukes and Al Qaeda. Shiite Iran has neither. It would be tragic to ignore the lessons of Iraq, stumble onto a war train armed with flimsy evidence, and imagine Iran is close to a bomb when there's no conclusive evidence it's made the decision to build one. Remember, the mullahs love ambiguity. It's their element, along with maddening inertia. To risk "breakout" is to risk the Islamic Republic. Hence the waiting-for-Godot aspects of their nuclear zigzag.

When I heard those words — "neuter that regime" — what I saw was a shattered body in Tampa. A third U.S war is inconceivable.