Anger is a Gift. Joy is a Choice.

Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks

2012-02-10T10:47:00.003-08:00

Joe Sabia: The technology of storytelling

2012-02-10T10:47:00.001-08:00

Sierra Club Took $26 Million From Gas Industry

2012-02-06T07:13:00.001-08:00

The Sierra Club has admitted it accepted more than $26 million in donations from one of the nation’s largest natural gas companies at a time when the environmental group was publicly promoting natural gas as an alternative to coal. On Thursday, the Sierra Club said it stopped accepting the money in 2010.

Yemeni Activists Protest Saleh’s NYC Visit

2012-02-06T07:12:00.001-08:00

Protesters rallied outside a luxury New York City hotel Thursday to denounce President Obama’s decision to allow Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to enter the United States for medical treatment. Saleh is believed to be staying in the Ritz Carlton overlooking Central Park. Yemen’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tawakkol Karman, addressed the protest via cellphone from Yemen and called for Saleh to be tried by the International Criminal Court.

Amel Ahmed: "Dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh is staying at this hotel, so we came out to protest the fact that our government would allow him into this country to begin with. We don’t feel that he should be here in the United States of America. We think it sends the wrong message to the Middle East, if you’re saying that you support democracy in the Middle East, and you’re anti-extremism in the Middle East, then you shouldn’t be supporting dictators. You should be supporting people on the ground who are calling for a democracy. I mean, for years, we’ve criticized the Muslim world, for turning to extremism and not sharing the same democratic values, meanwhile we have an entire generation that’s rising up and demanding democracy, and meanwhile, you’re hosting a dictator in a five-star hotel. The message is conflicting, and there should be a consistent message coming from the White House."

SEC Issued Scores of Waivers to Wall Street Firms in Fraud Cases

2012-02-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

he New York Times has revealed new details on how the Securities and Exchange Commission has repeatedly allowed Wall Street firms to skirt punishment for fraud. An analysis shows the SEC has granted nearly 350 waivers to financial companies, allowing them to maintain privileges even after admitting fraudulent practices. JPMorganChase received at least 22 waivers over the past 13 years while settling six fraud cases, while Bank of America and Merrill Lynch received 39 waivers and settled 15 times. In a speech on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said deceptive practices by Wall Street firms are now under control.

Timothy Geithner: "The financial system, itself, is getting strong and safer. Much of the excess risk-taking and careless and damaging financial practices that caused so much damage to the American economy have been forced out of the financial system. These gains, though, will erode over time if we are not able to put these full reforms in place."

Elementary Students Collecting Water for Dimock Township

2012-02-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

Shohola Township, Pike County - As federal officials continue to sample well water in part of Susquehanna County, people who say their well water has been contaminated by natural gas drilling are getting some help.

Elementary school students in Pike County have started a water collection drive for people who live in Dimock Township.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently providing water to four families but others say they need help.

That's where students from Shohola Elementary School come in.

For roughly the last week, students have been bringing in water jugs on a daily basis.

"People that don't have water can't drink," second grader Andrea Murphy said.

Dimock has become a focal point in the gas drilling debate.

Eleven families say Cabot Oil & Gas contaminated their well water with methane and chemicals. Cabot has strongly denied those claims.

"Since I knew that happened, it has been pretty tough for me to know that they can't drink any water without going to the store and buying it," third grader T.J. Teehan said.

School principal Dr. Peg Schaffer said a parent came up with the water collection idea to help celebrate the 100th day of school.

She says students have done a lot of other community service projects in the past.

Dr. Schaffer says even though the school is collecting water, they're not taking sides in the controversy.

"We just want to help, just like we do on numerous projects throughout the course of the year," Dr. Schaffer said. "It's just about reaching out, one community to another, helping them out and it teaches our children that they have to be civic minded right from elementary school."

For many students, they've taken on the water collection as a personal mission to help their neighbors in need.

"My mother actually helped me. She went around and collected 75 gallons of water," fifth grader Tabitha Brengel said.

The Shohola Elementary School will be open Saturday from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM so that people from the community can help donate water.

All of the water will be picked up by Dimock Township residents on Monday afternoon.

By: Eric Deabill

RAP NEWS X - Occupy2012 (feat. Noam Chomsky & Anonymous)

2012-02-01T18:03:00.001-08:00

No Fracking Way

2012-02-01T17:38:00.001-08:00

The Invisible War: New Film Exposes Rape, Sexual Assault Epidemic in U.S. Military

2012-02-01T17:37:00.000-08:00

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

2012-01-30T19:59:00.000-08:00

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address

2012-01-30T19:56:00.001-08:00

Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory

2012-01-30T19:55:00.001-08:00

Happy Australia day

2012-01-30T15:20:00.001-08:00

We'er Not Broke (2012 documentery)

2012-01-25T13:55:00.001-08:00

We'er Not Broke

2012-01-25T13:52:00.001-08:00

As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got to Start Taxing Corporations

2012-01-25T13:51:00.001-08:00

EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming

2012-01-25T13:50:00.000-08:00

The Environmental Protection Agency will focus its national study of hydraulic fracturing on seven areas in five states but will exclude the two Wyoming gas fields where agency researchers have already collected some of the most in-depth data on drilling's environmental impacts.

The study—which was announced last March, without specifics on research sites—will investigate alleged water contamination from drilling in five areas in Texas, Colorado, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. It also will encompass cradle-to-grave research projects in Pennsylvania and Louisiana, where the agency will track drilling's effects on water quality from before the drill bit hits the ground to after hydraulic fracturing has been performed.

"This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do—ensure that the health of their communities and families are protected," said Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development, in a statement.
Conspicuously absent from the list are sites in Sublette County and Pavillion, Wyo., where EPA scientists began testing water and collecting data three years ago in response to allegations of drilling-related contamination. In Sublette County, one of the most active drilling fields in the country, researchers discovered benzene in 88 water wells in 2008 and have been testing ever since. In Pavillion, the EPA found metals, methane, hydrocarbons and traces of compounds related to fracking chemicals in residential water wells in 2009.
Research in both areas is ongoing and may still inform the EPA's work, but it will not play a central role in the nationwide investigation into whether hydraulic fracturing is safe or presents a risk to drinking water. The EPA did not immediately respond to questions about the role of the Wyoming research.
Fracturing is a process used to extract trapped oil and gas from thousands of feet below ground by injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under enough force to shatter the rock and allow the oil and gas to flow out. Advancements in the technology have made large, deeply buried natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere accessible for the first time. But the process is exempt from federal regulation, and there is little research showing where the chemicals wind up after they are pumped underground or how they can be safely disposed of after the drilling is finished.

(cont)

Tim’s Story

2012-01-25T13:49:00.000-08:00

Tim DeChristopher came to Utah in his early 20s to work as a wilderness guide for at-risk and troubled youth. Tim was born in West Virginia, where his mother was an early advocate for the cessation of mountaintop removal coal mining. In 2008 as a student of Economics, Tim attended the Stegner Symposium at the University of Utah, where he was greatly moved and galvanized by Dr. Terry Root, a scientist for the International Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Root explained to the audience that elements of the climate crisis were already irreversible. Tim confronted Terry after her presentation and asked her if it were true that many species, natural wonders and bioregions were in imminent peril. Terry put her hand on Tim’s shoulder and said the following: “I am so sorry, but my generation failed yours.” Those words haunted Tim, and dramatically changed his personal worldview.

While Tim was taking his final exams at the University of Utah, advocates for Utah’s wilderness like Robert Redford and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance were attempting to bring attention to a controversial auction of Utah public lands, orchestrated by the outgoing Bush Administration. The auction included parcels adjacent to cherished natural resources like Canyonlands National Park. SUWA and other regional advocates brought a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management in efforts to halt the auction pending further review and public comment. Through no fault of SUWA or their allies, the lawsuit could not settle the issue prior to the auction. On December 19^th, Tim finished his last final exam and took TRAX to the protest that SUWA and others had organized outside of the auction. On arrival, Tim decided that the protest needed to be moved from outside of the auction to inside, where the action was happening. With no prior plan of action, Tim entered the building where the auction was held and approached the registration desk. When asked if he was there to bid, Tim made a quick decision. He registered as Bidder 70 and entered the auction.

Tim intended to stand up and make a speech or create some other kind of disruption. Once inside, however, Tim recognized the opportunity to stop the auction in a more effective, enduring fashion. He sat quietly with his bidder paddle lowered, until he saw a friend from his church openly weeping at the sterile transfer of beloved red rock lands away from the public trust and into the hands of energy giants. It was then that Tim decided to act.

At first, Tim simply pushed up the parcels’ prices (some starting as low as two dollars per acre, and were ultimately sold for $240 per acre). Once almost half of the parcels had been sold to oil and gas companies, Tim felt he could no longer bear to lose any more public lands. Tim bid on and won every subsequent parcel, until he was recognized as an outlier and escorted from the auction. Once it was revealed that Tim did not have the intent or the means to pay for the parcels he won, the auction erupted in chaos. Because Tim won so many parcels and inflated the prices of so many others, the auction had to be shut down. Due to the requisite thirty-day period between a canceled auction and its rescheduled successor, the incoming administration took office before the auction could be rescheduled. Upon review of the parcels in question, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar dismissed the auction, declaring that the BLM had cut corners and broken many of its own rules, including a crucial statute requiring all federal agencies to take the impacts on our climate into account prior to auctioning off public lands for the purpose of energy development.
Tim’s action garnered a great deal of media and public attention, and catalyzed an overwhelming influx of support and applause for his creative, effective, and nonviolent act of civil disobedience, which ultimately safeguarded thousands of acres of Utah public lands. Tim’s bold act, coupled with his personal charisma and the gravity of his motivation, brought enthusiastic activists out of the Utah woodwork. Together with other activists who were equally concerned about the climate crisis and inspired by the effectiveness of Tim’s action, including current Director Ashley Anderson, Tim founded Peaceful Uprising, a volunteer-based climate action group committed to defending a livable future from the fossil fuel industry.
Tim’s action on December 19^th radically changed the course of his life. After the current administration decided to indict Tim, despite the confirmed auction’s illegality, Tim took his message to the widest possible audience to bring attention to the desperate need for effective action to combat the climate crisis. Tim also emphasized the ways in which his action had positively impacted his own life. “Ed Abbey used to say, ‘Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul,’” Tim said, addressing the crowd at 350.org’s 10/24 International Day of Climate Action. “I would take that a little further, and say that principled action is the salvation of the soul. I may have to go to prison, but every day since that auction, I walk a little taller, and I feel a little more free.”
It took the federal government more than two years to convict and sentence Tim. The trial was delayed a total of nine times by the Prosecution. Federal Judge Dee Benson dismissed Tim’s initial defense (the “Necessity Defense,” claiming that Tim’s crime was the lesser of two evils when weighed against the threats posed by the illegal auction). The Defense’s assertion of Selective Prosecution (as no other bidder had ever been indicted for failing to pay for parcels at an auction) was also dismissed. The threat of climate catastrophe that motivated Tim was banned from the courtroom and kept from the ears of the jury, as were the fact that Tim managed to raised adequate funds for initial payments on the parcels after the auction; the fact of the auction’s confirmed illegality; and the dismissal of multiple parcels.
Despite the multiple rescheduled dates, climate activists, organizers, and advocates from all over the country came to Salt Lake City for Tim’s trial to demonstrate their solidarity with a brave young man willing to offer up his own future to fight for the future of our planet. Supporters marched to the federal courthouse, where they remained for the trial’s duration, singing revolutionary songs and never leaving the Courthouse steps despite freezing rain and rough weather. Tim often expresses his own deep faith in the power of song, to unite people and empower them to act without fear. Referring to environmental and climate justice advocates in America, Tim summed up his own perspective: “We will be a movement,” he frequently stated, “when we sing like a movement.”
On March 3, 2011, after hours of jury deliberation, Tim was convicted of two federal felonies: one count of false representation, and one count of violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. Between his conviction and his sentencing hearing, Tim was able to tour the country, speaking to college students, climate activists and progressive audiences in every region. He assured supporters that he was fearless and unremorseful about his actions, and urged activists to be bold and brave in the fight for climate justice. Tim reminded his audiences that all meaningful social change in American history has required nonviolent civil disobedience. Tim urged activists to take the long view, and be ready to go to jail to defend their principles and their cause. “We don’t need to figure out how to keep me out of jail,” Tim explained to a concerned Santa Fe supporter. “We need to figure out how to get more people into jail.”
On July 26^th, 2011, Tim was sentenced to two years in federal prison. In the pre-sentencing report, the Prosecution openly admitted that Tim himself was not a threat to society or at risk to reoffend; the stated purpose of the sentence was to deter other activists from taking similar action to further the climate movement. In his final statement to the Judge, Tim said that he understood why the Prosecution saw him as a threat. “[My message] may indeed be threatening to the power structure,” he said. “The message is about recognizing our interconnectedness. The message is that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited. Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.”
After his sentence was issued, Tim was removed immediately from the courtroom and taken into the custody of federal agents. 26 people were arrested outside the Salt Lake City courthouse, and 26 solidarity actions happened at federal courthouses throughout the United States. The demonstrations were intended to express supporters’ outrage, and more importantly, to illustrate the climate movement’s undeterred commitment to continued action. Tim’s conclusion to his final statement to the courtroom at his sentencing hearing crystallized his own personal stake in that commitment:
“You can steer my commitment to a healthy and just world if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.”
Tim is currently serving his sentence at the Herlong Federal Correctional Institute in Herlong, California.

http://www.peacefuluprising.org/tim-dechristopher/tims-story

Pa.’s New Jobs Czar Fought Enviro Regs for Years

2012-01-25T13:47:00.000-08:00

A version of this story was co-published with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
For years C. Alan Walker, a coal industry mogul and wealthy donor to Pennsylvania's Republican Party, clashed with environmental officials who tried to regulate his companies. He described them as "vindictive," "out of control" and "the most dangerous thing" affecting the country's welfare.

In 1981 Walker even argued that the state should let someone from industry influence how environmental regulations were enforced.

Now, some 30 years later, Walker himself has been given exactly that role by the state's new Republican governor, Tom Corbett, who has accepted nearly $184,000 in political donations from Walker since 2004.
In January Corbett appointed Walker acting secretary for the state's Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). In March he gave him authority to expedite and influence permits at any state agency, including the Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates drilling in the Marcellus Shale, one of the nation's most important natural gas fields. Walker was also appointed to the state's Marcellus Shale Commission, a multi-stakeholder group that will advise the state in developing the shale. The goal, Corbett has said, is to "make Pennsylvania the Texas of the natural gas boom" and "create jobs, not votes."

A spokesman for Corbett said that Walker's role is not unprecedented and that his influence will be tightly focused on promoting job growth while preserving environmental enforcement.
Walker's assignment has raised questions about how a businessman whose coal companies were cited numerous times for polluting streams and drinking water -- and who then fought the state's orders to clean them up -- will work with DEP officials who are tasked with carrying out environmental laws.
Walker recently assured state legislators that he will not issue permits or override environmental decisions. "I'm merely here as an expediter to make sure that permits get the proper attention," he said.
He has also defended his coal companies' environmental record. "As long as I have run those companies, not one gallon of polluted water went into a Commonwealth stream—period," he is quoted as saying in the March 24 edition of the Patriot News, a newspaper in central Pennsylvania. "I wouldn't want to live in the state of Pennsylvania if it had."
However, a review of court documents, state records, and of Walker's own statements since the late 1970s revealed at least 15 cases in which Walker's businesses polluted the state's waterways.
State records show that in the 1980s and 1990s Walker's companies were ordered to treat wastewater that was contaminating residential drinking water wells and nearby streams. In Rush Township mines drained into streams, polluting the municipal water supply for the nearby town of Houtzdale, as well as Mountain Branch, a stocked trout stream.
In an email, a DCED spokesman told ProPublica that mining is a dirty business and that Walker had met his legal responsibilities.
In 2003, Walker told the DEP that his companies, which were winding down operations, could no longer afford to treat wastewater. After he threatened to stop treating the waste sites, he reached a summary settlement with the state: He and his insurance companies contributed to a $7.2 million cleanup trust, and the state released him from his treatment responsibilities. The settlement, which he signed on Oct. 2, 2003, included a statement describing the harm his companies had done to water resources over the years. Walker said recently that he never intended to stop treating the wastewater, and that his stance at the time was merely a negotiating tactic.

Cont...

ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare (Teaser)

2012-01-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Escape Fire Trailer

Jesus heals the Gay

2012-01-08T19:50:00.001-08:00

Year of Cooperatives

2012-01-08T16:26:00.001-08:00

The First 70

2011-12-22T08:52:00.002-08:00

Grow your food stamps – Learn how

2011-12-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

Grow your food stamps – Learn how

Posted October 19th, 2011 by admin

By Hayley Currier

What’s the difference between food and nutrition?

The United States government is attempting to grapple with this question, as seen in the October 2008 renaming of the federal Food Stamp Program which is now SNAP—Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The government is no longer, at least in name, just supplementing the purchase of food for low-income residents. They are supposed to be supplementing nutrition, somewhat of a different story.

A new wave of research and projects are questioning if all calories are created equal—enough food is not the same as enough nutrients. Processed and sugar-laden food—the cheapest option for many on food stamps—may be causing more problems than they are solving. Organizations like the Center for Weight and Health through the University of California, Berkeley are advocating for changes that encourage people to eat healthier. Globally, more people are suffering from obesity and related illnesses than undernourishment. Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, speaks strongly about the need to improve unhealthy diets on an international scale and calls for measures such as taxing unhealthy food and regulating food advertising. Evidence is mounting that we shouldn’t just talk about filling bellies any more, but what we are filling them with.

The renaming of SNAP indicates that the USDA is finally waking up to the mounting health crisis caused by empty calories. Research on whether food stamps contribute to obesity is not new, and a recent Ohio State University study showed that the longer someone is on food stamps, the higher the BMI rises in comparison to those not on food stamps. However, with some innovative thinking, SNAP also has the potential to combat obesity-related diseases. New energy is being pumped into this decades-old program. Food stamps could always be used to buy fruits and vegetables, but now double-voucher programs are being tested with great success at farmers’ markets across the country. This encourages low-income residents to buy local, organic and healthy produce instead of unhealthy processed packaged food, by doubling their purchasing power when purchasing from local farmers’ markets. This supports local farmers while giving low-income residents better access to healthy food.

Another old idea made new again is using food stamp funds to grow food. Though not widely promoted, food stamp funds have been available since 1973 to buy seeds and plants for starting a personal garden.

This is no surprise to SNAP Gardens, a new initiative started by Daniel Bowman Simon to promote the fact that SNAP funds may be used to purchase food-producing plants and seeds. If you use the $5.00 you spent on tomatoes to instead buy a tomato plant, your $5.00 gets you dozens of tomatoes. With over 45,000,000 Americans on food stamps, that’s a lot of tomatoes.

Simon is trying to tackle this awareness gap by starting at farmers’ markets. He sends promotional posters in any language requested, from Spanish to Cherokee to Hmong, to be hung in markets to inform SNAP consumers of their options. Since April 2011, 124 markets have already requested posters. By buying plants, consumers get more food for less money, enabling them to “grow their SNAP dollars.” And by selling plants, the farmers get extra income earlier in the growing season and create new and often long-standing relationships with their customers.

This SNAP creativity is inspiring. However, the fact remains that the number of people receiving SNAP aid is growing every month. One must not allow innovation to overshadow the fact that this food aid represents a much larger economic problem.

Join Daniel Bowman Simon for a Webinar on SNAP Gardens on Wednesday, October 26th through the USDA’s People’s Gardens Initiative.

Snap Gardens website
Hunger and obesity.
Olivier De Schutter
Food Stamp Match program.
Growing food with food stamps
Using food stamps to grow good food
Farmers' Market Coalition
USDA information on canning, seed saving, bee keeping, and extending the growing season.

"My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing,"

2011-12-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

"My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing," Elijah said to Bachmann, after some lighthearted coaxing. A dumbfounded Bachmann then shot the boy's mother an icy look before the pair walked away.

The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says

2011-12-06T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Era of Small and Many

2011-12-01T14:58:00.001-08:00

Reversing the trend of generations

by Bill McKibben

Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine

Painting: Suzanne Stryk

Earlier this year, my state’s governor asked if I’d give an after-lunch speech to some of his cabinet and other top officials who were in the middle of a retreat. It’s a useful discipline for writers and theorists to have to summarize books in half an hour, and to compete with excellent local ice cream. No use telling these guys how the world should be at some distant future moment when they’ll no longer be in office—instead, can you isolate themes broad enough to be of use to people working on subjects from food to energy to health care to banking to culture, and yet specific enough to help them choose among the options that politics daily throws up? Can you figure out a principle that might undergird a hundred different policies?
Or another way to say it: can you figure out which way history wants to head (since no politician can really fight the current) and suggest how we might surf that wave?
Here’s my answer: we’re moving, if we’re lucky, from the world of few and big to the world of small and many. We’ll either head there purposefully or we’ll be dragged kicking, but we’ve reached one of those moments when tides reverse.

Take agriculture. For 150 years the number of farms in America has inexorably declined. In my state—the most rural in the nation—the number of dairies fell from 11,000 at the end of World War II to 998 this summer. And of course the farms that remained grew ever larger—factory farms, we called them, growing commodity food. Here in Vermont most of the remaining dairies are big, but not big enough to compete with the behemoths in California or Arizona; they operate so close to the margin that they can’t afford to hire local workers and instead import illegal migrants from Mexico.
But last year the USDA reported that the number of farms in America had actually increased for the first time in a century and a half. The most defining American demographic trend—the shift that had taken us from a nation of 50 percent farmers to less than 1 percent—had bottomed out and reversed. Farms are on the increase—small farms, mostly growing food for their neighbors. They’re not yet a threat to the profits of the Cargills and the ADMs, but you can see the emerging structure of a new agriculture composed of CSAs and farmers’ markets, with fewer middlemen. Which is all for the good. Such farming uses less energy and produces better food; it’s easier on the land; it offers rural communities a way out of terminal decline. You could even imagine a farmscape that stands some chance of dealing with the flood, drought, and heat that will be our destiny in the globally warmed century to come. Instead of the too-big-to-fail agribusiness model, this will be a nimbler, more diversified, sturdier agriculture.

And what works on the farm works elsewhere too. Think about our energy future—the phrase that engineers like to use now is “distributed generation.” Since our old fuels were dense in BTUs and concentrated in a few locations, it made sense to site a few giant generating stations where coal or uranium could easily be brought and burned. But the logic of sun and wind is exactly the opposite: millions of rooftops and ridgelines producing power. You can do it in cities as easily as in the country—new satellite and airplane mapping of New York City’s five boroughs showed that the city’s rooftops could provide half its electricity. If you can do that in New York, imagine Shaker Heights, not to mention Phoenix. And once you’ve done it, you’ve got something practical and local: an interconnected grid where everyone brings something and takes something away. A farmers’ market in electrons.
Many of us get a preview of life in the age of small and many when we sit down at our computers each day. Fifteen years ago we still depended on a handful of TV networks and newspaper conglomerates to define our world for us; now we have a farmers’ market in ideas. We all add to the flow with each Facebook post, and we can find almost infinite sources of information. It’s reshaping the way we see the world—not, of course, without some trauma (from the hours wasted answering e-mail to the death of too much good, old-school journalism). All these transitions will be traumatic to one extent or another, since they are so very big. We’re reversing the trend of generations.
But the general direction seems to me increasingly clear. Health care? In place of a few huge, high-tech hospitals dispensing the most expensive care possible, all the data suggest we’d be healthier with lots of primary and preventive care from physicians’ assistants and nurse practitioners in our neighborhoods. Banking? Instead of putting more than half our assets in half a dozen money-center banks that devote themselves to baroque financial instruments, we need capital closer to home, where loan officers have some sense for gauging risk and need.
Your average state or city leader could help push change in those directions: small investments in, say, slaughterhouses and canneries will help local farmers diversify. New zoning regulations can make rooftop solar quicker and easier to install. Higher reserve requirements will move money from Wall Street’s casinos back to Main Street’s banks. None of them will produce utopia—we will still have endless problems, but they’ll be more limited. A careless local farmer can still sicken his customers, but he can’t sicken millions of them at once. A corrupt banker can wreak havoc in his community, but not so much havoc that it topples the financial system. Problems will stay problems, instead of ramifying into disasters. If a hailstorm wrecks my solar panels, I’ve got an issue, but it’s not blacking out the East Coast.
All economic life is a bet—many small wagers at decent odds won’t make anyone a billionaire, but they should keep most of us out of the poorhouse. And that’s both the virtue and the trouble with this transition. The virtue is obvious; the problem is that there are always a few people determined to hit the jackpot. In our world, most of those people are not actually persons—we call them corporations. But their power over our democracy is very real, and on the farm and on the trading floor and in the hospital ward they’re doing their very best to block the transitions we need. Their money, earned under the old bigger-is-better paradigm, gives them great power to block change: just look at how skillfully the fossil fuel industry has used the Tea Party to stifle legislation that would speed the transition to renewable energy. Watch Big Ag write the next Farm Bill—it won’t be pretty. Big Pharma would happily keep our current medical system, never mind that it’s bankrupting us all even as we fall further behind other nations on everything from life expectancy to infant mortality.
It’s possible they can delay the transition too long—the physics and chemistry of climate change, for instance, demand quicker change than many of our systems can easily manage. But all the money in the world can’t, in the end, hold back history. It’s heading toward something different and new and interesting. Or many many somethings, each of them small and beautiful.

Democrats, Republicans trade blows on tax cuts

2011-12-01T14:52:00.001-08:00

Reuters) - Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Monday exchanged their first blows in a battle over extending a payroll tax cut for workers, the latest in a series of polarizing fights that has worried investors.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned that failure to continue the tax holiday would hurt U.S. economic growth and could, according to some economists, push the country back into recession.

The payroll tax cut for workers that went into effect at the beginning of 2011 has put about $1,000 in the average worker's pocket and helped to shore up consumer spending.
The Senate could vote on a measure extending and expanding it as early as Thursday, according to Democratic aides. The $255 billion cost of the legislation would be paid for with a new 3.25 percent tax on income over $1 million a year.
Republicans are expected to block it, in part because of the tax on the wealthy that they say will stifle job creation.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats should schedule votes on measures that have bipartisan support, instead of "symbolic show-votes that we know won't lead to anything except more tension and political acrimony."
The two parties have battled fiercely this year over the best way to improve the struggling U.S. economy and create jobs to reduce a 9 percent unemployment rate.
The acrimonious debates brought the United States to the brink of a first-ever debt default in August and stalled negotiations last week on a deficit reduction plan aimed at slowing the growth of the country's $15 trillion debt burden.
Fitch Ratings on Monday gave the United States until 2013 to come up with a "credible plan" to tackle its ballooning deficits or face the downgrade of its coveted AAA rating.
Some economists have warned that letting the payroll tax cut lapse could shave anywhere from 0.75 of a percentage point to 1.5 percentage points from economic growth. The latest economic data show that the U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate from July through September.
"The potential impact on the larger economy is downright scary," Reid said on the Senate floor.
Reid will have to find a way to gain enough support from Republicans, who are wary about allowing the tax cut for wage earners to expire ahead of the 2012 elections but do not want to add to already huge U.S. budget deficits.
MULTIPLE SENATE VOTES EXPECTED
If Democrats fail to win passage in the Senate this week, Reid said he would push for additional votes in December, before the current session of Congress comes to an end.
"We are not going to let this lapse," he said, predicting it could take up to three tries to pass a payroll tax cut extension.
Reid refused to comment to reporters when asked whether future versions of the legislation could try to pay for the tax cuts without targeting the very wealthy.
A Senate Democratic aide raised the idea of using future savings from U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan to help defray the cost of lowering the payroll tax. Using such future savings for current economic stimulus was discussed in the deficit-reduction negotiations that collapsed last week.
The current payroll tax cut that is set to expire on December 31 reduced workers' taxes, which are used to fund the Social Security retirement program, to 4.2 percent, from 6.2 percent.
Now, Democrats want to pare it back to 3.1 percent to put $1,500 in cash in the hands of about 120 million families.
Businesses would also get a tax holiday by cutting the 6.2 percent tax in half. To encourage more hiring, companies would not have to pay any payroll tax on newly hired workers under the Democratic plan.
While Republicans have either expressed opposition to cutting the payroll tax or been tepid to renewing it, at least one Republican said a deal was possible by year's end if it does not increase taxes on the wealthiest.
Senator Patrick Toomey, interviewed Sunday on ABC's "This Week" program, said, "I think probably some package of that with other features might very well pass." But he did not elaborate on a way to pay for a payroll tax cut he could support.
(Additional reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by Paul Simao)

America is Not Broke

2011-12-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

How to pay for the crisis while making the country more equitable, green, and secure.

A misplaced obsession with our national debt and austerity has overtaken the national debate on the economy, with a resounding call to slash government spending to balance the budget. Some lawmakers are asserting that the country is broke, that we must tighten our belts, and that we lack the resources to pay for teachers, firefighters, and other vital public servants. They argue that we can't afford the government programs that help people in need, and claim we don't have the funds for urgently needed job-creating investments.

A congressional "supercommittee" has tried to identify $1.2 trillion in new cuts over the next decade that could have devastating consequences for our communities and our nation. There are many excellent proposals that should be “on the table” for debate.

This report challenges the premise that America is broke. In fact, we argue that the current fiscal challenge poses an opportunity to harness our country’s ample but misdirected resources in ways that will make us stronger.

We did not attempt to develop an exhaustive list of possible revenue-raisers or spending cuts. Rather, we focused on 24 fiscal reforms that we believe would go furthest to make the country more equitable, green, and secure. These reforms amount to an estimated $824 billion in potential revenue per year — seven times the total savings the supercommittee was tasked with
producing.

The recommendations fall into three categories:

Revenues that advance a more equitable society: New taxes on Wall Street, corporations, and individuals could, if rigorously enforced, raise more than $375 billion a year, while reducing reckless speculative activity and creating a healthier society. Between 1935 and the late 1970s, progressive tax rates and investments in infrastructure, education, and housing expanded the middle class and served as a foundation for decades of broadly shared prosperity. Today, opinion polls indicate widespread renewed support for proposals to increase taxes on millionaires, make Wall Street pay its fair share, and close corporate tax loopholes.

Expenditure cuts that would make the United States and the world more secure: The Pentagon consumes more than half of U.S. federal discretionary spending, much of it on things that do not make us safer. While some jobs rely on this spending, a study by economists at the University of Massachusetts has shown that the military budget is a poor job creator compared to other forms of federal spending. Whereas $1 billion devoted to military production creates approximately 11,000 jobs, the same amount invested in clean energy creates about 17,000 jobs; in health care, 19,000 jobs; and in education, 29,000 jobs.2 We identify three areas where a total of $252 billion in cuts can be made to free up funds for job creation without risk to our national security. They are:

End the war in Afghanistan as we end the war in Iraq;
Reduce the sprawling network of overseas U.S. military bases; and
Eliminate programs that are obsolete and/or wasteful. All three of these goals are supported by the majority of Americans.

Revenue increases and subsidy cuts that will create a cleaner environment: If all polluting industries were required to pay the full cost of environmentally harmful practices and products, they would have greater incentives to adopt improved green technologies and reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. The Obama administration has promised to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and yet U.S. taxpayers are still spending tens of billions of dollars per year on handouts to giant oil and other energy firms. We recommend eliminating this corporate welfare and introducing new taxes on pollution that could generate an estimated $197 billion per year in revenue.