And Here We Are
By David Glenn Cox

And so here we are, living in an environment Huxley or Orwell could forecast, but could never foretaste. It is the enormity of it and the stealthiness of it, which gets next to you. Shoving money through the slots, as the man with gun and uniform watches you from the corner of the grocery store on a Friday night. It requires the suspension of belief and the acceptance of an un-reality, as Barack Obama names a former cable industry lobbyist to head the Federal Communications Commission and the Republicans create a false flag issue out of Benghazi.

It is the one-party state creating a smoke screen, diverting attention from the real issues of domestic policy. Divide and conquer, always keep’em guessing, always leave’em laughing. Jack Lew is a former hedge fund manager for Citigroup and manager of its alternative investments unit, with oversight over Citigroup’s subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Hong Kong and he’s the new Treasury Secretary.

Sally Jewell worked for Mobil as an engineer in the oil fields of Oklahoma from 1978 to 1981. From there she moved on to banking at Security Pacific and West One Bank, before moving on to the Titanic disaster of modern banking, the ill-fated S.S. Washington Mutual. Jewell escaped the disaster by jumping ship as the iceberg approached, moving on to become the CEO of REI sporting goods. She’s the Secretary of the Interior now and her qualifications for the job are based solely on chairing several green committees, versus a twenty-plus-year career in oil, finance and banking. Who would a thunk it; an oil engineer with background in banking and the Republicans said what?

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/05/21/and-here-we-are/davidcox/

(Picture courtesy of mhaithaca at flickr.com.)

In continuing tribute to the Diner tradition of Southern Dragon, today we look at media and news outside the U.S.

A scene of horror was created in Southeast London’s Woolwich neighborhood just outside an army barracks when two men hacked a soldier to death then actively publicized their own crime.   They announced to passersby that they were returning a murder there for the deaths of their fellows abroad at British hands.

One was pictured holding a knife and speaking to a woman at the scene….According to the paper, Cub Scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett asked him: “Would you like to give me what you have in your hands?”

“He was covered with blood,” she said. “I thought I had better talk to him before he starts attacking somebody else.”

She says the suspect told her the dead man was a British soldier, adding: “I killed him because he kills Muslims over there and I am fed up that people kill Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Comparisons were being made to the recent atrocity at Boston’s Marathon.

In Egypt’s Sinai region hostages have been taken and the Morsi government is struggling to recapture them from tribes that are in revolt against officials who have failed to give even basic services in that area.

More importantly, there are no indications that authorities even know the whereabouts of the hostages. The presidency says it is not talking to the hostage takers, but there are mediation efforts under way, and it does not seem that these men could be released without some sort of dialogue.

Tribal leaders have been key in talks with assailants in previous hostage situations involving tourists or members of the security forces. There have been claims over the past year that President Morsi had also been resorting to so-called Jihadists to mediate with armed groups in Sinai, which, if true, can be quite risky.

The government is, once again, between a rock and a hard place, but it is arguably a position they could have avoided if a genuine, transparent and wide-reaching dialogue and programme was set to develop the Sinai.

The economic slump in the European Union has ameliorated among signs that the worst part of the decline is over.

“There are signs the rate of decline is easing, which does suggest we may be moving into a period of stabilisation, but it’s taking a lot longer than most people anticipated,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.

“It’s looking more like the end of the year (until) we’re going to see the numbers start to show signs of stabilising.”

The new orders services index fell to 45.3 from 46.2, meaning a big upturn in the PMI next month looks unlikely.

Williamson said there were signs that the rate of decline eased this month in the “peripheral” euro zone countries outside Germany and France.

“But against that we’ve seen a worrying steep deterioration in service sector expectations for the year ahead.”

The easing of deficit levels in the U.S. has eased pressure here as well, erasing a major factor cited by opponents of public services to erase such basic support systems as social security and medicare.

Never.Give.Up.

Hi, y’all.

Tonight’s musical selection is “Trigger on my Fire” by Black Pistol Fire from their self-titled album.

Many state legislatures (and Congress as well) have an opening prayer. Recently, an atheist lawmaker was tasked with the duty. From the Phoenix New Times:

An atheist state lawmaker tasked with delivering the opening prayer for this afternoon’s session of the House of Representatives asked that people not bow their heads.

Democratic Representative Juan Mendez, of Tempe, instead spoke about his ‘secular humanist tradition’ and even quoted author Carl Sagan.

‘Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads,’ Mendez said. ‘I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people in our state.’

There’s also a video of the invocation. I think this kind of diversity is great, and that our lawmakers could stand to hear thought provoking words of great writers, not just scripture, before they begin their day. Here’s another recent moment where Wolf Blitzer asked a woman if she thanked the Lord for surviving the tornado. Her response is both honest and gracious.

Also, a lot of my friends are upset that apparently it’s pronounced jif, reports Yahoo! News. Or at least, so says the creator of the humble GIF, on accepting a Webby Award:

Since retiring in 2001, [Steve] Wilhite has led a quieter existence than his creation. He goes on RV trips. He built a house in the country with a lot of lawn to mow. He dabbles in color photography and Java programming. He uses e-mail and Facebook to keep up with family.

He is proud of the GIF, but remains annoyed that there is still any debate over the pronunciation of the format.

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

Tomorrow I leave for Burning Flipside, central Texas’ Burning Man event. I’ll be gone from Thursday through Monday, which means Richard will edit and host watercoolers during that time. See you next week!

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Will the Connecticut General Assembly begin dismantling the state's war economy?

The Connecticut legislature has sent to the governor to sign a bill that would create a commission to develop a plan for, among other things:

“the diversification or conversion of defense-related industries with an emphasis on encouraging environmentally-sustainable and civilian product manufacturing. On or before December 1, 2014, the commission shall submit such report to the Governor and, in accordance with the provisions of section 11-4a, to the joint standing committee of the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to commerce.”

The commission “shall Advise the General Assembly and the Department of Economic and Community Development on issues relating to the diversification or conversion of defense-related industries” among other things.

Read the full text.

According to Peace Action, sponsor State Senator Toni N. Harp from New Haven has said,

“The proposed Futures Commission will set up a framework that allows us to convert many of our military related jobs and infrastructure into non-military industries.”

This is a remarkable breakthrough that didn’t just come out of nowhere:

“In November 2012, a ballot referendum passed in New Haven that called for moving the money from war to jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and human needs. This referendum won support nearly 6 to 1! This winter in Connecticut, the US Peace Council, No Nukes No War, the City of New Haven Peace Commission with the support of the state AFL-CIO and International Association of Machinists worked to get  SB619 introduced in the state legislature calling for a Futures Commission whose goals is to investigate how to convert the weapons manufacturing industries to producing civilian, green products and retain and develop manufacturing in the state. The Commission that this bill creates will include representatives of labor, peace and environmental organizations.”

In February, Bill Shortell, an official with the International Association of Machinists in Connecticut, explained what’s needed this way:

“Diverse forces are now converging in an attempt to carve up the military budget. These are (1) those who would cut it to reduce the deficit. There is considerable logic on their side. The solvency of the nation, in many people’s eyes, is threatened by the size of the debt compared with our GDP. About 30% of our government runs on borrowed cash. The same proportion can be applied to the military budget.

“Then there is growing group (2) that wants to “Move the Money” to much-needed social services, like health and education, and also to repair our crumbling infrastructure.

“There is also a powerful group (3) who would not reduce the military budget at all. This group somehow imagines the continued military usefulness of fighter jets, nuclear subs, etc, even though they rarely argue this. They instead generally justify continued military spending because of the millions of jobs and billions in profits that it creates.”

TIME FOR CONVERSION

“Finally, there is a small group (4), which sees the dismantling of the military budget as inevitable, and is making plans for alternative uses of the “procurement” part of the budget. This is about $100 billion of the $700 billion budget. We advocate re-assigning workers and switching capital to products, which have a peacetime use. This does NOT mean abandoning factories and retraining manufacturing workers to be nurses, teachers, and construction workers.

“We don’t need any more construction workers right now, and most military manufacturing workers are not suited or inclined to training in the social services. In addition, folding up this significant sector of US manufacturing, with no replacement products would have a disastrous impact on the US economy.

“Economic Conversion means designing peacetime manufactured products that are in demand, and re-tooling military facilities to produce them. The growing market for green technology is most often cited.

“The two other groups who would cut the military budget seem unaware of the impact of eliminating so much value-adding industry.  Nor are they focused on the plight of the military production workers or the many millions more, soldiers, administrators, security personnel, who stand to lose their job with the shrinking of the military budget. These last, however,  are not represented by unions.

“Union-based organizations like USLAW and LLP have no choice but to take into account the ideas of Economic Conversion, as we set policies and phrase our peace message. Calling flatly to “cut the military budget,”  spurs opposition from the manufacturing unions. These, in turn, have enough influence in the AFL-CIO to considerably weaken its vital input in the struggle over the reduction of the military budget.

“Economic Conversion is a difficult, complex question. There is little precedent for using government funds to manufacture anything but weapons. But if we don’t try to understand it and embrace it, the likelihood of achieving other benefits of the peace dividend fades, as the military workers and our unions cling to militarism.

“The military budget is so enormous that the goals of all three of the groups who would reduce it can be addressed. To fully achieve them, we need new taxes on people who can afford to pay.”

By Axel Caballero

In January 2013, the staff at Cuéntame received a phone call from 9 year old Stephanie Pucheta and her mom María Ortiz. Their request seemed simple and straightforward at the time: Would Cuéntame help in preventing the deportation of Stephanie’s dad, Julio Cesar Pucheta?

María and Stephanie were desperate; they had tried many avenues and contacted different immigration lawyers to no avail. Virtually broke and seemingly with nowhere else to turn to, they made the call after seeing one of our documentary campaign videos on immigration cases. Stephanie’s father had been in detention for over a year after a traffic violation and his removal proceeding was eminent. The Pucheta family story seemed all too common – reflecting precisely the horrors of our broken immigration system: A family on the verge of separation – with no resources, no legal remedies and no access to effective representations.

As with the many stories we receive, we immediately attempted to contact volunteer and human rights’ groups in the state of Georgia – where the family was located – in a last minute effort to help with their case. It was too late; Stephanie’s dad had already been deported. It didn’t come as a surprise, it happens all too often. We contacted Stephanie and María again who by then had enlisted the help of a pro bono lawyer, and asked if they wanted to tell their story. We explained to them that Cuéntame’s (which translates to ‘count me OR tell me your story’) mission was precisely that to tell stories that like theirs so often go unnoticed. Our hope was to create a small interest in the case, knowing that the system is so overwhelmed that they are viewed as another number and another file.

Stephanie was particularly keen in telling us her experience and her perspective. In an effort to capture her thoughts as pure and as best possible we decided to send Stephanie a personal camera and asked her to tell us her account of the events. Over a period of two weeks, Stephanie diligently clicked on the camera every morning and recorded a few minutes every day – a personal video diary of sorts.

Once she was done, she mailed the camera back to us so that we could see, hear and spread the message she had sent. We didn’t know what to expect. We had heard it all and seen it all. Yet, as soon as we turned on her first 9 minute clip, we knew this was different:

After watching the clip, we felt urgency, anger and shed tears. How can all of this happen? How can a Stephanie and thousands of children like her have to go through this? Couldn’t we do something about it? Wasn’t there an immigration reform bill being discussed to address these same issues? Stephanie’s story is emblematic of the over 25,000 immigrants who apply for family unity waivers each year only to be torn apart by an immigration system that emphasizes blind enforcement policies over sensible and human rights’ solutions.

As we move into a very serious, prominent and real immigration debate we see that our legislators once again have put the security industrial complex ahead of individual and human rights. Billions of dollars are being poured into the militarization of our borders, the fueling of private immigrant detention facilities and the continuation of raids and arbitrary deportations that have all but shredded basic and human rights. It is often futile to talk in these terms as the issue of immigration has been so criminalized, and tarnished with hate rhetoric by anti-immigrant groups that the mere discussion of human rights seems like an abomination in it of itself. Our families are facing a humanitarian crisis but our legislators have decided to prioritize talking about how to double up on these efforts?

We hope that our public officials listen to Stephanie and the thousands of migrant children looking for a solution. How about an immigration policy that enforces immigrant rights and deports hate?

Natural gas drilling

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on federal lands.

As part of its 171-page document of rules, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), revealed it will adopt the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public lands.

ALEC is a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and “dating service” that brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists together at meetings to craft and vote on “model bills” behind closed doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become law in what Bill Moyers referred to as “The United States of ALEC.”

BLM will utilize an iteration of ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act” – a bill The New York Times revealed was written by ExxonMobil - for chemical fluid disclosure of fracking on public lands and will do so by utilizing FracFocus.org‘s voluntary online chemical disclosure database.

In a way, it’s all come full circle. As we covered here on DeSmogBlog, the original chemical disclosure standards and the decision to utilize FracFocus’ database came from the Obama Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) industry-stacked Fracking Subcommittee formed in May 2011. DOE gave a $1.5 million grant to FracFocus.

The Texas state legislature soon thereafter adopted the first bill making FracFocus the fracking chemical disclosure database at the state level in June 2011. Since then, it’s been off to the races, with the Council of State Governments adopting the TX bill as model bill in Aug. 2011, ALEC adopting it as a model bill in Oct. 2011, and the bill becoming state law in Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states.

Both the Illinois and Florida state legislatures have also tried to push through this model, but it died dead in its tracks.

FracFocus has been an anemic and failed effort by the Obama Admin. to alter the George W. Bush Admin. “Halliburton Loophole” standards for fracking chemical disclosure, which allowed the recipe of fracking chemicals to remain a “trade secret.” It’s amounted to nothing more than the same game by a different name, with a Harvard study recently giving FracFocus a “failing grade.”

The FracFocus Façade: “Truck-Sized” Disclosure Loopholes

Almost two years after FracFocus‘ debut, it is important to scrutinize its disastrous performance.

“Drilling companies in Texas, the biggest oil-and-natural gas producing state, claimed similar exemptions about 19,000 times this year through August,” explainedBloomberg in a Dec. 2012 investigation. “Trade-secret exemptions block information on more than five ingredients for every well in Texas, undermining the statute’s purpose of informing people about chemicals that are hauled through their communities and injected thousands of feet beneath their homes and farms.”

One representative from Texas – the original FracFocus state – said it allows “truck-sized” loopholes in chemical disclosure. An earlier investigative effort by Bloomberg explained just how big these 18-wheelers are.

“Energy companies failed to list more than two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011, when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year,” wrote Bloomberg. “The gaps reveal shortcomings in the voluntary approach to transparency on the site, which has received funding from oil and gas trade groups and $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.”

This moved U.S. Rep. Diane DeGette, author of the FRAC Act – which would mandate actual fracking chemical disclosure, although it’s never garnered more than a handful of co-sponsors - to say FracFocus offers nothing more than the mirage of transparency.

“FracFocus is just a fig leaf for the industry to be able to say they’re doing something in terms of disclosure,” she said.

“Fig leaf” is a generous way of putting it. After all, FracFocus is merely a PR front for the oil and gas industry.

FracFocus‘ domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include industry lobbying tour de force America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation – a front group for Chesapeake Energy.

ALEC Model Bill Gone U.S. Public Lands in BLM Rules

The number of Wisconsin children who are from low-income families has climbed for the ninth straight year, according to a new report from the state’s Department of Public Instruction.

In the 2012-13 school year, 42% of Wisconsin children were eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. In the 2003-04 school year, just 30% of students qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches. The share of students qualifying has climbed every year since then. This video shows how the share of low-income schoolchildren has changed over time in each school district.

The criteria for qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches have stayed the same during the time period described. Students in families earning less than 130% of the federal poverty level qualify for free school lunches. For the 2013-12 school year, students from a family of four earning less than about $30,000 would qualify for free lunches. A much smaller number of students in families earning between 130% and 185% of the poverty level qualify for reduced-price lunches.

In Wisconsin’s five largest school districts, more than half the students are from low-income families. Eighty-four percent of the students in Milwaukee Public Schools are from low-income families.

The rising number of low-income students presents challenges for Wisconsin schools. Children from low-income families have poorer educational outcomes and lag their peers in educational achievement. They also are less likely to graduate from high school and become well-educated, healthy members of Wisconsin’s skilled workforce.

New policies proposed by state lawmakers may pose additional challenges to schools that serve largely low-income students. In his budget proposal, Governor Walker has recommended setting aside funding for schools that are rated the highest on DPI’s report card system. Schools that score in the lowest category would receive much less money, with the result that schools with relatively small numbers of students from low-income families would receive the most benefit. For more on that proposal, which is scheduled to be voted on next week by the legislature’s budget committee, read this blog post.

For more information, go to www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org.