The Washington Post (2/26/10) had an article about the Hurt Locker - the headline was "Some Iraq, Afghanistan war veterans criticize movie 'Hurt Locker' as inaccurate'" were not happy or in agreement with the film. 'Some' - as in, maybe 10 or 15, what is SOME anyway? What if the headline read: Iraqi War Vets Critical of Hurt Locker. Does that headline sound / read differently than 'Some Iraqi War Vets Upset with Hurt Locker'?
What if we had a headline six years ago - "A few people were protesting the Iraq War" - when the number was about 10-20,000. Versus those who supported the action, even though they opposed the fact we were laboring too long in the desert. The headlines never read 'a few' ... they were always 'Protestors' or 'Thousands Gather ...' Does it matter? Most certainly it matters - the bias cannot be mistaken, and to rearrange the boxes to suit your purposes - so you might argue that no one cares, is really quite stupid. The entire point of protests over the war - so Bush could hear and see the masses of people who wanted it stopped or ended or ... so Bush could LEARN from the events. Yet it seems that those who write these biased columns fail to learn - the American people are simply not interested in your alternate reality. That point has been made time and again and again and again.
So why has The Hurt Locker done so well --- please don't mistake one thing for another, for you will not only be stupid, but ignorant as well. Hollywood votes for the award, not the American people, and Hollywood has opposed the war since February 2003 (that is, BEFORE it ever began). Of course they would nominate it, and support it. It is NOT a runaway popular film. It has barely made back its costs. It is not a great film, and even if people buy the DVD, does not mean they agree with it nor like it - they buy the DVD because they buy movies - good and bad movies. That percentage may be small - 5-6%, but when the movie sits on a fence costing $15 million to make and earning just that much back, deduct the 5% and it is still losing money. In no way does it suggest even a minimal support for the film around the country. The foreign funds will save it from being a flop, but then again, most foreign movie goers regard Americans as reckless and this film proves it.
For Tom Hanks to make such an asinine statement - of course he is entitled to his personal opinion, for the time being, while it is still a right to express idiotic statements, BUT the headline should not read - Hanks angers CONSERVATIVES over his comparison of WWII and Iraq ... Hanks should offend every living veteran of World War II, every veteran from Iraq and Afghanistan, every enlisted man in the military today, every family members of any veteran from any war .... and that is not an exclusively conservative bunch.
Tom Hanks Angers Conservatives, Comparing 'The Pacific' in World War II to Iraq
Hanks and Matt Damon's 'Green Zone' Under Fire From Conservatives for Stances on Iraq War
By LUCHINA FISHER
ABC News
March 17, 2010—
It's no surprise that some conservatives love to hate Hollywood.
Michael Moore and Sean Penn are perennial favorites. But Tom Hanks?
The star of such flag-waving films as "Saving Private Ryan" and "Apollo 13" and producer of the World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers" has come under fire recently for remarks he made while promoting his current project, "The Pacific."
In an interview with Time magazine, Hanks, who is producing the HBO miniseries, compared the World War II conflict in the Pacific with the current one in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Pacific" began airing March 14.
"Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods," Hanks told Time. "They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?"
Richard Pearle, former secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, told ABCNews.com that Hanks has got it wrong.
"What he is suggesting, that the coalition forces are acting out of racist motives, is preposterous," Pearle said. "We're there at the request of the Iraqi government, which is trying to put together a democracy, and we've lost Americans trying to help them do that. I'm not at all clear what Mr. Hanks has in mind.
"He's an actor. He ought to go back to 'Saving Private Ryan,'" Pearle said. "I think if personalities that have a big megaphone by virtue of their acting talent are going to make political statements, they ought to be careful."
Hanks an 'Ignoramus'
Hanks' remarks lit up the conservative blogosphere. Pajamas Media's Victor Davis Hanson did not hold back: "Hanks' comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus."
Brad Schaeffer, writing on Frum Forum, took Hanks to task for making the comparison to the current war on terror. "To make the claim that we are waging war on Islamofascists because, presumably, we view Muslims as 'different' not only is an insult to the nation but betrays a stunning ignorance of contemporary history."
Tom Hanks Draws Conservative Fire
Hanks did not stop with his comments to Time. In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," he said the Pacific battle against the Japanese represented a war of "racism and terror," where the only way to complete the battle was to "kill them all."
"Does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today?" Hanks said.
When questioned about his comments by a journalist from conservative CNS News, Hanks clarified his remarks, substituting the word "ignorance" for "racism."
"His first statement was absurd," Pearle said. "The fact that he's trying to back out of that indicates how ignorant the first statement was."
It appears there's no backtracking when Hollywood and politics meet.
Bill O'Reilly has taken swipes at Hanks on three different occasions. In one, he said Hanks has "gone off the rails." In another, two nights ago, Karl Rove, who was promoting his new book, joined in.
Rove told O'Reilly, "I didn't write this book with the expectation that it would be picked up by Tom Hanks and Danny Glover and Sean Penn as part of their book club. He is impervious to rational discussion. He has no intellectual curiosity."
It remains to be seen how Hanks' new series will do in light of his comments. Viewers have shown they can be fickle about war films.
The success of "The Hurt Locker" at the box office and the Academy Awards was a first for films about the Iraq conflict, although conservatives have largely championed that film as apolitical. The dismal box office showing of "The Green Zone," the Iraq war film helmed by Matt Damon, has been more typical of the response to films about Iraq and Afghanistan.
Success of HURT LOCKER? The Success? The film cost $15 million to produce and it has brought in $15 million. THAT is NOT success. If it brings in $20 you are looking at something less than a miserable failure. ANyone knows that to be considered a success you need to make back a portion of the cost plus the cost. Who is trying to alter history here? ABC News Entertainment?
Conservatives have implied that politics are sinking "The Green Zone," since the film, directed by "United 93" director Paul Greengrass, focuses on the touchy area of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Politics and Hollywood
In the New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat said "The Green Zone" refuses to "stare real tragedy in the face, preferring the comforts of a 'Bush lied, people died.'"
"Throw politics into the mix, and there seems to be no escaping the cliches and simplifications that mar Greengrass's movie," Douthat said.
Clearly, politics and Hollywood are a combination guaranteed to cause controversy.
Iraq
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Hurry Up, Do Something - Doesn't Matter What - Haiti
Often, when terrible and tragic events overtake a community, a region, a country, Americans feel compelled to give, and we give, whatever our economic situation, we give - billions in aid, and not from a government, but from people. Of course, some are guilted into giving, often by celebrities who within hours of the earthquake were moving heaven and earth to get funds and foods and supplies to Haiti. A telethon was had, and money raised.
We give, and the world gave - some gave a tent, others gave a blanket, but they all gave. That was what we were told was needed, we had to do it, we had to help.
We did, and now they ... some do not have anything because, well, read the column. Perhaps the answer is to not always act first without thinking through the reprecussions. It doesn't take long - 48 hours, rational thought instead of emotion, analysis and evaluation. Perhaps you make something bad even worse if you do not.
Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath
By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer
Tue Mar 16, 8:43 pm ET
.PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – When the young woman needed to use the toilet, she went out into the darkened tent camp and was attacked by three men.
"They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns," the slender 21-year-old said, wriggling with discomfort as she nursed her baby girl, born three days before Haiti's devastating quake.
"I am so ashamed. We're scared people will find out and shun us," said the woman, who suffers from abdominal pain and itching, likely from an infection contracted during the attack.
Women and children as young as 2, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in the Jan. 12 catastrophe, are now falling victim to rapists in the sprawling tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people.
With no lighting and no security, they are menacing places after sunset. Sexual assaults are daily occurrences in the biggest camps, aid workers say — and most attacks go unreported because of the shame, social stigma and fear of reprisals from attackers.
Rape was a big problem in Haiti even before the earthquake and frequently was used as a political weapon in times of upheaval. Both times the first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted, his enemies assassinated his male supporters and raped their wives and daughters.
[I guess Danny Glover forgot to mention this small detail.]
But the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people has made women and girls ever more vulnerable. They have lost their homes and are forced to sleep in flimsy tents or tarp-covered lean-tos. They've lost male protection with the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons. And they are living in close quarters with strangers.
The 21-year-old said her family has received no food aid because the Haitian men handing out coupons for food distribution demand sexual favors.
Sex-for-food is not uncommon in the camps, said a report issued Tuesday by the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development in Haiti. "In particular, young girls have to negotiate sexually in order to get shelter from the rains and access to food aid."
At the camp on Monday where the young mother was gang-raped, a woman in shorts tried to bathe discreetly. Stripped to her waist, she faced her blue tarp tent, her back to the rows of other shelters.
Nearby, a teenage girl squatted behind a pile of garbage, trying to avoid the stench and clouds of flies around tarp-covered latrines that provide the only privacy, but also are places where women are attacked.
In this camp, some 47,000 people live crowded into what used to be a sports ground in a neighborhood that always has been dangerous. Residents include a dozen escaped prisoners, among them a man accused of a notorious murder, according to Fritznel Pierre, a human rights advocate who lives at the camp.
"But nobody says anything because they're scared, scared of the criminals and scared of the police," he said.
Pierre has documented three other gang rapes in the camp, including of a 17-year-old who says she was a virgin before six men attacked her and raped her repeatedly.
"I really worry about the teenager because she has no one to look out for her. She says she sees her attackers but is afraid to report them because she would then have to leave the camp and she has nowhere to go," Pierre said.
Investigators for Human Rights Watch reported the first three gang rapes to U.N. officials. Then, two weeks later, on Feb. 27, the 21-year-old mother was gang-raped.
Only a week later did U.N. police officers begin patrolling.
"For me it seems completely bizarre that for this one camp that everyone knows is unsafe, it's taken them three weeks to get a patrol going," said Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the agency's women's rights division. "It's unrealistic to expect patrols in camps all the time, but I think they can identify hotspots and provide security to those spots."
Pierre complained that the U.N. patrols are ineffective. "They only drive their cars down the one road that covers only a small portion of the camp. They never get out of their cars," he said.
In the hilltop suburb of Petionville, where plush mansions look out over slums on hillsides and in ravines, a 7-year-old rape victim was being treated Monday in the hospital of a tent camp set up on a golf course. Another child, a 2-year-old, had been raped in the same camp two weeks earlier.
The toddler is taking antibiotics for a gonorrhea infection of the mouth, according to Alison Thompson, who is the volunteer medical coordinator for a Haitian relief group created by Sean Penn. She helped treat both children.
[They need to die. These animals need to die. They do not need counseling, food, aid, support, or arrest - they need to die. How does the aid cause this - it doesn't, but you push people to act, to do something, we give, and then we feel like we have done our part and you disappear, but the worst has just started for many and it has nothing to do with aid. You know what would help them more than food? If Matt Damon sent 6 men to patrol the camps. He can afford it, perhaps simply hire ex-soldiers who have been checked out, hire someone to do it - save lives. ]
"Women aren't being protected," Thompson said. "So when the lights go down is when the rapes increase, and it's happening daily in all the camps in Port-au-Prince."
Besides sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, victims face possible HIV infection. Haiti has the highest infection rate for the virus that causes AIDS in the Western hemisphere, with one in 50 people infected.
Among the many rape victims is an 18-year-old girl who lost her parents, grandmother, a sister and three cousins to the quake. She was roaming the streets distraught when a man approached her, promising her his wife would look after her, she said.
The middle-aged man took her to a house, then left and came back with two men. The three raped her repeatedly until she managed to escape.
The teen is among dozens of rape victims who have sought help from KOFAVIV, a group of Haitian women who survived political rapes in 2004. Their offices were destroyed in the quake and they now operate from a tent.
They brought the victims to American volunteer lawyers who came to Port-au-Prince a week ago to identify Haitians who may qualify for humanitarian parole to live in the United States.
"I've been here five days and have spoken to 30 (rape) survivors including a dozen under 18. Their stories are horrific. I would be catatonic," said San Francisco lawyer Jayne Fleming.
Few rapes are reported because women often face humiliating scrutiny from police officers who suggest they invited the attacks and even nurses who contend young girls were "too hot" in their dress style, according to Delva Marie Eramithe, a KOFAVIV leader.
Her own 18-year-old daughter was saved from an attacker who dragged the girl into a dark alley between tents at the downtown camp sprawling across Champs de Mars plaza. The assailant did not see the teen's three sisters, who had been walking behind her, and all four of them managed to beat him and run him off.
Soon after, he returned to their tent with three other men and a gun, Eramithe said.
While a male neighbor argued with the men, Eramithe and her daughters went to a nearby police station to report the attempted rape.
"We told them the man who attacked her was right there at our tent, just two blocks away," Eramithe said. "But one policeman said they had received reports of nothing but raping, thefts and domestic beatings all day and there's nothing they can do. The other police officer said the only person who can do anything is President (Rene) Preval."
When she insisted, they gave her the license plate of a police van patrolling the camp perimeter. Eventually she found the patrol car but that officer "told us to go and get the attacker and bring him to them."
Police spokesman Gary Desrosiers said only 24 rapes have been reported to Haitian authorities this year. Several suspects were detained, but many escaped when prisons collapsed in the quake, he said.
Police Chief Mario Andresol blamed the attacks on the more than 7,000 prisoners who escaped. "Bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," he told reporters two weeks after the quake.
"We are aware of problem ... but it's not a priority," Information Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said last month.
Haitian police officers with stations minutes from some of the largest camps do not patrol — a fact that spokesman Desrosiers blames on the loss of dozens of officers killed in the quake, as well as scores who remain missing and more than 250 who were injured.
Still, that leaves some 9,600 Haitian police officers and 2,000 U.N. police officers.
The first signs of action came when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived Sunday, and a contingent of female U.N. and Haitian police officers set up a tent at the camp.
Ban promised the camps will be "safe and secure."
He praised the security offered by Haitian and U.N. police and told the women officers: "We must protect these women and girls. ... If they are sexually abused and attacked and raped, that is totally unacceptable and intolerable, and we must stop it."
On Monday, a man with a bullhorn was at the camp during a food distribution, saying "We don't want men raping women, do we?"
No, the women waiting in line yelled back.
Still, the fear was palpable among the most vulnerable. The 18-year-old orphaned rape victim was nervous about the time, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
"I have to find somewhere to sleep, near some people who might help me if there's trouble," she said.
"It scares me, the way the men look at me, and they know I'm all alone."
haiti
We give, and the world gave - some gave a tent, others gave a blanket, but they all gave. That was what we were told was needed, we had to do it, we had to help.
We did, and now they ... some do not have anything because, well, read the column. Perhaps the answer is to not always act first without thinking through the reprecussions. It doesn't take long - 48 hours, rational thought instead of emotion, analysis and evaluation. Perhaps you make something bad even worse if you do not.
Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath
By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer
Tue Mar 16, 8:43 pm ET
.PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – When the young woman needed to use the toilet, she went out into the darkened tent camp and was attacked by three men.
"They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns," the slender 21-year-old said, wriggling with discomfort as she nursed her baby girl, born three days before Haiti's devastating quake.
"I am so ashamed. We're scared people will find out and shun us," said the woman, who suffers from abdominal pain and itching, likely from an infection contracted during the attack.
Women and children as young as 2, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in the Jan. 12 catastrophe, are now falling victim to rapists in the sprawling tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people.
With no lighting and no security, they are menacing places after sunset. Sexual assaults are daily occurrences in the biggest camps, aid workers say — and most attacks go unreported because of the shame, social stigma and fear of reprisals from attackers.
Rape was a big problem in Haiti even before the earthquake and frequently was used as a political weapon in times of upheaval. Both times the first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted, his enemies assassinated his male supporters and raped their wives and daughters.
[I guess Danny Glover forgot to mention this small detail.]
But the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people has made women and girls ever more vulnerable. They have lost their homes and are forced to sleep in flimsy tents or tarp-covered lean-tos. They've lost male protection with the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons. And they are living in close quarters with strangers.
The 21-year-old said her family has received no food aid because the Haitian men handing out coupons for food distribution demand sexual favors.
Sex-for-food is not uncommon in the camps, said a report issued Tuesday by the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development in Haiti. "In particular, young girls have to negotiate sexually in order to get shelter from the rains and access to food aid."
At the camp on Monday where the young mother was gang-raped, a woman in shorts tried to bathe discreetly. Stripped to her waist, she faced her blue tarp tent, her back to the rows of other shelters.
Nearby, a teenage girl squatted behind a pile of garbage, trying to avoid the stench and clouds of flies around tarp-covered latrines that provide the only privacy, but also are places where women are attacked.
In this camp, some 47,000 people live crowded into what used to be a sports ground in a neighborhood that always has been dangerous. Residents include a dozen escaped prisoners, among them a man accused of a notorious murder, according to Fritznel Pierre, a human rights advocate who lives at the camp.
"But nobody says anything because they're scared, scared of the criminals and scared of the police," he said.
Pierre has documented three other gang rapes in the camp, including of a 17-year-old who says she was a virgin before six men attacked her and raped her repeatedly.
"I really worry about the teenager because she has no one to look out for her. She says she sees her attackers but is afraid to report them because she would then have to leave the camp and she has nowhere to go," Pierre said.
Investigators for Human Rights Watch reported the first three gang rapes to U.N. officials. Then, two weeks later, on Feb. 27, the 21-year-old mother was gang-raped.
Only a week later did U.N. police officers begin patrolling.
"For me it seems completely bizarre that for this one camp that everyone knows is unsafe, it's taken them three weeks to get a patrol going," said Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the agency's women's rights division. "It's unrealistic to expect patrols in camps all the time, but I think they can identify hotspots and provide security to those spots."
Pierre complained that the U.N. patrols are ineffective. "They only drive their cars down the one road that covers only a small portion of the camp. They never get out of their cars," he said.
In the hilltop suburb of Petionville, where plush mansions look out over slums on hillsides and in ravines, a 7-year-old rape victim was being treated Monday in the hospital of a tent camp set up on a golf course. Another child, a 2-year-old, had been raped in the same camp two weeks earlier.
The toddler is taking antibiotics for a gonorrhea infection of the mouth, according to Alison Thompson, who is the volunteer medical coordinator for a Haitian relief group created by Sean Penn. She helped treat both children.
[They need to die. These animals need to die. They do not need counseling, food, aid, support, or arrest - they need to die. How does the aid cause this - it doesn't, but you push people to act, to do something, we give, and then we feel like we have done our part and you disappear, but the worst has just started for many and it has nothing to do with aid. You know what would help them more than food? If Matt Damon sent 6 men to patrol the camps. He can afford it, perhaps simply hire ex-soldiers who have been checked out, hire someone to do it - save lives. ]
"Women aren't being protected," Thompson said. "So when the lights go down is when the rapes increase, and it's happening daily in all the camps in Port-au-Prince."
Besides sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, victims face possible HIV infection. Haiti has the highest infection rate for the virus that causes AIDS in the Western hemisphere, with one in 50 people infected.
Among the many rape victims is an 18-year-old girl who lost her parents, grandmother, a sister and three cousins to the quake. She was roaming the streets distraught when a man approached her, promising her his wife would look after her, she said.
The middle-aged man took her to a house, then left and came back with two men. The three raped her repeatedly until she managed to escape.
The teen is among dozens of rape victims who have sought help from KOFAVIV, a group of Haitian women who survived political rapes in 2004. Their offices were destroyed in the quake and they now operate from a tent.
They brought the victims to American volunteer lawyers who came to Port-au-Prince a week ago to identify Haitians who may qualify for humanitarian parole to live in the United States.
"I've been here five days and have spoken to 30 (rape) survivors including a dozen under 18. Their stories are horrific. I would be catatonic," said San Francisco lawyer Jayne Fleming.
Few rapes are reported because women often face humiliating scrutiny from police officers who suggest they invited the attacks and even nurses who contend young girls were "too hot" in their dress style, according to Delva Marie Eramithe, a KOFAVIV leader.
Her own 18-year-old daughter was saved from an attacker who dragged the girl into a dark alley between tents at the downtown camp sprawling across Champs de Mars plaza. The assailant did not see the teen's three sisters, who had been walking behind her, and all four of them managed to beat him and run him off.
Soon after, he returned to their tent with three other men and a gun, Eramithe said.
While a male neighbor argued with the men, Eramithe and her daughters went to a nearby police station to report the attempted rape.
"We told them the man who attacked her was right there at our tent, just two blocks away," Eramithe said. "But one policeman said they had received reports of nothing but raping, thefts and domestic beatings all day and there's nothing they can do. The other police officer said the only person who can do anything is President (Rene) Preval."
When she insisted, they gave her the license plate of a police van patrolling the camp perimeter. Eventually she found the patrol car but that officer "told us to go and get the attacker and bring him to them."
Police spokesman Gary Desrosiers said only 24 rapes have been reported to Haitian authorities this year. Several suspects were detained, but many escaped when prisons collapsed in the quake, he said.
Police Chief Mario Andresol blamed the attacks on the more than 7,000 prisoners who escaped. "Bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," he told reporters two weeks after the quake.
"We are aware of problem ... but it's not a priority," Information Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said last month.
Haitian police officers with stations minutes from some of the largest camps do not patrol — a fact that spokesman Desrosiers blames on the loss of dozens of officers killed in the quake, as well as scores who remain missing and more than 250 who were injured.
Still, that leaves some 9,600 Haitian police officers and 2,000 U.N. police officers.
The first signs of action came when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived Sunday, and a contingent of female U.N. and Haitian police officers set up a tent at the camp.
Ban promised the camps will be "safe and secure."
He praised the security offered by Haitian and U.N. police and told the women officers: "We must protect these women and girls. ... If they are sexually abused and attacked and raped, that is totally unacceptable and intolerable, and we must stop it."
On Monday, a man with a bullhorn was at the camp during a food distribution, saying "We don't want men raping women, do we?"
No, the women waiting in line yelled back.
Still, the fear was palpable among the most vulnerable. The 18-year-old orphaned rape victim was nervous about the time, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
"I have to find somewhere to sleep, near some people who might help me if there's trouble," she said.
"It scares me, the way the men look at me, and they know I'm all alone."
haiti
Mexico and US Money
An entire industry thrives on US money in Mexico and it is not drugs.
Remittances from US to Mexico drop 14%
By Ronald Buchanan in Mexico City
Financial Times
January 4 2010 21:18
The remittances that Mexican emigrants sent home to their families from a recession-bound US dropped by 14 per cent year-on-year in November to $1.5bn, the Bank of Mexico reported on Monday.
Remittances for the first 11 months of 2009 totalled $19.6bn, a decline of 16 per cent on the same period of the previous year, the central bank said.
Most of Mexico’s emigrants are based in the US. Their remittances are exceeded only by oil exports as the hard-pressed Mexican economy’s official leading source of dollar earnings, although official statistics give no estimate of the earnings of the nation’s powerful drug cartels.
Mexico’s close trade ties to the US have been blamed by Felipe Calderón, president, and international financial institutions for an expected fall of almost 7 per cent in its gross domestic product in 2009, the worst performance in Latin America, and worse than what followed Mexico’s 1994-95 financial collapse.
November’s fall in remittances was the smallest in eight months, probably reflecting a moderate recovery in the US jobs market. The impact will have been eased for Mexicans receiving money by the fall in the Mexican peso’s value against the dollar.
Last year, the government’s finances remained sound, largely thanks to its ability to dip into rainy-day funds, but a 2010 austerity budget raised fears of a long haul out of recession.
The government has rejected criticism it is not doing enough to stimulate growth. At the weekend, José Antonio Meade, a deputy finance minister, said investment in programmes to regenerate jobs and boost public works amounted to 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009, “a sum that is comparable with the stimuli implemented in other industrialised and emerging countries”.
For consumers, the uphill slog of January will be steep this year, with rises in the price of everything from cable television to beer, as well as petrol, electricity and food staples such as tortillas and bread.
But the investment community remains upbeat amid predictions of 3.5 per cent economic growth in 2010 and 2009’s increase of 44 per cent in the Mexican stock market index.
Confidence was bolstered last year when Mr Calderón appointed the respected finance minister, Agustín Carstens, to succeed Guillermo Ortiz as governor of the Bank of Mexico.
Ernesto Cordero, who took over from Mr Carstens at the ministry, is more of an unknown quantity, but he has tried to quell fears of big changes.
Mexico
Remittances from US to Mexico drop 14%
By Ronald Buchanan in Mexico City
Financial Times
January 4 2010 21:18
The remittances that Mexican emigrants sent home to their families from a recession-bound US dropped by 14 per cent year-on-year in November to $1.5bn, the Bank of Mexico reported on Monday.
Remittances for the first 11 months of 2009 totalled $19.6bn, a decline of 16 per cent on the same period of the previous year, the central bank said.
Most of Mexico’s emigrants are based in the US. Their remittances are exceeded only by oil exports as the hard-pressed Mexican economy’s official leading source of dollar earnings, although official statistics give no estimate of the earnings of the nation’s powerful drug cartels.
Mexico’s close trade ties to the US have been blamed by Felipe Calderón, president, and international financial institutions for an expected fall of almost 7 per cent in its gross domestic product in 2009, the worst performance in Latin America, and worse than what followed Mexico’s 1994-95 financial collapse.
November’s fall in remittances was the smallest in eight months, probably reflecting a moderate recovery in the US jobs market. The impact will have been eased for Mexicans receiving money by the fall in the Mexican peso’s value against the dollar.
Last year, the government’s finances remained sound, largely thanks to its ability to dip into rainy-day funds, but a 2010 austerity budget raised fears of a long haul out of recession.
The government has rejected criticism it is not doing enough to stimulate growth. At the weekend, José Antonio Meade, a deputy finance minister, said investment in programmes to regenerate jobs and boost public works amounted to 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009, “a sum that is comparable with the stimuli implemented in other industrialised and emerging countries”.
For consumers, the uphill slog of January will be steep this year, with rises in the price of everything from cable television to beer, as well as petrol, electricity and food staples such as tortillas and bread.
But the investment community remains upbeat amid predictions of 3.5 per cent economic growth in 2010 and 2009’s increase of 44 per cent in the Mexican stock market index.
Confidence was bolstered last year when Mr Calderón appointed the respected finance minister, Agustín Carstens, to succeed Guillermo Ortiz as governor of the Bank of Mexico.
Ernesto Cordero, who took over from Mr Carstens at the ministry, is more of an unknown quantity, but he has tried to quell fears of big changes.
Mexico
Mexico and the Crime Wave - Makes Afghanistan Look Peaceful
And the good times roll - Mexico is coming apart at the seams. You could argue - as the government applies pressure in one direction, the syndicates apply pressure in the other.
Or - the government has lost control.
US citizens shot dead by Mexican drug gangs
By Adam Thomson in Mexico City
Financial Times
March 14 2010 22:53
Three people with links to the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez were gunned down at the weekend by “drug cartel hit teams”, according to a US official.
A consulate employee and her husband, both US citizens, were murdered while driving in the violent border city, which neighbours El Paso, Texas. Their baby daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, survived the attack.
In a separate incident the husband of a Mexican consulate employee was killed while driving through the city, one of the world’s most violent. According to media reports, his two children were injured in the attack.
On Sunday Mike Hammer, the White House National Security Council spokesman, said Barack Obama, US president, was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the news of the killings.
Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement condemning the murders and promised to work with the US government to investigate the crime. “Mexican authorities will work tirelessly to throw light on the circumstances surrounding the crime,” it said.
The murders come as Mexico suffers a wave of violence associated with the government’s war on organised crime, which it has made its policy cornerstone.
At the weekend, local media reported the murder of 31 people in and around the Pacific-coast beach resort of Acapulco in what are believed to be drug-related murders. At least two of the victims were found decapitated.
[You'd think al qaida and their barbarism had arrived in Mexico.]
The crimewave has provoked the US to issue travel warnings for citizens planning on visiting Mexico’s border cities. On Sunday the US state department announced that its diplomats working in six northern Mexico cities were told they could send family members home.
But so far this year, Ciudad Juárez has borne the brunt of the crime. During the first two months of 2010, 410 people were murdered in the sprawling, industrial city. Last year there were 2,600 murders in the city, which has a population of 1.3m.
Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s centre-right president, has sent thousands of troops to patrol the city’s streets in the past 12 months in an attempt to restore order.
But federal police officers and military personnel complain they do not have sufficient intelligence to combat the crime groups effectively.
A recent poll showed that the violence was taking its toll on the government, with Mr Calderón’s image as a leader at 47 per cent – the lowest point since he took office in December 2006.
[It must all be our fault. The US is responsible.]
Mexico
Or - the government has lost control.
US citizens shot dead by Mexican drug gangs
By Adam Thomson in Mexico City
Financial Times
March 14 2010 22:53
Three people with links to the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez were gunned down at the weekend by “drug cartel hit teams”, according to a US official.
A consulate employee and her husband, both US citizens, were murdered while driving in the violent border city, which neighbours El Paso, Texas. Their baby daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, survived the attack.
In a separate incident the husband of a Mexican consulate employee was killed while driving through the city, one of the world’s most violent. According to media reports, his two children were injured in the attack.
On Sunday Mike Hammer, the White House National Security Council spokesman, said Barack Obama, US president, was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the news of the killings.
Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement condemning the murders and promised to work with the US government to investigate the crime. “Mexican authorities will work tirelessly to throw light on the circumstances surrounding the crime,” it said.
The murders come as Mexico suffers a wave of violence associated with the government’s war on organised crime, which it has made its policy cornerstone.
At the weekend, local media reported the murder of 31 people in and around the Pacific-coast beach resort of Acapulco in what are believed to be drug-related murders. At least two of the victims were found decapitated.
[You'd think al qaida and their barbarism had arrived in Mexico.]
The crimewave has provoked the US to issue travel warnings for citizens planning on visiting Mexico’s border cities. On Sunday the US state department announced that its diplomats working in six northern Mexico cities were told they could send family members home.
But so far this year, Ciudad Juárez has borne the brunt of the crime. During the first two months of 2010, 410 people were murdered in the sprawling, industrial city. Last year there were 2,600 murders in the city, which has a population of 1.3m.
Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s centre-right president, has sent thousands of troops to patrol the city’s streets in the past 12 months in an attempt to restore order.
But federal police officers and military personnel complain they do not have sufficient intelligence to combat the crime groups effectively.
A recent poll showed that the violence was taking its toll on the government, with Mr Calderón’s image as a leader at 47 per cent – the lowest point since he took office in December 2006.
[It must all be our fault. The US is responsible.]
Mexico
Monday, March 15, 2010
The End of Times or Just the End of His Political Career?
In one area, Retardicans have supremacy - foreign affairs. The lies that Bush dismantled our relationships around the world was a farce, and unfortunately people with less common sense than God gave a squirrel, believed it. Regardless.
On many issues Retardicans are just that, not very bright, and just as foolish as Losercrats. When it comes to issues of security and peace - Republicans own the gamebook.
By the way - that construction that was going on - hasn't been, isn't. Israel has not proceeded since they put a hold on it 10 months ago. Yes, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak did give a go ahead, but nothing has gone ahead. It is not moving. Nothing. Hasn't been and isn't. Yet this administration is acting like a petulant child - demanding something stop that has never started. He (Obama) is a menace when it comes to US foreign policy. He wants 1 billion friends and is willing to give up a few million, because in the end, he knows whats best for us.
Another reason why inexperienced community organizers should not be anywhere near the White House.
We should all pray he doesn't do anything worse than what he has done and pray his next 3 years goes by quickly and peacefully.
Republicans slam Obama's hard line towards Israel
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor says spat with Israel 'jeopardizes America's national security', while another senior party member concerned about administration's 'softer approaches' toward Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran
Yitzhak Benhorin Published: 03.16.10, 00:29 / Israel News
Ynetnews.com
WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers came out swinging Monday against President Barack Obama's hard line toward Israel over its controversial plans to expand a settlement in disputed east Jerusalem.
The number two Republican in the House of Representatives deplored the Obama administration's stance on Israel as "irresponsible" a week after Israel gave the green light to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in the area the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.
After Netanyahu vows to continue east Jerusalem construction, Qureia says, 'If Israel continues these practices, another uprising will break out'; Egyptian FM calls Israel's actions 'attempt to suffocate the Palestinians'. Dozens of Palestinians riot north of Jerusalem
Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials said last week's announcement of the new construction was insulting and damaging to efforts to revive long-stalled peace talks.
"To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, vice president and the secretary of state have made against Israel is an understatement," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.
"In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends."
He said the administration's public spat with the Jewish State "jeopardizes America's national security."
The government of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave permission for the new construction in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood on March 9, just as Biden visited Israel, sparking a major diplomatic crisis.
Israel's ambassador to Washington said bilateral relations have hit a 35-year low.
It also came just two days after the Palestinians had reluctantly agreed to hold indirect, US-brokered negotiations with Israel.
Senator Sam Brownback said in a statement that "it's hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace."
The Kansas Republican, a staunch defender of Israel in Congress, said it would be "far more worthwhile" for the administration to focus its efforts instead on shifting the location of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly controversial proposal.
'Israel indispensable ally'
There are no embassies in Jerusalem, as Israel captured and annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War in a move the international community does not recognize. Israel considers all of the city its capital despite Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem.
Brownback also urged the Obama administration to narrow its focus on the "growing Iranian nuclear threat," referring to the Islamic republic's continued defiance of international calls to halt its controversial uranium enrichment program. Israel considers Iran an existential threat.
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued a statement saying, “The Administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel is not merely irresponsible, it is an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship with a close friend and ally."
According to the Republican leader, "The Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to US national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies.
“If the Administration wants to work toward resolving the conflict in the Middle East, it should focus its efforts on Iran’s behavior, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its state-sponsorship of terrorism, its crushing of domestic democratic forces, and the impact its behavior is having, not just on Israel, but also on the calculations of other countries in the region as well as on the credibility of international nonproliferation efforts," Boehner said in the statement.
"House Republicans remain committed to our long-standing bilateral friendship with Israel, as well as to the commitments this country has made,” he added.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that the Obama administration halt its condemnations of "an indispensable ally and friend of the United States."
"US condemnations of Israel and threats regarding our bilateral relationship undermine both our allies and the peace process, while encouraging the enemies of America and Israel alike," she said.
Ros-Lehtinen added that she was "deeply concerned" about the administration's "softer approaches" toward the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran.
Iran and Syria are the main foreign backers of the Shiite terror group Hezbollah but both deny that they provide anything other than moral support.
Washington also accuses Syria of turning a blind eye to militants crossing its border into Iraq.
really stupid people
On many issues Retardicans are just that, not very bright, and just as foolish as Losercrats. When it comes to issues of security and peace - Republicans own the gamebook.
By the way - that construction that was going on - hasn't been, isn't. Israel has not proceeded since they put a hold on it 10 months ago. Yes, the Defense Minister Ehud Barak did give a go ahead, but nothing has gone ahead. It is not moving. Nothing. Hasn't been and isn't. Yet this administration is acting like a petulant child - demanding something stop that has never started. He (Obama) is a menace when it comes to US foreign policy. He wants 1 billion friends and is willing to give up a few million, because in the end, he knows whats best for us.
Another reason why inexperienced community organizers should not be anywhere near the White House.
We should all pray he doesn't do anything worse than what he has done and pray his next 3 years goes by quickly and peacefully.
Republicans slam Obama's hard line towards Israel
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor says spat with Israel 'jeopardizes America's national security', while another senior party member concerned about administration's 'softer approaches' toward Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran
Yitzhak Benhorin Published: 03.16.10, 00:29 / Israel News
Ynetnews.com
WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers came out swinging Monday against President Barack Obama's hard line toward Israel over its controversial plans to expand a settlement in disputed east Jerusalem.
The number two Republican in the House of Representatives deplored the Obama administration's stance on Israel as "irresponsible" a week after Israel gave the green light to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in the area the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.
After Netanyahu vows to continue east Jerusalem construction, Qureia says, 'If Israel continues these practices, another uprising will break out'; Egyptian FM calls Israel's actions 'attempt to suffocate the Palestinians'. Dozens of Palestinians riot north of Jerusalem
Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials said last week's announcement of the new construction was insulting and damaging to efforts to revive long-stalled peace talks.
"To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, vice president and the secretary of state have made against Israel is an understatement," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.
"In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends."
He said the administration's public spat with the Jewish State "jeopardizes America's national security."
The government of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave permission for the new construction in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood on March 9, just as Biden visited Israel, sparking a major diplomatic crisis.
Israel's ambassador to Washington said bilateral relations have hit a 35-year low.
It also came just two days after the Palestinians had reluctantly agreed to hold indirect, US-brokered negotiations with Israel.
Senator Sam Brownback said in a statement that "it's hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace."
The Kansas Republican, a staunch defender of Israel in Congress, said it would be "far more worthwhile" for the administration to focus its efforts instead on shifting the location of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly controversial proposal.
'Israel indispensable ally'
There are no embassies in Jerusalem, as Israel captured and annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War in a move the international community does not recognize. Israel considers all of the city its capital despite Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem.
Brownback also urged the Obama administration to narrow its focus on the "growing Iranian nuclear threat," referring to the Islamic republic's continued defiance of international calls to halt its controversial uranium enrichment program. Israel considers Iran an existential threat.
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued a statement saying, “The Administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel is not merely irresponsible, it is an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship with a close friend and ally."
According to the Republican leader, "The Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to US national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies.
“If the Administration wants to work toward resolving the conflict in the Middle East, it should focus its efforts on Iran’s behavior, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its state-sponsorship of terrorism, its crushing of domestic democratic forces, and the impact its behavior is having, not just on Israel, but also on the calculations of other countries in the region as well as on the credibility of international nonproliferation efforts," Boehner said in the statement.
"House Republicans remain committed to our long-standing bilateral friendship with Israel, as well as to the commitments this country has made,” he added.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that the Obama administration halt its condemnations of "an indispensable ally and friend of the United States."
"US condemnations of Israel and threats regarding our bilateral relationship undermine both our allies and the peace process, while encouraging the enemies of America and Israel alike," she said.
Ros-Lehtinen added that she was "deeply concerned" about the administration's "softer approaches" toward the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran.
Iran and Syria are the main foreign backers of the Shiite terror group Hezbollah but both deny that they provide anything other than moral support.
Washington also accuses Syria of turning a blind eye to militants crossing its border into Iraq.
really stupid people
Obama and Israel: When is the truth not the truth? When he isn't listening.
I am curious. All this 'new construction' that Israel is supposedly doing. Where is it? And why is this administration using that term for the construction when they have been informed to the contrary by Israel?
The truth is sometimes complicated and requires explanation. Much easier to go with the lie.
Barak unfreezes 112 settler homes
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
08/03/2010
Jerusalem Post
Contractor Haim Zaken still has nothing in writing that would allow him to actually build in the Beitar Illit settlement, even though Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s verbal nod for the project angered Palestinians on Monday.
In the midst of a renewed push to jump-start the peace process, the Defense Ministry announced that work could continue on 112 apartment units in Beitar Illit that had been frozen as a result of the 10-month moratorium on new West Bank settlement construction.
But for Zaken, it’s all hearsay.
“I haven’t seen any official document,” Zaken told The Jerusalem Post, adding that he still could not send a construction crew out into the field at this stage.
Many of his 68 apartments are part of the 112-unit project, which was given a stop work order at the end of November when the cabinet imposed the moratorium.
Last Wednesday, the Defense Ministry’s Exemptions Committee, which hears appeals from contractors and homeowners whose projects have been frozen, granted his appeal and said he could continue to build. The Civil Administration then notified the Beitar Illit Municipality, which in turn spoke with Zaken on Thursday.
A ministry source said the US had also been notified, but the source did not clarify when or how.
The decision to exempt the 112 Beitar Illit units from the overall West Bank freeze on new construction was publicized only on Monday morning by Army Radio. The story was broadcast as US special envoy George Mitchell and US Vice President Joe Biden were visiting Israel.
It also came one day after the PLO Executive Committee voted to support the resumption of negotiations with Israel through indirect, US-brokered talks.
On Monday, the Palestinian Authority cabinet also approved the measure, even though it and PA President Mahmoud Abbas believe that West Bank construction projects such as the one in Beitar Illit show that Israel is not serious about peace.
Palestinians have demanded that Israel halt all settlement construction. In a gesture to the Palestinians, Israel agreed at the end of November to halt any construction project that lacked a foundation. However, it allowed work to continue on 3,000 apartment units that already had foundations at the time of the moratorium.
Now that the Beitar Illit project has been excluded from the freeze, that number has risen to 3,112.
Located a mere .4 kilometers over the pre-1967 border, Beitar Illit is the third-largest Jewish city in the West Bank, with a population of 36,000.
In spite of the Palestinian insistence that Israel withdraw completely to the pre-1967 border, Israel has assumed that it will retain Beitar Illit in any final status-agreement with the Palestinians.
On Monday, the ministry explained that initial approval for the 112 apartment units had been granted by former prime minister Ehud Olmert as part of a larger project of close to 300 units.
Contractors working on the project had then received all the permits necessary for the units and had laid the foundations for all but the 112 when the moratorium was announced.
A Defense Ministry statement to the media said these were not new approvals, but a very specific decision that had been taken to unfreeze the units for safety and infrastructure reasons.
A source explained that it was impossible to lay infrastructure for the larger project without construction of these 112.
The site, as it is now, also poses a safety hazard to people in the area, said the source.
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now said that the Defense Ministry was simply being “creative” in the excuses it offered for breaking its word regarding the moratorium.
This was the government’s way of welcoming the Americans to Israel, said Ofran.
The whole point of the moratorium is that new homes can no longer be built in the settlements, she said.
According to data released Sunday by the Knesset Research Center, it’s possible that the moratorium has frozen work on an estimated 3,000 new homes in the settlements.
The report was drawn up at the request of MK Danny Danon (Likud) as part of his drive to make compensation available for homeowners and contractors who have taken a financial hit as a result of the moratorium. It calculated that the families who owned these homes now had to pay an extra 10 months of rent while they waited to resume building.
Compensation for this rent could cost NIS 90 million, the report estimated, not including financial damage to contractors and their employees, as well as the loss of fees to local settler councils.
To arrive at that NIS 90m. figure, the Knesset Research Center looked at 2008, in which it said 2,023 permits had been issued for new apartment units in Judea and Samaria.
This number refers to individual permits acquired by homeowners from local authorities, for projects that had already been approved by the Defense Ministry, and does not constitute new government approvals of construction.
Final figures were not yet available for 2009, but the Knesset Research Center estimated that at least 2,000 new local permits for apartments had been handed out in 2009 for projects approved by the ministry before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office.
Netanyahu has not approved any new projects, although settlers and contractors have continued to receive local permits to build projects authorized by past governments.
The researcher who authored the project told the Post that anecdotal evidence pointed to the fact that settlers had increased their rate of seeking local permits prior to the moratorium, under the belief that it would allow them to continue building.
It is likely that an additional 1,000 permits were granted by local authorities, he said, thereby bringing the number of those impacted by the freeze to 3,000. He cautioned that he had no data to back this up.
A Defense Ministry source, however, said that number matched its estimate.
Although the moratorium has been in effect for more than three months, the government has yet to agree on a formula to compensate settlers and contractors who have lost money from the delay in their housing projects.
Only now are government officials and politicians deliberating the criteria for compensating home-buyers and contractors.
Frustrated by the lack of progress on the matter, Danon and MK Uri Ariel (National Union) had threatened to ask the Knesset to legislate a compensation mechanism.
Danon has estimated that total compensation for the 10 months could reach NIS 160m. The Finance Ministry has said it is premature to cite a figure before the criteria have been set.
On Sunday, Netanyahu approved general terms for compensation, but the exact criteria are still being debated by a committee of representatives from the Finance, Interior and Defense ministries, as well as the Prime Minister’s Office.
Already it has been determined that compensation will be available to homeowners, contractors and local councils. Once the criteria are set, the mechanism for compensation can be implemented immediately.
As a result of the general criteria that have been established, Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser reached an agreement with Danon and Ariel, under which both men withdrew bills they had submitted on the issue to the Ministerial Committee on Legislation.
Danon said he was hopeful that the formula to be approved would prevent the financial collapse of families who had put all of their resources into building their homes.
Until now, he said, the government has only worried about enforcing the freeze and has not thought of the people who were paying for it out of their own pockets.
Israel
The truth is sometimes complicated and requires explanation. Much easier to go with the lie.
Barak unfreezes 112 settler homes
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
08/03/2010
Jerusalem Post
Contractor Haim Zaken still has nothing in writing that would allow him to actually build in the Beitar Illit settlement, even though Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s verbal nod for the project angered Palestinians on Monday.
In the midst of a renewed push to jump-start the peace process, the Defense Ministry announced that work could continue on 112 apartment units in Beitar Illit that had been frozen as a result of the 10-month moratorium on new West Bank settlement construction.
But for Zaken, it’s all hearsay.
“I haven’t seen any official document,” Zaken told The Jerusalem Post, adding that he still could not send a construction crew out into the field at this stage.
Many of his 68 apartments are part of the 112-unit project, which was given a stop work order at the end of November when the cabinet imposed the moratorium.
Last Wednesday, the Defense Ministry’s Exemptions Committee, which hears appeals from contractors and homeowners whose projects have been frozen, granted his appeal and said he could continue to build. The Civil Administration then notified the Beitar Illit Municipality, which in turn spoke with Zaken on Thursday.
A ministry source said the US had also been notified, but the source did not clarify when or how.
The decision to exempt the 112 Beitar Illit units from the overall West Bank freeze on new construction was publicized only on Monday morning by Army Radio. The story was broadcast as US special envoy George Mitchell and US Vice President Joe Biden were visiting Israel.
It also came one day after the PLO Executive Committee voted to support the resumption of negotiations with Israel through indirect, US-brokered talks.
On Monday, the Palestinian Authority cabinet also approved the measure, even though it and PA President Mahmoud Abbas believe that West Bank construction projects such as the one in Beitar Illit show that Israel is not serious about peace.
Palestinians have demanded that Israel halt all settlement construction. In a gesture to the Palestinians, Israel agreed at the end of November to halt any construction project that lacked a foundation. However, it allowed work to continue on 3,000 apartment units that already had foundations at the time of the moratorium.
Now that the Beitar Illit project has been excluded from the freeze, that number has risen to 3,112.
Located a mere .4 kilometers over the pre-1967 border, Beitar Illit is the third-largest Jewish city in the West Bank, with a population of 36,000.
In spite of the Palestinian insistence that Israel withdraw completely to the pre-1967 border, Israel has assumed that it will retain Beitar Illit in any final status-agreement with the Palestinians.
On Monday, the ministry explained that initial approval for the 112 apartment units had been granted by former prime minister Ehud Olmert as part of a larger project of close to 300 units.
Contractors working on the project had then received all the permits necessary for the units and had laid the foundations for all but the 112 when the moratorium was announced.
A Defense Ministry statement to the media said these were not new approvals, but a very specific decision that had been taken to unfreeze the units for safety and infrastructure reasons.
A source explained that it was impossible to lay infrastructure for the larger project without construction of these 112.
The site, as it is now, also poses a safety hazard to people in the area, said the source.
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now said that the Defense Ministry was simply being “creative” in the excuses it offered for breaking its word regarding the moratorium.
This was the government’s way of welcoming the Americans to Israel, said Ofran.
The whole point of the moratorium is that new homes can no longer be built in the settlements, she said.
According to data released Sunday by the Knesset Research Center, it’s possible that the moratorium has frozen work on an estimated 3,000 new homes in the settlements.
The report was drawn up at the request of MK Danny Danon (Likud) as part of his drive to make compensation available for homeowners and contractors who have taken a financial hit as a result of the moratorium. It calculated that the families who owned these homes now had to pay an extra 10 months of rent while they waited to resume building.
Compensation for this rent could cost NIS 90 million, the report estimated, not including financial damage to contractors and their employees, as well as the loss of fees to local settler councils.
To arrive at that NIS 90m. figure, the Knesset Research Center looked at 2008, in which it said 2,023 permits had been issued for new apartment units in Judea and Samaria.
This number refers to individual permits acquired by homeowners from local authorities, for projects that had already been approved by the Defense Ministry, and does not constitute new government approvals of construction.
Final figures were not yet available for 2009, but the Knesset Research Center estimated that at least 2,000 new local permits for apartments had been handed out in 2009 for projects approved by the ministry before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office.
Netanyahu has not approved any new projects, although settlers and contractors have continued to receive local permits to build projects authorized by past governments.
The researcher who authored the project told the Post that anecdotal evidence pointed to the fact that settlers had increased their rate of seeking local permits prior to the moratorium, under the belief that it would allow them to continue building.
It is likely that an additional 1,000 permits were granted by local authorities, he said, thereby bringing the number of those impacted by the freeze to 3,000. He cautioned that he had no data to back this up.
A Defense Ministry source, however, said that number matched its estimate.
Although the moratorium has been in effect for more than three months, the government has yet to agree on a formula to compensate settlers and contractors who have lost money from the delay in their housing projects.
Only now are government officials and politicians deliberating the criteria for compensating home-buyers and contractors.
Frustrated by the lack of progress on the matter, Danon and MK Uri Ariel (National Union) had threatened to ask the Knesset to legislate a compensation mechanism.
Danon has estimated that total compensation for the 10 months could reach NIS 160m. The Finance Ministry has said it is premature to cite a figure before the criteria have been set.
On Sunday, Netanyahu approved general terms for compensation, but the exact criteria are still being debated by a committee of representatives from the Finance, Interior and Defense ministries, as well as the Prime Minister’s Office.
Already it has been determined that compensation will be available to homeowners, contractors and local councils. Once the criteria are set, the mechanism for compensation can be implemented immediately.
As a result of the general criteria that have been established, Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser reached an agreement with Danon and Ariel, under which both men withdrew bills they had submitted on the issue to the Ministerial Committee on Legislation.
Danon said he was hopeful that the formula to be approved would prevent the financial collapse of families who had put all of their resources into building their homes.
Until now, he said, the government has only worried about enforcing the freeze and has not thought of the people who were paying for it out of their own pockets.
Israel
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Goodbye IOUs, I didn't even know you - and now you're gone.
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press
March 14, 2010
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It's time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
Social Security's shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program's finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.
"This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We're here," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. "We are not going to be able to put it off any more."
For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.
Remember Al Gore's "lockbox," the one he was going to use to protect Social Security? The former vice president talked about it so much during the 2000 presidential campaign that he was parodied on "Saturday Night Live."
Gore lost the election and never got his lockbox. But to illustrate the government's commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form.
They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. The agency, which is part of the Treasury Department, opened offices in Parkersburg in the 1950s as part of a plan to locate important government functions away from Washington, D.C., in case of an attack during the Cold War.
One bond is worth a little more than $15.1 billion and another is valued at just under $10.7 billion. In all, the agency has about $2.5 trillion in bonds, all backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. But don't bother trying to steal them; they're nonnegotiable, which means they are worthless on the open market.
More than 52 million people receive old age or disability benefits from Social Security. The average benefit for retirees is a little under $1,200 a month. Disabled workers get an average of $1,100 a month.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes — employers and employees must each pay a 6.2 percent tax on workers' earnings up to $106,800.
Retirees can start getting early, reduced benefits at age 62.
They get full benefits if they wait until they turn 66.
Those born after 1960 will have to wait until they turn 67.
Social Security's financial problems have been looming for years as the nation's 78 million baby boomers approached retirement age. The oldest are already there. As that huge group of people starts collecting benefits — and stops paying payroll taxes — Social Security's trust funds will shrink, running out of money by 2037, according to the latest projection from the trustees who oversee the program.
The recession is making things worse, at least in the short term. Tax receipts are down from the loss of more than 8 million jobs, and applications for early retirement benefits have spiked from older workers who were laid off and forced to retire.
Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, says the crisis has been years in the making. "If this helps get people to look more seriously at that in the nearer term, that's probably a good thing. But it's only really a punctuation mark on the fact that we have longer-term financial issues that need to be addressed."
In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.
For the budget year that ends in September, Social Security is projected to collect $677 billion in taxes and spend $706 billion on benefits and expenses.
Social Security will also collect [“collected”?! from whom! ] about $120 billion in interest on the trust funds, according to the CBO projections, meaning its overall balance sheet will continue to grow.
The interest, however, is paid by the government [Oh. so – they didn’t ‘collect’ anything!!!], adding even more to the budget deficit.
While Congress must shore up the program, action is unlikely this year, said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., who just took over last week as chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security.
"The issues required to address the long-term solvency needs of Social Security can be done in a careful, thoughtful and orderly way and they don't need to be done in the next few months," Pomeroy said.
The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military.
About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.
Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
"Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America," Kennelly said. "They're as solid as what we owe China and Japan."
social security
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press
March 14, 2010
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It's time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
Social Security's shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program's finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.
"This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We're here," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. "We are not going to be able to put it off any more."
For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.
Remember Al Gore's "lockbox," the one he was going to use to protect Social Security? The former vice president talked about it so much during the 2000 presidential campaign that he was parodied on "Saturday Night Live."
Gore lost the election and never got his lockbox. But to illustrate the government's commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form.
They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. The agency, which is part of the Treasury Department, opened offices in Parkersburg in the 1950s as part of a plan to locate important government functions away from Washington, D.C., in case of an attack during the Cold War.
One bond is worth a little more than $15.1 billion and another is valued at just under $10.7 billion. In all, the agency has about $2.5 trillion in bonds, all backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. But don't bother trying to steal them; they're nonnegotiable, which means they are worthless on the open market.
More than 52 million people receive old age or disability benefits from Social Security. The average benefit for retirees is a little under $1,200 a month. Disabled workers get an average of $1,100 a month.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes — employers and employees must each pay a 6.2 percent tax on workers' earnings up to $106,800.
Retirees can start getting early, reduced benefits at age 62.
They get full benefits if they wait until they turn 66.
Those born after 1960 will have to wait until they turn 67.
Social Security's financial problems have been looming for years as the nation's 78 million baby boomers approached retirement age. The oldest are already there. As that huge group of people starts collecting benefits — and stops paying payroll taxes — Social Security's trust funds will shrink, running out of money by 2037, according to the latest projection from the trustees who oversee the program.
The recession is making things worse, at least in the short term. Tax receipts are down from the loss of more than 8 million jobs, and applications for early retirement benefits have spiked from older workers who were laid off and forced to retire.
Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, says the crisis has been years in the making. "If this helps get people to look more seriously at that in the nearer term, that's probably a good thing. But it's only really a punctuation mark on the fact that we have longer-term financial issues that need to be addressed."
In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.
For the budget year that ends in September, Social Security is projected to collect $677 billion in taxes and spend $706 billion on benefits and expenses.
Social Security will also collect [“collected”?! from whom! ] about $120 billion in interest on the trust funds, according to the CBO projections, meaning its overall balance sheet will continue to grow.
The interest, however, is paid by the government [Oh. so – they didn’t ‘collect’ anything!!!], adding even more to the budget deficit.
While Congress must shore up the program, action is unlikely this year, said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., who just took over last week as chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security.
"The issues required to address the long-term solvency needs of Social Security can be done in a careful, thoughtful and orderly way and they don't need to be done in the next few months," Pomeroy said.
The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military.
About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.
Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
"Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America," Kennelly said. "They're as solid as what we owe China and Japan."
social security
The French, the Jews, Cars, and Obama ??
What could possibly connect - the French, the Jews, automobiles, and the Obama administration?
Does make you wonder.
The Jews of France were required to register with their local police departments that they were in fact Jews, their addresses, names of all members of their families, and incurred restrictions on owning property and practising in certain professions. Their stores and businesses were required to be marked as being owned by Jews. By 1942, Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David. Some Jews lost btheir citizenship if they were more recent immigrants, along with the children who may have been born in France. The French were actually quite helpful. Before the Nazis invaded France, the French decided they would help their Jewish friends by rounding them up and sending them to one of a couple concentration camps near the border of Spain until such a time as the German government might wish to exterminate them. It was easy - they had already provided all the details when they registered. The Milice would help ensure Jewish compliance, and inevitably deportation to a very bad place.
The French Jewish population was about 350,000. Of these, 65,000-76,000 were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau and Treblinka. Approximately 1 in every 7 Jews. More than 4000 were sent to Sobibor in Poland - an extermination camp. Of all those sent to that most evil of places, 2 were alive at the end of the war.
It begins with simple requests to provide details, then defining who and what you are with identification, then it becomes much worse - the potential is there for much worse.
Always for the greater good. We will round you up to protect you. We are rounding up your neighbors to protect them. We are doing this for your good. And each 'good' received has a payback at some point. If we put a speed lock on vehicles to prevent them from going over 80, think how much safer we would all be. At 80 mph, the gas to the engine would cut until the car moved back into the 70-75 mph range, and if the vehicle did this three times, the gas would shut off completely. Think how many lives we would save - all those stuck gas pedals would not cause as much damage.
The good.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make "black boxes" mandatory for all new vehicles.
The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.
Reuters, March 12, 2010.
cars
Does make you wonder.
The Jews of France were required to register with their local police departments that they were in fact Jews, their addresses, names of all members of their families, and incurred restrictions on owning property and practising in certain professions. Their stores and businesses were required to be marked as being owned by Jews. By 1942, Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David. Some Jews lost btheir citizenship if they were more recent immigrants, along with the children who may have been born in France. The French were actually quite helpful. Before the Nazis invaded France, the French decided they would help their Jewish friends by rounding them up and sending them to one of a couple concentration camps near the border of Spain until such a time as the German government might wish to exterminate them. It was easy - they had already provided all the details when they registered. The Milice would help ensure Jewish compliance, and inevitably deportation to a very bad place.
The French Jewish population was about 350,000. Of these, 65,000-76,000 were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau and Treblinka. Approximately 1 in every 7 Jews. More than 4000 were sent to Sobibor in Poland - an extermination camp. Of all those sent to that most evil of places, 2 were alive at the end of the war.
It begins with simple requests to provide details, then defining who and what you are with identification, then it becomes much worse - the potential is there for much worse.
Always for the greater good. We will round you up to protect you. We are rounding up your neighbors to protect them. We are doing this for your good. And each 'good' received has a payback at some point. If we put a speed lock on vehicles to prevent them from going over 80, think how much safer we would all be. At 80 mph, the gas to the engine would cut until the car moved back into the 70-75 mph range, and if the vehicle did this three times, the gas would shut off completely. Think how many lives we would save - all those stuck gas pedals would not cause as much damage.
The good.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make "black boxes" mandatory for all new vehicles.
The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.
Reuters, March 12, 2010.
cars
The French Involvement in the Deaths of Tens of Thousands of Jews
rance
The funny part - even though their legal system has found that the French people were complicit in the murders of tens of thousands of Jews, they are still in denial.
France found responsible for deporting Jews
Ruling adds, though, that post-war reparations have already been made
The Associated Press
Mon., Feb. 16, 2009
PARIS - France's top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government's responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition of the state's role in the Holocaust.
The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the "responsibility" for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution.
The decision released Monday also found that the deportation had been "compensated for" since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.
[I am curious about this - how do you compensate more than 60,000 Jews - many who were exterminated, when for the last sixty years you have been in denial. Please, tell me?]
Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.
A Paris court had sought the Council of State's opinion on a request by the daughter of a deportee who died at Auschwitz for reparations from the French state. She was also asking for material and moral damages for her own personal suffering during and after the occupation.
The council left it up to the Paris court to rule on her request.
But the council in its decision said that it "considers that because the acts and actions by the state led to the deportation of people considered Jews by the Vichy regime, (they) constituted errors and became its responsibility."
The council called for a "solemn recognition of the state's responsibility and of collective prejudice suffered" by the deportees.
Today, France has western Europe's largest Jewish community of approximately 500,000.
There is great irony in this, but I don't have the time in the near future to spend on it.
Jews
The funny part - even though their legal system has found that the French people were complicit in the murders of tens of thousands of Jews, they are still in denial.
France found responsible for deporting Jews
Ruling adds, though, that post-war reparations have already been made
The Associated Press
Mon., Feb. 16, 2009
PARIS - France's top judicial body on Monday recognized the French government's responsibility for the deportation of Jews during World War II, the clearest such recognition of the state's role in the Holocaust.
The Council of State found that the government of Nazi-occupied France at the time held the "responsibility" for deportations that led to anti-Semitic persecution.
The decision released Monday also found that the deportation had been "compensated for" since 1945, apparently ruling out any reparations for deportees or their families.
[I am curious about this - how do you compensate more than 60,000 Jews - many who were exterminated, when for the last sixty years you have been in denial. Please, tell me?]
Thousands of Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during the occupation. After the war, subsequent French governments took decades to acknowledge any role by the collaborationist Vichy regime in the Holocaust.
A Paris court had sought the Council of State's opinion on a request by the daughter of a deportee who died at Auschwitz for reparations from the French state. She was also asking for material and moral damages for her own personal suffering during and after the occupation.
The council left it up to the Paris court to rule on her request.
But the council in its decision said that it "considers that because the acts and actions by the state led to the deportation of people considered Jews by the Vichy regime, (they) constituted errors and became its responsibility."
The council called for a "solemn recognition of the state's responsibility and of collective prejudice suffered" by the deportees.
Today, France has western Europe's largest Jewish community of approximately 500,000.
There is great irony in this, but I don't have the time in the near future to spend on it.
Jews
Saturday, March 13, 2010
When is a Dictator not a Dictator? When Sean Penn says so.
Sean Penn is a fool, all that pot from Ridegmont has given him some serious blowback in the form of a - his inability to distinguish between fact, fiction, reality, fantasy, dictators, and tyrants, credible elections, and farcical jokes called elections.
I pray, when the day comes that Chavez is removed from the office he has violated, that the Venezuelan people will demand Penn return to face the truth about Chavez so that Penn might live out the remaining years of his life wracked by guilt and shame.
You are seriously a fool Mr. Penn. You have very little that is redemptive. I will assume you are a good father, thus you have that one saving grace. You are not a great actor, good enough, but not great; and you most certainly have no clue about reality.
Chavez thanks Sean Penn for slamming his critics
Fri Mar 12, 2010
Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is grateful that actor Sean Penn has defended him against his critics within the U.S. media.
In an appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" last week, Penn slammed Chavez critics who refer to the socialist leader as a dictator.
The Oscar-winning celebrity noted that Chavez has won repeated elections and suggested that media critics who call him a dictator should be jailed.
[What about in the US - should we jail everyone who called Bush a tyrant, dictator, or other scurrilous name?]
He says that "there should be a bar for which one goes to prison for these kinds of biases."
[The same level for a bar in the US when you and Sarandon and Fonda were accusing Bush of delusional crimes?]
Penn has visited Chavez several times and frequently defends the president's leftist political policies.
Chavez welcomed Penn's comments Wednesday and thanked the actor for standing up to his detractors.
I pray, when the day comes that Chavez is removed from the office he has violated, that the Venezuelan people will demand Penn return to face the truth about Chavez so that Penn might live out the remaining years of his life wracked by guilt and shame.
You are seriously a fool Mr. Penn. You have very little that is redemptive. I will assume you are a good father, thus you have that one saving grace. You are not a great actor, good enough, but not great; and you most certainly have no clue about reality.
Chavez thanks Sean Penn for slamming his critics
Fri Mar 12, 2010
Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is grateful that actor Sean Penn has defended him against his critics within the U.S. media.
In an appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" last week, Penn slammed Chavez critics who refer to the socialist leader as a dictator.
The Oscar-winning celebrity noted that Chavez has won repeated elections and suggested that media critics who call him a dictator should be jailed.
[What about in the US - should we jail everyone who called Bush a tyrant, dictator, or other scurrilous name?]
He says that "there should be a bar for which one goes to prison for these kinds of biases."
[The same level for a bar in the US when you and Sarandon and Fonda were accusing Bush of delusional crimes?]
Penn has visited Chavez several times and frequently defends the president's leftist political policies.
Chavez welcomed Penn's comments Wednesday and thanked the actor for standing up to his detractors.
Big Heads, Little Brains
The Times
March 13, 2010
Cro Magnon skull supports theory that human brains have begun to shrink
Humans like to portray themselves as a sophisticated life form driven by brain rather than brawn. So they may be surprised by a project to reconstitute a 28,000-year-old skull from remains found in France.
This has provided evidence to support a theory that our brains have begun to shrink.
[We are shrinking. And that does not bode well for us, given that we are all intellectual giants I suppose it will not have any effect on us for a very long while!!]
The French team that claims to have produced one of the best replicas yet of an early modern human skull say that it is 15 to 20 per cent bigger than ours. No one suggests that we are 15 to 20 per cent more stupid than Cro Magnon 1, the best preserved of five skeletons discovered in 1868 in the Cro Magnon cave in the Dordogne, because there is only a minor link between brain size and intelligence.
It may be that, rather like computers, our brains are becoming more efficient even as they grow smaller. But the project could shed light on a human evolutionary question that has divided and bemused the specialists: if indeed our heads have started to shrivel, why is this happening?
Cro Magnon 1 has been kept in the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He is believed to have been a well-built, elderly man about 6ft tall. Already known to scientists worldwide, Cro Magnon 1 will become even more famous next week when a mold of his skull will be shown at the American National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
The endocast was made by scanning the interior of the skull at the Quinze-Vingts Hospital in Paris to obtain a picture of the impression left by the brain on the neurocranium.
Antoine Balzeau, of the French Museum of Natural History, transformed this into a 3D image that was in turn made into a mold by a specialist software prototyping firm.
“It’s one of the most beautiful endocasts ever,” Mr Balzeau told The Times. He said that an initial assessment of Cro Magnon 1’s skull confirmed the belief that brains had grown "slightly smaller over tens of thousands of years”, reversing an earlier trend towards bigger brains.
However, he said that the cerebellum — a brain structure linked to language and concentration — appears to take up a larger proportion of the head now than in the time of Cro Magnon 1. This suggests that some parts of the brain are more “compressible” than others, he said.
Several theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the shrinking brain. One is that big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities.
A second theory is that skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses. As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.
[Small favors. Imagine. We could all be walking around with heads like the Queen from Alice!]
Other experts say that with high infant mortality, only the toughest survived — and the toughest tended to have big heads.
March 13, 2010
Cro Magnon skull supports theory that human brains have begun to shrink
Humans like to portray themselves as a sophisticated life form driven by brain rather than brawn. So they may be surprised by a project to reconstitute a 28,000-year-old skull from remains found in France.
This has provided evidence to support a theory that our brains have begun to shrink.
[We are shrinking. And that does not bode well for us, given that we are all intellectual giants I suppose it will not have any effect on us for a very long while!!]
The French team that claims to have produced one of the best replicas yet of an early modern human skull say that it is 15 to 20 per cent bigger than ours. No one suggests that we are 15 to 20 per cent more stupid than Cro Magnon 1, the best preserved of five skeletons discovered in 1868 in the Cro Magnon cave in the Dordogne, because there is only a minor link between brain size and intelligence.
It may be that, rather like computers, our brains are becoming more efficient even as they grow smaller. But the project could shed light on a human evolutionary question that has divided and bemused the specialists: if indeed our heads have started to shrivel, why is this happening?
Cro Magnon 1 has been kept in the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He is believed to have been a well-built, elderly man about 6ft tall. Already known to scientists worldwide, Cro Magnon 1 will become even more famous next week when a mold of his skull will be shown at the American National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
The endocast was made by scanning the interior of the skull at the Quinze-Vingts Hospital in Paris to obtain a picture of the impression left by the brain on the neurocranium.
Antoine Balzeau, of the French Museum of Natural History, transformed this into a 3D image that was in turn made into a mold by a specialist software prototyping firm.
“It’s one of the most beautiful endocasts ever,” Mr Balzeau told The Times. He said that an initial assessment of Cro Magnon 1’s skull confirmed the belief that brains had grown "slightly smaller over tens of thousands of years”, reversing an earlier trend towards bigger brains.
However, he said that the cerebellum — a brain structure linked to language and concentration — appears to take up a larger proportion of the head now than in the time of Cro Magnon 1. This suggests that some parts of the brain are more “compressible” than others, he said.
Several theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the shrinking brain. One is that big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities.
A second theory is that skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses. As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.
[Small favors. Imagine. We could all be walking around with heads like the Queen from Alice!]
Other experts say that with high infant mortality, only the toughest survived — and the toughest tended to have big heads.
Transparency, Honesty, Integrity: They have none.
It is only a problem if it is a Republican who had forgotten to remember about six cases. If it is a Democrat, and a Democrat who opposes military tribunals, then forgotten a few cases is fine.
How can a man who opposed the use of military hearings, military detention, and Bush's larger policy of holding detainees without trial, become the man charged with enforcing policies that, each day appear a little more like Bush's - Guantanamo is still open, new people are held there, Obama has decided (rightly) to not hold civilian trials for Mohammad and his cohorts, they are still being detained, without trial as yet ... amazing Holder can work as an agent for the government on this issue.
And before we dismiss this as a case of oversight, I would have to ask - if Joe was applying for the position of Attorney General in 2009, what few sets of questions (themeatic only) would you ask him? Assuming the guy you would work for has promised to close Guantanamo and give the terrorists civilian trials. And yes, those were biggies - mentioned every chance he got on the campaign trail. Wouldn't Guantanamo be a big one. Wouldn't trials for terrorists be a big one and if you wrote a brief for one of the only cases to go mto civilian trial, wouldn't that get found and mentioned??? I think so, nay, I am certain it would if they were being open and transparent, rather than being swamp monsters.
Holder is sitting in an office, perhaps he is at a park, walking with someone and as they walk they discuss the Padilla brief and one thought mentioned is to simply forget the Padilla brief, simply forget to give it to the Senate. Perhaps one of the two people walking is a Senator. And further, the Senator, holding a complete list of briefs and cases Holder has beenn involved, checks off a couple other cases and hands it back to the other man - maybe leave off a few others, so as to ensure no one believes we did it on purpose, if that was the only brief, it would be evident, but if it is one of six or seven ... it was an oversight.
I wonder how close I might be. Oh wait, Democrats did this with the secret meetings Cheney had - they imagined all sorts of subjects and theories and conspiracies, and attributed all sorts of malfeasance to the Vice President, knowing nothing, other than a meeting occured. Sort of like the several secret meetings between Obama and Soros at the White House - no transcript or record of their conversation was demanded. No Moveon.org people creating fictitious copnspiracy theories of Obama and Soros.
Interesting how 'truth' works. Interesting what 'transparency' really means.
Att'y general failed to give legal briefs to Senate
WASHINGTON
Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:38pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder failed to tell the Senate about seven legal briefs he signed when lawmakers considered his nomination to his current job, according to a letter released on Friday.
Two of the briefs involved appeals to the Supreme Court for Jose Padilla, who sought release from a military prison in South Carolina where he was being held after then-President George W. Bush designated him an "enemy combatant."
Padilla was held in a military brig for three years before his case was moved to a criminal court in Miami, where he was convicted on charges of offering his services to militants.
The Justice Department sent the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets presidential nominees, a list of briefs that were omitted on Friday. "We regret the omission," Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said in a letter to the panel.
Holder has been facing intense scrutiny as the Obama administration tries to decide whether to prosecute terrorism suspects like the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in military or criminal courts.
The attorney general had been spearheading that effort but concerns about holding those trials in criminal court forced the White House to intervene and officials are now weighing whether to prosecute Mohammed and four of his alleged co-conspirators in a military court.
Previously, Holder has disclosed to the Senate five briefs he submitted to the Supreme Court during his law practice. From July 2001 until being confirmed by the Senate as attorney general, Holder worked at Covington & Burling in Washington.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department said Holder failed to tell the Senate about one brief he signed related to the Padilla case, prompting outcries from Republicans who said it offered more details about Holder's views on key policies.
The other six briefs related to issues such as race discrimination and a challenge to a prison sentence.
And dear Retardicans, lest we feel left out - all the members of Congress in the Republican party (the Retardicans) do not have the brains to comprehend the level of complexity of the lies and cover-up that Losercrats do daily. It is very sad to watch. You stack a Retardican against a Losercrat and the poor Retardican needs the Losercrat handicapped, bound, tied, gagged, drugged, and thrown into a sack, to even the odds, and they still lose. And it is not because of the values held by Retardicans - their core values are far closer to the values of this country and our shared history than anything on the other side, rather it is simply the intellectual disparity between the two. However, I know with certainty there are intellectual heavyweights on the Republican side, but for whatever reason (perhaps because the Retardicans keep hogging the news / spotlight) their arguments and cases are not as well known.
obama
How can a man who opposed the use of military hearings, military detention, and Bush's larger policy of holding detainees without trial, become the man charged with enforcing policies that, each day appear a little more like Bush's - Guantanamo is still open, new people are held there, Obama has decided (rightly) to not hold civilian trials for Mohammad and his cohorts, they are still being detained, without trial as yet ... amazing Holder can work as an agent for the government on this issue.
And before we dismiss this as a case of oversight, I would have to ask - if Joe was applying for the position of Attorney General in 2009, what few sets of questions (themeatic only) would you ask him? Assuming the guy you would work for has promised to close Guantanamo and give the terrorists civilian trials. And yes, those were biggies - mentioned every chance he got on the campaign trail. Wouldn't Guantanamo be a big one. Wouldn't trials for terrorists be a big one and if you wrote a brief for one of the only cases to go mto civilian trial, wouldn't that get found and mentioned??? I think so, nay, I am certain it would if they were being open and transparent, rather than being swamp monsters.
Holder is sitting in an office, perhaps he is at a park, walking with someone and as they walk they discuss the Padilla brief and one thought mentioned is to simply forget the Padilla brief, simply forget to give it to the Senate. Perhaps one of the two people walking is a Senator. And further, the Senator, holding a complete list of briefs and cases Holder has beenn involved, checks off a couple other cases and hands it back to the other man - maybe leave off a few others, so as to ensure no one believes we did it on purpose, if that was the only brief, it would be evident, but if it is one of six or seven ... it was an oversight.
I wonder how close I might be. Oh wait, Democrats did this with the secret meetings Cheney had - they imagined all sorts of subjects and theories and conspiracies, and attributed all sorts of malfeasance to the Vice President, knowing nothing, other than a meeting occured. Sort of like the several secret meetings between Obama and Soros at the White House - no transcript or record of their conversation was demanded. No Moveon.org people creating fictitious copnspiracy theories of Obama and Soros.
Interesting how 'truth' works. Interesting what 'transparency' really means.
Att'y general failed to give legal briefs to Senate
WASHINGTON
Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:38pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder failed to tell the Senate about seven legal briefs he signed when lawmakers considered his nomination to his current job, according to a letter released on Friday.
Two of the briefs involved appeals to the Supreme Court for Jose Padilla, who sought release from a military prison in South Carolina where he was being held after then-President George W. Bush designated him an "enemy combatant."
Padilla was held in a military brig for three years before his case was moved to a criminal court in Miami, where he was convicted on charges of offering his services to militants.
The Justice Department sent the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets presidential nominees, a list of briefs that were omitted on Friday. "We regret the omission," Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said in a letter to the panel.
Holder has been facing intense scrutiny as the Obama administration tries to decide whether to prosecute terrorism suspects like the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in military or criminal courts.
The attorney general had been spearheading that effort but concerns about holding those trials in criminal court forced the White House to intervene and officials are now weighing whether to prosecute Mohammed and four of his alleged co-conspirators in a military court.
Previously, Holder has disclosed to the Senate five briefs he submitted to the Supreme Court during his law practice. From July 2001 until being confirmed by the Senate as attorney general, Holder worked at Covington & Burling in Washington.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department said Holder failed to tell the Senate about one brief he signed related to the Padilla case, prompting outcries from Republicans who said it offered more details about Holder's views on key policies.
The other six briefs related to issues such as race discrimination and a challenge to a prison sentence.
And dear Retardicans, lest we feel left out - all the members of Congress in the Republican party (the Retardicans) do not have the brains to comprehend the level of complexity of the lies and cover-up that Losercrats do daily. It is very sad to watch. You stack a Retardican against a Losercrat and the poor Retardican needs the Losercrat handicapped, bound, tied, gagged, drugged, and thrown into a sack, to even the odds, and they still lose. And it is not because of the values held by Retardicans - their core values are far closer to the values of this country and our shared history than anything on the other side, rather it is simply the intellectual disparity between the two. However, I know with certainty there are intellectual heavyweights on the Republican side, but for whatever reason (perhaps because the Retardicans keep hogging the news / spotlight) their arguments and cases are not as well known.
obama
Friday, March 12, 2010
Goodbye Privacy, Though I never knew you at all, You had the strength to show us the difference, While others had none.
Why no one cares about privacy anymore
by Declan McCullagh
March 12, 2010 4:00 AM PST
CNET News
"I just finished eating dinner with Sergey and four other Buzz engineers in one of Google's cafes," engineer John Costigan wrote a day after the Twitter-and-Facebook-esque service was announced. "He was particularly impressed with the smooth launch and the great media response it generated."
You might call Brin's enthusiasm premature, especially since privacy criticisms prompted Google to make a series of quick changes a few days later. Activists have asked the Federal Trade Commission to "compel" Google to reprogram Buzz a third time to adhere to the no doubt well-informed specifications of Beltway lawyers. A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of an aggrieved second-year law student is underway.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse: relatively few Google Buzz users seem to mind. Within four days of its launch, millions of people proved Brin right by using the messaging service to publish 9 million posts. A backlash to the backlash developed, with more thoughtful commentators pointing out that Google Buzz disclosed your "followers" and who you were "following" only if you had elected to publish that information publicly on your Google profile in the first place.
My hunch is that Google Buzz will continue to grow because, after nearly a decade of social-networking experiences (its great-granddaddy, Friendster, started in early 2002), Internet users have grown accustomed to informational exhibitionism. The default setting for a Buzz message is public, and Buzz-ers using mobile phones are prompted to disclose their locations.
Norms are changing, with confidentiality giving way to openness. Participating in YouTube, Loopt, FriendFeed, Flickr, and other elements of modern digital society means giving up some privacy, yet millions of people are willing to make that trade-off every day. Of people with an online profile, nearly 40 percent have disabled privacy settings so anyone may view it, according to a Pew Internet survey released a year ago. The percentage is probably higher today.
No doubt critics of Google Buzz would reply that accidental disclosure of some correspondents was ample reason to worry. While it's true that privacy options at first were not as obvious as they could have been, they did exist. Even the original version let you edit the "auto-following" list and preview your profile to see how you'd appear to others. (If you're that sensitive about your privacy, especially on a free service, why not take a moment to click that link?)
Different people, different privacy preferences
Much of our modern concept of privacy can be traced to a 1890 law review article by Samuel Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. They complained that "the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons" and sympathized with those who were "victims of journalistic enterprise."
If this sounds like Barbra Streisand's famously futile privacy lawsuit against a photographer who dared to take an aerial snapshot of her Malibu beach home, it is. What outraged Warren was a rather tame society article in a Boston newspaper about a lavish breakfast party that he had organized for his daughter's wedding. (Like the censor-happy Streisand, Brandeis and Warren paid scant attention to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press.)
Fortunately, courts have not embraced all of Warren and Brandeis' arguments, and American citizens are not as muzzled today as those two would have wished. A lawsuit that a Pennsylvania couple filed against Google Street View, for the clearly felonious act of publishing a photograph of their house that mirrored what was on the county tax assessor's Web site, recently met with an ignominious end.
"As a social good," says Richard Posner, the federal judge and iconoclastic conservative, "I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth." That isn't a defense of snooping as much as a warning of the flip side of privacy--concealing facts that are discreditable, including those that other people have a legitimate reason for knowing.
The truth about privacy is counter-intuitive: less of it can lead to a more virtuous society. Markets function more efficiently when it's cheap to identify and deliver the right product to the right person at the right time. Behavioral targeting allows you to see relevant, interesting Web ads instead of irrelevant, annoying ones. The ability to identify customers unlikely to pay their bills lets stores offer better deals to those people who will.
Anyone who's spent a moment reading comments on blogs or news articles knows that encouraging participants to keep their identities private generates vitriol or worse. Thoughtful discussions tend to arise when identities are public. Without that, as Adam Smith wrote about an anonymous man in a large city in The Wealth of Nations, he is likely to "abandon himself to every low profligacy and vice."
Privacy relinquishment is the business model behind exhibitionistic start-ups like Blippy.com, which lets users broadcast what they buy from Amazon, iTunes, and other sites. Other users are invited to submit critiques. After a Blippy user named Joe Greenstein purchased an iPhone app titled "SpeedDate--Dating for Singles of any Sex," it didn't take long for the discussion to turn risque. One fellow wondered: "Are you really 'dating singles of any sex?'" Another asked: "What gives, Joe. Did you break up with your gal?" The original poster replied: "Yes, to breakup. Yes, to dating singles of any sex."
Location-disclosing services are proliferating. Twitter now permits users to include geolocation data in messages, and the company has told developers to "encourage" users to enable the feature. Start-ups like Brightkite and Loopt let you select who can monitor your GPS-derived location, moment-by-moment, through your cell phone. Google Latitude is similar; Foursquare and Dopplr let you disclose your whereabouts more selectively. A report this week said that Facebook may do the same.
Medical privacy is, in some cases, being selectively discarded. Cancer patients share intimate details on survivor discussion sites. On theKnot.com, theNest.com, and theBump.com, members often tell other community members they're pregnant before they tell their families, and often don't bother to conceal their identities. These discussion areas go beyond support networks; they've become additions to and substitutes for in-person conversations.
Commercial data-mining is reaching its apogee at companies like Amazon.com, Last.fm, Apple, and Netflix that use it to do nothing more sinister than suggest relevant books or movies. Customers applauded when Netflix offered $1 million to anyone who could improve its recommendation engine; a team including three AT&T researchers claimed the prize last September. Netflix's next contest will require entrants to crunch millions of chunks of demographic data, including age, sex, ZIP code, and previously rented movies, and then predict which movies those people will like.
Generation X-hibitionist
If any of this concerns you, then you didn't grow up with the Internet. It's difficult to overstate how thoroughly today's youth--call them Generation X-hibitionist--have adjusted to living in a world of porn spam and Viagra ads that utterly lacks quaint 20th-century conceptions of privacy. (When dealing with the police, privacy is a Fourth Amendment right; when dealing with Blippy, it's a mere preference.)
A 2008 Harris Interactive/CTIA survey of more than 2,000 American teens confirms that youth are least worried about privacy. Only 41 percent were concerned; 59 percent were happy to provide personal information to marketers. Compare this to a Harris poll conducted in 1998, the same year Google was founded, that found a remarkable 80 percent of people were hesitant to shop online because of privacy worries. Fast forward 12 years and we're bragging on Blippy about what we bought with our Mastercard.
Perhaps this disinterest in traditional concepts of privacy is one reason why Twitter (originally public) is growing so much faster than Facebook (originally private). While Facebook's remarkable share of global Internet eyeballs doubled last year, according to Alexa.com, Twitter's grew tenfold.
Because Facebook has such a large audience, it can no longer grow as fast. But one advantage that Twitter has is that its founders intentionally chose openness and offered simpler choices. With mere followers instead of friends, there's no need to worry about whether someone qualifies as an intimate or not.
Much of this change is generational. But it also happens when folks old enough to remember cassette tapes and President George H.W. Bush become more comfortable with disclosure. It was only three years ago that Time magazine wondered if Google Street View was "an invasion of privacy." Now even municipal IT departments, including those of Atlanta and Lynchburg, Va., have found uses for it. Does anyone remember when the Electronic Privacy Information Center claimed in 2004 that Google's Gmail somehow violated wiretap laws? Hundreds of millions of satisfied users later, we know that nobody else cared.
At a technology conference in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his audience that Internet users don't care as much about privacy anymore. The 25-year old said that, in the seven years since he started the company, "people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people--and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time." Zuckerberg defended the company's decision in December to push users to reveal more, saying "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."
That change drew the same wails of protest that greeted Google Buzz. Advocacy groups wrote an alarmist note to federal regulators demanding an injunction on grounds that the changes "harm the public interest"--effectively substituting a small clique's privacy preferences for everyone else's. The ACLU announced a letter-writing campaign. The Federal Trade Commission noted, ominously, that Facebook's changes are "of particular interest to us." About the only thing missing--no doubt a press release is being drafted this very moment--is a class action lawsuit to enrich plaintiffs' attorneys while resulting in no measurable changes to Facebook.com.
But as regulatory enthusiasts in Washington were attempting ritualistic divinations of the public interest, something different was happening on the Web: the actual public didn't care. Instead of abandoning the site en masse, Facebook users clicked through a few menus of options and went on with their lives. A protest group titled "Facebook! Fix the Privacy Settings" drew a mere 3,400 of more than 350 million users, less than one-thousandth of 1 percent. Compare that unconcern with the number of people who turned their attention to such weighty topics as "Chuck Norris Facts" (more than 225,000), "Physics Doesn't Exist, It's All Gnomes" (more than 76,000), and "I Flip My Pillow Over To Get To The Cold Side" group (nearly 1 million).
One reason why Zuckerberg's who-needs-privacy argument works is that, through a growing collection of these services with unusual vowel counts, we're choosing what to share. Unlike interactions with government snoops, these are voluntary: Give up a bit of privacy to get a service for free, and everyone benefits (except perhaps rivals that used to charge).
Zuckerberg's own approach to privacy mirrors his company's. His public Facebook profile shows him snuggling up to a teddy bear and attempting to walk while tied to what appears to be a co-worker dressed as a banana. Another photographic montage captures Zuckerberg at his sister's wedding in Jamaica, smiling bravely while wearing a fluorescent vest matching the bridesmaids' turquoise gowns.
There are photos of Zuck The Party Animal at a 2006 kegger, and others with his girlfriend Priscilla at an honest-to-goodness Silicon Valley bison roast. The most telling informational tidbit may be that the Keds-sporting entrepreneur is, officially and publicly, a "fan" of himself.
Perhaps the real issue is not technology but psychology. Irwin Altman, a professor emeritus in the University of Utah's psychology department, created one of the more widely cited theories of privacy before Facebook's founder was born. "If one can choose how much or how little to divulge about oneself to another voluntarily, privacy is maintained," Altman wrote, effectively blessing the social media of a generation later. "If another person can influence how much information we divulge about ourselves or how much information input we let in about others, a lower level of privacy exists."
Now those boundaries are so fluid. Fifty years ago Mark Zuckerberg would have been seen as disclosing far too much information. Doesn't that guy need help, or at least therapy? Now it makes him a very normal, by the standards of his generation, Internet billionaire.
privacy
by Declan McCullagh
March 12, 2010 4:00 AM PST
CNET News
"I just finished eating dinner with Sergey and four other Buzz engineers in one of Google's cafes," engineer John Costigan wrote a day after the Twitter-and-Facebook-esque service was announced. "He was particularly impressed with the smooth launch and the great media response it generated."
You might call Brin's enthusiasm premature, especially since privacy criticisms prompted Google to make a series of quick changes a few days later. Activists have asked the Federal Trade Commission to "compel" Google to reprogram Buzz a third time to adhere to the no doubt well-informed specifications of Beltway lawyers. A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of an aggrieved second-year law student is underway.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse: relatively few Google Buzz users seem to mind. Within four days of its launch, millions of people proved Brin right by using the messaging service to publish 9 million posts. A backlash to the backlash developed, with more thoughtful commentators pointing out that Google Buzz disclosed your "followers" and who you were "following" only if you had elected to publish that information publicly on your Google profile in the first place.
My hunch is that Google Buzz will continue to grow because, after nearly a decade of social-networking experiences (its great-granddaddy, Friendster, started in early 2002), Internet users have grown accustomed to informational exhibitionism. The default setting for a Buzz message is public, and Buzz-ers using mobile phones are prompted to disclose their locations.
Norms are changing, with confidentiality giving way to openness. Participating in YouTube, Loopt, FriendFeed, Flickr, and other elements of modern digital society means giving up some privacy, yet millions of people are willing to make that trade-off every day. Of people with an online profile, nearly 40 percent have disabled privacy settings so anyone may view it, according to a Pew Internet survey released a year ago. The percentage is probably higher today.
No doubt critics of Google Buzz would reply that accidental disclosure of some correspondents was ample reason to worry. While it's true that privacy options at first were not as obvious as they could have been, they did exist. Even the original version let you edit the "auto-following" list and preview your profile to see how you'd appear to others. (If you're that sensitive about your privacy, especially on a free service, why not take a moment to click that link?)
Different people, different privacy preferences
Much of our modern concept of privacy can be traced to a 1890 law review article by Samuel Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. They complained that "the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons" and sympathized with those who were "victims of journalistic enterprise."
If this sounds like Barbra Streisand's famously futile privacy lawsuit against a photographer who dared to take an aerial snapshot of her Malibu beach home, it is. What outraged Warren was a rather tame society article in a Boston newspaper about a lavish breakfast party that he had organized for his daughter's wedding. (Like the censor-happy Streisand, Brandeis and Warren paid scant attention to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press.)
Fortunately, courts have not embraced all of Warren and Brandeis' arguments, and American citizens are not as muzzled today as those two would have wished. A lawsuit that a Pennsylvania couple filed against Google Street View, for the clearly felonious act of publishing a photograph of their house that mirrored what was on the county tax assessor's Web site, recently met with an ignominious end.
"As a social good," says Richard Posner, the federal judge and iconoclastic conservative, "I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth." That isn't a defense of snooping as much as a warning of the flip side of privacy--concealing facts that are discreditable, including those that other people have a legitimate reason for knowing.
The truth about privacy is counter-intuitive: less of it can lead to a more virtuous society. Markets function more efficiently when it's cheap to identify and deliver the right product to the right person at the right time. Behavioral targeting allows you to see relevant, interesting Web ads instead of irrelevant, annoying ones. The ability to identify customers unlikely to pay their bills lets stores offer better deals to those people who will.
Anyone who's spent a moment reading comments on blogs or news articles knows that encouraging participants to keep their identities private generates vitriol or worse. Thoughtful discussions tend to arise when identities are public. Without that, as Adam Smith wrote about an anonymous man in a large city in The Wealth of Nations, he is likely to "abandon himself to every low profligacy and vice."
Privacy relinquishment is the business model behind exhibitionistic start-ups like Blippy.com, which lets users broadcast what they buy from Amazon, iTunes, and other sites. Other users are invited to submit critiques. After a Blippy user named Joe Greenstein purchased an iPhone app titled "SpeedDate--Dating for Singles of any Sex," it didn't take long for the discussion to turn risque. One fellow wondered: "Are you really 'dating singles of any sex?'" Another asked: "What gives, Joe. Did you break up with your gal?" The original poster replied: "Yes, to breakup. Yes, to dating singles of any sex."
Location-disclosing services are proliferating. Twitter now permits users to include geolocation data in messages, and the company has told developers to "encourage" users to enable the feature. Start-ups like Brightkite and Loopt let you select who can monitor your GPS-derived location, moment-by-moment, through your cell phone. Google Latitude is similar; Foursquare and Dopplr let you disclose your whereabouts more selectively. A report this week said that Facebook may do the same.
Medical privacy is, in some cases, being selectively discarded. Cancer patients share intimate details on survivor discussion sites. On theKnot.com, theNest.com, and theBump.com, members often tell other community members they're pregnant before they tell their families, and often don't bother to conceal their identities. These discussion areas go beyond support networks; they've become additions to and substitutes for in-person conversations.
Commercial data-mining is reaching its apogee at companies like Amazon.com, Last.fm, Apple, and Netflix that use it to do nothing more sinister than suggest relevant books or movies. Customers applauded when Netflix offered $1 million to anyone who could improve its recommendation engine; a team including three AT&T researchers claimed the prize last September. Netflix's next contest will require entrants to crunch millions of chunks of demographic data, including age, sex, ZIP code, and previously rented movies, and then predict which movies those people will like.
Generation X-hibitionist
If any of this concerns you, then you didn't grow up with the Internet. It's difficult to overstate how thoroughly today's youth--call them Generation X-hibitionist--have adjusted to living in a world of porn spam and Viagra ads that utterly lacks quaint 20th-century conceptions of privacy. (When dealing with the police, privacy is a Fourth Amendment right; when dealing with Blippy, it's a mere preference.)
A 2008 Harris Interactive/CTIA survey of more than 2,000 American teens confirms that youth are least worried about privacy. Only 41 percent were concerned; 59 percent were happy to provide personal information to marketers. Compare this to a Harris poll conducted in 1998, the same year Google was founded, that found a remarkable 80 percent of people were hesitant to shop online because of privacy worries. Fast forward 12 years and we're bragging on Blippy about what we bought with our Mastercard.
Perhaps this disinterest in traditional concepts of privacy is one reason why Twitter (originally public) is growing so much faster than Facebook (originally private). While Facebook's remarkable share of global Internet eyeballs doubled last year, according to Alexa.com, Twitter's grew tenfold.
Because Facebook has such a large audience, it can no longer grow as fast. But one advantage that Twitter has is that its founders intentionally chose openness and offered simpler choices. With mere followers instead of friends, there's no need to worry about whether someone qualifies as an intimate or not.
Much of this change is generational. But it also happens when folks old enough to remember cassette tapes and President George H.W. Bush become more comfortable with disclosure. It was only three years ago that Time magazine wondered if Google Street View was "an invasion of privacy." Now even municipal IT departments, including those of Atlanta and Lynchburg, Va., have found uses for it. Does anyone remember when the Electronic Privacy Information Center claimed in 2004 that Google's Gmail somehow violated wiretap laws? Hundreds of millions of satisfied users later, we know that nobody else cared.
At a technology conference in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his audience that Internet users don't care as much about privacy anymore. The 25-year old said that, in the seven years since he started the company, "people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people--and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time." Zuckerberg defended the company's decision in December to push users to reveal more, saying "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."
That change drew the same wails of protest that greeted Google Buzz. Advocacy groups wrote an alarmist note to federal regulators demanding an injunction on grounds that the changes "harm the public interest"--effectively substituting a small clique's privacy preferences for everyone else's. The ACLU announced a letter-writing campaign. The Federal Trade Commission noted, ominously, that Facebook's changes are "of particular interest to us." About the only thing missing--no doubt a press release is being drafted this very moment--is a class action lawsuit to enrich plaintiffs' attorneys while resulting in no measurable changes to Facebook.com.
But as regulatory enthusiasts in Washington were attempting ritualistic divinations of the public interest, something different was happening on the Web: the actual public didn't care. Instead of abandoning the site en masse, Facebook users clicked through a few menus of options and went on with their lives. A protest group titled "Facebook! Fix the Privacy Settings" drew a mere 3,400 of more than 350 million users, less than one-thousandth of 1 percent. Compare that unconcern with the number of people who turned their attention to such weighty topics as "Chuck Norris Facts" (more than 225,000), "Physics Doesn't Exist, It's All Gnomes" (more than 76,000), and "I Flip My Pillow Over To Get To The Cold Side" group (nearly 1 million).
One reason why Zuckerberg's who-needs-privacy argument works is that, through a growing collection of these services with unusual vowel counts, we're choosing what to share. Unlike interactions with government snoops, these are voluntary: Give up a bit of privacy to get a service for free, and everyone benefits (except perhaps rivals that used to charge).
Zuckerberg's own approach to privacy mirrors his company's. His public Facebook profile shows him snuggling up to a teddy bear and attempting to walk while tied to what appears to be a co-worker dressed as a banana. Another photographic montage captures Zuckerberg at his sister's wedding in Jamaica, smiling bravely while wearing a fluorescent vest matching the bridesmaids' turquoise gowns.
There are photos of Zuck The Party Animal at a 2006 kegger, and others with his girlfriend Priscilla at an honest-to-goodness Silicon Valley bison roast. The most telling informational tidbit may be that the Keds-sporting entrepreneur is, officially and publicly, a "fan" of himself.
Perhaps the real issue is not technology but psychology. Irwin Altman, a professor emeritus in the University of Utah's psychology department, created one of the more widely cited theories of privacy before Facebook's founder was born. "If one can choose how much or how little to divulge about oneself to another voluntarily, privacy is maintained," Altman wrote, effectively blessing the social media of a generation later. "If another person can influence how much information we divulge about ourselves or how much information input we let in about others, a lower level of privacy exists."
Now those boundaries are so fluid. Fifty years ago Mark Zuckerberg would have been seen as disclosing far too much information. Doesn't that guy need help, or at least therapy? Now it makes him a very normal, by the standards of his generation, Internet billionaire.
privacy
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Another Kennedy - Railing Against Whatever He is Railing Against
Kennedy's - almost universally - at least the males, have problems keeping their hands of alcohol, drugs, and women. Keeping their hands to themselves is a problem.
Patrick, who has indicated he will retire to spend time with his family, railed on about who knows what, and did it in such a manner as to make Bush proud of his grammatical issues.
Or perhaps he had too much to drink.
March 10, 2010 5:16 PM
Patrick Kennedy: Media Doing "Despicable" Job Covering Afghanistan
Stephanie Condon
CBSNews.com
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) railed against the Washington press corps today on the House floor for paying more attention to the likes of scandal-ridden Eric Massa than the war in Afghanistan.
"There's two press people in this gallery," Kennedy yelled during a debate over an anti-war resolution. "We're talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press? No press."
"You want to know why the American public is fit?" he continued. "They're fit because they're not seeing their Congress do the work that they're sent to do. It's because the press, the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now."
Kennedy's comments came during a three-hour floor debate over a resolution sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that would force President Obama to bring troops home from Afghanistan within 30 days, or longer if it were necessary because of safety issues.
The other peripheral issues - Kucinich - this man should be strung up by his thumbs and licked by giant snails with garlic breath. He is a despicable little man. He is a horrid human being and a pathetic example of a congressman.
On and on and on Patrick goes, on and on and on and on ... and as one comment made clear - Democrats were not lamenting the over zealous media when Larry Criag was being excoriated in the media. Every day new stories, every day sordid details, every day allegations of new abuses; nor when Tom Foley was the media star over his interest in a 21 year old intern. The media spotlight went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ... and Patrick NEVER ONCE lamented all the important issues in the world that should have been covered instead of sordid sexual details. Nope. Nor did anyone in that party urge the media to get back to issues of import - like terrorism or war.
democrats
Patrick, who has indicated he will retire to spend time with his family, railed on about who knows what, and did it in such a manner as to make Bush proud of his grammatical issues.
Or perhaps he had too much to drink.
March 10, 2010 5:16 PM
Patrick Kennedy: Media Doing "Despicable" Job Covering Afghanistan
Stephanie Condon
CBSNews.com
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) railed against the Washington press corps today on the House floor for paying more attention to the likes of scandal-ridden Eric Massa than the war in Afghanistan.
"There's two press people in this gallery," Kennedy yelled during a debate over an anti-war resolution. "We're talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press? No press."
"You want to know why the American public is fit?" he continued. "They're fit because they're not seeing their Congress do the work that they're sent to do. It's because the press, the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now."
Kennedy's comments came during a three-hour floor debate over a resolution sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that would force President Obama to bring troops home from Afghanistan within 30 days, or longer if it were necessary because of safety issues.
The other peripheral issues - Kucinich - this man should be strung up by his thumbs and licked by giant snails with garlic breath. He is a despicable little man. He is a horrid human being and a pathetic example of a congressman.
On and on and on Patrick goes, on and on and on and on ... and as one comment made clear - Democrats were not lamenting the over zealous media when Larry Criag was being excoriated in the media. Every day new stories, every day sordid details, every day allegations of new abuses; nor when Tom Foley was the media star over his interest in a 21 year old intern. The media spotlight went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ... and Patrick NEVER ONCE lamented all the important issues in the world that should have been covered instead of sordid sexual details. Nope. Nor did anyone in that party urge the media to get back to issues of import - like terrorism or war.
democrats
The Democrats and Health Care
To pass a bill the American people do not want, cannot afford, and have made clear they oppose many times? Why? Under what rationale? For Pelosi and Reid and Obama, it doesn't seem to matter. There are many days when Bill Clinton in office was an idyllic time.
Cram it through without a vote? That the American people oppose it and Congress opposes it ... so they come up with a way to pass it anyway.
Amazing. And you think Obama brought change?
He did, he brought the corruption of Chicago to the White House.
House Democrats looking at 'Slaughter Solution' to pass Obamacare without a vote on Senate bill
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
Washington Examiner
03/10/10 4:17 PM EST
Would House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democratic leaders try to cram the Senate version of Obamacare through the House without actually having a recorded vote on the bill?
Not only is the answer yes, they would, they have figured out a way to do it, according to National Journal's Congress Daily:
"House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.
"Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.
"Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. 'Once the CBO gives us the score, we'll spring right on it,' she said."
Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor.
In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House "deems" the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but House members would be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.
Would that rationale fly with the public? A blog post on House Minority Leader John Boehner's blog described the approach as a "twisted scheme."
How much fun will it be for Democrats representing congressional districts carried by John McCain in 2008 to be constantly reminded about the Cornhusker Bargain, the Louisiana Purchase, the Slaughter Solution, the death panels, $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, individual mandates, etc. etc.
dems
Cram it through without a vote? That the American people oppose it and Congress opposes it ... so they come up with a way to pass it anyway.
Amazing. And you think Obama brought change?
He did, he brought the corruption of Chicago to the White House.
House Democrats looking at 'Slaughter Solution' to pass Obamacare without a vote on Senate bill
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
Washington Examiner
03/10/10 4:17 PM EST
Would House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democratic leaders try to cram the Senate version of Obamacare through the House without actually having a recorded vote on the bill?
Not only is the answer yes, they would, they have figured out a way to do it, according to National Journal's Congress Daily:
"House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.
"Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.
"Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. 'Once the CBO gives us the score, we'll spring right on it,' she said."
Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor.
In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House "deems" the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but House members would be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.
Would that rationale fly with the public? A blog post on House Minority Leader John Boehner's blog described the approach as a "twisted scheme."
How much fun will it be for Democrats representing congressional districts carried by John McCain in 2008 to be constantly reminded about the Cornhusker Bargain, the Louisiana Purchase, the Slaughter Solution, the death panels, $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, individual mandates, etc. etc.
dems
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The End of March
Not only is March Madness nearly upon us, but so to is another event that occurs every year, same time, same place ... the seal cull, in Canada.
Nothing more can be said, it happens. And cull they do.
Those tricky Canadians!
Canada
Nothing more can be said, it happens. And cull they do.
Those tricky Canadians!
Canada
Her Majesty Nancy Pelosi I: Pass the Health Care Bill So We Can Find Out What Is Inside It, and Send More Advocates Quickly.
Forget about he fact she misspoke, she has done that quite a few times in the last few months - and has had to come back and explain what it was she was explaining when she was so incorrectly explaining what we failed to understand when she explained. Sort of like with Bush, only he was of course not as good as them, because they are liberals and liberals care, so we ignore tha glaring problems staring us in the face everytime they open their mouth and instead concentrate on a bumbling retardican. Yep. Makes sense.
03/09/2010
Pelosi Remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties
“Thank you, President Valerie Brown [of Sonoma County, Calif.] Don’t we all take pride in Valerie Brown recently being named County Official of the Year for her advocacy on behalf of all of America’s counties? Thank you, Valerie. Her wealth of experience – as a mayor, a state legislator, and an educator and a county executive - makes her an innovative and effective leader for the future. At this time of great challenges, her understanding of the different needs of NACo’s diverse counties is essential.
“I understand many other county officials are here from California. Any Californians to be heard from here? Thank you for coming the distance to Washington and for going the distance for our constituents. And I want to acknowledge all of you who are here.
“I had the privilege last year to acknowledge the work of the Executive Committee of NACo by welcoming them to the Speaker’s office in the Capitol. This year, I have the even greater privilege to come to you to speak to all of the members of NACo.
[Perhaps because the Republican leadership was in measuring curtains and she didn't want to appear as deferring to Republicans in front of anyone. And for anyone who finds this scoffable - you have not heard the staffers in the hallways of Congress, and how certain they are their party is about to lose control of the Senate and possibly the House. Deep depression, worry, fear.]
“On the 75th anniversary of the National Association of Counties, your leadership is more vital and more necessary than ever. You know that. I just want you to know that we in Congress do too.
[...]
“Just a little more than a year ago, our President Barack Obama stood on the steps of the Capitol, just a little more than a year ago and called for swift, bold action now to restore our economic growth. In his budget, he set out a blueprint founded on three pillars for our prosperity: a highly-educated workforce, the future, a clean energy economy, good-paying jobs, and quality, affordable health care for all Americans. And he saw these critical building blocks as engines of job creation and economic growth.
“Answering that call, and responding to the needs of America’s counties, we passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, creating and saving up to 2 million jobs so far, and more to come.
Why not say 3 million, we can't understand that number either.
“You know best what the Recovery Act means to American’s counties. I have traveled the country, visited many counties to dedicate, groundbreak, observe funding coming into counties, tens of millions of dollars in some counties, over $100 million in some counties, hundreds of millions of dollars. For the Port of Houston, for a highway in Colorado, whether it is keeping teachers on the job, cops on the street, we believe that the Recovery Act was essential to keep us from an even worse recession. But in fact, it has created or saved 2 million jobs.
[...]
“When we were debating the recovery bill a year ago, a year and a month ago, the stock market was about 6,500. Yesterday it closed 10,500—a swing of 4,000 points.
[...]
“As you are in Washington this week, we stand at the doorstep of history, ready to realize a centuries old dream, started by a Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt. He was the one who started this country thinking in this direction, and we are deeply in his dept. But, we are a hundred years late. A century old dream of health care for all, and we will be prepared to send the bill to President Obama’s desk that ensures affordability for the middle class, accountability for the insurance companies, and access for millions more Americans, tens of millions more.
[...]
“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President’s economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation—innovation begins in the classroom—clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon.
[...]
“Thank you NACo, for the opportunity to be with you. On behalf of my colleagues in the Congress, I welcome you to Washington, D.C. I hope we will see you on Capitol Hill. We want your advocacy either here or from home.
[Another word for advocacy is? And yet, what was it that Democrats and Obama in particular were going to change about Washington? And what is it Pelosi is stating very clearly?]
democrats
03/09/2010
Pelosi Remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties
“Thank you, President Valerie Brown [of Sonoma County, Calif.] Don’t we all take pride in Valerie Brown recently being named County Official of the Year for her advocacy on behalf of all of America’s counties? Thank you, Valerie. Her wealth of experience – as a mayor, a state legislator, and an educator and a county executive - makes her an innovative and effective leader for the future. At this time of great challenges, her understanding of the different needs of NACo’s diverse counties is essential.
“I understand many other county officials are here from California. Any Californians to be heard from here? Thank you for coming the distance to Washington and for going the distance for our constituents. And I want to acknowledge all of you who are here.
“I had the privilege last year to acknowledge the work of the Executive Committee of NACo by welcoming them to the Speaker’s office in the Capitol. This year, I have the even greater privilege to come to you to speak to all of the members of NACo.
[Perhaps because the Republican leadership was in measuring curtains and she didn't want to appear as deferring to Republicans in front of anyone. And for anyone who finds this scoffable - you have not heard the staffers in the hallways of Congress, and how certain they are their party is about to lose control of the Senate and possibly the House. Deep depression, worry, fear.]
“On the 75th anniversary of the National Association of Counties, your leadership is more vital and more necessary than ever. You know that. I just want you to know that we in Congress do too.
[...]
“Just a little more than a year ago, our President Barack Obama stood on the steps of the Capitol, just a little more than a year ago and called for swift, bold action now to restore our economic growth. In his budget, he set out a blueprint founded on three pillars for our prosperity: a highly-educated workforce, the future, a clean energy economy, good-paying jobs, and quality, affordable health care for all Americans. And he saw these critical building blocks as engines of job creation and economic growth.
“Answering that call, and responding to the needs of America’s counties, we passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, creating and saving up to 2 million jobs so far, and more to come.
Why not say 3 million, we can't understand that number either.
“You know best what the Recovery Act means to American’s counties. I have traveled the country, visited many counties to dedicate, groundbreak, observe funding coming into counties, tens of millions of dollars in some counties, over $100 million in some counties, hundreds of millions of dollars. For the Port of Houston, for a highway in Colorado, whether it is keeping teachers on the job, cops on the street, we believe that the Recovery Act was essential to keep us from an even worse recession. But in fact, it has created or saved 2 million jobs.
[...]
“When we were debating the recovery bill a year ago, a year and a month ago, the stock market was about 6,500. Yesterday it closed 10,500—a swing of 4,000 points.
[...]
“As you are in Washington this week, we stand at the doorstep of history, ready to realize a centuries old dream, started by a Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt. He was the one who started this country thinking in this direction, and we are deeply in his dept. But, we are a hundred years late. A century old dream of health care for all, and we will be prepared to send the bill to President Obama’s desk that ensures affordability for the middle class, accountability for the insurance companies, and access for millions more Americans, tens of millions more.
[...]
“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President’s economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation—innovation begins in the classroom—clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon.
[...]
“Thank you NACo, for the opportunity to be with you. On behalf of my colleagues in the Congress, I welcome you to Washington, D.C. I hope we will see you on Capitol Hill. We want your advocacy either here or from home.
[Another word for advocacy is? And yet, what was it that Democrats and Obama in particular were going to change about Washington? And what is it Pelosi is stating very clearly?]
democrats
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