According to Thursday's Free Press,  there has now been a 90% die-off of the cave-dwelling bat population in the northeast due to a still unidentified pathogen associated with the fungal condition known as "white nose syndrome."

Coupled with the massive  collapses occurring among bee colonies, this is not just a sad scenario, but an extremely alarming one with regard to our food security.   These creatures play a vital role in natural insect control for fruit and vegetable crops.  What is happening to our future chances for survival on a purely subsistence level while all of our energy and resources are directed toward "growing" an already enormous and dysfunctional consumer economy and waging an irrational war on the other side of the globe?  We have surrendered much of our investigative science capacity to corporate agendas, and what remains in the way of publicly funded efforts is  frequently targeted by the right, either as a waste of money or a moral menace.  Ignorance and hubris threaten our very survival, but as we are witnessing in Copenhagen, the industrialized giants seem to be locked in a paralytic state of denial.  This will end badly.

As a seventh-generation Texan, when I say that I love Texas as much as anybody, I know that means a great deal more than many. For me, it is personally heartbreaking to learn that an ultraconservative group of activists -- led, until recently, by a Bryan, TX, dentist -- has marshaled curriculum changes to history and civics textbook that will be widely adopted throughout the nation. Texas conservatives are even messing with Texas! The Texas State of Board of Education rejected an amendment that would have detailed the contributions of Tejano soldiers who fell defending the Alamo -- in particular the men led by the great Tejano hero Juan Seguín.

While Texas Republicans recommend creating space in high school curricula for conservative pundit Phyllis Schlafly, they suggest striking Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (!) from the records. The prevailing educational winds from Texas are hostile to minority historical figures, to say the least. This climate makes the work of groups like the Pearl Coalition all the more important.

The Washington Post reports today the Pearl Coalition's efforts to bring a schooner from El Salvador to the Southwest Waterfront to serve as a permanent reminder of the largest slave escape attempted in U.S. history. Here's a story I never learned as a lad:

On April 15, 1848, more than 70 slaves from Maryland, the District and Virginia gathered at the Seventh Street pier in Southeast Washington and boarded the Pearl, hoping it could take them to freedom. Stormy weather left them stalled in the Chesapeake Bay long enough to be recaptured, but the attempt brought fame to some of the passengers and buoyed the abolition movement.

An old post by Ten Miles Square has more on the failed exodus.

For a cost just shy of buying three snow melters, the District could have a permanent historical fixture along the Waterfront -- a standing (sailing?) testament to the episode. Texas sure as hell isn't going to recommend teaching it. It would seem that for the next decade, at least, local municipalities will need to take a greater hand in ensuring that educational opportunities exist to instruct students about the role minorities have played in shaping history.

Note, too, that the Spirit of the Pearl would be a cool-ass schooner visible from every bridge over the Potomac. That it could serve as both a tourist attraction and an educational tool suggests that over time the boat could potentially pay for itself. That's historical revisionism I can get behind.

In a new blog-post Stacy Mitchell (The Big Box Swindle), Senior Researcher for the New Rules Project scolds environmental groups for failing to take a closer look at  Walmart's recent attempts to green-up their corporate image:  

So, on the one hand, you have Wal-Mart's sustainability program, which proposes to reduce the emissions associated with some of the products it sells. And, on the other hand, you have Wal-Mart's core business model, which ensures that we have to replace those products far more often.  This is where some of our most prominent environmental groups have really failed us. They've loudly cheered Wal-Mart's every green announcement, but have done little to help us understand or prod the company to confront the deep sustainability issues that are at the heart of its business model.

Wal-Mart has carefully defined the parameters of sustainability to avoid running up against the basic formula of how it operates and grows. Glaringly absent from Wal-Mart's recent sustainability report, for example, is any mention of sprawl or land use. There's no discussion of how much undeveloped, carbon-absorbing habitat its big stores consume each year, even as the nation's supply of both developed retail space and abandoned "greyfields" mushrooms to epic proportions.

Somehow I missed this story earlier in the month but in a review this morning of global security news, I discovered that Admiral Mike Mullen, the chair of US Joint Chief of Staff, had issued new guidelines for the conduct of war superseding those issued by General Colin Powell nearly two decades ago. The Powell Doctrine held that the American military should be sent to war only when a vital national interest was at stake, when support from the public was assured, and when “overwhelming force” was committed to the effort. The Powell Doctrine was first articulated in 1992 in an article by then Chairman of Joint Chief in the quarterly journal Foreign Affairs.

The new Mullen Doctrine, based on the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, calls for a more restrained use of force so as to minimize civilian loss of life. Admiral Mullen also called for increased and open-ended discussion between politicians, the military, and the public on how best to use American hard and soft power.

Admiral Mullen laid out his vision for US warfare at a speech at Kansas State University on March 3, 2010 in which he outlined three new principles. The first is that military power should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state. The second is that force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way. The third principle is creating an environment where policy and strategy are constantly evolving.

The underlying assumption of the Mullen Doctrine is that for the foreseeable future, the US will be involved in wars somewhere in the world and likely in multiple locations at the same time. Indeed, while the American public is hopefully fully aware - frankly I'm not convinced that they are aware of the costs - we are waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but that we also have on-going military operations in the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, and Colombia not to mention garrisons scattered across the planet in support of US foreign policy objectives. For such an important subject, the story was largely buried in the press. Here's a link to the story in the Washington Post. The reality is that Admiral Mullen is right, we don't engage in an open-ended discussion about how the US military is used and we need to do so.

The text of Admiral Mullen's speech is beneath the fold.

What happened to the evidence? (photo: mastahanky via Flickr)

I just re-read Philippe Sands’ Torture Team and, given the news of disappearing emails and documents, this passage struck me anew:

[Mike Dunlavey, who was in charge of Gitmo as they put together the torture plan for Mohammed al-Qahtani] would have liked to have gone back to the daily diaries and schedules that were kept on the computer system, together with reports that were sent out on a daily basis, and details of the videoconferences that had taken place with the Pentagon. “I need to see that stuff,” he mused, “how am I going to get it?” It seemed doubtful that he would. “They were backed up at SOUTHCOM,” he explained, but “a couple of months after I left there was a SNAFU and all was lost.”

Sands goes onto wonder whether there might be a connection to the destruction of the torture tapes. Dunlavey left Gitmo in November 2002, so those materials would have been lost in late 2002 or early 2003, when we now know people were panicking about what to do about the torture tapes. That was also between the time when–at the end of November 2002–a lawyer from CIA’s Office of General Counsel reviewed the tapes and claimed they matched the torture logs exactly, and the time when–in May 2003–CIA’s Inspector General discovered they weren’t an exact match. More importantly, CIA IG discovered there were 11 blank tapes, 2 broken ones, and 2 more mostly blank ones, suggesting that a first round of efforts to hide evidence on the torture tapes took place before CIA’s IG reviewed them.

In other words, this “SNAFU” happened around the same time as the first round of destruction of the torture tapes took place.

Since there are so many incidences of destroyed or disappearing torture evidence, I thought it time to start cataloging them, to keep them all straight.

• Before May 2003: 15 of 92 torture tapes erased or damaged
• Early 2003: Dunlavey’s paper trail “lost”
• Before August 2004: John Yoo and Patrick Philbin’s torture memo emails deleted
• June 2005: most copies of Philip Zelikow’s dissent to the May 2005 CAT memo destroyed
• November 8-9, 2005: 92 torture tapes destroyed
• July 2007 (probably): 10 documents from OLC SCIF disappear
• December 19, 2007: Fire breaks out in Cheney’s office

(I put in the Cheney fire because it happened right after DOJ started investigating the torture tape destruction.)

There are two more evidence-related issues pertaining to the torture program.

First, recall that the government has refused to turn over all of Abu Zubaydah’s diaries to him [update: here's a more updated description of the diaries status from Jason Leopold]. The status of both the diaries and the legal argument over them remains largely sealed, so we can’t know for sure whether all the diaries remain intact. I believe they are just being withheld and haven’t been destroyed, but we don’t know for sure.

Also, remember that Alberto Gonzales was wandering around DC with a briefcase full of CYA documents just after he became Attorney General. Among those documents were draft and final versions of OLC opinions relating to torture, and possibly memos describing some operational aspects of the program.

The classified materials that are the subject of this investigation consist of notes that Gonzales drafted to memorialize a classified briefing of congressional leaders about the NSA surveillance program when Gonzales was the White House Counsel; draft and final Office of Legal Counsel opinions about both the NSA surveillance program and a detainee interrogation program; correspondence from congressional leaders to the Director of Central Intelligence; and other memoranda describing legal and operational aspects of the two classified programs.

Since this briefcase appears to have been about CYA, it is unlikely Gonzales would have destroyed any of them. But we know only that they were not in secure custody for about two years.

In other words, at least five pieces of evidence on torture has disappeared or been destroyed. But it could well be more than that.

John Durham? For a guy investigating disappearing evidence, you’ve been awfully quiet…

Tags: Abu Zubaydah, Dick Cheney, John Durham, Mike Dunlavey. John Yoo, OPR report, Patrick Philbin, Philip Zelikow, Philippe Sands, Torture

[Welcome Amy Goodman, and Host Sara Robinson] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread.  - bev]

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Back in 2007, at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (the church’s big annual national gathering), I had the remarkable experience of hearing Amy Goodman moderate a panel of extraordinary gentlemen. One was Daniel Ellsberg. One was Mike Gravel, then a contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. And the third was Robert West, a former president of Beacon Press, which is owned by the UUA.

Together, with Amy as moderator, these men told the untold story of how the Pentagon Papers were brought to the public. Ellsberg gave a copy of the 7,000 pages to The Washington Post’s Ben Bagdikian — but only on the condition that Bagdikian deliver a copy to Senator Gravel, so he could read them into the Congressional record. (The transfer involved a midnight cloak-and-dagger meeting in a dark parking lot, with Gravel transferring the boxes by himself because only he had senatorial immunity should they be caught.) While Bagdikian fought the government to print the papers in the Post, Gravel played hide-and-seek with the Senate’s leadership (then in the form of Mike Mansfield) to get the the Papers on record; and at the same time arranged with Beacon Press (after 35 other publishers turned them down) to print them. The agreement to publish– which church leaders well understood was putting the entire future of one of the nation’s oldest denominations on the line, as well as committing themselves to an act of capital treason — ended up in front of the Supreme Court, after two years of ongoing government persecution of the church.

I was in the front row for this spellbinding bit of group storytelling, along with my daughter, then not yet quite 17. “This is what heroes look like,” I told her. “Take a good look — because this is what your faith and your family will expect of you on the day that history knocks on your door and insists that you take a stand.”

Amy Goodman knows a lot about taking unpopular and personally risky stands that threaten the powers that be. She’s had a lot of experience breaking the sound barrier — that wall of silence that allows Americans to remain blissful in our too-easy denial of the many injustices that make our comfort possible. And she knows things about keeping your wits and courage about you in the resulting sonic booms that fellow progressives caught in the winds of change can learn from. Amy’s unwillingness to compromise her principles has made all the difference — for her, for the country, and for the people whose unheard voices become audible through her work. That stubborn insistence not only put her where she is — as the host of Democracy Now!, which runs every weekday on over 800 radio stations across the country and around the world — but also gives her work its forthright, earnest, and powerful flavor.

Breaking the Sound Barrier is a compilation of several dozen of Amy’s newspaper columns which ran between the summer of 2006 and the fall of 2009. At just 500 words each, the columns are shorter than this introduction; but brief as they are, they’re sharp, vivid vignettes, each one offering up a telling detail, a pointed moral, a transformative moment, or a wicked irony. Amy shows us US generals comparing the process of invading a country to a work of art in progress — and then invokes Guernica. She notes wryly that the ancient home of one of Maryland’s most notorious slave torturers, then known as “Mount Misery,” now belongs to Donald Rumsfeld.

“It is the responsibility of journalists to go where the silence is, to seek out news and people who are ignored, to accurately and clearly report on the issues — issues that the corporate, for-profit media often distort, if they cover them at all,” Goodman writes. To that end, she recounts not only the stories told by Gravel, Ellsburg, and West that night in Portland; but also writes movingly about being a witness to a massacre in East Timor, which she only survived herself because she could produce an American passport; gives her account of being arrested at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in 2008; and takes on the American Psychological Association for its unconscionable unwillingness to sanction members who participate in US government torture. Her insights into the 2008 election cycle, including a full section on Obama, reveal the full range of progressive hopes and fears for this president.

Many of us are already very familiar with Amy’s work and exploits, so I imagine we’re going to have a lot to talk about today. Personally, I’ll be asking her about her recent brush with the Canadian border patrol during a visit to my adopted hometown of Vancouver. I cross that same patch of border weekly — indeed, I crossed it just last night — so her experience with this has been nothing short of sobering for me, and I’m interested in knowing what’s shaken out from this since. Have your questions ready, too: more than usual, this is one Book Salon guest who will sidestep no answers and pull no punches.

Welcome to FDL, Amy!

Tags: Amy Goodman, Breaking the Sound Barrier, Democracy Now!, Sara Robinson

We hope you didn't miss Look Up too much while your Space Editor was up to other things during the past month. Your weekly astronomy fix is back, however, so pull up a lawn chair and dim the porch light.

Actually, our first event comes with its own chairs. Hubble 3D opens at IMAX theaters this Friday, March 19. A private world premiere event was held at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum last Tuesday, with a screening featuring special guests, including Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA, and most of the STS-125 crew that stars in the film.

Let's not mince words: this movie is mindblowing. Hubble 3D not only takes you on a ride with the three main astronaut crews responsible for getting the Hubble Space Telescope up and running (in 1990, 1992, and 2009), but it actually takes you through space to the galaxy fields and nebulae we can see through Hubble's eye. The telescope's ability to resolve fine detail from millions of light-years away has allowed scientists (and probably a lot of graphic designers) to create fantastic 3D images -- a flight through space to the Orion Nebula, with its nursery of baby stars nestled inside, bursting away interstellar material as they grow, is something out of Carl Sagan's dreams.

This is no lame-ass "reality-based" James Cameron 3D, this is full-on Captain EO style, duck-or-reach-out-and-touch-it 3D -- and let's face it, that's what we really want to see when we put on those stupid-looking glasses. If you've never seen a space shuttle launch (or even if you have), Hubble 3D might be one of the best, closest experiences you'll ever have. Multiple cameras from the tower and surrounding launchpad capture the full ground-shaking experience of the launch as the exhaust and steam blow right over you and the roar explodes from the speakers.

On a personal note: the launch they filmed was actually the first launch I saw in person, in May 2009 -- you'll see clips from the bleachers at Banana Creek where I was sitting -- and while nothing can beat the grandeur of that memory, I have to admit, this experience came an almost infinitesimally close second.

Hubble 3D isn't just a movie for space fans, though all of you should buy your tickets immediately. The film might be the best convert opportunity you'll ever have. Your friend who doesn't really "get" why you like all this space stuff, your kids to whom you're trying to teach the wonders of the universe and instill the curiosity that creates future scientists, engineers and explorers -- take them to this movie and let the NASA filmmakers do the work for you.

Hubble 3D opens this Friday at the Air & Space Museum on the Mall and runs about 45 minutes. Tickets and showtimes here.

Chris Wallace does his best to make sure Chris Van Hollen can’t adequately respond to him when pointing out the Republicans hypocrisy with their temporary ban on all earmarks which as Van Hollen tries to point out is nothing more than an election year stunt. As he noted if they were serious about doing reform, they’d have done it when they were in power and they’d be pushing for permanent changes and not temporary ones.

Wallace: Congressman Van Hollen this week House Democrats announced a one year ban on earmarks—those are the individual members’ pet projects going to for profit corporations—then House Republicans announced a one year ban on all earmarks, for profit corporations, to anyone. Will House Democrats join House Republicans in a one year ban on all earmarks?

Van Hollen: Let me say Chris, I’ve got to smile when my Republican colleagues talk about earmark reform. For sixteen years when they had the Congress they did nothing. The test of whether you’re serious is what you do when you have the power to change it. Not what you say when you don’t. Earmarks quadrupled during those sixteen years. The first day of the new Democratic Congress in 2007 we put in place transparency reforms, accountability reforms, we can no longer tuck these pet projects in the middle of the night into the…

Wallace: Sir you’re not answering my question.

Van Hollen: I’m going to get there. I think it’s important to lay this predicate. We also passed a provision that says that you have to sign a conflict of interest disclosure. You can’t ask for earmarks where you have an interest…

Wallace: We’re going to run out of time.

Van Hollen: Okay Chris. The answer to your question is we have passed a major change in terms of banning nonprofits and it’s a permanent change. What they’ve said is they’re going to do a temporary moratorium and in fact if you listen to Jerry Lewis and others in their caucus…

Wallace: We should point out that’s not the comedian, that’s the Congressman from California.

Van Hollen: That’s right. He’s their leading member, their senior member on the Appropriations Committee—this is eight months—what we did was permanent. All our changes we’ve made are permanent and the way they got their conference on board was to say wink, wink, eight months, we can change when we come back.

Wallace: Congressman Cantor?

Cantor: Chris, I mean, come on, listen to that. I mean there’s a reason why we’re in the minority now. I think we’ve tried to learn our lesson here. We took a significant step the other day in our conference and we said we will not be seeking any earmarks, a total ban on earmarks this year.

About to deliver her imprint on the biggest and most controversial piece of legislation of her life, get ready for a steady stream of pictures of Pelosi this week (already started: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) making her look like an incredible goof. (Not that The BAG hasn't been pointing this out, by the way, since the two-headed monster won the White House News Photographer Association's "Political Photo of the Year" in '07.)

In this pic, The Speaker is miniaturized; her title is almost completely obscured and sliced; her oversized and disembodied hand, combined with the angle of the drapes, the flags, the ceiling, the reflection in the mirror, and the eagles ringing her head make her seem like she's part of a real carnival; and her bulging eyes make her look like a hysteric, which -- with all the exaggerated expressions and super-close ups already flooding the wire -- is what the distortion is really about.

(title changed/slightly revised - 2pm PST)

(photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images. caption: U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during her weekly news conference March 12, 2010 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Pelosi discussed the health care reform legislation with the media.)

AFP - Top aides to President Barack Obama confidently predicted Sunday that his signature health care overhaul would finally pass through Congress this week, after a year of costly political wrangling.

Dennis Kucinich (photo 2007, courtesy of CAPAF)

Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he’d stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.

Let’s review a brief history of the disease known as “health insurance reform.”

When the president and the speaker of the House thought it would be strategic to censor any talk of single-payer healthcare, almost every member of Congress and almost every astroturfing party-before-country activist group and labor union, and almost every follower of those groups, fell obediently into line. “We’ll open the debate with the least we’ll settle for, a pathetic token public-option,” they thought cleverly, rubbing their hands together. “Then we’ll compromise down from there.”

But after demanding the “public option,” too many people refused to toss it overboard, and public pressure grew to keep it in. So 60 congress members signed a letter to the speaker last summer insisting that they would not settle for a health insurance bill that lacked a serious public option. When they were presented with a bill that did not meet their demands, almost all of them voted for it anyway.

Now 51 senators say they will pass a bill including a super-pathetic token public option of the sort passed by the House last summer, but Pelosi wants to pass a bill without anything even called a “public option” in it. Almost all of the congressional public-option stalwarts want to go along with the speaker and the president. And almost all of the astroturfing party-before-country activist groups want to fall obediently into line.

Meanwhile several states are moving single-payer healthcare bills through their legislatures, but they face likely lawsuits from insurance companies over conflicts with federal law if they try to actually get their residents healthcare. Senator Bernie Sanders is advertising the Senate bill as solving this problem, routinely failing to mention that his solution, if it is one, does not kick in for seven years. But an amendment passed in a House committee last summer would have clearly and unequivocally taken care of states’ concerns. The president told the speaker to strip that amendment out of the bill, and almost no members of Congress complained when she did so.

Where does Dennis Kucinich fit into this story? He’s the reason the word “almost” appears in it so many times. He didn’t open negotiations by proposing the lowest he’d accept. He pushed for a real single-payer solution. He single-handedly framed the public option as a compromise rather than a communist plot. Kucinich signed the letter committing to take a stand for at least a public option. But he made the mistake of thinking people actually wanted him to mean it. So he took that lonely stand. And he introduced and passed the amendment that would have allowed states to provide their residents with a serious healthcare solution.

Now, all the astroturfers applauded and encouraged taking a stand for a public option when there were 60 congress members pretending to do it, without apparently giving any thought to how greatly weakened progressives would be in Congress if they didn’t follow through. Did they think the chance that a bluff might work was worth damaging all future campaigns? Did they disbelieve all their own talk about how the bill would be worthless without the “public option.” It’s hard to know. The so-called public option had shrunk to such a token gesture that it was always hard to know what good they imagined it would do if included. And today they talk about passing a bill without even that token included, and passing it “for political reasons,” usually avoiding the question of whether the bill is actually better or worse than nothing.

But suppose that you honestly thought the public option was worth at least pretending to take a stand for, and now you no longer do, but you think the remaining bill does more good than harm. Why would you have no complaint with Pelosi who could put the “public option” back in and pass the bill? Why would you have no complaint with congress members who oppose the bill on the grounds that it protects abortion rights? Why would your complaints be focused on the one guy who stuck to what you used to want him to stick to? Could embarrassment be a factor here? Shame? Humiliation? Do you feel uneasy about asking that ever congress member be an obedient slave to the president? Do you sense that progressives would then be excluded entirely? Does it worry you that you’re protesting insurance companies in support of a bill that causes insurance companies’ stocks to rise?

Even the activist groups that have acted on principle throughout this ordeal have fallen short of Kucinich’s actions. Kucinich knew that real progress would come through the states, so he worked to pass an amendment permitting state single-payer. And virtually nobody backed him up. Activist groups either prattled on in a fog about national single-payer, or they focused exclusively on the so-called public option. These two camps wouldn’t talk to each other, but they both agreed on leaving states’ concerns by the wayside.

If, in stark contrast to what was done, labor unions and activist groups and progressive media had taken their agenda from their membership and brought it to Washington, rather than the reverse, then very quickly Kucinich would not have been alone in demanding single-payer, and the right-wingers would have soon been begging for a token public option as a compromise.

Healthcare is only one issue. There are dozens of stories like the one above, with different issues but the same characters and plot. When dozens of congress members commit to opposing war funding, Kucinich commits and then follows through. When it comes to ending the wars or impeaching the war criminals, Kucinich leads, in opposition to his political party but in support of his constituents, the American people, the rule of law, and the stated goals of progressives.

I hope self-loathing partisan sycophants realize that the corporate media will equally depict either passage or nonpassage of a “health insurance reform” bill as a defeat for Democrats. And, in this case, rightly so. But the long-term impact of a reform that doesn’t reform, one that rather compels Americans to pay their hard-earned money to institutions even more hated than Congress, namely health insurance companies — THAT would be the real political loser, with or without a privately run program for 3 percent of us called “the public option.” And, again, rightly so. Kucinich is saving the Democrats from themselves by helping to block their health insurance bill, but they can’t see what’s in front of them through the fog of their constant dreaming about mountains of money and a naked Rahm Emanuel poking them in the chests.

Tags: Dennis Kucinich, healthcare, progressives, public option, single payer

Configuring networks and routers has always been an impossibility for me. No matter how closely I follow the directions, I always mess it up.

This morning, my laptop said I needed to upgrade the driver on my wireless connection. After I did, I couldn't get online. The network only showed limited access instead of local and internet. I was about to go to Office Depot and buy a new router when I thought I'd try one last time to play with the old one. I put the disk in my desktop (which is connected by ethernet cable).

Three hours later, I'm done. I have a new network and not only does my desktop and laptop recognize it, but so does my iPhone and iPod (they never recognized the old network.) [More...]

I might go for broke and try to set up the wireless HP color printer/fax/copier that's been sitting unused in its box for 6 months because I was never able to get it to recognize the old network. On second thought, why push my luck? I'll save that for another day.

What did you get done today? This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

AP - The senator trying to rewrite the nation's financial industry rules is dropping plans to create a stand-alone consumer financial protection agency and give a single regulator the power to oversee all banks, according to people familiar with the evolving proposal.

Sure, there's some flooding in Alexandria -- though that was pretty much expected -- and Amtrak service is just now back to normalcy on the Northeast Corridor after downed power lines created issues with track switching and signaling. But Pepco and Dominion both report minimal power outages (unlike energy companies in states to our north and east), Metro's all clear aside from track maintenance, and the Flood Watch over the District has been lifted. Besides, the constant drip from the sky has been the perfect excuse to sit on the couch and gorge myself on a 48-hour feast of college basketball.

photo: Bsivad via Flickr

Sadly, it appears that Barack Obama is unwilling or unable to take on corporate America. He talks tough, but accommodates when the chips are really on the table – as the health care debate has conveniently demonstrated. More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that with a few notable exceptions, both Republicans and Democrats in Washington are basically employees of corporate lobbyists.

Perhaps one of the best ways to counter the stranglehold large corporations have on our economy and our government is to go underground. We can take the legs out from under the Wal-Marts, Exxons, Monsantos, and Coca-Colas of the world by finding alternatives to the corporate-consumer culture we have been raised in. Here’s a quick list of 5 ways we can get started:

1) Refuse to purchase anything from the three largest companies in any industry. This would eliminate the incentive to glean maximum profit no matter what the cost to human lives or the environment. For example, imagine how the oil business would change if all of a sudden Exxon, Shell, and BP were trying to be #4 instead of #1. If you’re feeling really daring, you can refuse to buy anything sold by a Fortune 500 company.

2) Shop more at yard sales and thrift shops, and engage in the ancient practice of bartering. Our culture is already saturated with material goods. Anything we buy new is probably already sitting unused in one of our neighbors’ houses. The idea that we should purchase something new every time we need something is a false imperative created by the corporate marketing and advertising machine.

3) Eat locally grown and unprocessed food. It’s better for you, better for the planet, and better for the non-corporate farmers. Plus, it almost always tastes better.

4) Stop watching television. Or at least watch it with an awareness of how the advertising is manipulating you. Marketing firms pay the best psychologists a lot of money to help them produce commercials to make you buy their products. The best defense against them is the “off” button.

5) Read, write, and talk about the dangers of corporate control. Even the most knowledgeable of consumers have been “branded” and make shopping decisions for reasons they’re not consciously aware of.  Research shows that children begin forming brand loyalties at a very young age. I’m a pastor, but my 4-year old son can name more brand names than Biblical characters. It’s not unreasonable to say that consumerism and corporatism have become the true belief systems in our country. Like an addiction, the first step to recovery is admitting we have a problem. And we can’t admit it unless enough people know about it.

What would you add to this list of underground ways to fight the corporate beast?

Tags: Barack Obama, big business, Corporate greed, Corporate Power, underground

Meanwhile, I read that the state has been intensively auditing S.U.N.Y., finding the usual examples of services that could be consolidated and bookkeeping errors that need to be corrected. While I have no problem with holding S.U.N.Y. and C.U.N.Y. strictly to account, however, the reality is that staffing and pay are low in New York State in state government higher education (colleges and universities)  and in New York City in local government higher education (community colleges) relative to the national average, according to governments division data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Particularly when the higher cost of living downstate is accounted for in payroll. Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school spending, staffing and pay in the portion of New York State outside New York City is off the charts. It appears that the whole focus in a fiscal crisis in on the places where the money isn’t. Somehow, I don’t think that’s an accident.