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The recent release of the October 2010 job figures by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the national economy was generating net new jobs (151,000) for the first time in recent months, with the private sector responsible for all of the net job growth. A careful look at the breakout of the job growth figures by major industrial sector revealed a very high concentration of growth in just four sectors: temporary help services, retail trade, fast food and other eating/drinking places, and health care/social services. Employment in the nation’s goods producing industries (mining, construction, and manufacturing) as well as transportation services and utilities, the nation’s key employers of blue collar workers, was basically flat. Since the national recession officially ended in June 2009, the U.S. economy still has not added any net new wage and salary jobs in its goods producing industries or in transportation services. Total employment in the construction, manufacturing and transportation industries combined was still 540,000 below its level in June 2009. There has been no recovery in these industrial sectors to date.
Given their above-average concentration in the above industries, the nation’s blue collar workers (construction, installation and maintenance, production, and transport operators) remain trapped in a labor market depression, 16 months after the end of the recession. Between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2009, 17% of all blue collar workers’ jobs in the US were eliminated while the combined number of professional and management-related jobs were left unchanged. Over the June-September period of this year, we estimate that 17 to 18 percent of the nation’s production workers and transportation operatives/material movers were left either unemployed or underemployed — as were 28 percent of all construction and extraction workers. In comparison, only 4 to 6 percent of professionals and 6 to 7 percent of managers were facing one of these labor market problems.
The dire circumstances in which the nation’s blue collar workers have found themselves in recent years can also be gleaned from a careful analysis of the findings of the recent BLS dislocated worker survey, which tracked permanent job losses over the 2007 to early 2010 period. Over this three year period, 15.4 million workers 20 and older were displaced from a job, equivalent to about 11% of all U.S. workers, the highest rate of job displacement in the approximate 30 year period for which such data are available. Over 5 million of these dislocated workers were employed in blue collar jobs at the time of their displacement, representing a near 17% dislocation rate. Nearly 16% of transportation operatives/ material movers, 17% of production workers, and 21% of construction workers were displaced. These job displacement rates compare to only 4-6% of professional workers and eight per cent of those holding managerial jobs.
The re-employment rate of these dislocated blue collar workers was only 44% at the time of the February 2010 survey, and fewer than two-thirds of those regaining employment were able to find a new blue collar position. Thus, overall, under three of every ten displaced blue collar workers were reemployed in blue collar jobs in early 2010. Those who had to switch occupational groups to become reemployed experienced an average 25% decline in their weekly earnings. Their lower weekly earnings will reduce their families’ abilities to maintain consumption at prior levels, holding down aggregate spending, and thereby stalling the recovery.
The ARRA stimulus efforts and the private recovery in jobs have so far had little impact on employment prospects of the nation’s blue collar workers. Other nations, including Denmark, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, implemented other workforce strategies, especially work sharing and training for part time workers who were kept on the firm’s payrolls, to maintain the employment of blue collar workers and enhance their technical skills. Each of them were far more successful than the U.S. in avoiding steep declines in employment and sharp rises in their unemployment rates, especially for men and blue collar and service workers. The U.S. can learn from them on more effective policies to preserve jobs and prepare our workers for future job demands.
Prepared by: Andrew Sum and Mykhaylo Trubskyy, Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

President Obama’s recent visit to India was a symbolic gesture to cultivate an atmosphere of goodwill as well as to celebrate the announcement of business deals that will create over 50,000 American jobs. However, Obama’s tour to solidify quality relations with what could become America’s closest financial and industrial ally in the 21st century was immediately met with a smear campaign of misinformation from the conservative media machine.
Now, I know this is not too surprising, but bear with me while I explain how this event is a symptom of a greater problem.
The rhetorical shenanigans on Obama’s trip reached a deafeningly absurd level when, during an interview on Anderson Cooper 360, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann stated that the President’s trip across Asia was costing taxpayers more than $200 million dollars a day. When asked to substantiate this claim, Bachmann responded with the adorable vapidity of a Pixar princess: “These are the numbers that are coming out in the press.”
The “press” Bachmann referred to was, of course, an anonymous Indian official that no one can seem to track down.
Not only was Bachmann clearly intent on breaking this unsubstantiated tidbit to the American public, but she was so overeager to blurt “Obama Bad!” that she couldn’t even wait for the appropriate moment to discourse all over herself on national television. Here was the opening of Cooper’s interview with Bachmann:
Aaaaand scene. Thank you for watching Tourettes Theatre, goodnight. I like turtles.
If you asked a co-worker a question and he or she responded by going off the rails on a point you didn’t bring up in the first place, you would think that person:
A) Didn’t hear your question correctly.
B) Must be another one of your supervisor’s cousins who got to skip the HR interview.
C) Was running for political office, had no substantive answer for you, but yet was bold enough to completely insult your intelligence with a comically transparent straw man argument roughly equivalent to shouting “LOOK! A BEAR!”
So this $200 million/day falsehood, non-fact, bugaboo, or lie (whatever you want to call it) was quickly debunked, right? Well, not before Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck all broadcast it to their audiences as further evidence of how appalling it is to have Barack Obama, and any Democrat associated with him, in a position of political office.
Even sadder is the fact that The White House and The Pentagon had to address this fallacy. In two separate press conferences, officials made statements meant to put to rest this rumor touted as truth by prominent conservatives in the media who had very little interest in that mystical, pagan art of “fact-checking.”
But what’s the big deal here, really? After all, the whole thing $200 million myth was debunked, right?! Go ahead and ask 5 people today if they heard how much Barack Obama’s trip to India cost. I think you’ll see that a poorly-publicized correction can do very little once the damage has been done through a well-coordinated effort of collusive media bombardment. It’s the equivalent of your drunk friend nodding off while holding the bottom of the ladder you were on and then bringing a box of discounted Whitman’s chocolates to your hospital room.
Now, many talking heads in the media simply follow the elephantine rhetoric and jack-asinine soundbites of the political parties they subscribe to. However, our country’s right-wing media personalities and politicians are no longer even pretending that they actually think for themselves. At this point, conservatives have exposed the fact that they subscribe to a network that distributes a single, consistent idea which, in turn, and not coincidentally, becomes what every single one of them thinks, believes, and says. It’s a unified, manufactured front.
See, the problem with this is that true analysts, journalists, and politicians will always have differing opinions on social issues, even if they subscribe to similar schools of thought, because their ideas are not processed on an assembly line. If Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin really were thinking for, of, and by themselves, then they should have at least slightly different opinions about which cubby hole they want to put their mittens in. One can subscribe to a political methodology and still hold distinctly differing opinions on certain matters with others who are under ideological umbrella; this is how healthy discourse is created.
Am I the only one who finds it kind of odd (and more than a little disturbing) that whatever viewpoint is expressed on FOX news becomes, nearly verbatim, the across-the-board party, media, and social line for anyone with a right-leaning mentality? And the fact that this act of hive-minded regurgitation is then repeated over the radio, TV, the Internet, and in print, is an undeniable red flag that this manufactured front is being created in an ideological factory as if it were a commodity no more unique than rat feces-infused dog food.
Variance in opinion and a desire to encourage healthy debate is how we can recognize those who are truly concerned about our country as opposed to those who are power-hungry panderers who would do anything to reach the spotlight. The nature of selectively and irresponsibly reporting news in a day and age where information is as cheap as a two-dollar Alaskan governor, is to deceitfully and deliberately impose a dangerously myopic view upon one’s audience; and thus, any pretense at uncovering truth must be recognized as an absolute sham.
It’s actually fairly easy to identify the pundits whose greasy hands are thick with dogmatic snake-oil. If a politician or member of the political media appeals to your intellect with well-contextualized, factual information, then they’re probably giving it to you straight.
However, if someone attempts to theatrically manipulate your anger and emotions by identifying with you as a chum, a pal, or just another fellow victim of the status quo, then they’re doing that to make up for their lack of hard facts and logical rationale.
In short, if someone in the political media acts like the two of you are buddies, they have another agenda in mind.
Nobody in the political media is your friend.
And they shouldn’t be. After all, it’s not their job to be your friend. Their job is to report the truth.
I’m actually convinced that conservative pundits have such a large audience because their methods of stroking anger and insecurity play well to a growing segment of our population that is socially anxious and very lonely. However, I have no facts to verify that statement, so I’ll retract that right here.
Or maybe I’ll just throw it out there and wait and see if The Pentagon will denounce it for me.

Follow Edward Murray on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/WeCanBeatEczema

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

My name is Christina and I have a confession. I have never watched The X-Factor. I’ve never watched Britain’s Got Talent, or Pop Idol, or Dragons’ Den, or The Weakest Link. I’ve never even watched Strictly Come Dancing.
I did, when I was checking the BBC’s website, and discovered that the biggest news of the day was the fact that a former shadow home secretary, who used to be very keen on chaining pregnant mothers to their hospital beds, had herself been put in a harness, and lowered on to a stage, watch a clip of this taking place. In those 90 seconds I was flooded with the same feeling – of sweaty-palmed mortification – that I had when I wet myself in school assembly and was sent home in alien pants.
I did once watch 10 minutes of The Apprentice, but I felt so terrible for the participants’ mothers that I had to give up. Clearly, if your sons or daughters were conscripted into some kind of child militia, and were then brutalised by warlords, and you accidentally caught some footage of them on the news behaving monstrously with machetes, you would feel pretty awful, but at least you could turn to whoever you were watching it with and say that some random factors had kicked in to wreck the lovely manners they were taught. There is, as far as I’m aware, no conscription for The Apprentice. Parents around the land can only watch and wail and weep.
And, like pretty much every member of the world’s population that has access to a computer, I’ve seen a YouTube clip of Susan Boyle. Luckily, by the time I saw it, it had been made safe. At the beginning, you could see the wires sticking out, the wires that could well be ticking to disaster. But although the wires were still there – the wild hair, the bushy eyebrows, the plump figure in a toddler’s party dress tiptoeing on stage and then wiggling its hips as the first pre-emptive strike against anticipated cruelty – you knew that it would be all right, because you knew that it had been all right, that the singing spinster who came on stage as a freak had been allowed, by the jeering, and then cheering, crowd, to leave it as a star.
Happy ending. Phew! But TV talent shows, as far as I can gather from not watching them, don’t exist to make the participants happy. They exist to make entertainment, and the entertainment doesn’t seem to have much to do with the all-must-have-prizes model we offer, presumably to maximise the shock later, in our primary schools. The entertainment could be some dancing or singing, but an on-screen breakdown would, you could see from the eye-rolling in the audience, and the sinister glint of Simon Cowell’s shark-like teeth, have been just as good, if not better.
And so, when the 47-year-old virgin, who had hardly left her home town, or her cat, or, until her recent death, her mother, had, as she was shunted from TV freak show to non-stop media circus, the odd wobble, everyone was thrilled. Every swear word, every hip wiggle, every swallowed-back tear was a headline. Fat Frump Cracks Up was pretty much the gist of it.
On Sunday night, Susan Boyle gave an interview to a man who once edited a newspaper so keen on entertaining news that it sometimes made it up, a man who was also there the night that the sneers turned to cheers. Susan Boyle was used to the sneers. People had, she told Piers Morgan, been making “snide comments”, and “jibing” at her, and calling her names, all her life. At school, according to a friend, she was called “Susie Simple”. Her classmates threw stones at her. She was “always on her own”. There was, said Boyle, when Morgan showed footage of the friend talking about the routine cruelties that were the warp and weft of her life, and which made me want to lie on the floor and howl, “nothing worse than psychological cruelty”. Physical things “can heal”, she said. “Psychological scars don’t.”
Boyle, by the way, looked great. She looked pretty. She looked relaxed. She looked dignified. When Morgan asked her what was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, a shadow crossed her open face, but she didn’t cry. “Somebody called me a retard once,” she said, “but it’s not true. These people,” she added, “can’t help who they are. And they attract more love.” Of the children who bullied her, she would only say that it was a shame “that other people couldn’t have parents who showed them a good example.” But she was grateful, she said, for what she had now. She was just relieved to have left behind a life of “sitting at home being unemployed” and “having a talent” she “couldn’t use”.
This country is teeming with Susan Boyles. They may not have such spectacular talents, and they may not have her stamina, or her ability, on a daily basis, to brave the kind of setbacks that would have most of us refusing to leave the house, let alone exposing, and singing about, our dreams in front of sneering media moguls, and they may not have the “very nice” family to support and protect them that she clearly had, and has, but there are several million people in this country who don’t work, and quite a lot who have never worked, and who have never had the opportunity to find out if they have a talent, and, if they do, how to use it. And a TV talent show is as likely to help them do that as a Mumbai slumdog is to become a millionaire.
A still depressed economy following a global crisis, in a time of state-slashing Tory-dominated government, is clearly a less than ideal time to be addressing the shattered dreams, and lost potential, of this country’s Susan Boyles. But the truth is, there’s never a good time. It was a woman from Grantham who liked to talk about graft and grit who set in train a cycle of worklessness that has blighted several generations. A Labour government which poured money into education and job-creation schemes seems only to have made the cycle of dependency worse. It has taken a true blue Tory to address the issue in a way that might just have a chance of slowing the juggernaut of dependency down.
At the Tory Party conference, Iain Duncan Smith said that he would “break down the barriers to work and ensure work pays better”. He also said that the Government had “concern for the poor running through its DNA”. While some of us might doubt that biopsies (preferably painfully acquired) from George Osborne would confirm this, few could question Duncan Smith’s commitment to making the lives of poor people better.
As someone who has spent serious chunks of time on some of the country’s worst sink estates, he knows that the problems associated with not working – depression, inertia, ill health – can be just as acute as those associated with poverty. This week, he has suggested that some people on benefits might be required to do four weeks of “mandatory work activity”, in order to “give them a sense” of the discipline, and rewards, of work. Not, as some figures on the left are implying, a taste of the workhouse. Not months. Not years. Four weeks.
Of course it would be better if there were jobs for all the people who were unemployed. Of course it would be better if such jobs as there are were in the right place. And of course you shouldn’t cut the benefits of people who have tried very hard to get a job, and failed. But if you want to change anything, if you want, as Susan Boyle might put it, to dream a dream, then you have, however big the obstacles, to make a start.

Follow Christina Patterson on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/queenchristina_

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The president says a Republican proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts to everyone for two years is a “basis for conversation.” I hope this doesn’t mean another Obama cave-in.
Yes, the president needs to acknowledge the Republican sweep on Election Day. But he can do that by offering his own version of a compromise that’s both economically sensible and politically smart. Instead of limiting the extension to $250,000 of income (the bottom 98 percent of Americans), he should offer to extend it to all incomes under $500,000 (essentially the bottom 99 percent), for two years.
The economics are clear:
First, the top 1 percent spends a much smaller proportion of their income than everyone else, so there’s very little economic stimulus at these lofty heights.
On the other hand, giving the top 1 percent a two-year extension would cost the Treasury $130 billion over two years, thereby blowing a giant hole in efforts to get the deficit under control.
Alternatively, $130 billion would be enough to rehire every teacher, firefighter, and police officer laid off over the last two years and save the jobs of all of them now on the chopping block. Not only are these people critical to our security and the future of our children but, unlike the top 1 percent, they could be expected to spend all of their earnings and thereby stimulate the economy.
Conservative supply-siders who argue the top 1 percent will stop working as hard if they have to return to the 39 percent marginal rate of the Clinton years must be smoking something (probably an expensive grade).
Their incomes of the top are already soaring (Wall Street is reading a 5% boost in bonuses, executive salaries and perks are back on the trajectory they were on before the collapse, and the stock market is booming), so it’s hard to argue much hardship.
Besides, only earnings over $500,000 would be affected because — remember — we’re talking about the marginal tax rate.
In addition, the Clinton years weren’t exactly bad years, economically, for the top 1 percent.
Finally, the Bush tax cuts didn’t trickle down anyway. To the contrary, between 2001 and 2007, the median wage dropped. And Bush’s record on jobs was pitiful.
The politics are even clearer. Over the next two years, Obama must clarify for the nation whose side he’s on and whose side his Republican opponents are on. What better issue to begin with than this one?
The top 1 percent now takes in almost a quarter of all national income (up from 9 percent in the late 1970s), and its political power is evident in everything from hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers who can treat their incomes as capital gains (subject to a 15 percent tax) to multi-million dollar home interest deductions on executive mansions.
If the President can’t or won’t take a stand now — when he still has a chance to prevail in the upcoming lame-duck Congress — when will he ever?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

This Blogger’s Books from
Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future
by Robert B. Reich
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
by Robert B. Reich

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Last week, Missouri voters approved Proposition B, requiring that large-scale commercial breeders provide in a year’s time sufficient space for dogs, an annual veterinary examination, humane methods of euthanasia, and a limit on the number of reproductively intact animals used for breeding, among a limited number of other humane care standards for dogs. In campaigning against the measure, the Missouri Farm Bureau leveled an array of false charges against Prop B and also against The Humane Society of the United States, which worked to pass Prop B. I write to address these charges and to set the record straight.
False Claim: The Missouri Farm Bureau argued that Prop B was not just about dogs, but about ending animal agriculture.Fact: The Missouri Secretary of State concluded, in fact, that the measure deals only with one species: canis lupus familiaris, or the domesticated dog. There is no reasonable interpretation that it would apply to cattle, pigs, chickens, or any other domesticated or wild species. If there were an attempt by some organization to promote humane treatment of other species, that type of reform would have to go to the Legislature or to the people in the form of a separate ballot measure. Missouri voters would probably reject any measure that went too far. We are not aware of any such effort, and Prop B has no bearing on any future reform efforts.
The HSUS
False claim: The Missouri Farm Bureau argued that existing regulations governing dog breeding are sufficient and that they simply need to be enforced.Fact: Under Prop B, Missouri’s enormous puppy mill problem will be scaled down to a level that is easier for the state to oversee, manage and enforce. It is the backers of Prop B, not the Farm Bureau or the commercial dog breeding industry, that have advocated for robust enforcement through the years; this is the first we’ve heard of the Farm Bureau calling for more rigorous enforcement, but we welcome the encouragement. The puppy mill problem has gotten worse year by year, and the Farm Bureau has stood by as more reckless breeders have flocked to Missouri and humane organizations have had to deal with thousands of dogs relinquished by mills or seized after terrible problems came to light. It costs humane groups millions of dollars to clean up the mess made by these large-scale puppy mills.
Under current rules, it is legal to keep a breeding dog in a wire cage six inches longer than her body, to keep her confined in that cage for her entire life, to allow her to be outside during the extremes of winter, to allow animals in cages stacked above to defecate on the animals below, to never call on a veterinarian to examine an animal, and to abandon or kill dogs once they are no longer wanted. I am amazed that the Farm Bureau somehow thinks such standards for dogs are adequate.
False claim: The HSUS wants to eliminate pet ownership.Fact: The HSUS celebrates pet ownership, and has done so for all 56 years of its existence. While we certainly urge would-be dog owners to look to the pool of homeless dogs kept by shelters and rescue groups, we have instructions on our website and in our publications that encourage would-be dog owners to follow simple guidelines when they shop for a dog from a breeder. Your invoking of fabricated quotes or quotes taken out of context to misrepresent our positions is dishonest and defamatory. Every day at The HSUS, our staff bring their dogs to work — the action of committed and caring pet owners who celebrate their relationship with their animals. Indeed, The HSUS published the 2008 book, “Dogs at Work,” to guide companies in instituting this valuable opportunity to more employees. Our daily work is to celebrate the bond we have with pets, to help people find pets appropriate for their household, to help people keep their pets, or to find ways to reunite people with their pets.
False claim: The HSUS isn’t interested in improving farm animal welfare, but only in ending animal agriculture.Fact: We work with animal producers throughout the country, and included among our members are ranchers and others involved in the business of agriculture. We have been a financial supporter of Humane Farm Animal Care, which certifies high welfare production, and The HSUS also provides major support to the Global Animal Partnership, which also promotes high welfare standards in agriculture. In developing countries, our work has ensured that farm animals are stunned before being slaughtered, and we have a raft of other programs working with farmers. We have long supported more humane treatment of animals in agriculture, and in terms of political activity, we have promoted improvements to slaughter and transport systems, and, on the farm, giving the animals enough room to “stand up, lie down, turn around, and freely extend their limbs.” If the Missouri Farm Bureau believes that allowing farm animals to turn around equates to an end to all animal use, then that is an unfortunate statement about its own lack of ethical standards in the conduct of its business.
False claim: The HSUS has destroyed the egg industry in California.Fact: The HSUS did work to pass Proposition 2 in 2008, but that measure simply stipulates that egg production be cage-free — a modest animal welfare and food safety policy that enjoys the support of numerous retailers and two-thirds of Calilfornia voters. Already companies like Burger King, Hellmann’s, and scores of others are using cage-free eggs. It does not prevent the raising of chickens for egg production. What’s more, it does not go into effect until 2015, so it’s hard to imagine that a measure that has not gone into effect has resulted in the destruction of the industry. One study even found that the Prop 2 campaign in California increased demand for cage-free eggs while reducing demand for eggs from caged hens, sending a strong signal to the industry about what consumers expect of it.
False claim: The HSUS “spends less than one percent of its funds on the actual care of pets.”Fact: The HSUS spends millions of dollars on companion animal care, and spends more than $20 million a year on our programs that support local animal shelters and provide direct care for domestic animals and wildlife. The HSUS actually provides direct care to more animals than any other group in the nation, and maintains five animal care centers, a national veterinary services program, and a national emergency response unit that rescues animals from all over the nation. We also spend millions preventing cruelty, and it’s that work that the Missouri Farm Bureau and other animal-use groups apparently do not like.
It was 12 years ago that The HSUS helped to qualify and pass an anti-cockfighting ballot initiative in Missouri — the only other initiative petition on animal welfare in Missouri history. The Missouri Farm Bureau opposed that ballot measure, too, arguing that a ban on that barbaric practice would lead to an end to all hunting, fishing, rodeo and animal agriculture. As with Prop B, voters approved that measure, and there’s been no attempt to outlaw hunting or animal agriculture in any way in the 12 years since. The Farm Bureau deceived some voters then with that argument, just as it did this year with Prop B, but it was the right decision for Missouri. Staged fights between animals are morally wrong, just as lifelong confinement of dogs in small cages at puppy mills is wrong, too.
The Missouri Constitution allows for citizen lawmaking, and the principle underlying it is majority rule. The will of the people should be respected — even if the Farm Bureau and some lawmakers disagree with the decision. Both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star have within the last few days urged elected officials to honor the vote of the people. The fact is, a majority of the people of Missouri voted in favor of Prop B. The measure was approved by a majority of voters in a majority of state House and Senate districts. That counts in a democracy.If you care about animal welfare, leave the dogs alone. If you care about democracy, let the law take effect and do not work to subvert it.
This post originally appeared on Pacelle’s blog, A Humane Nation.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., is home to one of America’s last communist experiments; and it’s a near century-long success story. Founded in 1919, the Green Bay Packers remain the only major league franchise in American professional sports without traditional private owners. There are certainly no billionaires in their board room. The Packers have won a dozen NFL championships in Titletown, more than any other franchise, and they have done it all with what is essentially communal ownership by the committed Cheeseheads of Green Bay. There are, technically, private stockholders in the form of more than 100,000 people in possession of nearly five million shares in the team. But these owners have stock certificates that can officially never pay a dividend, and so they amount to little more than novelty memorabilia sold to support the club. For all intents and purposes, they might be viewed as oversized, if expensive (last sold in 1998 at $200 per share), trading cards.
In order to ensure the Packers always remain part of the Green Bay community, the team’s 1923 “Articles of Incorporation for the Green Bay Football Corporation” include a clause mandating all profits from any sale of the team be given to the Sullivan Wallen Post of the American Legion, and be used to build “a proper soldier’s memorial.” In 1997, shareholders voted to change the beneficiary from the American Legion to the Green Bay Packers Foundation, a non-profit organization which makes donations to a wide variety of charities and institutions throughout the state.
The football team is one giant Wisconsin commune, sharing more than a climate with “the socialist paradise” of Sweden. If the NFL expands to Scandinavia, not only will our European neighbors lay claim to the nickname “Vikings,” but they might want to run their franchise like the Packers. Green Bay has more than 100,000 different “owners” who elect a board of representatives to run the team (you didn’t think they host an overflow meeting each summer in Bay Beach Amusement Park on the shores of Green Bay to kick around personnel moves, did you?).
By rule, shares of Green Bay Packers so-called “stock” cannot be resold for a profit. By rule, no individual can purchase more than 200,000 shares, to prevent individuals from mounting anything resembling a hostile takeover by grabbing too much power or control. “Owners” don’t even get ticket privileges with stock ownership. An NFL franchise failing to wow ownership’s corporate clients with expensive fringe benefits? What happened to the aristocracy of the superwealthy club of NFL owners?
That’s not capitalism. That’s not private enterprise. That’s egalitarian. That’s the path to NFL communism! It could even be enough to turn storied baseball aficionado Fidel Castro into an NFL man; or at least a Packer Backer. There should be angry Tea Party activists lined up outside Lambeau Field wearing Chicago Bears jerseys before and after every home game, protesting the city of Green Bay and its tradition of spitting on our traditional free market. Upon careful examination of the Green & Gold, the informed citizen knows a reddish hue can also be observed on their beloved team.
Of course, loyalty is a fragile thing, and bandwagons aren’t manufactured anywhere with a guarantee for permanence. Should the Packers regain their losing ways of the 1970s and 80s and somebody makes an offer, things could get dicey. Four years ago Forbes placed the value of the Packers franchise at $911 million. If a group of football-starved Los Angeles investors decides to pay a bit of a premium and submit a one billion dollar bid for the club, the shareholding Packer faithful may contemplate. They might think about the impact that money could have for, say, the 20,000 students enrolled in Green Bay public schools. The math works out to $50,000 per child, and the comrades of Green Bay, Wis., could send all of their children to college, free of charge. That kind of broader socialist movement in education, a populist push for the common good, sounds almost as Bolshevik as the Green Bay Packers’ present ownership structure.
But, those Wisconsin Cheeseheads are the proud sort, and they do love their football every bit as much as they worship beer, sausage and fat chicks. Should push come to shove, would Green Bay Packers fans actually be willing to watch their 100-year socialist utopia fade away in exchange for the concentrated riches of free enterprise as we have come to know it? It may be too late to seek advice from Packers legends Curly Lambeau and Vince Lombardi, but should Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt try to arrange a meeting to consult with a frail Kim Jong-Il before the North Korean leader is also lost?

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I am currently touring South Australia and recently went on a handful of wine tastings through its famous Barossa Valley region. I was lucky enough to have been put under the care of Life is a Cabernet Tours and its guide Ralf Hadzic who shuttled my colleagues and I around the vineyards for tastings galore.
Another great way to see these gorgeous pastoral spots and sample some wines is via bike (which we also did). Wyndham House, proprietor of the exclusive and stunning boutique vineyard accommodation Mooroooroo Park led our bike tour through the Barossa Ranges. Pristine new bicycles are available for rent through the inn.
I began this trip a wine-loving newbie but believe I have been transformed into a major shiraztafarian through this epic S. Oz journey. I hope you enjoy this slideshow of the vineyards of the Barossa as much as I enjoyed the real deal.
Welcome to the Barossa
1 of 8
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Sixty-six percent of the Australian wines that make it to the U.S. marketplace come from South Australia whose chief winemaking region (beyond the Clare Valley) is the Barossa Valley. Within the Barossa Ranges lies Eden Valley, a pocket that is two to three degrees cooler than the rest of the Valley. As a result, its grapes ripen later in the season producing more so-called ‘feminine’ wines. Cabernet/Shiraz is a popular blend in the Barossa Valley. This is just some of the info travelers to the region can expect to learn when they pay a visit to the vineyards and tasting rooms of the Barossa.
Photo by Shana Ting Lipton
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Follow Shana Ting Lipton on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The punditocracy is anxiously war-gaming the expected battles between the Obama Administration and Congress. But while there will be plenty of strong rhetoric and political theatrics on Capitol Hill, much of the real action will occur elsewhere, in administrative and regulatory processes that typically occur offstage.
That probably wasn’t included when they taught you in high school about how laws get made. But it’s key to how laws really work.
With Democrats controlling the White House and maintaining a narrow majority in the Senate while Republicans run the House of Representatives, big legislation from either party will get blocked by the other. But important decisions will be made in the implementation of major reforms already enacted, particularly financial regulatory reform and health care reform. Yes, there will be fights over funding and contentious congressional hearings, but much of how these new programs will operate on a day to day basis — and how they will affect ordinary Americans — will be decided by how rules and regulations are written and how new agencies get organized.
This is a process that advocates will need to keep their eyes on. And it offers the administration ways to show voters the concrete ways these new programs will help ordinary folks. Efforts at bipartisanship in the face of relentless Republican hostility in Congress won’t accomplish much, but concrete achievements in implementing these reforms will.
If congressional Republicans make good on their announced plans to use spending bills to try to block parts of health care reform, the administration must move concretely and publicly on the portions of it that give consumers protection against abusive practices by insurers and make it easier for people to obtain affordable coverage. Obscure mechanisms that have important functions — like insurance exchanges, which will serve to make coverage available and affordable — need to be made clear and transparent, and kept front and center. If people see how these things will help them, they won’t let Republicans block their funding.
The old saying, “The devil’s in the details,” has never been more true.
And the administration will need to move effectively and aggressively on implementing benefits that are beginning right away, such as the high-risk pools designed to help people suffering from medical conditions that would have left them uninsurable without health care reform. President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid have expressed willingness to make small legislative tweaks to the law, but advocates must be on guard to make sure these crucial elements stay untouched.
As I noted last week , we are lucky to have Elizabeth Warren in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s serious about making the financial system fair and transparent, and she understands that the proverbial man and woman on the street need to see the CFPB helping them right away.
And there will be a lot on CFPB’s plate. The bureau will be able to regulate mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and more, with a focus on the largest banks (over $10 billion in assets) as well as non-bank lending institutions that were previously unregulated. CFPB will have the power to decide if financial products or practices are unfair, abusive or deceptive, and issue rules to prevent future abuses.
Less talked about but also important is an under-the-radar victory earlier this year ended a federal giveaway to private student loan companies. Now, CFPB will have the authority to regulate student loans in line with the Truth in Lending Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Until now, students, who often have little experience in making judgments on credit and interest rates, have been preyed upon by private, often-unregulated lenders. CFPB will have authority to stop these abuses.
Watch how these already-passed laws get implemented. That’s where the real action will be.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Even though Thanksgiving isn’t upon us yet, it’s time to talk turkey. Buying and roasting a bird can be intimidating, especially if you’re a first-time host or hostess. Even those of us who have done it before have a hard time shaking those nagging thoughts revolving around whether the bird will be juicy or dry or—worse yet—underdone.
Related:
EatingWell’s Best Thanksgiving Turkey Recipes
Our Complete Thanksgiving Guide–Recipes Menus, Planners & More!
It’s understandable. After all, if you’re like most people, you’re only roasting a turkey once, maybe twice a year. We’ve roasted quite a few turkeys in the EatingWell Test Kitchen, and through trial and error, we’ve picked up on some common turkey mistakes and how to avoid them.
Mistake 1: You buy the wrong bird.
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What To Do Instead: Not all turkeys are created equal. Some birds are self-basting, meaning that they are injected with a solution of broth, salted water or other flavorings to keep them moist during cooking. We found these turkeys do stay moister, but if youre watching your sodium intake you may want to avoid them. Check the label if youre buying a turkey from the grocery store. The label will tell you the percent of solution in the bird and will also include all the ingredients in the solution.
Related: Turkey Buyer’s Guide
Photo from Flickr: alecea
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Feel ready to start roasting? Check out this recipe to inspire you to pull off a flawless turkey this year:
Lemon-Garlic Roast Turkey & White-Wine Gravy
More to Inspire You This Thanksgiving:
Stunning Thanksgiving Desserts
Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Side Dishes
Luscious Pumpkin Desserts
By Hilary Meyer
Hilary Meyer is assistant editor for EatingWell Media Group. Hilary spends much of her time in the EatingWell Test Kitchen, testing and developing healthy recipes. She is a graduate of New England Culinary Institute.
More from EatingWell:
Save 1,273 Calories with this Thanksgiving Menu
Green Bean Casserole, Sweet Potato Casserole and More Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes
A Full Thanksgiving Menu for Less than $7 Per Person
Get a Free Trial Issue When You Subscribe to EatingWell Magazine and Sign Up for Our Free E-Newsletters!

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One of the “golden rules” of investing we have at our firm, Cue Ball, is that we value the business model over the financial plan. In fact, we value the business model over any particular sector for investment and like to say that we are “business model driven” (versus sector-driven). There is not necessarily a consistent definition for business model, but the Wiki definition is good enough. It says a business model is “the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.” Consistent with this definition, we see the business model as the explanation of how a firm translates an idea into value, or more bluntly, into money. There is no doubt that at the heart of a business model is the monetization model.
Over the years we have learned that having a business does not necessarily mean that you have a business model. Think of the dot-com heyday, when shipping 89-cent pet foot in an $18 Fed Ex package was a business. (Some of that delusional hubris has resurged in some recent online media businesses that believe that you can wait to figure out how you’ll make money). Some call us an old school VC, but if you come knocking at our door looking to pitch your idea, you have to have clarity on how you are going to make money from your idea — cash flow is still the basis for a sound business the last time we checked.
In our previous lives running businesses, my partners and I have seen and experienced one business model that we love the best, based on fundamental cash flow and the ability to grow that cash flow as the business scales.
Here it is: recurring revenue + fixed cost leverage = superior cash flow.
If you can find a business that has highly repeatable revenues (and often paying in advance for that recurring revenue) and if you can keep your CAPEX to, say, less than 10%, then you probably have a winner. Businesses that capture this model are often correlated with some differentiated form of intellectual property (IP). Think about examples such as royalties from content; franchise fees from multi-unit branded chains; subscription revenues from software applications, licensing fees from brands, and licensing fees from technology or patents.
The unifying theme between all of these examples is that there is usually an upfront investment to develop some form of the IP (content, software, brands, retail formats, or technology) and once that is developed and proven there is an ability to charge for that product or service on a recurring fee basis. This is not necessarily a cheap investment but if you get it right, you create a defensible moat based on the IP created. From that point on, so long as on-going research and development and CAPEX can be managed, there is tremendous leverage in this model.
The buzz around SaaS (software as a service) is driven by the attractiveness of this “build once run many times” model whereby the marginal cost of each incremental sale is diminutive. It is no coincidence that the most generous philanthropist and one of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, practices this business model.
During my years of working with my partner Dick Harrington at The Thomson Corporation (now Thomson-Reuters), we focused on finding and building “must-have” information services that held the potential for highly repeatable revenue. Understanding that this was the goal, we focused maniacally on the metric of what percent of our revenue represented recurring revenue. Businesses that offer something that is “must have” often exhibit recurring revenue of greater than 90 percent and that is what we eventually achieved across most of our businesses at Thomson. Or put another way, less than 10 percent of customers churn each year. We rarely consider a business model that is not approaching at least 75 percent recurring revenue, with the potential to get over 90 percent.
Another attractive characteristic of this model is that you often get the cash upfront. Consider subscriptions that get renewed and paid before the delivery of those services. While you need to recognize the revenue as services are delivered you have the benefit of upfront cash. As the digital age rapidly evolves, we are inspired and keep a close eye to those changes. But the most important thing for us is to see if those technologies and new businesses can have a rational business model.
There are of course examples of businesses that have had extraordinary valuations and liquidations events before they have demonstrated the soundness of a business model. But those businesses are more dependent on timing of value capture than the stability of true customer value and real sustainable cash flow generation.
But a business model where you get the vast majority of your customers coming back every year, where the cost to deliver an additional customer approaches zero at scale, and where you get a lot of the cash upfront — what more can you ask for? This is a business model we love and it may indeed be the best business model in the world.
This article first appeared on Harvard Business Publishing on March 18, 2010.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Popular TV show Glee has had a tendency to go off the rails when it tackles serious issues. The show’s irreverent, ironic tone had led them to strike occasional false notes when they address issues of disability and discrimination in the past. Last night’s episode, framed as a response to the rash of gay suicides early this year was extraordinary counterproductive.
When Mr. Schuester, the glee club advisor, sees Kurt being hit by a member of the football team, the teacher does not discipline the bully himself or go to the principal’s office to make sure the bullying is resolved. He accepts at face value Kurt’s statement that Mr. Schuester can do nothing to help him. Once Schuester feels like he is off the hook, he reframes the problem as Kurt’s responsibility, asking him why Kurt is “letting it get to you” and rebuking him for becoming withdrawn and belligerent.
Depression or anger is a reasonable response to abuse. Although Kurt would probably prefer to be less upset by his bullies, it is unfair for Schuester to frame Kurt’s response as the problem, rather than the abuse provoking his response.
If Glee had set up Mr. Schuester’s response as a reflection of the lapses of some teachers and districts and had provided a better model later in the episode, his counterproductive message could have been redeemed. However, the mistakes of Mr. Schuester were repeated and amplified a few scenes later by the episode’s unambiguous ‘good guy.’
Kurt meets Blaine, a gay student at a more tolerant school, and turns to him for advice. Blaine was also bullied at his old school before he transferred to his new, zero-tolerance private school. Since private school tuition isn’t an option for Kurt, Blaine tells him he should “refuse to be the victim.”
This advice to gay teens is misleading and dangerous. It is ridiculous to say that bullied students need to “refuse to be the victim.” No one consents to assault. Kurt is not allowing or condoning bullying because he is upset by it. No one should feel ashamed that they could not stop a bully on their own or that they had to withdraw from a painful situation.
I hate to imagine a queer student living in a bad school district who watches Glee and decides that s/he has a responsibility to confront his/her tormentors. Children, particularly children already being target, do not have a duty to put themselves in danger to try to be an object lesson. People who are abused or harassed do not have an overriding responsibility to redeem their abusers; they have a responsibility to protect themselves and flee if necessary. Telling them that they have a responsibility to confront students who have threatened them puts them at risk for serious injury.
A case can be made that queer adults do have an obligation to come out and confront bigots. This is the goal of National Coming Out Day, which tries to undermine harmful perceptions of queer people by reminding straights that there are gay people in your everyday life, and they do not match the slurs. In the Gus van Sant biopic Milk, one of the most powerful moments was when Harvey Milk forces a volunteer to come out to his homophobic family, telling the volunteer that he needs to set an example by outing himself and showing his parents that queers are people.
Given the terrible homophobia in many parts of the country (exemplified by the Arkansas school board member who declared he wished more gay students would kill themselves), it remains important to give queer teens help resisting bullying and to encourage them to persist long enough to escape their abusive homes and communities if necessary.
Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project has helped provide support to gay teens at risk, and Savage has been emphatic that, while teens at risk should focus on surviving, adults have a responsibility to make things better by standing up and speaking out. Glee put the onus of intervention entirely on the victim, letting Mr. Schuester and other school administrators off the hook for their passive response to beatings and sexual assault in the hallways.

Follow Leah Anthony Libresco on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/leahlibresco

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Jeff Goldblum and J.J. Abrams together on the same red carpet? Somewhere the geek universe was smiling. I was anyway. The eclectic duo were just two of a bevy of stars who walked the red carpet of the iconic New York City Ziegfeld Theatre last night (Nov. 7) for the premiere of Morning Glory, a new comedy that centers on the dysfunction behind a morning television show.
The film centers on Rachel McAdams, a hard-working producer, who tries to revive a morning show in spite of her twos feuding veteran anchors, respectively played by Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton. The three leads were joined on the red carpet Sunday evening by co-stars Patrick Wilson, “Modern Family’s” Ty Burrell, John Pankow, among others, and the film’s director Roger Michell (Notting Hill), and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada). Many television personalities were also on hand, curious if the movie nailed the real morning show dynamic.
Watch the videos below for a few interviews with the beautiful people, but first, check out Talk About It! The epilepsy awareness organization, which Abrams is involved with, sponsored the event. Oh, and Morning Glory opens this Wednesday. Here’s the story…
Rachel McAdams & Jeff Goldblum
JJ Abrams:
Dave Price of CBS This Morning:
John Pankow:
George Stephanopoulos:
Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna:

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Sweet ‘Stache: 50 Badass Mustaches and the Faces Who Sport Them
by Jon Chattman, Rich Tarantino

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In the fall, I try to spend time on the East Coast and, if my schedule permits, get over to Paris, where I used to live. In both places, I hang out with old friends, eat amazing food and see the big art shows that traditionally open during this season. This year, I headed upstate New York to see the Dia:Beacon and Storm King before heading off to Paris, which was incredibly invigorating in so many ways, albeit super expensive!
Here’s a slideshow on the New York highlights. Up next week: Paris.
The Arbor Bed & Breakfast
1 of 11
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From Mark Twain to Malcom X: Americans Discover the Great Mosques (Slideshow)
Every year I try to get upstate New York to see the foliage; this year I was in High Falls, a two hour trip from the city, where I stayed at the Arbor Bed & Breakfast. The Enterprise Car Rental across the street from my NY apartment wanted $100/day for a compact car, but the Enterprise in Beacon, NY offered a special of $9.99/a day with 100 free miles. I figured it was worth saving $90/day to take the train from Grand Central an hour up the Hudson and pick up the car there.
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Along the four-mile stretch on Ventura Blvd in Studio City commonly referred to as “the Sushi strip,” connoisseurs of raw fish are confronted with many choices to satisfy their raw fish cravings, but the only man you can turn to satiate them is Kazunori Nozawa. Nozawa is a master sushi chef who rules his restaurant, “Sushi Nozawa” with an iron fist and a very sharp blade. For decades he’s been introducing Americans to the Omakase (chef’s choice) menu, and if ever questioned to what’s on it, only offers you his long-standing motto of “Trust Me.”
When you sit at the sushi bar, you put your sushi destiny in Chef Nozawa’s hands. He chooses his top sushi picks of the day, which varies depending on season and availability, and absolutely refuses to serves abominations such as California or spicy tuna rolls, so don’t even ask.
Affectionately referred to by fans as the “Sushi Nazi”, in reference to the famed “Soup Nazi” of the Seinfeld television series, Nozawa is known for throwing out even the most highbrow of customers who don’t play by the rules. But those who do can boast at having one of the most authentic and delicious sushi experiences in the U.S.
Beyond his reputation for good sushi and penchant for ejecting customers, there’s more to Nozawa than meets the eye. For that reason, my friend, sometimes collaborator, and fellow sushi lover David Gelb and I decided to get to know the man behind the counter. This is what we discovered…
NOZAWA from David Gelb on Vimeo.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Where do they find these people? I’m talking about those crazy-talking Tea Party types, ultra-conservative Republicans posing as legitimate lawmakers and politicians, some of them even passing themselves off as senators, members of Congress and governors.
Now, before you say anything, I am not nave about politics. I know that politics has always attracted some of the best, but all too frequently it has attracted some of the worst that society has to offer. But this past election season, it seems as if the bottom fell out on how bad it can get — how truly pathetic and hopelessly unqualified candidates for political office are allowed to be. Tea party candidates demonstrated their extremist and racist views, their ignorance of basic constitutional principles, and their lack of preparation for primetime.
And most of all, they showed that they are wholly-owned pawns of wealthy interests.
Rand Paul, Rick Scott and Jan Brewer won. Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck and Sharron Angle lost, but they were still legitimate nominees of a major political party, so victory was at least within the realm of the possible for them. Dumb as bricks, with no practical experience or knowledge of which to speak, is suddenly a virtue. Some of them said they would criminalize abortion in the case of rape and incest, or protect the rights of private businesses to discriminate against black people. Some have urged the use of Second Amendment remedies. At least one candidate led a program to openly intimidate black voters. And yet, a number of them found enough votes to take them to victory. They told the constituents they would protect the interests of the rich, and yet they were able to garner enough votes from the poor dumb citizenry to win the election. That’s something, isn’t it?
The bar of stupidity and intolerance is lowered every day, and yet someone will vote for these people. In Oklahoma, a state senator authored a measure to amend the state constitution, prohibiting state courts from considering international law or Islamic Sharia law when reviewing cases. The measure passed with 70 percent of the vote, and a federal judge overturned it, which shows that the federal government is necessary to protect us from the states.
The re-elected governor of Texas, Rick Perry, longs for the old days, a hundred years ago — before the progressive movement and the New Deal, when there were no child labor laws, unemployment insurance, national income tax, consumer regulations or worker protections. He even wanted Texas To secede from the Union, and likely put an innocent man to death. And still, the citizenry of Texas rewarded Perry with a third term in office.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, the governor and a state legislator pass an anti-immigrant “papers please” law that was drafted by white supremacists and the private-prison industry.
Whenever you find deplorable laws, there were deplorable people behind those laws, driven by greed and fanaticism, and lacking in character, empathy, scruples, and a concern for the common good. America needs some sort of competency exam, some kind of quality control process for their elected officials. Where are the regulations? I know, elections are supposed to take care of that. Under normal circumstances, in a democracy with elected representatives, you should be able to count on an informed electorate to pick the best candidates based on the issues. But this is America, and there are several problems with that notion. Civic engagement is lacking, voter participation is low, and many who vote are low information voters. Public education and the news media have failed them. While democracy depends on an educated electorate, sadly, too many American voters are ignorant and ill-informed.
It does not help matters that the nation’s politics are driven by a system of legalized bribery, blown wide open by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. In this pay-to-play land, with the best system money can buy, democracy goes to the highest bidder. So what is considered corruption in your run-of-the-mill, Third World banana republic is the law in America, protected by the First Amendment — because corporations are people, too.
Given the dysfunction, the gridlock and the mean-spiritedness in our politics, it is no wonder that the best and brightest too often flock to other disciplines, leaving the barrel scrapers to fill the vacuum of political leadership. And yet, someone somewhere out there will vote for them.
David A. Love is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, and a contributor to The Progressive Media Project and theGrio. He is based in Philadelphia and is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His blog is davidalove.com.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

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A panel set up to generate plans for trimming the US budget deficit has proposed a series of tough measures including cutting Social Security rises and raising the retirement age to 69.
The commission, set up by President Barack Obama, set out 200bn (125bn) in potential cuts aimed at reducing the 1tr US budget deficit.
The draft report suggests slashing public health and defence spending.
Its contents are unlikely to progress to Congress for debate, analysts say.
, put forward by the commission's co-chairmen Erskine Bowles, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton, and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, comes a week after Republicans pledging to cut spending took control of the US House of Representatives in the mid-term elections.
The two were among the first to acknowledge their plan's unpopularity. But analysts say the proposal illustrates the hard choices ahead if the US intends to balance the budget.
“We'll both be in a witness protection programme when this is all over, so look us up,” Mr Simpson joked to reporters.
Mr Bowles said: “We're not asking anybody to vote for this plan. This is a starting point.”
Sticking points
The draft proposals include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, a government-sponsored healthcare programme for the elderly, and tax increases, including a rise in the petrol tax.
Among other likely sticking points is a proposal to raise the retirement age to 68 by 2050 and 69 in 2079, with an exemption for those unable to work past 62.
Other proposals include:

A popular rant among book critics is that autobiographies are acts of vengeance in which the writer gets to publicly strike back at his enemies for eternity.
There’s something to that, but in recent years, autobiographies by public figures have increasingly become exercises in damage control. The people who write them are presumably controversial enough to merit a book contract, and sufficiently motivated by the indignities of having been misunderstood to rehash for the public things that they may prefer, remain well, unhashed.
President George W. Bush’s new book, Decision Points, falls into the damage control category — vindictiveness being more a Nixon-Carter trait than a Bush one — and will serve as the cornerstone of the never-ending battle to write history.
One of the realities of crisis management is that timing matters more that strategy, and timing is on Bush’s side with his book’s release. Despite the fabled power of Bush’s PR team to control public opinion, he left office despised to seismic degrees not felt since Nixon did his tortured salute when he boarded Marine One for the last time.
For Bush, the dividend of being a near-universal target of wrath is that there’s nowhere else to go but up. There are qualities about “43″ that come through in his book, which would have landed with a Mission Accomplished-y splat had it been published during President Obama’s two-year canonization.
For one thing, Bush reminds us in Decision Points that he is not a man of Jeffersonian brilliance, a perverse endearment that contrasts starkly with Obama’s divinity. It’s a tonal thing with Bush, not an explicit declaration or specific revelation.
That a middling student led the country during exceptional times makes the book all the more interesting given that his successor, who was declared Lincoln 2.0 before even being sworn in, is having such a tough go of it lately.
Americans have a complicated relationship with exceptionality: We are transfixed by it, wanting it for ourselves, but secretly pray for its failure in others. If somebody’s going to think he’s better than we are, we want to see that magic working, pronto. In this regard, Obama’s radiance has betrayed him lately. If you rise by juju, you fall by juju when you fail to pull silver dollars from children’s ears.
When someone without the pretense of greatness, however, confirms that he is exactly who we thought him to be — he can merchandize his actions more credibly as having done his best given the circumstances. We are more likely to give Mr. Normal credit for the good things that happened on his watch and less likely to hold him responsible for failing to work miracles.
Obama promised us morning in America, and indeed we’ve got it, but with a scorching hangover. This is true even if the core events were not of his making.
Bush’s everyman appeal is the source of what moral authority he had — and still has in some places. Somehow, as the conversational, warm and sometimes even funny, tone of Decision Points underscores, he emerged from Rooseveltian blueblood society with Truman’s horse sense.
Some will still contend that Bush’s nickel-word use is further proof that he’s dumber than dog dirt, but the legend of Republican imbecility has been the GOP’s secret weapon since Lincoln’s heyday. That’s right, the campaign literature of the times labeled Lincoln a moron, too.
Still, the best damage control efforts will fail to change the minds of dug-in opponents, but no seasoned spin doctor ever believes that’s the real goal. The aim of crisis management is to beat back your enemies and rally your friends. To this end, Bush’s take on the Iraq war will be cold comfort to the war’s opponents who will view his take on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction as little more than a Homer Simpson-esque “D’oh!” But the former president may also assure the families of those who lost loved ones that it was not a meaningless struggle.
Bush is “shocked,” “angry” and stricken by “sickening” feelings over the WMD debacle, but believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein’s regime. Which will we focus on, the wrongheaded catalyst of the conflict or the long-term result? The answer will depend upon events and the politics you brought to the debate in the first place, not rhetoric.
On Katrina, one senses that Bush knew how far he could push the counter-narrative. On one hand, he is outraged by the characterization that the government’s anemic response was motivated by race. On the other, he acknowledges his obliviousness to the symbolism surrounding the disaster (flying over New Orleans but never landing), but doesn’t prattle on about force majeure.
Bush will win points for tweaking the Auric Goldfinger of his administration, Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush commuted the prison sentence of Cheney aide Scooter Libby to a $250,000 fine and probation, but declined to pardon him. Cheney was furious and, after years of being portrayed as the vice president’s sock puppet, the reader is left with a feeling that Bush may have shut the door of the Oval Office and shouted “Booyah!”
Spin has its limitations, and nobody knows this better than Bush. Since leaving office, he has been quiet, and one is left with the impression this is due to some combination of Bush family omerta and a genuine abhorrence of public life, an odd quality for a guy who made it to the top of the public life heap.
Iraq will be Bush’s main legacy whether he wants it or not. We will be paying for it in multiple currencies for generations regardless of what he says.
The causes of the financial meltdown have barely begun to be debated, but it will be impossible to read about this minefield of an economic era without detonating on the name Bush.
Contrary to our culture’s alchemic belief in the power of spin doctors, the truth is that one has limited power over how they are perceived. The more you try to shuck and jive away your nature (think Nixon walking on the beach in wingtip shoes trying to be more Kennedy-esque) or the toe-stub of reality (“heckuva job Brownie”), the harder the culture laughs. Or cries.
The best of Bush’s not-so-great options was to use his autobiography to certify who he is, and who we already knew him to be. Period.
This would not have worked amidst the narcotic vapors of Hope and Change. But the rip of the political current allowed Bush this thaw to plant the seeds of the history he helped make.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like.”
Or, as Bush himself might say, “Or not.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

This post was co-written by Justin Guay of the Sierra Club International Climate Program.In a blog post this week, United States Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg paints a rosy picture of future trade relations between the United States and key emerging markets such as India and South Africa – one which envisions a revamped American economy fueled by export trade that feeds a growing middle class.Yet despite this rhetoric, Ex-Im Bank is not only failing to finance a clean energy economy, but it is also saddling dynamic emerging markets with 19th century fuels by propping up an industry only able to survive in a 21st century economy through political maneuvering, enormous subsidies, and misleading PR campaigns.To underscore Ex-Im Bank’s failure one need look back no further than last Friday, November 5th, when the board voted on the greenhouse gas implications of the enormous 4,800 MW Kusile coal-fired power plant in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The vote, based on the Bank’s carbon policy, is meant to weed out high carbon intensity projects and promote low carbon lending. If ever there were a project that failed to meet such criteria, it is Kusile, which alone will emit over 36 million tons of carbon dioxide annually while increasing South Africa’s emissions by 9.7%. What’s more, this is a project Ex-Im Bank is willing to consider despite the fact that South Africa has not yet concluded its second integrated resource plan (IRP2) and climate strategy processes. This violates Ex-Im Bank’s policy for highly carbon intensive project financing, which requires that “[t]he host country shall have developed a Low Carbon Growth Plan or Strategy and the project must be consistent with the results and objectives of that Plan.”Sadly, this is merely the latest in a growing trend which has seen Ex-Im Bank’s fossil fuel financing skyrocket in recent years (PDF). Just a few months back, despite initially rejecting a similarly enormous Sasan coal-fired power plant in India, the Bank flip-flopped and decided to support the project. Then in a cynical attempt to gloss over this disastrous decision, the Bank pointed to a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Reliance (the Indian company responsible for the project) to build 250 MW of solar power as its “positive impact” on the project. The Bank currently has a congressional directive to use 10% of its portfolio to finance renewable energy, which would generate roughly $2 billion in financing. However it achieves a meager 0.5-1% per annum, clearly failing in its mission to help build this strategic sector. Such discrepancies are critical as the Bank pursues President Obama’s National Export Initiative, which seeks to double exports over five years. Without a serious shift in lending, this initiative will create the perverse incentive to prioritize these large-scale fossil fuel projects at the expense of the nascent clean technology export sector. Sierra Club members submitted more than 7,000 comments and wrote more than 500 letters to Ex-Im Bank President Hochberg demanding that he promote 21st century American job growth by promoting technologies that create 13.5 jobs for every million dollars invested (compared to only 3.7 in oil and gas and 4.9 in coal). In order to repair our sagging economy, put Americans back to work, and sustainably power the growing middle class in these dynamic emerging markets, Ex-Im Bank must not only talk the talk, it must walk the walk.Tell President Hochberg as much in the comments section of his commentary.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

It’s fair to say that intensive livestock farming is under the spotlight, and rightly so. Industrialized animal agriculture has a lot to answer for when it comes to its impact on animal welfare, the environment, and the livelihood of family farms.
But the likes of Smithfield and Monsanto aren’t going to let go of their multi-billion dollar empires very easily. They want us to believe that modern mono-agriculture, with its industrial systems, GM crops and reliance on fossil fuels, is our only chance to stave off worldwide hunger. And they are doing their utmost to portray less intensive approaches to food production as inefficient, unscientific and even dangerous.
It has recently come to my attention that the National Beef Packing Company has given its distributors a revised version of an article (first published in January 2010 at Slate.com) by James E. McWilliams, entitled “Beware the Myths of Grassfed Beef,” to help promote its “natural” beef products, and to counter the growing interest in grassfed beef.
I don’t know who edited this newer version of the article. Perhaps McWilliams did it himself, or maybe someone at National Beef realized that if they printed the original article they would have found themselves promoting the animal welfare and health benefits of grass-fed beef over feedlot beef. Because McWilliams’ original article states that “the comparative health benefits of grass-fed beef are well documented” and that grass-fed beef is “higher in omega 3s and lower in saturated fat” and “kinder to the animals.” Yet all these points were removed from the version that National Beef is distributing. But let’s not worry too much about that right now, because the real problem is the scientific foundation of McWilliams’ article.
One of my pet peeves is deceit and spin being masqueraded as real science. So whenever I read these types of articles I always read the scientific reports and references they refer to in order to authenticate their claims. And all too often I find that the real science has been distorted or misrepresented.
McWilliams writes that “an Australian study found a higher prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in the feces of grass-fed rather than grain-fed cows.” Unfortunately, he provides no clear reference to substantiate this claim. However, I knew that another piece written about the comparative food safety of cattle fed hay vs. cattle fed grain (Hancock and Besser 2006) makes the following statement: “One study (Fegan et al, 2004a) found that a higher prevalence among pastured cattle and, among positive cattle, similar concentrations of E. coli O157:H7 in feces.” Fegan is Australian, so this must be the study McWilliams is referring to. But if you read Fegan et al in detail, it says that “there was no significant difference (P = 0.06) between the numbers of E. coli O157 in pasture-fed or grain-fed cattle feces, although the geometric mean (antilog of the mean of log10 transformed MPN values) was higher in grain-fed (130 MPN g-1) than in pasture-fed (13 MPN g-1).” Leaving out all the “MPN g-1″ jargon, this statement directly contradicts Mr. McWilliams’ assertions: the science states that the level of E. Coli O157 is higher in grain-fed than in pasture-fed cattle.
McWilliams uses another Australian study (Fegan et al 2004b) to back up his claim that grassfed cattle become colonized with E. coli O157:H7 at rates nearly the same as grain-fed cattle. Again, when you read the full report, the researchers state that the “grassfed” cattle in the study may have been fed supplemental grain. Is this therefore a true comparison of grassfed and grainfed animals? Clearly not.
And how can someone who wants to refute claims that grassfed beef is safer have missed so much scientific evidence to the contrary? McWilliams fails to mention Barlow and Mellor’s (2010) study which found that grainfed cattle are significantly more likely to have a higher concentration of E. coli in their feces than grass-fed cattle. Or Bailey and Vantelow (2003), who found that 58 percent of the feedlot cattle they tested were carrying the food poisoning campylobacter bacteria, while only 2 percent of cattle raised on pasture tested positive. Or Scott et al (1999) who switched cattle from grain-based diets to hay and found that acid-resistant E.coli decreased from 10,000 to 20 viable cells per gram in 7 days. The fact is that the scientific consensus indicates that more E. coli (including O157:H7) are present in the feces of cattle fed grain diets than forage-fed cattle. You’ll find all the supporting evidence you need on the Animal Welfare Approved website blog.
It is more important than ever that we don’t take such unfounded arguments at face value. Look at the research backing up the statements and consult trusted sources. The scientific reality is that grassfed systems do deliver higher animal welfare, environmental sustainability and improved nutritional qualities — and a much lower risk of E. coli.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

While still recovering from the shock of seeing the Islamic Republic of Iran sitting on the UN Commission on Women’s Rights (CSW), we discover that it is being elected today — November 10 — by the Asia Region, to the executive board of UN Women. UN Women is the newly created UN entity dedicated “gender equality and the empowerment of women,” their efforts aimed at eliminating inequalities in law and practice. Iran is notorious for imprisoning and punishing women’s rights activists as acts against national security. Having a state that rejects gender equality sit on the executive board of a body mandated to coordinate policies and set priorities to promote gender equality worldwide is bad news for Iranian citizens. Worse, Iran’s influence will be a threat to the progress achieved by decades of persistent advocacy by women’s rights movements in Muslim countries that still linger under centuries-old traditions and autocratic regimes. It would also undermine international law and the CSW’s and UN Women’s mandate.
For too long, people like me have been intimidated, inside and outside their countries, sometimes even by their own peers in the West, into believing that they are irrelevant because they aspire to universal human rights. I was born in a Muslim family in a conservative town in Iran and my grandmother never left her house without a chador. My mother and her sister were married to men who were chosen for them but they did not wear the veil and were not practicing the way their mother was. They were respectful of their religion and were never considered “bad Muslims.” My father had five brothers. All were raised in the same household by the same parents. Each grew-up with a different understanding of his religion and his culture. Each adopted a different life style. This is the case in many practicing Muslim families when there is no coercion or violence.
In Iran, women are second class citizens in law and in practice. A woman, for example, cannot aspire to high public offices where she could bring about change, inherits 50% less than her brothers, cannot marry without the consent of her father, cannot, unlike men, divorce her spouse unless the latter agrees, cannot have custody of her children if they are above the ages of two (boys) and seven (girls), cannot be judges and their testimony in court counts as half of that of men. So a raped woman’s testimony does not count if she is the only witness. In Iran, married men can have an unlimited number of extra marital sexual relationships but married women can be sentenced to stoning for adultery without any evidence or witnesses, as is the case for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
Iranian authorities, and their supporters here and elsewhere, may argue that women’s rights activists are women from the wealthy neighborhoods from the north of Tehran or other important urban centers. I have spent years following and documenting human rights cases and the backgrounds of the victims I see, year after year, mostly attest to the contrary: the stakes in Iran are much higher for those who do not have the means to buy their education, their right to a fair trial in courts run by seminary-trained clerics, their freedom from a bad marriage, or their security in an authoritarian regime where corruption thrives. Those who persist in calling for change are not necessarily familiar with the West, do not speak any foreign languages, cannot afford to start their own businesses or leave the country in search of a better future, or post bail when they are imprisoned. The fight for women’s rights is the fight, above all, of those citizens with limited options.
A significant number of activists have been victims of state repression in Iran over the last decades for simply opposing discriminatory laws. For example, the One Million Signatures Campaign includes men and women who want a better present and a promising future for themselves, their sisters, their daughters, and their grand daughters. They are from Tehran, Esfahan, Kurdistan, Mazandaran, Guilan, Azerbaijan, Mashhad, and other provinces. They come from the middle class as well as from under-privileged families. Scores of them have been arrested and sentenced to prison terms for collecting signatures or writing about discriminatory laws. Scores have been forced into exile.
The Iranian leaders and other autocrats argue that the demands expressed by women’s rights advocates, ie the reform of discriminatory laws, are at odds with Iranians’ culture and religion. I am not an expert in religious law and will not argue on religious grounds though those who dare to do so, such as Hojatoleslam Saidzadeh, are imprisoned and defrocked. As for Iran’s culture, no one can have the monopoly on defining it or imposing its interpretation on Iranians. Like Christians and Jews, Muslims are diverse culturally and have a multitude of interpretations of what their religion requires. There are also Iranian Muslims who do not practice and Iranians who are agnostic or non-believers. The beliefs of Muslims, as those of Christians and Jews, are part of an ever evolving culture. Those who call for an end to discrimination belong in what is too often called the “Muslim world” and are as relevant as those who oppose change.
If the culture promoted by the Iranian leaders is really that of the Iranian people, there would be no threat against national security from a group of women going door to door collecting signatures for changing discriminatory laws. At worst, they would come back empty-handed and Iranians would simply not sign their petition. But the multiple summons and intimidation by the Information Ministry, the detentions, the convictions, and other forms of harassments are not symptomatic of confident leaders but of fearful rulers whose priority is to conceal the fact that their views have little appeal among Iranians, most of whom are below the age of thirty.
The best way to fight an idea is with a better idea. The Islamic Republic authorities are lacking convincing arguments in a rapidly modernizing society. Their better idea is to imprison and silence activists or force them into exile.
By allowing Iran to sit on the executive board of the newly created UN Women, the international community is rewarding it for silencing Iranian voices that support gender equality and international law, the very basis of the creation of the commission and UN Women. It is a bad bargain for the international community and for countless women in numerous countries around the world. It also makes irrelevant those of us who risk prison and torture by persisting to call for gender equality. The sense of terrible disillusion that it instills will be hard to overcome.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

While the results of the midterm elections provided some evidence on the state of the economy, there’s a far clearer indicator of just how bad things are. William Dembski, one of the main proponents of intelligent design, has recanted his scientific views in an attempt to keep his job. As philosopher Michael Ruse has said, explaining but not condoning Dembski’s actions, “here he is with a wife and kids to support and the threat of the sack.”
The issue is as clear as any could be and demonstrates the kind of litmus test that proponents of religious fundamentalism impose on their adherents — even on their stars. And make no mistake about it, William Dembski is a first order star in the intelligent design firmament. He is a prolific author who has earned both a Ph.D. in mathematics as well as a Masters of Divinity degree. He is a fellow of the Discovery Institute and a professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Indeed, you can’t read anything about intelligent design without encountering Dembski’s arguments in support of this version of creationism.
And yet, according to an article in Florida Baptist Witness, even his stellar creationist credentials were not enough to keep the inquisitors from his door. As the article describes it, Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, called Dembski into his office along with “several high-ranking administrators at the seminary.”
At issue were two of Dembski’s beliefs, as expressed in his latest book The End of Christianity and elsewhere: that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe 14 billion years, and that Noah’s flood was regional rather than worldwide.
Again, according to the article in Florida Baptist Witness, “At that meeting, Dembski was quick to admit that he was wrong about the flood, Patterson said.”
Patterson went on to say, “Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school.”
Prior to the meeting but in response to growing criticism (and in direct contradiction to what he said in The End of Christianity), Dembski wrote, “As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality.”
This simple admission, an acknowledgement that he “bow[s] to the text” on issues of science, removes Dembski from any consideration as a real scientist. Consider his statement of faith in light of the motto adopted in the 1600s by the Royal Society of London, the oldest extant scientific society in the world. Their motto, a translation and a paraphrase of a line from Horace’s Epistulae, reads as follows:
Real scientists let the evidence lead them to their conclusions. The pseudoscientists known as creationists use the Bible to generate their conclusions and twist the data to conform. What is so very sad, if not surprising, is that previously Dembski claimed to rely on science for part of his work. For example:
To be fair to those who have forced Dembski to walk away from his scientific principles, at this point some, but certainly not all, are willing to turn a blind eye to his old earth views if not his views on Noah’s Flood. The Florida Baptist Witness notes that Patterson “believes that proper exegesis of the early chapters in Genesis requires a young earth. But he also said that young- and old-earth creationists banding together to combat evolution is more important than internal debates among creationists.”
So, while Patterson would fire Dembski over his views on the Flood, when it comes to the age of the earth, he takes the position that any enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Not everyone agrees with that view, though. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said, “Theologically, the historical Adam as the common ancestor of the human race is the most important issue. But the question is, how in the world do you end up with an historical Adam if you have an old earth? It’s becoming increasingly clear that an old earth implies something other than an historical Adam.” Kurt Wise, yet another prominent creationist and a professor of biology at Truett-McConnell College said, “it is impossible to consistently believe in both an old earth and inerrant Scripture.”
Although the news of Dembski’s retractions appeared a few weeks back, I waited to write about it to see how the creationist community would respond. Surely, those who vigorously promoted Ben Stein’s movie Expelled (a film that famously pretended that a scientific orthodoxy relentlessly fired world class scientists who held dissenting views) would come to his defense. Not surprisingly, not a peep of protest has been heard.
Ben Stein meet Paige Patterson, apparently the most moderate of the fundamentalist inquisitors: “Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school.”

This Blogger’s Books from
Science, Nonscience, and Nonsense: Approaching Environmental Literacy
by Dean Michael Zimmerman

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

By Kate Spencer
Dean Paul Voakes of CU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication will be stepping down from his position next summer.
Voakes made the announcement to staff members Wednesday morning.
His resignation will be effective June 30, 2011. He will be returning to the faculty.
Provost Russell L. Moore said he will start searching for interim leadership for the school after Voakes departs as dean summer 2011.
“Paul Voakes has led our journalism program in the most difficult time in its history,” Moore said in a news release. “He has done so with character and compassion, while being a key part of the academic leadership of CU-Boulder. We thank him for his dedicated service to the university and welcome him back to the classroom.”
Voakes said he is ready to return to working with students.
“I now look forward to returning to the faculty and continuing this important work with our students,” Voakes said in the release.
Voakes has been dean at the school of journalism since July 1, 2003. Prior to heading up CU’s journalism program, he served as associate professor at the Indiana University School of Journalism.
Prior to his appointment to the Indiana University faculty in 1994, Voakes held academic positions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
His professional experience includes political reporting and editing. He had served as editorial writer and op-ed columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, editorial page editor for the Peninsula Times Tribune and business editor and general assignment reporter for the Palo Alto Times.
Voakes’ research interests include technological change in journalism education, law and ethics in the newsroom and First Amendment rights, according to a CU news release. He is an author of numerous journals, books and articles, as well as the recipient of several prestigious research grants, honors and teaching awards.
He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis.
Voakes replaced Interim Dean Stewart Hoover, who served in the position while a national search was conducted.
Stay with the CU Independent for more information as this story develops.
Contact CU Independent Editor-in-chief Kate Spencer at Katherine.a.spencer@colorado.edu.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com