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As the November winds start blowing and the chill enters the air, hundreds of thousands of the nation’s students are filling out applications for college and university admissions that will need to be filed within a few weeks. The annual school rankings published by the cottage industry of assessors are out and students and parents are fretting over what is possible and what their college advisors insist is a “stretch.” There is much to know about the admissions process, yet most of it remains mysterious to students and parents. In this series of postings I hope to shed a bit of light on this subject.
The American path to college admissions is vastly different from the ones found in European and Asian societies. In most other nations, there is almost total reliance on standardized national examinations – and the anxiety goes way up as students prepare for these exams that will largely determine their future. Since students apply to specialized programs, such as law, once they are admitted to a university there are few ways of changing their focus of interest if they decide that they want to study, for example, physics. Switching “majors” in mid-stream is near impossible. Admissions officers don’t care much about the “whole person” or whether you were the lead trombone player in your high school band, or an all-league tight end or an agile 275 lbs pulling guard on your football team, or the star in The Vagina Monologues, the oft produced play in high schools these days. You are what you test. That is why the junior year in China, for example, is called the “black year,” as students prepare to see if they represent part of the one percent or so who will be offered positions in universities and colleges based on their scores on national examinations. In Europe, the structure of the academic system has not caught up with the policy of admitting all students who pass the national examination. Consequently, we see 200,000 students at the University of Rome and almost as many in the University of Paris. Few of these students ever see the inside of a classroom or actually talk with a professor, but they are eligible for national health insurance. They read published notes of formal lectures; they take exams at the end of their first year. In sum, most other nations have a very different set of criteria for determining qualifications for college and university admissions – and behind all of that is a different idea about the mission of higher learning. We see in these international variations in admissions practices different views, as well, about what constitutes meritocracy.
The American system stands in sharp contrast to that way of doing things. Here too there are noteworthy variations. First, most colleges and universities are in “need” of students. They are not highly selective. They are willing to accept students with rather limited academic achievement and with few outward signs of great academic potential. If they graduate from a state high school with a certain academic average or rank in class they are entitled to attend college – whether at a community college or a state college or top tier university in the state system. At its best, it provides an important avenue for upward mobility and skill acquisition needed for the job market of today. This is not a bad thing, but it differs appreciably from what goes on at perhaps 150 or so private and public colleges and universities in the United States that are highly selective – they have their choice of students from a huge pool of applicants. The numbers are staggering. In 2010, for example, Harvard received about 30,500 applicants of which they admitted 6.9% – not good odds even for the highly qualified and self-selected group who actually apply to that great university. The numbers and ratios of admissions, typically referred to as “selectivity,” at the other Ivy League schools are similar. Yale, Princeton, and Columbia accept about 8 percent of their applicants. In short, getting in is a crapshoot. The same kinds of numbers obtain at places like Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore – admissions rates of about 15%, slightly higher than the Ivy League, because these colleges more often lose to the Ivy League schools when both schools accept the same person. There is little doubt that perhaps more than 5,000 of the 26,000 students who apply to Columbia each year could do very well at the University and contribute greatly to it. But there are only 1,000 or so positions available so many extraordinary students are turned down. And the odds of being admitted are going down. Reports in The New York Times suggest that the applicant numbers for 2011 are up by double digits at many of these schools (although we are witnessing individual students applying to many schools, given the uncertainty of being admitted to their top choices) and notably among the great public institutions, such as UCLA (about 58,000 applicants this year). Note that despite sharply rising costs at these elite schools of higher learning, the demand in the marketplace for slots in those top schools is actually rising.
At these highly selective colleges, the goal is to “shape a class.” Undergraduate admissions decisions rest in the hands of a staff of well-trained and highly motivated young people – the dreaded admissions officers.1 Faculty members rarely have any input into these decisions. In fact, at most elite colleges and universities, the faculty have almost nothing to say about admissions policies or what criteria should be emphasized in admitting students. Even at the Ivy schools there is almost never a discussion with the faculty about how the admissions office defines a “success” or “failure” in a past admissions decision. Despite their considerable talents, most admissions officers are arguable not as talented or as interesting as thousands of students who are applying to these schools – many of whom will be rejected. The smartest, most imaginative, and creative administrators ought to be located in the office of admissions. They rarely are despite the admissions office’s dedication and remarkable determination to admit “the most qualified” students. That’s unfortunate because shaping an undergraduate student body is one of the most critical tasks of a university.
To shape a class admissions officers have to establish guidelines and categories that need to be followed through the process. There is a superabundance of applicants who are extraordinary by almost any numerical indicator: GPA, SAT, Achievement Examinations. But as much as applicants would like to think that there is some in “the sight of God” rank order of quality of applicants from, say 1 to 30,000 at Columbia, there is not. So what is done? Broad diversity parameters are set, including race, ethnicity, gender, geographic region of the nation and the world. It is not simply by chance that the proportion of students in each of these categories rarely varies much from year to year. These may not be quotas, but they certainly represent goals or targets. Beyond demographic and geographic criteria, there are also athletic teams that have to be filled out with about 20 percent of all admitted students; alumni children that need a break; and talented students in a variety of disciplines that need to be recruited. For colleges and universities that don’t have deep financial aid pockets, ability to afford the education may also be a parameter that is mixed in with the quality of the student’s record. Contrary to the opinion of some secondary school guidance counselors, these colleges are looking for a well-rounded class, as much as for well-rounded individuals. And yet the nation’s elite colleges betray their ability to make difficult decisions and rarely take the kind of chances some of us would like to see them take. They are too often guided by what the final result will look like in numerical terms compared with their competition – and how that might play out in U.S. News & World Report rankings.
An informal pact has developed between college counselors at secondary schools and the admissions people at the select colleges. The college counselors want a good track record of getting their kids into the schools they apply to and the colleges want to get the counselors to send them their “best” students, which is generally defined as those with the best academic record and Board scores. If you are not a kid who has gone down the straight and narrow path for his or her entire high school career, doing exceptionally well in everything, and racking up impressive numbers in advanced placement courses, you are rarely advised to apply to one of these highly selective colleges – unless you fall into some category (like a star athlete) where it is well-known that lower standards are applied in terms of formal testing and other academic credentials. Within the group of outrageously high achievers, whose SATs and GPAs are already off-the-chart, youngsters are pushed by their parents and secondary school teachers to “differentiate” themselves from the thousands of others by “doing something” special in “extra-curricular” activities. But, the brilliant poet to be or distinguished novelist, or political cartoonist of the future, who just did not give a damn about chemistry in his sophomore year and received an embarrassing C for the course, is told that he or she doesn’t have a prayer of getting into one of the selective schools. The kid who starts out as a street artist, but who will eventually do extraordinary work as a performance artist, is pushed away from the selective schools. There is an appreciation for diverse talents, but only if it comes hand-in-hand with great Board scores and a uniformly high GPA. But that is not the way the world works. If Columbia can produce a poet of Allen Ginsburg’s quality, who cares if he was lousy in mathematics? And if they can produce a physicist as brilliant as the eventual Nobelist, Julian Schwinger, who cares if he had no interest in high school European history?
The result of the superabundance of high achieving secondary school youngsters is that many of the top schools in the nation have taken the “quirkiness” out of the student body – and the rebelliousness of intellect, style, and thought, that is often ultimately critical to doing something of importance other than law or medicine. The result is both good and bad for the higher educational system. It turns out that some of the most talented quirky kids go to other places and thrive there – and have wonderfully productive careers after college pursuing their interests. It is unfortunate, however, that the criteria used for admissions by the most selective schools classify the exceptionally talented but “one-sided” youngster as “not eligible” for admission. And that’s a shame and not functional for our society.
In Part II of this posting, I’ll propose for your consideration an alternative method of admitting students for highly selective colleges and universities.
1In contrast, the faculty is deeply involved with decisions of what students to admit to Ph.D. programs. Admissions officers, not faculty members, are largely responsible for admissions decisions to professional schools – with medicine being an important exception.

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The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected
by Jonathan R. Cole

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Not long ago, I was asked to give a presentation on crisis management to a group of “seasoned” professionals. As a history enthusiast, I racked my brain to find an analogy that would illustrate the magnificent changes that were taking place in communication. My mind finally landed on the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy presidential debates. A quick Google search uncovered this quote from U.S. News & World Report, which perfectly illustrated the point I was trying to make:
Only time and history will tell what that one moment will be that marks the shift from traditional media to social media. In the meantime, it seems every organization is experiencing that moment for itself; more often than not, during a crisis.
Of course, crises come in all shapes and sizes, and over the last five years while working at Southwest Airlines, I had a front-row seat to several aviation industry crises – from controversial mini-skirts and broken guitars to safety allegations and emergency landings – forcing me to completely rethink crisis communication and bow to the gods of social media.
While the specific details of each crisis varied, the key principle for managing them remained the same. Ultimately, it’s all about communication.
When crafting a social media crisis plan, the most important thing to consider is not the various details of every possible scenario, but rather the reality of how people are discovering, consuming, and sharing information. For example:
Fact: You’re likely to learn about a crisis via Twitter or Facebook before you receive official notification from an internal source.
Fact: You cannot “shut down” the Internet – going “dark” is no longer an option. Regardless of how you choose to leverage social media, your customers, employees, and all major media outlets will be utilizing free, public, global social media tools to communicate about your organization.
Fact: You are not powerless. By being prepared and leveraging social media, you can help to disseminate factual information, lead and influence conversations, and squash misinformation.
While crises are never welcome or wished for, they are a fact of life and an opportunity — an obligation, even — to show the world what you’re really made of.
11 Components of a Social Media Crisis Plan
1. Talk to your customers and employees
You must communicate — both to your customers and your employees — in order to lead and shape conversations. Not communicating is not an option, at least not a good one. In the words of Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Play the hand you’re dealt. As PR practitioners, you try everyday to engage your employees and get media coverage for your organization. Consider a crisis an opportunity to communicate and take action when the whole world is watching.
2. Do it as quickly as possible
Social media moves at the speed of light. Respond to news as it occurs, as quickly as possible, and preemptively whenever possible in order to lead conversations, prevent speculation, disseminate your messages, ensure public access to factual information, and squash misinformation. The longer you wait, the less control you have.
3. Say you’re sorry
Saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t have to be an admission of guilt. And, an apology is not going to be a deciding factor in a court of law. In fact, studies show that an apology is more likely to keep you out of court in the first place. If you’ve screwed up, apologize and take your lumps. Then quickly find a way to make the situation right or minimize the chance of it happening again.
4. Be substantive and factual
You often have just one shot to get your message across the plate, and the first swing goes the greatest distance. Create air tight messages. Anticipate issues and criticism and address them head on to disarm critics. Don’t pretend that the tough issues aren’t going to come up. Don’t fool yourself in to thinking that no one is going to notice. Don’t leave the door open for attacks. Give your supporters the ammunition they need to protect and defend you. If you don’t have all of the answers, say so. But simply failing to address the tough issues opens the door for endless negative coverage in the form of news, blog posts, and comments that will take you to task, essentially throwing fuel on the fire and extending the life of the problem.
5. Fight fire with fire
Ramon DeLeon of Domino’s in Chicago once said, “the only way to put out a social-media fire is with social-media water.” Meaning, if the crisis is taking place on Twitter, don’t respond with a press release. And, don’t wait until a crisis to begin using social media tools. You want to be skilled. You want to understand the rhythms of the different channels. You want to have familiar and trusted voices available to represent you. And, you want to have a network of friends and fans to protect and defend you.
6. Aggressively push your messages
Use every medium at your disposal. Blogs aren’t dead — where else can you tell your side of the story, in its entirety, without the filter, rules, and limitations of a third party. And, don’t underestimate search. You want to have as much influence over what people see and read about your brand as you can. When someone searches for anything related to your brand, you want your messages to be the first thing they see. Bottom line, the public expects it.
7. Gauge public sentiment
Listen to what your customers are saying. Identify the issues that are truly important to them, and if you’re not addressing them, adjust your communication strategy accordingly. In reality, you should never be in that position. If something catches you off guard, it’s likely that someone in your organization could have anticipated and prevented it. Get all the players at the table. In the brilliant words of Southwest Airlines’ Senior Vice President Operations, Greg Wells, “the drip, drip, drip of information doesn’t help anyone.”
8. Always take the high road
It can get nasty out there. And, snarky and sarcastic doesn’t translate well, especially when coming from a Fortune 500 company. You need people representing you online who instinctively know your brand; who can think like your customers; who have a thick skin; who are personable; who have a gift for messaging; and who are willing to personally take it on the chin to protect and defend your organization.
9. Have infrastructure in place
Done right, social media should touch all aspects of your business. But, ultimately, someone has to own and drive it; particularly in a crisis. Modernize your infrastructure. Establish reporting structures and approval processes with speed and agility as your number one priority.
10. Listen to your internal experts
Crises come in all shapes and sizes. There is no plan that will fit every situation. There is no tool that will tell you what to do. You need people paying attention to your channels and your audience in order to know how to respond appropriately. Be prepared to throw everything you thought you knew out the window if it no longer makes sense.
11. Evaluate and change
Your biggest failures will always be your biggest learning experiences. But in order to inspire organizational change, you have to make sure that everyone in your organization is learning from them as well. With each misstep, document exactly what happened: what went wrong; how it can be prevented in the future; what infrastructure changes are needed; and how you plan to address similar situations in the future.
In terms of social media, people often talk about “giving up control.” But I would argue that organizations have more control today than perhaps they’ve ever had. By acknowledging the power of social media and dedicating resources to it, organizations can quickly address problems and maybe even turn lemons into lemonade.

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Perhaps like many first generation Americans, Thanksgiving is a time to remember where we came from. What I love most about our Thanksgiving is the mix of people and places that sit around the table. We have the English-speaking contingent, and the French corner. And I’m not sure which is more thankful to be American on Thanksgiving. What I love about America is that everyone had a reason to come here. For some of my relatives it was freedom, for others it was safety, and for others it was love. No matter what the reason, they came to America to fulfill it, and they all found what they were looking for. So while they may have come here for a million different reasons, they are all thankful for one thing: to be here, in America, on Thanksgiving. And as for me, the first in my mom’s family to be born in the States, I am thankful that after so many years abroad, I am finally back home to partake in the most Franglais feast ever known to mankind: my family’s Thanksgiving.
Of course, when you are a proud American hailing from another land, you can’t help but mix in your heritage with the American traditional standbys. Instead of green bean casserole, we do buttered haricots verts. And no Thanksgiving goes by without my mom’s famous Dauphinois potatoes. But this year, I was inspired by a sandwich I see everywhere: turkey, cranberry, and brie. The perfect combination on bread, so why not on a Thanksgiving plate? To go along with the perfect roast turkey and cranberry sauce comes my macaroni and brie: harvest-hearty whole grain penne enveloped in a thick brie cheese sauce. It is mild and creamy and hearty, a little bit American and a little bit French, with a hint of holiday nutmeg. Absolutely perfect with lean roast turkey and sweet-tart cranberries.
I know the point of tradition is that it doesn’t change, but I don’t know if there will be room for Dauphinois on this year’s table! But there will always be something French in my Thanksgiving. It’s important to remember where you came from, to be happy where you are.
Macaroni and Brie
serves 6
INGREDIENTS
1 pound whole grain penne
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk
1 13.5-ounce wheel of brie, rind removed, cut into chunks
Freshly grated nutmeg
Fine sea salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
cup white or whole-wheat panko crumbs
PROCEDURE
1.Preheat the oven to 375F. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook penne of the way through, and then drain. My pasta said cook 9 to 10 minutes; I cooked it 6 to 7.
2.In a wide braising pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour, and cook for 2 minutes, until the mixture foams and just begins to turn golden. Whisk in the cold milk in a steady stream. Increase the heat to medium-high, and continue whisking the sauce for 5 minutes. The sauce should be thick enough that if you dip a spoon in the bchamel and run your finger down the back of the spoon, the sauce stays separated.
3.Add in the brie, and lower the heat to low. When the brie has melted, add in nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste. Stir in the penne until well combined.
4.Pour the mixture into a buttered square baking dish. Top with panko and a few dots of butter. Place the baking dish on a rimmed baking sheet and cook 30 minutes, until bubbling. Then, place under the broiler until the panko is golden, another 3 to 5 minutes. Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Serve hot.

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Representative Bruce Braley, from Iowa’s First District, returned to the House of Representatives this week, after surviving a very brutal re-election campaign in which millions of dollars of outside money from anonymous right-wing donors were spent against him. His campaign was an interesting one, because rather than try to distance himself from his own party or from what Democrats have accomplished in the past few years, Braley instead embraced his own record, and proudly defended it to his voters.
Braley’s victory was a narrow one — 49.5 percent to 47.5 percent — but this didn’t make it any less satisfying for Democratic election-watchers looking for trends during this year’s midterms. Braley holds the district in Iowa which stretches north and west from the “Quad Cities” area, which he won as part of the Democratic takeover in 2006. In 2008, he won his first re-election fight with a whopping 65 percent of the vote. But this year, the headwind of the Republican resurgence was a tough obstacle to overcome for any Democrat elected to the House in the past four years. Braley’s victory certainly gives hope to those in the Democratic Party who have been calling on Democrats to refuse to apologize for who they are and what their party stands for.
Braley’s opponent was an enormous beneficiary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, as a conservative group from outside the district pumped an enormous amount of money into the race, most of it spent on advertisements attacking Braley. Here’s how Braley describes the campaign strategy he used to fight back: “When I first ran for Congress, we talked about bringing the troops home from Iraq, which we’re now doing. We talked about raising the minimum wage. We did that. We talked about making sure men and women had equity in the workplace. We did that with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. We talked about lowering taxes for middle class families. We did that. We talked about improving access to health care for the 47 million Americans without health insurance. We did that.”
Bruce Braley will continue as the chairman of the recently-revived Populist Caucus in the House. He founded the caucus a few years ago with like-minded Democrats who wanted a group to focus solely on the American middle class. So far, they have supported many commonsense bills which address middle-class concerns in various ways. The most recent bill Braley wrote which made it to President Obama’s desk for signature, for example, was the “Plain Writing Act,” which now requires the federal government to write all its documents (tax forms, aid applications, etc.) in “simple, easy-to-understand language.” While not a high-profile sort of idea, it will be much appreciated by millions of Americans who are tired of digging through and trying to decipher the typical bureaucrat-ese used in the past on such documents.
The Populist Caucus did lose some members in the midterm election, but (because of the smaller number of Democrats overall), actually increased its proportional membership within the House Democratic Caucus, from roughly 13 percent of the outgoing House Democrats to around 14.5 percent of the incoming group. The Populist Caucus did better than the Blue Dogs in retaining membership in the recent election, but not quite as good as the Progressives did. In the next Congress, the Populist Caucus will start with 28 members.
We caught up with Braley this week, and had the chance to ask him a few questions about his recent campaign, and about how he sees House Democrats moving forward in the next few years. The full transcript of this interview follows.

Populist Caucus Chairman Bruce BraleyPhoto credit: Office of Rep. Bruce Braley

Let me begin by congratulating you on your recent re-election, against some very tough odds. How was 2010 different from other campaigns you’ve been in?
The biggest difference between 2010 and other years was the sheer amount of secret donors dumping money into my district to help my opponent. Obviously, it was a bad year for many Democrats across the country and that kind of environment, coupled with a $2 million smear campaign that was funded entirely by secret donors, made my race closer than I would have liked. But Iowa’s First District is 40 percent Independent, and then almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Every year I have to go out and earn every single vote, so I feel very honored that the people of Iowa’s First District re-elected me to continue fighting for middle class families.

During the campaign, it was reported that the conservative group “American Future Fund” had donated $800,000 to your Republican opponent’s campaign. The Sunlight Foundation now reports that a total of over $2.2 million of outside money was spent on your opponent’s campaign. How did you effectively manage to counter so much money spent against you in your district, which is a fairly inexpensive media market to begin with?
One of the biggest factors was that I’ve always been honest with my constituents. Whether they agree with me on an issue or not, I’ve always told them where I stand and why. When secret donors started dumping money into my race, we responded to every attack forcefully and honestly, telling them why I took the difficult votes I took. Iowans are smart people who take our electoral process very seriously. So when these ads went up on the air, we knew voters would take a look at who was trying to get rid of me and why. Throughout all of this, we tried to make clear the choice voters had: they could vote for a candidate supported by secret donors and corporate interest groups, or they could vote for someone who would stand up and fight every day for middle class families.

Did you feel your House seat had been targeted by the national Republicans as a winnable seat for them? How did that make you feel?
No. The National Republican Campaign Committee never invested in my race. Instead, secret corporate donors targeted me, because the actions I’ve taken to hold corporations accountable posed a clear threat to their interests. I consider it a badge of honor that these reckless corporations saw me as such a threat, that they would waste more than $2 million trying to take me out. I’ve spent my life fighting to help middle class families and I plan to continue fighting for values that strengthen and expand the middle class. I think the questions voters have to ask themselves as we move forward is: “Why did these secret donors spend this much money, and why are they so afraid to tell us who they are?”

You ran a campaign that Politico described before the election as an “unapologetically Democratic campaign.” Your opponent tried his best to tie you to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, and — unlike many Democrats this year — you did not run away from them, or the Democratic record. Do you think this is why you won?
I think I won because I spent a lot of time talking to voters about the important votes I took to help people in my district, why those votes were necessary, and why I was proud of them. When I first ran for Congress, we talked about bringing the troops home from Iraq, which we’re now doing. We talked about raising the minimum wage. We did that. We talked about making sure men and women had equity in the workplace. We did that with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. We talked about lowering taxes for middle class families. We did that. We talked about improving access to health care for the 47 million Americans without health insurance. We did that.
In the last two years, we’ve been working hard to get our economy back on track after reckless Wall Street speculators nearly drove it off a cliff. It took eight years of failed Bush economic policies to get us into that mess and it’s going to take a while for us to fully recover, but we’ve made progress.
I believe every elected official has a responsibility to explain their votes to the people who elected them. I believe that even those who disagree with me will respect the fact that I stand by the things I’ve done and fight for the values so many Iowans cherish.

Do you think there are any lessons from your campaign that other Democrats should learn, for the future? Or do you think the circumstances you faced were unique and wouldn’t necessarily work in other districts or other states, or even other years?
Even though every district and state is unique, I believe voters in every district are looking for similar attributes in the people they elect to represent them. I believe our constituents are looking for leaders with integrity and principle who will listen, work hard and get things done. Not every single person is going to agree with every single vote we take. One lesson I think some of my colleagues learned was that you’re going to get attacked for the votes you take, so there’s no point trying to run away from them when campaign season rolls around. If you’re not willing to stand up and explain why you voted for a certain bill, you shouldn’t vote for that bill in the first place.
We weren’t elected to solve little problems. We were elected to solve big problems. Some of my colleagues took courageous votes to solve the big problems we face and they lost their jobs as a result. But the people who sleep well at night are the ones who did what they thought was right and had the courage to stand by their records.
At the end of the day, people want to vote for someone they like, someone they trust, and someone who’s not afraid to fight for them.

You are chairman of the Populist Caucus in the House. How did the Caucus do in the midterms? How many members will not be coming back in the 112th Congress?
The Populist Caucus lost five members in the midterm elections. Even though many of our members were listed as some of the most vulnerable Democrats, many members were re-elected because of the work we’ve done to fight for middle class families, create jobs and get our economy back on track.
We’re saddened to lose these great members of our caucus and wish them well in the future.

Some in the media have slapped the “populist” label on the Tea Party movement. While this may not be very accurate on their part, do you see any sort of common ground whatsoever on any economic issues where the Populist Caucus — made up entirely of Democrats so far — could work together with the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party?
We have common ground in our shared frustration that more has been done to help Wall Street than to help Main Street. In the Populist Caucus, we’ve been advocating legislation and policies that give middle class families the chance to make it in America again. We have clear differences as to how we go about achieving those goals. Too frequently over the past two years, there has been a complete lack of bipartisanship. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, Iowa, if someone needed help or had a good idea, you didn’t ask whether they were Republican or Democrat. I’m hopeful we can reduce the partisanship and get back to common sense in the next few years.

Do Democrats expect much out of the upcoming “lame duck” session of Congress, before the end of the year? Are any jobs measures ready to go, or any other bills we should hope to see passed before the end of the 111th Congress?
It’s still unclear what we’ll be able to accomplish in the final months of the 111th Congress. I know there has been a lot of discussion about the Bush tax cuts — whether to permanently or temporarily extend the tax cuts for middle class families, and whether to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. And, as always, the biggest question mark is whether the Senate will be able to get anything done.

What do you hope to accomplish in the next two years, and what do you think will be possible for Democrats in the House to achieve over this period, given the minority you’re going to have to work with?
My top priority is continuing to create jobs and getting our economy back on track for middle class families. After that, we need to take a hard look at our current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ll also need to look at our education policy and what we can do to make sure our kids are getting the education they deserve and need in a competitive global economy.
Regardless of whether I’m serving in the majority or the minority, my most important responsibility is helping people in Iowa’s First District. I hope to continue providing a consistently high level of constituent service through my great staff in Iowa and Washington, D.C. Helping people is the most rewarding part of this challenging job and my life has been enriched by the people I’ve helped who inspire me with their courage and perseverance.

Chris Weigant blogs at:
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by “Tom Paine”

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Communication in any relationship is critical. Many marriages fail because of a failure to communicate. A divorce is one of the most traumatic times in your life. Psychologists have said and studies have shown that the worst thing anyone can go through is the death of a child. The second worst is the death of a spouse in a good marriage. And close behind, ranking third in stressful events is a divorce. The following are my 10 key tips on how to communicate with your attorney.
10.Keep a written list of issues and questions. You are being charged by an attorney for his or her time and expertise. Do not call your attorney every day. Save these questions and contact your attorney with several questions rather than one at a time. This is an economical way to cover issues and still have your questions answered.
9.Communication. You can communicate with your attorney by email, which is becoming more the rule than the exception. Do not send an email every hour or with every thought. I now find that I spend hours every day going through emails with some clients emailing me several times a day. This can prove very expensive. Again, cover several issues or questions at once. Do not abuse email.
8.A good telephone conversation can resolve many issues. Do not call your attorney every day. Again, save your questions and ideas. Cover several in one conversation. Do not hesitate to brainstorm with your attorney.
7.You can always communicate with your attorney by fax.
6.Your case is important. This is your life. Make sure you receive a response. No matter how you communicate with your attorney, whether by email, phone, fax or snail-mail, these all deserve a response from your attorney. One of the major reasons why attorney/client relationships breakdown is because attorneys fail to communicate in a reasonable and prompt fashion.
5.You can always communicate by snail mail. This is a good way to communicate if there are several issues to be raised, but it is also a slow means in our era of high technology and demands for instant gratification or answers.
4.If you have questions or issues, don’t be bashful. Remember that your attorney is working for you. Communication is a two-way street, and it is important to communicate. You deserve to know what is going on. You deserve to know what strategies are being raised. If there are issues that you have questions about, you deserve answers. They should all be in a timely fashion. There was once a study done with regard to phone calls and messages, and when a client reasonably expected a return call. The possible answers were: immediately, within three hours, within four hours, by the end of the day, within 24 hours, or whenever. The correct response was within three hours. In reality, that is often impossible, but it is reasonable to expect a return phone call within 24 hours. I always try to return calls and respond to my client’s e-mails by the end of the day because I know that people are going through a very traumatic time in their lives, especially in a family law situation.
3.This is one of the most important situations in your life. It is frightening, agonizing, and especially if it is something that has been forced upon you by an unexpected divorce by your spouse, is a horrible experience. I repeatedly talk to many of my clients about the divorce diet where they suddenly start losing tremendous amounts of weight. It is important to take care of yourself, not only legally, but also emotionally and give yourself time to breathe and make sure you are taking care of your medical and physical needs.
2.If you and your attorney are having problems, discuss them. Don’t be bashful. If you feel that something is not being properly handled, ask your attorney the reasons for it. If you have not been notified about a hearing or the next steps in your divorce on a timely basis, you have a right to know. Talk to your attorney. Remember that your attorney is working for you. This is your life, and you and your attorney should be working together so that you can make independent and informed decisions.
1.Meet with your attorney. Face to face communication is critical. At the initial consultation, this is how you establish a rapport. This is how you decide whether or not you are going to retain a particular attorney. Don’t hesitate to ask questions. Don’t hesitate to take notes. Make sure that before you retain an attorney, that this is the person who you will entrust one of the most important times in your life to. Don’t hesitate to have regular meetings so that you can make sure that you are both on the same wavelength, and working together. You and your attorney are part of a team. This is important.
If you have any other ideas or thoughts, please share them with me.
HENRY S. GORNBEIN
Family Law Attorney & Legal Correspondent
hgornbein@familylawofmichigan.com

Follow Henry Gornbein on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Here in Gonaives, it’s often hard to tell the living from the dead. So many are somewhere in between, their bodies limp and pupils rolled back in their skulls. Their pulses are a meek patter and their breath so faint that you have to lean in closely to see the chest rise and fall with strained gasps for air.
Cholera now plagues this city of 300,000 in northern Artibonite, the region in northwestern Haiti where the outbreak was first confirmed on October 23. The disease has already claimed more than 1,000 lives and hospitalized 16,799 more. The truth is the numbers are likely much higher. Travel to Gonaives and people will quickly tell you about those who died on their way to the hospital or entire families that passed away in their homes, only to be discovered later by neighbors.
I traveled to Gonaives to meet our Cholera Emergency Response Team, who supported a local hospital after they received word that it was inundated with cholera patients following Hurricane Tomas. While the number of cases is now starting to plateau in Artibonite, we are still seeing between 60 and 110 patients per day at the hospital, many of whom are young children.
When I step into the hospital, I am immediately hit by the smell of vomit and chlorine.
Patients file in, often carried by relatives, into our triage, where they are assessed based on their level of dehydration. Those who are not severely dehydrated are instructed to sip oral rehydration salts (ORS) while nurses monitor their progress. For those with little fluid left, International Medical Corps transfers them into the hospital for IV fluids and monitoring.
Soon after I arrive, a man and woman shuffle in, carrying two half-conscious boys. They tell our triage nurses that the boys had been sick for two days, but this was their second time at the hospital. The grandmother, Saintilia, 45, says that the serum that they gave her was working and they would like some more. The boys are given plastic cups with ORS and instructed to take a seat and sip slowly, so the nurses can monitor their condition.
She brings the plastic cup to her grandson’s lips and goes on to ask if I’d heard of the flooding in Gonaives from Tomas. “People dropped dead on the street,” she says. “The flood waters went over [the bodies] and then into homes.”
While it’s hard to say that Tomas caused the spike in cholera cases in Gonaives, it certainly created the perfect conditions to spread it far and wide, as contaminated water sources spill into homes and contaminate formerly safe food and drinking water. Unfortunately, this is probably not just the case in Gonaives.
“Everyone is sick in my family except us,” Saintilia says, pointing at her son and the boy’s father, Viviandieu, 26.
She goes on to confess she knows little about cholera. As she cradles her sick grandson, I am saddened by the fact that this will likely not be the case for long. “No one knew anything about cholera… until people started to die,” she says.
With the last outbreak 140 years ago, Haiti has no memory or experience in what cholera is and how to handle it. For the majority of Haitian physicians, cholera is only something that they read about in a text book in medical school. And for the general public, especially those living in remote villages, cholera is like a black plague, moving through communities and claiming lives without reason or remorse. Some think it’s another divine punishment for Haiti’s previous sins and some see it as an irreversible death sentence. Others think it is spread by fish and some think it’s not any different from the diarrhea that people get from time to time.
One woman told me she had not had anything to eat or drink since she first learned of cholera, because someone told her that’s how you get it.
But the truth is that cholera is preventable and treatable. What makes it fatal is a delay to care. That’s why large scale community education is the most powerful way to save lives in this epidemic. If people know how to protect themselves, they will be less likely to get cholera or pass it onto others. If people know what the symptoms are and that they must go to a doctor right away, they have a better chance for a full recovery.
International Medical Corps has been running community education campaigns throughout Artibonite with community health workers as well as social leaders including Christian and voodoo priests, mayors, and a well-respected local Boy Scout network. These campaigns are also running in and around International Medical Corps’ 14 primary health clinics in Port-au-Prince, Petit Goave, Jacmel, and Leogane, to prepare communities as the outbreak spreads further. We also plan to run radio specials and engage Haiti’s public bus system of brightly painted tap-taps in the campaign to reach as many people as possible with lifesaving messages.
Within an hour, the twin boys start to perk up and reach for the plastic cup on their own. The family is given more ORS and water purification tablets and instructed how to use them. If the boys’ condition worsens, they are to bring them immediately back here so the doctors and nurses can check on them and give them IV fluids if needed.
Just as the four of them get up to make their way back home, a shiny white coffin is ushered in. At least this one gets a proper burial, I’m told. The Gonaives cemetery already has too many anonymous bodies.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Ebony magazine is moving, folks.
So, here’s my little tour of the company’s editorial departments, ripped from my memory (1999-2006). Full disclosure: I worked on the Ebony floor — aka The Plantation — for seven years, until I got canned. Ha!
For starters, the moniker “The Plantation,” commonly used by former Ebony employees, referred to the heavy-handed, often quirky, policies — assigned lunchroom seating, no vacation, consistent raises, but no promotion if you were under 50, etc. — definitely not the magnificent edifice.
The Johnson Publishing Company headquarters — AKA The Ebony-Jet Building — was built in 1972 at a price of $8 million (approx. $41 million today). The Ebony-Jet building offers a breathtaking view of Grant Park, a movie theater, penthouse executive suite, glass walled conference rooms and decked out private offices. There are 11 floors, and each floor has a different dcor and category of worker bee as well.
Let’s stroll to The Jet and Ebony floors, shall we?
The Seventh Floor: Jet magazine
The elevator doors open to reveal an ultra urban space decorated with deep, mustard tones and rich chocolate leather. This is the home of Jet magazine.
The custom yellow-and-brown leopard carpeting evokes warm feelings of Africa.
Occasionally, there’s a parade of Fashion Fair Show models, in full rehearsal and strutting their elongated limbs for an upcoming runway show. The movie screening room is also located on this floor. After hours, select JPC employees are invited to watch first-run movies before they hit the big screen.
On any given day, a celebrity and his entourage are parked by the elevators, chatting it up with Jet editors. The editors’ individual cubicles are adorned with photos of celebrities that have come to meet them.
Oddly, these stars rarely took the short elevator ride from the 7th floor to the 8th floor, to meet the Ebony editors.
But The Man (overseers of the Ebony Associate Editors, definitely NOT Lerone Bennett Jr.) would descend the rear stairwell to meet the celebrities on the 7th floor.
The Man took the back stairwell to prevent us from following him; dutifully, he would boast about the celebrity visitor after the star had left the premises.
It was known that celebrity visitors were not allowed on the Ebony floor unless The Man invited them, but there were some celebs that didn’t play by those rules.
A respectful Jay-Z was one of them; he wouldn’t be ‘handled,’ by a tour guide or boxed on one floor.
Jay-Z wanted to see the entire building and he did so — he even met the Ebony Associate Editors. An excitable comedian Wayne Brady did the same, exclaiming, ‘Take me to meet The Queen!’ (AKA, Linda Johnson Rice) along the way.
The Eighth Floor: Ebony magazine
The elevator doors open to reveal a captivating landscape of warm orange, and rich, dark brown accents and cabinetry. Bright, extra-wide, orange sofa chairs flank a bronze sculpture, The Snail Bird, by Douglas R. Williams.
This is the home of Ebony magazine.
Five state-of-the-art executive offices line the main wall of the floor.
These offices are equipped with sofas, cabinet televisions, mini-bars, refrigerators, and wide windows that provide a near-panoramic view of Grant Park. These are the senior-level offices of The Man.
It’s poetic that The Man’s offices are lined along the wall, because if you really think about it, The Man and the wall are one and the same. And they function as one: To divide, to hold back, and to fortify The Man’s position of power while simultaneously, block the ascension of the worker bees.
The centerpiece of the Ebony floor is the boat-shaped, glass walled conference room.
On the opposite side of the conference room are four, dusty brown metal cabinets, arranged in a row of broken dreams. (There are no windows, so where are the gnats coming from?)
There is no laughter here; just the sound of work, and the occasional whimper.
Internet usage is frowned upon, but there is an 8-track cassette tape player for the young workers to share.
I snapped this photo of the actual 8-Track Cassette player installed in my cube, circa. 2001.
Welcome to the The Plantation, for me, the official birthplace of the WTF* moment.
According to the company’s press release, the company has “launched its search for a new home as the legendary publisher opens the next chapter in its history.”

Follow Zondra Hughes on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/ZondraHughes

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Everybody has a suggestion. Is this what we’re thankful for? Mass confusion when faced with a roasted bird? I know how the news cycle works and I know the best way to get attention is to be outlandish, which probably explains why every year there is a new “best” wine for Thanksgiving.
Come on folks, the menu hasn’t changed in years! Thanksgiving should be about sharing the day with friends and family, and the quintessential All-American comfort foods. The bottom line is that the wine you like is the best wine for your Thanksgiving but, in case you are searching through all the options, I thought this would be a good time break down some of the classic pairings for Thanksgiving.
Chardonnay
1 of 11
The New Yorker’s Annual Food Issue: What’s On The Menu
Cooking by the Book
6 Chefs’ Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes
The 5 Biggest Thanksgiving Turkey Mistakes & How To Avoid Them
Chatting With Food Network Challenge’s Kerry Vincent
Yo-Ho-Ho And A Snifter Of Rum: Sipping Rums To Enjoy Without Paper Umbrellas
Chardonnay is the most popular wine in America and there’s no need to avoid it on Thanksgiving, as it’s actually as good a choice as almost any other wine.
If your meal has orchard fruits and a nutty element, apples, pecans, or wild rice, those flavors can serve as a classic bridge, making this complementary pairing an easy winner.
I would opt for a wine with a little oak. The spice and sweetness imparted by the oak will help the wine stand up to the richer dishes at the table.
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Share your favorite food and wine pairings for Thanksgiving in the comments.
Find more wine articles at Snooth.com.

Follow Gregory Dal Piaz on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In the end, it was a blow out. The mother of all initial public offerings — that of the refreshed, revitalized and revamped General Motors — went off better than almost anyone expected. Of course, questions abounded: Could GM sustain profitability? Was its new management team up to the job? When will GM have a product slate as highly rated as Ford’s?
But investors wisely bought the story that the unprecedented bankruptcy and restructuring fundamentally altered the prospects of the world’s second largest automaker.
Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” and in GM’s case at least, it didn’t. Approximately $65 billion of liabilities stripped from GM’s balance sheet. At least $8 billion of annual structural costs sliced from the company’s bleeding North American operations. A tough new board of directors of businesspeople chosen without regard for their politics.
The result? A company that could only make money when U.S. car sales hovered around record levels of 16 to 17 million units a year now was turning handsome profits at a sales rate of fewer than 12 million light vehicles. GM earned almost as much in the first nine months as Toyota and is on track to report its first profitable full year since 2004.
Equally importantly, 77,000 U.S. jobs were saved at the automaker, hundreds of thousands — perhaps more than a million — were preserved across GM’s far-reaching network of suppliers and dealers, and further devastation of America’s heartland and its industrial base was averted.
Note the key lessons of the GM adventure. First, the availability of $82 billion from the now reviled Troubled Asset Relief Program was essential. Our ever hapless Congress would never have acted in a timely way. The existence of TARP saved our auto industry, our banking system and derivatively, our entire economy.
Second, the president’s courage in insisting on shared sacrifice and willingness to back that up with the threat of liquidation for Chrysler and bankruptcy for both automakers was essential to achieving such a fundamental restructuring.
Third, management matters. A fashionable bit of revisionist history maintains that former GM chief executive Richard Wagoner should not have been fired, especially by a bunch of Wall Street guys turned government bureaucrats. Yet, Ford — which not only avoided bankruptcy but will achieve record profits this year — faced exactly the same challenges as GM: the same United Auto Workers, the same competition from Asian transplants, the same oscillating gasoline prices and the same credit crisis. Why did the two automakers end up on such different paths? Management.
While GM now has all the tools to succeed, it, of course, cannot afford to rest on its laurels. Much work remains. Its products, while vastly improved in recent years, still do not match those of Ford and its non-U.S. competitors. Despite the vast cost cuts, its profit margins in North America remain below Ford’s. And Ford has moved far more of its products to global platforms (80 percent compared to 17 percent for GM — what was Wagoner doing?).
While enormously successful in Brazil and China, the company must address its problems in Europe, where it is likely to lose up to $2 billion this year. The new board chose to reverse a decision to exit Europe, in part on the grounds that no global automaker can be absent from Europe. Fine. I get that. But now the company needs to find a way to at least staunch the bleeding.
I’ll leave the stock picking to Jim Cramer while observing that GM’s IPO was priced at a discount to Ford’s trading multiple. That’s understandable, given the uncertainties around GM. At the same time, proving itself to Wall Street and closing that multiple gap remains a source of upside for the newly public automaker.
Amidst a panoply of uncertainties, I’m particularly sanguine about the ability of GM’s new management team to execute. I’ve known CEO Dan Akerson for more than 20 years and he is exactly what GM needs: a proven executive with a no nonsense, Navy-tough style. He will certainly maintain GM’s newly found financial discipline. Taxpayers can be confident that they will receive back the vast preponderance of their investment.
Meanwhile, both GM and Ford are better positioned, at least for the near term, than their low-trading multiples suggest. Importantly, car sales in the U.S. will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, potentially faster than most believe. Americans need to buy more than 15 million light vehicles a year just to keep the fleet from aging and to account for new drivers. Can consumers postpone their purchases? Of course — and they have been. But they aren’t going to postpone them forever. And at 15 million, General Motors — with its improved products, tighter management, lower cost structure and better balance sheet — will be gushing profits.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When Logo’s gay tastemaker “The A List” – described as “Real Housewives with Balls” – announced it was casting a Los Angeles edition of the reality show, I knew what I had to do. I filmed this audition tape (even though I’m basically a shoo-in).
How could the Logo network not take a man who shops at both Target AND The Gap, a jetsetter who splurges daily on two venti iced green teas at Starbucks to fill the cupholders in his Ford Probe? Help me make my dream of appearing on a real TV show come true. (Oops, sorry; I forgot about infoMania.)
WATCH:
And just in case you’ve never seen the reality show that teaches us that self-absorption is open to all regardless of sexual orientation, see some clips below.

Follow Bryan Safi on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/bryansafi

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Reposted from OpenDemocracy.net, series on Civil Resistance and the New Global Ferment
In the fall of 2007, by the first week of October, as Burmese students, monks and citizens still hoping for an end to decades of austerity and repression continued to take to the streets in what is now known as the ‘Saffron Revolution,’ even in the face of violence threatened by the regime, much of the international media had nevertheless appraised the uprising as a failure. News stories began referencing the junta’s claim to be ‘restoring order’ and its promise that life in Burma would soon be ‘returned to normalcy.’ Life for the Burmese people has not, for many decades, been normal or orderly, but this reality did not seem to faze reporters, most of whom were forced to rely on the regime for information on events transpiring on the streets of Rangoon and elsewhere. Inside the country, activists had a very different story to tell. From their vantage point, it was actually they who were attempting to bring – for the first time in many decades – normalcy and order to Burmese society.
The frames on the story that emerged in international media, even before public resistance was finally quashed, reinforced several common and hardened beliefs about power, violence and the relationship between the two. These frames, which then led to misconceptions about the struggle, may have unintentionally served the interests of the oppressors.
As media audiences and observers relying on others’ accounts of civil resistance, we face a number of challenges in obtaining a nuanced understanding of the dynamics underlying mass nonviolent action. Typically, media coverage of a struggle at the stage where mass resistance is met with brute force reinforces the conventional wisdom by reporting on the use of violence as an effort by the repressive force to ‘establish normalcy’ or ‘generate stability’, as opposed to widening the lens and acknowledging both the underlying reasons for resistance and that resistance often persists despite violence. This kind of narrative has the potential to undermine the morale of members of a movement and diminish the enthusiasm behind shows of solidarity. In other words, misconceptions about the effectiveness of violence can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the context of a struggle.
Does this explain the Burmese movement’s inability to bring about a victory in 2007? Probably not. However, no struggle succeeds without winning the sympathy if not active support of a majority. And while the international audience cannot win the Burmese people’s struggle for them, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where the Burmese people can win without the active interest and support of the global audience, which can be influential in limiting the support of other external actors (in this case, the Chinese and Indian governments, which prop up the Burmese regime) – something that is unlikely to be attainable without an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of the struggle by journalists and reporters.
Let’s return to October 2007. Imagine you are shown a photo of a dozen or so Burmese monks squatting together on the street, facing half a dozen members of the Burmese army, who are holding riot gear and weapons. What assumptions do you make about who is confronting whom? Do you see organized or spontaneous actions by people? Do you see victims or empowered action-takers? Do you see chaos or strategy? Do you see hope or demoralization? Do you see violence or nonviolence? Do you see success or failure?
Most of us decide in the blink of an eye what to conclude, regardless of the reality behind the images. This is because we have been subjected to a saturation of subconscious messages (‘frames’) about how to understand a phenomenon like nonviolent civil resistance. And these frames have helped to reinforce or harden our beliefs in such a way that it is actually easier to force reality to conform to our assumptions and pre-determined conclusions than to shift those perspectives. This explains why, for example, commonly held beliefs cannot make sense of the ongoing resistance in Iran (which, according to mainstream media was successfully quashed) other than to assign credit to external forces (such as the United States) or to explain it away as meaningless. As such, hardened beliefs about phenomena such as power and violence are undoubtedly the genesis of more than a few conspiracy theories.
Media frames as metaphors in Burma and Iran
The gap between the mainstream media’s frames on the stories that emerged from Burma in 2007 and Iran in 2009, and the news that was communicated from the scenes in bits and pieces, was surreal. At their worst, irresponsible or unsophisticated media frames reinforce key distortions in conventional wisdom about nonviolent struggles and can even unconsciously default to the perspective of the oppressor, thereby undermining the movement or campaign and (unwittingly) enabling the brutality to continue.
This happens because a media frame helps form the cognitive structure of our perceptions of reality, and so it can determine what parts of a news story we find most significant. It helps us draw subconscious conclusions about the meaning behind the events in a story. Frames can be thought of as metaphors that serve to structure our experience and understanding of the complex world around us. For example, when Iranian pro-democracy activists saw a CNN headline announcing ‘Ahmadinejad Victorious in Iranian Elections’ or referring to Mousavi as ‘the defeated challenger’, they may have concluded that the regime’s attempt at (what is widely regarded as) an election theft had succeeded. This may in turn have undermined both enthusiasm and morale, and that could have caused some to give up their resistance, or in the worst-case scenario, even turn to violence to fight back.
There are a few common techniques used to frame stories such as the ones mentioned above. The fragmentation bias involves covering the story in isolated, unrelated pieces. The stories focus on the ‘trees’ rather than the forest, and as a result, key information is missed. As reported by most mainstream media, stories from Burma and Iran were highly fragmented. They suggested pandemonium, isolated acts of extremist political violence and regimes struggling to ‘normalize’ the situation. For example, a BBC headline from June 14, 2009 announced, “Crowds join Ahmadinejad’s victory rally.” Another from CNN on June 21, 2009 tells us that, “Chaos prevails as protestors, police clash in Iranian capital” and on June 13, ABC proclaimed that “Election battles turn into street fights in Iran.” Consider the terminology: ‘crowds’, ‘chaos’, ‘street fights’. When taken together, these smaller stories paint pictures of a country in chaos, and awash in repression. But of course the reality is much richer and even potentially encouraging. In any case, it may not be the repression and violence that is most interesting about the news coming from Iran or Burma, it may be that in both settings, people have continued to resist despite severe risk.
Stories that emerged from Burma and Iran were also characterized by something called the dramatization bias. Dramatization of a story occurs when the news is encapsulated in sensationalistic bits intended to provoke an emotional response on the part of the news consumer. This often happens in the absence of serious analysis of the policy issues, institutional interplay or larger social setting. There also tends to be an unconscious focus on the visual elements and theatrical aspects of the story. Dramatization is supported by emphasizing confusion, by an attitude of professional skepticism, and by an automatic respect for the effects of violence, and therefore tends to produce cynical conclusions about whatever runs counter to these expectations.
A couple of specific examples of dramatization include a BBC story from September 24, 2007 which proclaimed the “Burmese military threatens monks,” and from London’s Telegraph on September 27, in which we learned that “Burma troops issue ‘extreme action’ ultimatum.” While these headlines don’t directly misreport reality, they emphasize only one part – or side – of it. What they do not say is that nonviolent protests continued despite these threats (and the eventual use) of extreme violence.
The euphemism bias in media is driven by journalists hedging their bets about what is going on. Language is selected specifically to shift emphasis, blur meaning or downplay significance of some legitimate elements of the story. Occasionally, meaning is turned upside down, for example when a regime’s use of violence is referred to as an attempt at ‘restoring normalcy’. The use of euphemism can play an important role in the way civil resistance is covered, especially when the resistance happens in a non-Western country. The terminology used to describe the images of thousands of people on the streets often wrongly connotes improvised and anarchic action.
For example, a common caption for photos from the massive demonstrations in Tehran in the summer of 2009 would often say simply “Huge crowds in Iran,” a statement that, while technically correct, was incomplete. A “crowd” connotes a large group of people congregated together for no specified reason. Another example comes from Burma in mid-October 2007, when The Guardian announced that “One month on, Burmese regime stages show of strength.” The text that followed the headline went on to describe how the regime, fearing a resurgence of pro-democracy protests, rolled tanks into the streets as a pre-emptive measure. A more comprehensive and accurate frame on that story would have reminded us that such shows of force are used only when a regime feels threatened, that is, when it perceives itself in a position of potential weakness if opposition is permitted to gain any foothold. Yet the headline – and frame – managed, through euphemism, to turn this revelation of weakness into a “show of strength,” ultimately defaulting to the language (and propaganda) of the regime.
Finally, when information is in short supply and time is of the essence, media tend to fall back on the perspective of state officials, regardless of other key variables, such as the regime’s credibility. With this authority-disorder bias, the official authority – no matter how tyrannical – is expected to provide a solution to the visual crisis, even if their abuses have triggered the crisis in the first place. An example from Iran is when the BBC said on June 15, 2009 that “Iran’s supreme leader orders investigations into claims of vote fraud.” Or from Reuters on September 25, 2007, which reported about Burma that, “Myanmar junta sets curfew.” In both cases, there is a subtle but undeniable default to the governmental authority as being responsible for addressing the crisis at hand. Even in the rare circumstance when the phrasing is more cautious, such as “Iranian regime claims to be restoring normalcy,” there is still an inherent default to accept the veracity of the claim. This is especially true when the story ends with a government quote or by otherwise paraphrasing the version of the oppressor. One is reminded of the worst sort of “city hall journalism” in American cities, when lazy reporters would rewrite press releases in the comfort of their offices instead of going out and talking to sources.
While a lack of assiduous on-the-ground reporting seems to be the most fundamental challenge to contextualized reporting on civil resistance, there are several other flaws that also lead to a less sophisticated understanding of these events. These include a simple lack of understanding or knowledge amongst mainstream media institutions of the subject at hand. There may be no more than perhaps a dozen international correspondents in the world who have reported diligently on a number of major resistance movements, even as far better informed citizen journalists produce accounts which are ignored by major media. Similarly, there seems to be a lack of expertise about the larger social and political contexts in which these struggles take place. Few media agencies bother to employ regional specialists anymore, because they can get the most bang-for-their-buck from generalists. But while these individuals might be able to offer a breadth of commentary, it often comes at the expense of background and depth.
Meta-frames
Beyond the story-specific frames, we can observe a number of deeper ‘meta-frames’ that emerge from the patterns in media coverage of stories about nonviolent struggle. These meta-frames can be thought of as larger assumptions about concepts like power, conflict and violence and that shape the lenses through which we draw conclusions and find meaning and significance. When considering the topic of civil resistance, the most relevant meta-frames are:
Repression is more interesting/important than resistance
Power is top-down
Power is monolithic
Conflict is undesirable
Violent means are more effective than nonviolent means
Collectively, these meta-frames work together to suggest to the media audience that stronger leverage in nonviolent struggles is not in the hands of movement, but with the oppressors. The meta-frames suggest a view of natural power that is hierarchical, monolithic, top-down and something that is exerted ‘over’ the individual. They also suggest that violence and power are reinforcing (if not interchangeable) phenomena. Meta-frames are significant for two reasons: on one hand, they inhibit media and audiences from expecting nonviolent success (or to make sense of it when it occurs), and on the other, they may affect participants in a movement. The case of the US Civil Rights Movement is illustrative here. While many members of that movement rejected these meta-frames on violence and power (and ultimately achieved victory), even more than 40 years after the movement’s success, the decisive impact of persistent civil resistance is still not fully appreciated.
For instance, the roles of strategy and discipline by members of that movement tend to be regarded as less relevant than the contributions of key US opinion leaders and institutions that helped usher in political change. Most American history books emphasize Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Acts as the key turning points in the struggle, rather than focusing on the indefatigable work of skilled, disciplined students and activists from Nashville to Montgomery to Selma. In another example, the role of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who ordered federal officials to protect the Freedom Riders, has been given relatively more prominence than the work of many of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s key lieutenants, such as the Rev. James Lawson, who originally trained a number of the Freedom Riders, and who was billed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as “the mind of the movement.”
Probably the biggest danger of this conventional wisdom is that it presupposes that power (and therefore change) comes from the top down. But perhaps the most obvious lesson that can be gleaned from the cases of successful nonviolent movments in India, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, the Philippines and dozens of other nations is that the power of mobilized populations to challenge the legitimacy of oppressive rule and disrupt its operations is a bottom-up phenomenon.
To counter erroneous framing, conscious media citizens can take on the responsibility for ‘being’ the media. Citizen journalism has replaced professional journalism in many parts of the world as the go-to genre for the most sophisticated and insightful analysis. As a contributor to the media universe, it is essential that the citizen journalist use accurate language consistently. For example, instead of talking about the Burmese or Iranian governments as ‘restoring order’, an authentic journalist is more likely to talk about those governments as suppressing discontent.
There is also a role for new media: video journalism, blogs, Facebook (and other social media) and Twitter are all venues where political grievances can be aired and action can be enjoined. One of the advantages of these new, alternative media is that information communication goes two ways. The media audience participates in the discussion – a phenomenon that encourages empowerment and civic engagement, both of which (in addition to being democratic virtues) undermine the salience of the meta-frames discussed above.
Twitter is particularly interesting, especially with respect to the Iranian case. During June and July of 2009, when the streets of Iran were full of election protesters, Twitter became a key source of information on the resistance and subsequent crackdown. The regime banned all non-governmental media activity, making it very difficult for information to get out of the country. But clever Iranian activists adopted Twitter as their primary mode of communication with the outside world. As the regime told one story on its state-owned media channels (and to the world via government spokespeople), the people of Iran told a completely different one. As Iranian state news was claiming that only a handful of people showed up at a well-publicized Tehran protest, for example, thousands of independent ‘tweeters’ were all saying otherwise.
The Green Revolution has been dubbed ‘The Twitter Revolution’ for the degree to which even legitimate, mainstream international media (such as CNN and BBC) came to rely on tweets as their primary, up-to-date sources of information for what was happening inside the country. This is remarkable because not only was the movement able to undermine the official version of the news (which made the regime look ridiculous), it was also able to play a key role in telling its own story. While journalists still struggled to interpret meaning from the content in the “tweets,” the news – the data – was clear-cut. It is difficult to question the veracity of 10,000 individual citizens who are reporting events in the same way (and all differently from the regime.)
Neither the Burmese nor the Iranian struggle is (as of yet) a news story that can be characterized simply as an example of a failed movement and successful repression. The history of nonviolent struggle shows that movements which were counted out when major repression first hit – such as Solidarity in Poland in 1981 and nonviolent South African anti-apartheid strikers and boycotters in the mid-1980′s – were, a few years later, on the winning side. Ideally, the common misconceptions about nonviolent action will fade as knowledge about the phenomenon expands. But it is up to us – the global audience – to understand our responsibility in this dynamic. Ultimately our unwillingness to be complicit in sustaining hardened perceptions about civil resistance and nonviolent struggles will be critical to the evolution of responsible media coverage of this new, historic force in world events.
Resources:
W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Cognitive Policy Works

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Chicago’s mayoral race is on!
There are nine candidates: Carol Moseley Braun, Gery Chico, Danny K. Davis, Wilfredo DeJesus, Miguel del Valle, Rahm Emanuel, Ryan Graves, James Meeks and William (Dock) Walls.
Some people in the race are certainly stalking-horses, that is, they are not in the race for their interest but to pull and divide the vote. Games will be played, and deception will occur — this is the nature of the political beast. But for sure, this spring, there will be a new Mayor in City Hall.
We are experiencing something in Chicago that we have not experienced in a long time: American democracy. Until now, City Hall politics have become a benevolent, Irish ruled, dictated democracy with selective participation.
There is a wide range of men and one woman running who are all good people with track records fit for the Fifth Floor. A lot of money will be spent, endorsements will be made by the high and mighty, and new leadership will emerge. But, it is the voter’s choice.
Television, radio, literature, newspaper ads, billboards, and social networking will create awareness, propaganda of persuasion and present positions, but it will be the voter, We the People, who will close the blue curtain to punch the number for the candidate.
Voters are the deciding factor and voters are the only deciding factor.
Money is important to this political race, but it is not the deciding factor. The challenge for all of the candidates is to present their vision for the city of Chicago and to solve the problems. As far as I’m concerned, the mayoral seat is more important than the presidential seat because all politics are local and this is the biggest historical, local race since the Harold Washington era.
This is not a popularity contest. There are critical issues that must be addressed, so ask these mayoral candidates questions, the hard questions, and the questions that directly affect your life.
Will the next mayor raise taxes? What will the next mayor do about the current budget deficit? What will the next mayor do about the Daley administration’s bad deals that resulted in such negative consequences? What will the next mayor do with the Chicago Public Schools system? What about crime? What will be the next mayor’s strategy for achieving and maintaining safety in our streets?
And this follows with even more questions: Will the next mayor fill the city’s top executive positions of city departments from within the ranks, or will we get brand new bean counters? Will we see mass city layoffs to balance the budget? Will doing business with the city be an open process for minority businesses? Or will we continue the waivers game? Will we use technology to streamline the function of government? How will the city continue to achieve and develop its world-class status?
These are the serious questions of the day and voters will be awaiting the answers. Look at the candidates’ track records, look at their experience and see how it compares to your lifestyle, your family, and your neighborhood. Who makes sense for you?
All Chicago citizens should participate in the democratic process.
We are seeing democracy at its finest and at its worst: This race will be an exercise in media brutality. The pundits will vet position, person, personality and process to the point of no return. I hope in doing so, that the election process is fair and not sexist or racist.
However, I realize, that has already begun.
The foregone assumption is that Rahm Emanuel is the next mayor of Chicago. Why? He is smart. He will be well financed and he comes from serving two historic presidents. However, what is not being said is that he is a white male. This is also Emanuel’s problem. Can he pull votes from the South Side, from black Chicago, who voted 52 percent strong in the midterm election, sending Pat Quinn to Springfield?
The black community should not underestimate its power in this election. The black community is the elephant in the room. It is ours to win, or to lose, depending on who and how we play the game. This is a time to be smart and leave egos behind.
With three black candidates in the race, there will be no black mayor.
It is a prescription to repeat the ‘Tim Evans’ and ‘Eugene Sawyer’ political disaster. The candidates will shake out as the petitions are turned in on November 22nd and as coffers fill and the organizations develop. After November 22nd, it will be about the debate. Where will the candidates stand on the issues and who will be the last man or woman standing?
For sure, this election will be a benchmark for the City of Chicago. The question is, will we move forward into a new Chicago, or will we maintain today’s Chicago with old politics?
Voters will participate. Voters will decide. Voters will run it.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When I grow up I want to be a…
Children often fill in the blank with a myriad of respectable positions — doctor, lawyer, police officer, teacher, etc. — but few proclaim their intent to be an art historian. I was that rare exception — a fourteen year-old irrevocably captivated by an experience with art and pre-declaring art history my major before I’d even applied to university. My father, the consummate business professional with the principles of economics coursing through his veins, responded, “What career will you have? The arts are a terrific hobby, but they will not pay the bills.”
At the time, I had little retort, other than my deep-seeded passion for the arts and instinctual belief that this was the direction my life had to take. Many years later, I’m far better equipped for that conversation. On a personal level — what the business world would call microeconomics — I have managed to support myself entirely through my work in the arts, as a museum professional, a teacher, and a writer. In addition, thanks to Otis College of Art and Design, I now have broader evidence (from a macroeconomic perspective) which would have corroborated my point of view in that conversation so many years ago, but moreover, is hugely helpful when we advocate for the arts to civic and government leaders, foundations, corporations, and private donors.
Since 2007, Otis has commissioned an annual report to measure the combined impact of the arts, design, and entertainment industries in Southern California. While many of us share the belief of James Canales (President and CEO of the James Irvine Foundation) that “the arts and creativity are essential to our quality of life in California,” we needed more than just an impassioned dictum to persuade key stakeholders, particularly in a recessionary economy. The Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region provides important quantitative data to help support our qualitative assertions about the power of art, and, when paired together, the two make a proper case for the value of the arts. According to the report, The Kyser Center for Economic Research of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) found that the creative sector (which is comprised of ten industries) ranks #2 in Los Angeles County, behind only tourism, and directly or indirectly supports one in six jobs in the region, totaling nearly 800,000 jobs. The LAEDC estimates the total economic output of creative industries in Los Angeles at a staggering $260.9 billion. Many in Los Angeles have long believed the arts were a driving force of the community, as essential to the infrastructure of the city as the freeways, but these numbers prove that the arts are also of irrefutable importance to the economy of the region, and thereby the state.
As we continue to battle for increased funding for arts educations, private sponsorship of exhibitions, and the like, it’s important to bear in mind that we’re a very important constituent, both in terms of our qualitative and quantitative output in communities — the arts change lives and revitalize cities all while generating jobs, sales revenues, and taxes. As James Canales so eloquently explained, “We need to shift the narrative from arts as a ‘Nice to Have’ to arts as a ‘Need to Have’.” We’d better get started.
Read the report in full here.

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Emma Bovary is a cored apple: hollow, hollowing, browning and sweet. Her namesake novel, Madame Bovary (newly translated by Lydia Davis) is nothing if not a warning of how modernity turns out if we’re not careful — a symmetrical yet unbeautiful mess. It’s a biography in the form of a novel — a portrait of one of the most ruthless characters ever created. She is both victim and victimizer. She impales herself on the spire of boredom, on commercialism, too; she pounds the poison of debt. She turns shopping into a 19th century form of cutting. And then she commits a final and unsacred act of self-murder. Emma Bovary stumbles forward with biblical inevitability. She unravels. And in the end, with some satisfaction, she gets what she deserves.
If I’m being a bit hard on her, I have my reasons. When I first read Madame Bovary in college (that maroon Penguin paperback I marked up with blue ballpoint pen), I was mesmerized by the heroine’s catastrophically flawed character and by the author’s flawlessness. I was interested in how his sentences and paragraphs unfolded naturally into scenes and chapters, how his parts made a perfect whole, and so on. Flaubert’s simple mention of the color blue startled and delighted. He measured and stacked domestic indiscretions on Emma’s chest until they crushed her. I was startled by his genius, yes, but devastated by what he did to Charles.
As you follow Emma from town and country, as you accompany her on her slow walk to her self-stoning, you can’t help but grow more and more nervous for how things will end. You can’t help wanting to warn Emma, to draw her down another path, but, of course, you can’t. So, in the end, you anticipate Emma’s fate, but never, never the fate of Charles. With Charles, we aren’t allowed to see it coming. The tragedy of Charles is one compounded by surprise.
As I’ve been reading this new Davis translation of Madame Bovary, all of these feelings have come rushing back to me. Davis, an accomplished translator, is also a visceral, physical writer of fiction. So, naturally, I had hope that she might be willing to work with Charles. I had hope she might feel the same as I and try and save him — if not save him, at least soften the blow of his death. But I am sad to report that Lydia Davis has saved no one and softened nothing. Davis, translating Flaubert, writes, “His head was leaning back against the wall, his eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and he was holding in his hands a long lock of black hair.”
I have several copies of Madame Bovary at home. One of my favorites is a beautiful edition translated by J. Lewis May and illustrated by Pierre Brissaud for the The Limited Editions Club of New York. My copy is signed by the artist and is number 442 of 1,500 copies. It is a copy that, saved from the vagaries of life, may last 500 hundred years or more. I plan to pass it on to my sons when the time is right — when I think they can take its terrible news.
I have always known that I am not an Emma Bovary-type. I could never be so reckless in love and life, so brutally frank with myself, so tremendously self-confident that when my life was no longer worth living I could end myself. I am not Emma, but instead, I’m afraid, Charles. So when I read the last chapter of Madame Bovary, I am reading news of my own death. While I admire its symmetrical telling, I’m nonetheless ravished by the result. I never get to the end of the novel without hoping things will turn out differently. Lydia Davis’ translation, which I read as an eBook on my Kindle, is no exception.
I’ve often imagined rewriting the last chapter of Madame Bovary. In my version, you would not come upon Charles slumped over dead of a broken heart. Instead, you’d be left with his beautiful Berthe sitting on her father’s lap hearing a good book. Charles would not only live, but he would triumph! Emma would be the only death allowed. Emma would remain that apple cored: hollow, hollowing, browning and sweet. Everyone else would be saved.

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Sometimes I think it is much more fun to go to the circus as an adult, rather than a child. You can get your own program, treats and novelties without begging your harried parents. You can even sport a red sponge clown nose — as my spouse and I did, though he won out by hailing a cab with it still on! I was appalled though, when one of my colleagues spotted me tearing through my blue cotton candy in what I thought was a private moment, while my clown was out getting some air! This kind of surprise sighting can occur at The Big Apple Circus anytime, due to its intimacy and human scale. With just one ring to pay attention to, nothing gets lost and the humor and intensity are magnified in this simple setting.
Has the Big Apple Circus really been around 33 seasons? It still seems like the new and “liberal” thing to do, with many fewer animals than some city dwellers I know (not really) — and all is clearly cruelty free and non- arduous. Actually I think my dog, Nora, would put out more in the fancy foot work to secure the treats than the little furballs they pranced out. It was impressive to see goats riding ponies, with no beast any the worse off for it. For some reason, at the end of the segment, a giant white equine was released to bound about a little too closely by the stands, maybe to warn us that we better take the animal event seriously, after all. I did, covering my head with giddy tittering. Jenny Vidbel handled the creatures, both large and small.
This edition, Dance On! featured the beloved Grandma the Clown (Barry Lubin), looking exactly like Dustin Hoffman’s Tootsie, albeit dressed in schmattas. She was a very comforting figure for those of us who are not always at ease with the “Sad Clown” imagery.
Begging for our approval was Rob Torres, plying his skills as a juggler with his magic box — giving new meaning to the expression Hat-Trick as he delightfully manipulated us with his faux-insecure entreaties. Juggler Girma Tshehai, with orange balls as his main prop, kept upping the ante thus achieving an overreaching balancing act.
The bulk (literally) of the show included death (or at least neck) defying acts by an international cast of acrobats. The X Bud Roses Troupe were like Barbie Dolls on steroids, as they practiced their multi-level contortion project with smiles on their faces, leaving me with a feeling that their bodies were separate from their selves, leaving no room for human error.
We were thrilled by The Wuqiao Acrobatic Troupe, as the young men used their single wheel vehicles in ways my husband called almost scientifically impossible — stunts of balance and physics.
With the assistance of a thin wire and no net, Regina Dobrovitskaya engaged in what is the scariest part of the show with her aerial poses and much flouncing around up there. I was relieved when it was over and she was no longer in danger of slipping or being garroted.
Grinning fearlessly, The Kenyan Boys created human pyramids and hung on to each other as if their group feats were just a lark. They were much less serious than the contortionists.
The backstage people involved in bringing us the spectacle this year were new, with artistic director Guillaume Dufresnoy and his guest director Eric Michael Gillett, who also conceived Dance On!, selecting the acts and bringing in JP Perreaux on sound and Paul Rolnick for some added music. Gillett is well known to circus fanciers for his years as ringmaster at the other shop out there. Kevin Venardos was a terrific ringmaster himself, cutting a dashing figure peppered with humor and a good singing voice. We could have used more of him, as his role seemed quite limited.
Finally, as to the title Dance On! — this was no ballet show — the dancing being a jolly milling of the cast to an upbeat track of crowd pleasing Disco and Pop with a dash of “New Age.”
The Big Apple Circus’s Dance On! runs through Jan. 9 in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center; (888) 541-3750; bigapplecircus.org.

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This October the inaugural SWU Music & Arts Festival, one of the largest ever held in South America, was staged at the Maeda Farm near So Paulo, Brazil. Over 74 global musical acts, including headliners Rage Against the Machine, Linkin Park, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band, the Crystal Method, Joss Stone, Incubus and Tisto, played over 50 hours of music during the 3-day festival, to over 165,000 attendees, set against a stunning backdrop of world class art installations. However, it was much more than just a great opportunity to party, as SWU defined its core brand commitment by introducing the Global Sustainability Symposium.
The brainchild of Brazilian advertising mogul, Eduardo Fischer and created from conception to execution in less than 7 months, SWU’s initiative was clear: To provide solutions that can be applied by every individual and that bring about a healthier world for ourselves and the planet. When asked about his inspiration for creating this platform, Eduardo replied, “SWU is an awareness movement that purports to show – through practical examples and simple actions – that everyone can indeed begin to do their part by changing attitudes in small day-to-day ways, instead of expecting others to do it for you. Hence the name Starts With You.”
As Symposium Curator, Kate Dohring explained “Through entertainment and thought leadership dialogue, SWU brings to the forefront the important message of sustainability and empowers the individual to act so that their actions, when combined with millions of like minded individuals, make a world of difference. ”
Symposium Producer, Dan Brooks added, “At its heart, SWU is about staking a personal involvement in global sustainability. It doesn’t matter where your interests and motivations lie, there is always something that each of us can do to not just make the world a better place now, but make it better for the future too.”
The Global Sustainability Symposium proved to be a powerful and inspiring event. Attended by more than 3,500 people over 3 days, and with a web-cast audience of more than a quarter million and page views of over half a million, it became one of the most watched web events in Brazilian history, surpassing even the Presidential debate. Over 40 global and local environmental educators, innovators, thought leaders and change makers gathered to share ideas and offer solutions to a brighter future. Conservationist and star of Animal Planet, Jeff Corwin was encouraged to see so many people from all over the globe, engage, “The truth is that we are running out of time, but it’s not too late to change. We just need to do it soon.” Speaker and President of Resolve, Stephen D’Esposito was also enthusiastic, “Starts With You is about sustainability that spreads and sticks. The SWU vibe is like a positive virus, a messenge that spreads and stimulates iconic acts that get results.” Kopali Organics CEO, Zak Zaidman concurred, “Creating a more sustainable and compassionate planet will require EVERYONE to participate. A massive, well funded, high production values musical festival with a sustainability symposium sure is an important step in the right direction!”
The combination of international headlining rock stars and pioneering environmental change makers made for a powerful experience. Lucky enough to have been invited to participate, and having witnessed 3 immensely thought-provoking and inspiring days I left Brazil invigorated and with a renewed sense of faith in the rapidly expanding community, not only committed to sustainability, but excited and ready to create change on a global scale.
In the words of legendary music producer, David Saltz, “We’re just visiting here. We are not here forever, and our footprint has an effect for everyone that comes after. It’s a pretty simple thing to just be conscious of recycling, turning off lights, wasting water. There are so many simple things you can do in your own life that have such a huge effect. And again, it starts with you. If you make the effort, then multiply that effect by everyone that you know, and everyone that they know, and so on, then it becomes a huge platform of making a difference.”
However, no one could have put it better than Tisto who closed the festival by bringing down the house and succinctly telling the crowd, ” SWU. It starts with you… and it ends with you.”
Images Courtesy of Press Porter Novelli

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Two weeks ago, our country witnessed a dramatic shift in the political landscape that will undoubtedly play a major role in the direction of energy policy for our nation. For those of us who are intimately involved in the difficult work of helping to navigate an accessible course towards a clean energy future for our nation, we realize we will need to reach across the aisle and find common ground with conservatives. It would be egregious to believe that we can make any significant progress on clean energy over the next two years and while smart grid technology presents an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to work together, energy efficiency remains the more promising option.
Critics of President Obama’s energy policies blame attempts to pass energy legislation as one of the many reasons resulting in the loss of Democratic seats in the mid-term elections. However analysis suggests specific votes like the House climate bill had little to no effect on the outcome of the election. An exit poll of 1,000 voters in battleground districts commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters found that only 1% of voters were discontent with the Democratic candidate because of a policy position relating to energy. The source of discontent for many Americans is unarguably the economy and lack of jobs. Energy efficiency represents a cost effective option for bi-partisan consensus, while easing concerns over the national deficit and government spending and offers Congress an opportunity to provide attainable solutions for our waning economy.
The word “climate change and global warming” has continued to be a point of contention among many people across the country and many conservative leaning voters still doubt the validity that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. The notion of climate change also tends to challenge some of their religious beliefs. Many incoming members of Congress have publically denounced climate change as a real threat. To make matters worse, many major media outlets are already planning next year’s news agenda and have decided to leave climate change off the list.
Energy efficiency speaks directly to the current state of the economy and people’s immediate needs to save money on rising energy costs. While this strategy falls short of placing a price on carbon, it does accomplish a secondary goal of climate change proponents, which is raising awareness of environmental degradation and promoting sustainability. Energy efficiency offers the Obama administration a new way to approach passing energy legislation with a Republican-controlled House while stimulating the economy through energy cost savings.
By making energy efficiency a focal point of future energy legislation, we can begin to move the ball forward with Republican support. Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress and will do well to draft clean energy legislation in the form of tax incentives for energy efficiency focused programs that benefit the constituents that sent them to Washington and begin the hard work of pulling our economy out of one of the worst economic downturns in recent history. Members of Congress from both parties representing states hardest hit by the economic recession like Michigan and Nevada, which leads the nation in home foreclosures, could find particular favor among voters by using energy efficiency to stimulate their home states’ economies.
By promoting energy efficiency, we introduce a new opportunity to stimulate the economy in the form of energy savings. For instance, energy savings can be realized through programs that promote replacing outdated appliances with new energy star appliances and weatherizing homes throughout the country. Tax incentives can be offered to homeowners that subscribe to these energy saving programs.
History has shown that public perception to these types of programs is positive. Similar programs like the Car Allowance Rebate System or more commonly known as the “Cash for Clunkers” program of 2009 where automobile owners traded in older model vehicles for new energy efficient vehicles through government rebates was widely viewed as successful in promoting sustainability among consumers.
The Obama administration will face an uphill battle when attempting to pass substantive energy legislation over the next 2 years, however, energy efficiency remains the most viable option to gain consensus amongst Democrats and Republicans to help move our nation towards a clean energy future.
Rhon Hayes is the cofounder of GREEN DMV. GREEN DMV promotes clean energy and green jobs in low-income communities as a pathway out of poverty.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There are a number of reasons that people marry or divorce but, sometimes, it is because they are both artists. Another artist will understand the art one is attempting to create, will accept the lifestyle and serve as an in-house supporter as well as an experienced eye. Another artist may also be in-house competition and one’s fiercest critic, resentful of one’s success and scornful in his or her own.
It is not infrequent that artists marry each other, as the people they tend to meet in their art studies, at gallery openings or through their professional associations often are involved in the art world. Leon Golub and Jack Beal, for instance, met their wives (Nancy Spero and Sondra Freckelton, respectively) while attending the school of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Despite the real benefits for an artist of marrying (or living with) another artist, the identical careers — regardless of how dissimilar their respective artwork may be — create tensions for the two of them. Being an artist requires an ego of considerable size; two such people may find themselves clashing frequently, even if their disputes have nothing to do with their art or careers. Strong, unbending wills have destroyed more marriages than anything else.
Some artists approach these issues in advance by talking out a list of potential concerns. Jack Beal proposed to Sondra Freckelton three times before she finally accepted. “At first, he had the idea that I might be Madame Matisse, but I said ‘no’ to that. I didn’t study art in order not to have a career on my own.” The back of their 1953 marriage certificate includes a written “agreement of partnership” establishing that they are equal partners.
“Artists have to outline what the dangers are, could be, might have been,” said Miriam Schapiro, a painter who has been married to another painter, Paul Brach, for over 40 years. “You have to discuss whether or not to have the same or separate friends, whether you want to be treated as a couple or as individuals, whether your careers allow you to have a family, where you want to live, whether you want to be in the same gallery or not. They’re all difficult subjects, but married couples — especially those with the same career — have to be able to communicate.”
Other artists attempt to resolve the tensions of both spouses being artists through establishing separate studios (sometimes never even visiting each other’s studios), using different dealers and generally staying out of each other’s careers. One example of this was the house that Mexican muralist Diego Rivera had built for himself and his painter wife Frida Kahlo. There were two separate buildings, containing two separate living units and art studios, connected by a bridge on the second floor level.
Having two distinct studios, one for her in the garage and one for him away from the house, is “a physical manifestation of what is already going on,” said Scott Prior of Northampton, Massachusetts, who is married to Nanette Vonnegut, both of whom are painters. “If we are too close, we sort of step on each other’s toes. We do talk about each other’s work, but there are times when Nanny would just as soon that I not say anything about her work because I can be disruptive.”
It is relatively seldom that both artists in a marriage receive the same degree of attention and success in selling their work. At times, one artist’s career is clearly on the rise while the other’s has peaked, a scenario played out in the film A Star Is Born. Collectors, critics and dealers may come visit one artist’s studio and not the other’s, which can be especially painful when the two artists share the same space. Competition and anger may enter a relationship.
“When my wife’s career is doing better than mine,” Leon Golub stated, “I don’t feel as good about myself and may develop resentment.” Golub added, however, that he directs that resentment elsewhere — at limited thinking in the art world, for instance — and not at his wife.
Historically, in marriages between artists, it is the wife who has had to put work or career aspirations on hold. This has tended to be a common phenomenon in the art world where, except for the rare example of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz and a few other pairings, husband and wife artists seldom are accorded equal attention. New attention has been cast on the careers of Marguerite Zorach (painter wife of William Zorach, the American cubist sculptor) and Suzy Frelinghuysen (painter wife of George L.K. Morris, a painter and founder of the American Abstract Artists group) as well as on a number of other artists who happened to marry male artists. However, recognition does tend to come late — often posthumously.
“I did a lot of wifely things in the 1940s,” Louisiana painter Ida Kohlmeyer said, “accompanying my husband to Fort Bragg, where he was stationed during the war, and having two daughters.” By 1950, however, she was also ready to devote some energy to making art, earning a Master of Fine Arts at Newcomb College of Tulane University where she later taught. “Having children required me to better organize my life, and I realized that there was no time to waste. I had grown up a lot during the war. I put aside the dilletantism that had been part of my life before the war and began to really dedicate myself to art — as well as my children.”
In 1963, she won a Ford fellowship for her art and briefly considered moving to New York City in order to further her career there, “but I had a family, and it might have broken up my family, so I stayed.”
Finding the balance between raising children and pursuing one’s art is no simple matter, and it is often complicated by the need to hold a job and have a supportive spouse. Still, the desire to make art remains, even if it must be deferred for a period of time. Both Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeois, two of the most important women sculptors of the post-war era, took time off from their work to raise children — an important full-time job in itself — but they came back. “You have children for 15 years, not for 80 years,” said Louise Bourgeois. “It’s just one episode in your life. There’s a lot more to life than that.”
Bernarda Bryson Shahn lived with success and greatness for most of her life. Unfortunately for her painting career, that greatness belonged to her husband, painter and graphic artist Ben Shahn, whose success overshadowed everything his wife could accomplish. Bryson Shahn created paintings, drawings, prints and illustrations throughout her 60-plus-year career. She is an artist who shared a home, family, and left-wing political ideas with her husband but never his style or subject matter. Nonetheless, Ben Shahn’s renown has always colored the art world’s perception of her and her work. “People tell me all the time — I heard it again from a friend of the family just the other day — how they see the influence of Ben Shahn in my work,” Bryson Shahn said. “I think they just look for it and find it regardless of what it is in front of them. You couldn’t possibly find any real resemblance to Ben’s work in mine.”
From 1936, when their first child was born, until 1972, three years after Ben Shahn’s death, Bryson Shahn didn’t paint. “The marriage contract was just like that back then,” she said. “It was never the intention of my husband to stop from me from painting — in fact, he always encouraged me and others to express ourselves, and he never felt that there was only one way, his way, to paint — but one has obligations as a wife. I never intended to hold off on my career, but I just found myself in that circumstance.”
In 1972, Bryson Shahn brought herself to go into the studio of Ben Shahn, where she found a canvas he had stretched but never got around to painting. She painted it and, through considerable trial and error, worked herself back into the fine arts career that had been left off 36 years before.
The effort to be taken seriously has not been an easy one for her. Art dealers were always interested in representing her work in their galleries but rarely, she felt, because of a true liking for her paintings. “A dealer might want to take me on because he really wanted to represent Ben Shahn and thought he could get Ben by helping me,” she stated. “It’s been a rule with me not to be in the same gallery as my husband, and that has definitely hurt my career.” That rule has even led her to call herself professionally Bernarda Bryson, but her current gallery pressed her to use her married name and she finally agreed to do so after her husband’s death.
“I’ve often thought about what my career would have been like had I not married Ben Shahn,” she said. “I might have been taken seriously sooner. Not that I’m complaining.”
Lee Krasner (after her husband Jackson Pollock’s death) and Elaine de Kooning (during her husband Willem de Kooning’s life) also spent decades attempting to assert their own artistic vision. Sally Avery, widow of Milton Avery, claimed that she never let the attention paid to her husband’s painting (and the concomitant lack of interest in her own) “bother me too much. I wasn’t going after the same notoriety as my husband. I just went at my own pace and tried to ignore all the people who said ‘Oh, pity the poor wife who can’t get anyone to look at her work.’”
Avery added that her “career has flourished over the past 20 years” after her husband, Milton Avery, had died. While he was alive, “I wasn’t trying to promote my own work. I tried to promote his work, because I thought he was a better artist than me.”
Some artist-wives, such as Helen Sloan (John Sloan) and Emma Bellows (George Bellows) to name a few, completely give up on their art. Jo Hopper, wife of painter Edward Hopper, never fully gave up but was unhappy for years at the art world’s lack of interest in her painting. Gail Levin, an art historian and former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, noted that the museum “was given a number of her paintings along with the Edward Hopper bequest [in 1968], but most of her work was either given away or thrown out. Jo Hopper was not as good a painter as Edward Hopper, who was one of the greatest American artists ever, but she was as good as many a minor male painter who is currently in the Whitney’s collection. Edward Hopper’s fame was just too much for her career.”
That fame may have been a sore point throughout the Hopper marriage. Ben Shahn saw Jo Hopper as bitter and “rather jealous of her husband,” Bernarda Bryson Shahn said. “Ben used to complain that when he and others visited Edward Hopper, Jo was always trying to bring attention to herself and her work instead of his work. She was always bringing out her work into the middle of the room. I know of a lot of embittered wives of artists.”
Tensions are not necessarily lessened when an artist marries a nonartist. Janet Fish, a painter who first married and divorced an artist, then married and divorced a nonartist and currently lives with another artist, noted that “problems about being an artist are really symptomatic of other problems in the relationship. Men simply have more problems than women with competition. There is something in their upbringing that requires them to be the breadwinner. The bad relationships I’ve had have been when the man’s ego has been too tender.”
She added that “I know some women artists who say their husbands never come to their openings or to see their shows, as though they are trying to deny these careers exist.”
While artists marrying artists has a certain logic, the history of art reveals many examples of artists prefering a caretaker. Almost the entire abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and ’50s, for instance, was supported by the wives of the major artists. Barnett Newman’s wife, Anna Lee, for example, was a typing instructor; Mark Rothko’s wife worked as a model, and Adolph Gottlieb’s wife, Esther, taught school. In Europe, it was a tradition for artists to marry “working girls.” Goethe married his housekeeper, as did Pierre Bonnard and Marc Chagall — when his first wife left him, Chagall married his next housekeeper. This kind of marriage (and this kind of support for male artists in general) has largely disappeared with the advent of the women’s liberation movement. “There have been a lot of bitter wives along the way,” said Dore Ashton, critic and art historian and ex-wife of the late abstract expressionist Adja Yunkers.
Marriage, of course, isn’t a professional decision but a personal one. The success rate of marriages is not necessarily improved when artists marry critics or dealers and, in many respects, the marriages of artists are no different than those of everyone else. The marriage of Robert Rauschenberg and painter Susan Weil did not last very long, but the experience didn’t keep her from marrying another artist, the sculptor Bernard Kirschenbaum. Some artists get along well enough both personally and professionally that they, like Claes Oldenburg and Coosjie van Bruggen, Arakawa and Madeline Gins or Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, are able to collaborate on art projects. Others keep their marriage out of their careers as best they can and, in the worst case scenario of Carl Andre, an artist found himself on trial (later acquitted) for the murder of his artist spouse.
“I think it’s hard to be an artist married to an artist. I think it’s generally hard to be married and be an artist,” painter Lois Dodd, who had once been married to sculptor William King, said. “When you’re married, you have to think of another person, and art is a very selfish activity.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Charlie Rangel does not want our cheers. He doesn’t need our cheers. His public life has never been a melodrama; celebrity politics is not his game. His career and accomplishments are the only fitting accolades. However the House rebukes him, whatever columnists say about him, that’s what counts and it can’t be taken away. In the age where the superficial prevails and the genuine is routinely eclipsed by the confected, it is hard to come to grips with someone like Charlie Rangel. A big man with a healthy ego who never lost sight, though, of what mattered most — the people whom he represented and the causes of social justice that served them. Sure he broke some rules, and he bent some others. But he never sold out; he kept his integrity. His convictions were integral to who he was and what he did.
Is a Charlie Rangel an ethical public servant? By what performance standard? What have been the public ethics of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Have they had convictions about anything but their personal ambitions? Have they hesitated a moment before betraying the people they swore to help? Have they addressed the concerns of the common man who is praised to the skies in their rhetoric but not in their actions? Do these self regarding narcissists even know who they are? Yet enlightened opinion remains respectful and deferential. Charlie Rangel as Chairman of the House Ways & Means produced a sound, progressive piece of legislation that then was tortured into the absurd act that we are left with. His counterpart, Barney Frank as Chairman as the House Financial Services Committee, proved far more responsive to the pressures from Wall Street. By the standards of public service, Charlie Rangel should be placed above them all. On the record of what really counts, he deserves better than to be dragged over the coals in the lead editorial of The New York Times.
I’ve never met Charlie Rangel. The only time I ever saw him was in the aisle of a shuttle from National to La Guardia. He was smiling apologetically for a delay of 2 or 3 minutes that was his fault. Not a cosmetic smile from a consultant’s book of etiquette. It came from a man who as a Marine won the Bronze Star for heroism in Korea, then studied mathematics before plunging into politics where he truly has served for 40 years. Why should he twist himself inside-out in groveling before people in the House most of whom can’t even imagine someone of his temper. So here’s a smile, and a well earned toast, to a decent albeit imperfect man who did a heck of a lot.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When your children come to you with their tales of marital woe beware. There will be a great temptation to finance your child’s divorce, thinking that you are helping them get custody or more marital property but in most cases, hiring separate divorce lawyers is the death knell for any co-parenting relationship. Grandparents generally do not have rights to access their grandchildren in either divorce cases or when the parents are still together. Paying for your child’s attorney will be seen by the other parent as taking sides and when one parent “wins” custody, guess whose parents will get the short end of the child visitation stick? Because American courts give great deference to parents, allowing them to chose whom shall have access to their children, our own Supreme Court has held that “fit parents” are presumed to act in their children’s best interests. The state should not, therefore, “inject itself into the private realm of the family” to question the decisions of those parents. That means if the parents don’t want the grandparents to see the grandchildren, the parents choices will usually trump what ever “rights” the grandparents might think they have.
In the major grandparents rights case that made it to the Supreme Court, the father of the children had died. The grandparents had always had open access to the children but when mom remarried and the stepfather adopted them, the grandparents were no longer welcome to have much visitation, so the grandparents sued mom. One would think that the family of the dead parent would be given special consideration, but that was not the case. If courts are willing to cut off the grandparents in a situation where a parent has died, you can imagine how far grandparents get if the parents are just divorced.
A better course of action for grandparents to take when their children are getting divorced, is to be a peace keeper. Refrain from encouraging your child to hire the biggest shark in town. Believe it or not, very little good will come from escalating the emotional tension, which is the inevitable result of hiring separate lawyers. Each state has laws regarding property division and support. There is almost nothing to fight about if both sides are honest. As for custody, the last thing you want is court involvement into this area of a divorce. A far better solution when parents can’t agree on custody and are willing to leave it up to strangers to decide for them (lawyers/judges) is to use a stranger who is actually trained to get to the bottom of conflicts. Agree to leave all custody decisions to a family or child therapist, that way you can skip the lawyers, court and high legal bills in exchange for a fast and cost efficient solution.
Divorce mediation is the very best answer to the question of what to do when it is time to divorce. The couple can use one attorney instead of two. The attorney does not represent either side but is a great resource who can answer legal questions and help the couple negotiate an agreement and draft all the necessary paperwork. In states like California where the average cost of a contested divorce case is $20,000 per side, the cost of one mediator is a tiny fraction of the cost of a case that is fought in court. Any time you can cut lawyers out of a deal, you will save a lot of money. In divorce cases where children are involved, it is vital that they are not caught in the middle of their parents battle. Grandparents can give wise counsel to their own children by keeping the focus on what is in the best interest of the grand children. It is the rare case where kids are better off having limited contact with one of their parents. The best result in most cases is for the kids to be able to comfortably go back and forth between parents, but that is impossible after a bloody court battle. With many grandparents being the main source of funds for things like legal fees, they are in a powerful position to influence their own children’s decision as to how to proceed with a divorce. When grandparents understand what is at stake, they should act according to their own best interest by making sure there is never a war between the parents. That way the children are protected from a nasty court fight and their own access to the children is better protected.

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The breathless will-they-won’t-they coverage wasn’t quite as extreme this time, but there’s still been way more attention paid to the latest U.S. “settlement freeze” offer to Netanyahu than it deserves. What’s supposed to be the main point of it all – new negotiations leading to something remotely resembling a just, lasting and comprehensive peace – is simply not on the agenda of either Israel or the U.S.
The actual bribe – oh, sorry, I meant to say “incentives” – being offered to Israel this time around isn’t insignificant, of course. Among other things it will massively escalate the offensive capacity and reach of Israel’s air force, already by far the most powerful in the region. The offer starts with 20 brand-new state-of-the-art F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes – three billion dollars worth. That’s $3 billion on top of the almost $3 billion of military aid already paid to Israel this year. According to the influential Israeli daily Ha’aretz, it will double the number of the F-35 stealth bombers that the U.S. will send to Israel – Tel Aviv had already ordered 20 using the “normal” military aid to Israel, now they’re being offered 20 more free of charge.
** F-35 Stealth Bombers free of charge to Israel, that is – this offer will cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion more, money that could instead pay for 600,000 new green jobs here at home.
Then there’s the guarantee that the U.S. will veto any effort in the United Nations aimed at winning Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state. And the promise to prevent any UN effort to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes in Gaza, such as moving the Goldstone Report forward in the Council, and potentially moving the investigation to the International Criminal Court. From what we know of the offer (the final language is not yet settled – at least publicly) it will also include a broad commitment to automatically veto essentially any UN resolution that Israel claims undermines its already precarious international legitimacy.
I’ve been discussing these issues in the media quite a bit lately, including a couple of weeks ago on al-Jazeera’s “Inside Story” and yesterday on Russia Today (scroll down to last video).
What it all means is that the Obama administration is promising to interfere with and prevent any effort to hold Israel accountable in the international arena. The U.S. is staking out a position that allowing the UN to function unhindered, or implementing UN resolutions such as the Goldstone Report, are simply gifts to be bestowed or withheld according to politically-driven, not international law-driven, considerations.
** So basically, the U.S. government is now openly and publicly complicit in all the Israeli violations of international law and past UN resolutions.
And what does Israel have to give up for all of this? A one-time-only 90-day partial settlement moratorium in the West Bank, NOT including Occupied Arab East Jerusalem. Not a bad deal. Sure, most of the swag is stuff Israel would have gotten anyway. The U.S. has been vetoing Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for decades; just a couple of weeks ago the Obama administration engineered the withdrawal of a mild request in the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, asking that Israel finally acknowledge its widely known but officially secret nuclear weapons arsenal. That’s nothing new. But 20 additional new F-35 warplanes, at $130 million a pop, paid for by U.S. taxpayers? Now that’s nothing to sneeze at.
On the other hand, sneezing at the “settlement freeze” isn’t such a bad idea. It simply isn’t serious. Settlement expansion – which translates into house demolitions, land grabs, and population expulsions – will be allowed to continue at its current record pace in Occupied East Jerusalem. Just six weeks after the last ten-month settlement moratorium ended, Peace Now reported that construction had virtually caught up to the level it would have reached anyway. And even if the new West Bank “freeze” is total (which it certainly won’t be), all it does is delay the settler building frenzy for 90 days – at which point it can explode again, since the U.S. promised that this settlement slow-down will be the last ever requested.
**So with U.S. complicity, Israel’s illegal settlements – all of which are illegal, whether in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, whether tiny outposts or the giant settlement cities – will continue.
With 500,000 illegal settlers in the Occupied Territory who are breaking international law just by waking up in the morning, Israel will continue to violate the Geneva Convention’s prohibition on moving people into occupied territory. This “freeze” will do nothing to change that. In fact, the Israeli settlement real estate boom is being aided by U.S. organizations like the Hebron Fund, that raises tax-exempt funds to support the illegal and particularly violent settlers in Hebron.
Unfortunately the Obama administration seems not only to recognize, but to welcome the reality that the U.S. is supporting illegal occupation. According to the noted analyst and former head of the American Jewish Congress Henry Siegman, “How else to understand what Vice President Joe Biden told Netanyahu on November 8 in New Orleans before a gathering of Jewish Federation officials, that differences between Israel and the United States on the subject of construction in Jerusalem and in the West Bank are nothing more than ‘tactical in nature.’ Is the continuation of Israel’s military occupation and its denial of all rights to millions of Palestinians for nearly half a century nothing more than a minor tactical issue for the United States? Is that what President Obama told the Arab and Muslim world in his speech in Cairo? President Obama will have to take his own words about the Middle East peace process and its deep moral and strategic implications for America more seriously than he has so far if he expects Bibi Netanyahu to do so as well.”
We will have to take those words seriously too. Stay tuned to the action alerts of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation for the latest.
I have been traveling again, most recently up to Canada where I did a four-city speaking tour mainly on Israel-Palestine, though with some discussion also about Afghanistan, particularly because of the 3,000 Canadian troops backing the U.S. war there. In Toronto I was honored to deliver this year’s James Graff Memorial Lecture, following Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Richard Falk who have delivered that lecture in the past. I was speaking on “The U.S. in the Middle East: Peace Processes and War Fevers” if you want to take a look at the video. Then some other interesting events in London, Halifax, Ottawa… An interview on Rabble.ca (Canada’s answer to Pacifica Radio) is here.
Quite fascinating to see how the Israel-Palestine discourse is changing up there — not quite as rapidly as here in the US, it seems, but nonetheless far more quickly than before. Of course the Canadians now face a similar challenge to what we in the U.S. faced for so long, with their Harper government — the same government that led to a common joke, Canadians are bemoaning the fact that their country is the only place left where George Bush is still president. Prime Minister Harper has embraced a position of hard-core support for all Israeli policies of occupation, apartheid, suppression of any criticism. Staking out a pro-Israel position even beyond that of the Obama administration, Harper announced a couple of weeks ago that Canada would stand by Israel and refuse even to “pretend” to be an “honest broker.”
But what’s exciting is the huge escalation in human rights activism in Canada, challenging the government’s support for Israeli occupation and apartheid, supporting Palestinian rights and using the global campaign of BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – to confronting Harper’s policies. The world, specifically the United Nations, is helping as well, having just voted to deny Canada a coveted two-year term in the UN Security Council, largely because of the Harper government’s embrace of Israeli violations. It was a shock to many Canadians, who for decades viewed their country as a key backer of the UN and multilateralism, the country of Lester Pearson, credited with inventing UN peacekeeping. Suddenly Canadians had to face that their once-and-future “UN country” was being dissed by the world… But maybe that’s a good thing. It certainly sparked some good discussions.
Finally, with all the unchanging grim news on the policy side, the discourse shifts are racing ahead. For any of you who may have missed it, I urge you to take a look at this amazing four-minute video of “young Jewish and proud” – an extraordinary portrait of a new generation of already experienced activists. These young people – organized by Jewish Voice for Peace – stood to confront Netanyahu as he addressed the heart of the U.S. Jewish pro-Israel establishment: the annual assembly of the Jewish Federation. As the Israeli prime minister railed against those who would dare to delegitimize Israel, they stood alone, one after another, to raise hidden banners and to shout “the OCCUPATION delegitimizes Israel!” “The LOYALTY OATH delegitimizes Israel!” “The SETTLEMENTS delegitimize Israel!” “The SIEGE OF GAZA delegitimizes Israel!” And more. Each one was grabbed, roughed up, thrown out. After each one, somewhere else in the vast hall, another stood. The crowd turned vicious, turning on the last of the protesters, Rae Abileah from JVP and Code Pink, throwing her into a choke hold. But they turned the narrative around. Their action should make all of us proud. And we’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up!

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Now that the political posturing of the elections are behind us, it’s time for those in office to get to roll up their sleeves and enact policies that will take our country forward. Free of ballot box considerations, the next months will demonstrate to the country where President Obama truly stands.
Up until now, the rancid anti-immigrant atmosphere created by Republicans has left the president free to triangulate his position on the issue. As long as the administration shows a hair’s width more compassion, the Democrats assume they’ve secured the Latino vote.
One place that assumption will be put to the test is in Maricopa County, Arizona. In the state that codified discrimination this Spring and most recently banned affirmative action as of the elections, the administration appears to be talking from both sides of his mouth.
On one hand, President Obama took the politically courageous (if not constitutionally obligatory) step to file suit in Arizona against SB 1070.
On other hand, he has massively ramped up the very policies which created the political conditions for 1070′s passage in the first place. Most significantly, he has failed to reign in Joe Arpaio — a Sheriff who now puts the US on the map with human rights offenders from far corners of the world.
Is Obama an accomplice to Arpaio?
What was once considered federal inaction may now look like federal intention. After the first of the growing mega marches in Phoenix, Arizona, the Department of Justice launched what has now been a two-year long investigation with no concrete results. Criminal investigations of Arpaio’s abuse of power and mismanagement abound but have yet to unseat the Sheriff. The sheriff’s recent legacy includes forced chain gangs of inmates, the shackling of pregnant women in labor, and the expansion of his outdoor tent facilities he’s referred to as “concentration camps.”
Instead of reeling in a rogue officer, the Department of Homeland Security continues to contract with Arpaio to carry out immigration enforcement. While some attempt to make the claim that they’ve clipped the Sheriff’s wings, DHS trained fifteen new 287(g) officers, empowered as immigration agents, just last month.
Last week, the Department’s numbers displayed what no amount of spin could hide. Maricopa County accounts for nearly 30% of all those tagged for immigration proceedings under the federal 287g program. Almost an entire 1% of the population of Maricopa County or more than 36,000 residents have been taken in by Arpaio’s volunteer posses in the past four years — nearly double the number of any other county.
So while the president and Arpaio may have had a spat in the media last Spring, what we see in their reports is a far more friendly relationship.
If Obama doesn’t act to reign in the Frankenstein created by 287g in Arizona, and if he doesn’t stop the programs which will make other Arpaio’s out of sheriffs elsewhere, any gains made among Latino voters will be a castle in the sand.
More information can be found at http://basta287g.com

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com