Snarked on Net Neutrality

I've written before about Net Neutrality, and probably a quarter of my tweets relate to the issue. The FCC's Net Neutrality rules just went into effect, and Free Press is one of several entities to file suit against the FCC. The rules, you see, don't provide for true Net Neutrality; while they address the issue where land-based computers are concerned, they don't for wireless.

It's hard to get a handle on how much profit Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint make per cellular customer, but enough is never really enough, is it? AT&T recently eliminated the ability to buy a limited number of texts in favor of a $20.00 option for unlimited texts. I believe wireless companies make approximately a 10,000% texting profit. Another example: When I tried to change our existing plan to less than 700 minutes, I learned the 400 minute option—which would have worked for us as our daughter does most of her talking at night and on weekends— had disappeared. Like restaurants charging more for ever-larger plates, cellular providers are closing out less expensive options in favor of larger profits. And as there's so little competition, who's to stop them?

Free Press, a national, nonpartisan group working to reform media, sends out daily emails about media-related news. Many of those news items these days relate to the activities surrounding the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger (different filings made by AT&T as various items have leaked surrounding costs and jobs, lobbying money spent on Congress, unions, and corporations to win their support, and the recent Justice Department's Anti-Trust filing) to the fight for and against Net Neutrality.

I spend a lot of time reading articles linked to by Free Press in newspapers, magazines, online journals, The Huffington Post, etc., because the issue of Net Neutrality is important to me as a writer and former web publisher. You can imagine, then, that I was more than a little perturbed when I read the following headline yesterday on the Techland blog for @Time by @MattPeckham: Net Neutrality Proponents Sued by Net Neutrality Proponents? Though Peckham eventually cuts to the chase, it's not until four paragraphs in that he addresses the issue; until then the suit is made to sound frivolous and nonsensical. Here's the lead-in that follows the headline:

The folks who just officiated over net neutrality Internet regulations, the Federal Communications Commission, are being sued by—yep, the folks who fought to make net neutrality happen. Net neutrality's advocates suing net neutrality's enforcers?

True story.

Again, Peckham eventually makes Free Press' case, along with the FCC's response, but to me the article's headline, that snarky lead-in, and the lack of context related to the issue frustrated me. What's ultimately at stake is what the creators of the Internet envisioned, not a two-tiered system that cellular providers have already begun to force on customers.

It's clear that corporate interests already have a disproportionate impact on legislation, but articles like Peckham's do nothing to dispel the idea that corporate interests now infect journalism. The media bias I fear comes from corporate America, and that's what I worry filtered through into this particular article. "He said, he said" doesn't provide readers with the information they need to understand what's going on, any more than allowing politicians and their spin-meisters from making lies without being called on their bullshit because we've so perverted the concept of equal time that lies and reality now share the stage.

Yesterday I tweeted my displeasure and early today Matt Peckham answered me in a tweet. And then he snarked me by posting about a #Superficial #Reader" and linking back to his article on the Techland Blog. Ouch!

Snarked on Net Neutrality

Republican Autism

Earlier today I read about a link between autism and anorexia. Anorexics often display behavior that those who understand the Spectrum might recognize, including rigid thinking that revolves around rituals. Which made a great deal of sense a few moments ago when I read a piece by Roger Lowenstein in the new issue of Newsweek that as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, "the government has suffered from self-induced anorexia."

Think about all those wacky Republicans who signed Grover Norquist's No New Taxes...Ever pledge, and the "magical thinking," as Fareed Zakaria calls it, they exhibit, in believing the deficit can be reduced entirely by cutting spending. If the U.S. is suffering from anorexia, it seems to me that these no-tax Republicans (ie, just about all Republicans, btw), are exhibiting Spectrum behavior. Full blown autism or simply Aspergers? That I can't say, but I sure wish I could shake a snow globe and make it all go away like a bad dream.

Republican Autism

We the People Do Not Consent to the Great Depression On Purpose

I just sent this letter via the Coffee Party's letter-writing tool to my two senators, congressman, and the White House via email. I realize my congressman would just as soon go down in flames, but my senators are not quite as ideologically insane.

Stop holding our nation hostage to pander to extremists.

We do not consent to the world's first Great Depression On-Purpose. We demand a balanced approach to solving our fiscal problems that will not put the entire burden on the poor and middle class. We see through the ransom demands from radical extremists and representatives in Congress who have pledged their loyalty to a rigid ideology instead of the American people.

We will not stand by quietly and bear the entire burden of solving problems that were caused by irresponsibility in Washington and on Wall Street. If you ignore our phone calls and emails, expect to see us in your local offices and at your town halls. One way or another we will be heard and our nation's interest will be served, or, you will lose the privilege of representing us.

Click here to send your own letter.

We the People Do Not Consent to the Great Depression On Purpose

Rogue Elephants

I've already linked to this from google+ and twitter, but can't stop thinking about it, so I'm going to write about it here. There's an op-ed piece in today's @nytimes by David Barash entitled Washington's Rogue Elephants. In it he writes of the current debt ceiling stand-off between the President and the Republicans. Please click the link and read it for yourself, but here's what interests me, and following that, my question about it:

Barash writes about the metaphor we all seem to be using these days, that it is a classic game of chicken which will end with one side swerving out of the way. The swerver loses, but the crash is averted. But, he wonders, what if the current stand-off is not being played under traditional assumptions? His answer?

"Here’s where elephants come into play. To achieve their mating goals, male elephants will sometimes play games of chicken, with one individual essentially giving the impression that he is crazy and has become an irrational player in a game premised on shared rationality and predictability."

He adds that this tactic tends to work because male elephants "can become temporarily "crazy." When in musk bull elephants "ooze a weird, foul-smelling, greenish glop from glands near their eyes," and behave "with violent abandon, taking risks and defying the basic rules of pachyderm propriety (and also giving rise to the term 'rogue elephant')."

So, what does one do when confronted by a rogue elephant? Brasher suggests avoiding it or shooting it. Avoiding it means no more negotiating, and instead refusing to play the game.

Okay...in theory I get this, but how would President Obama do this in reality?

Rogue Elephants

Men and Sex

The lurid lead-in to Leslie Bennetts' Newsweek article: "The men who buy sex are your neighbors and colleagues. A new study reveals how the burgeoning demand for pr0n and prostitutes is warping personal relationships and endangering women and girls." Is it, in fact, the same argument in reverse for romance novels and pr0n? Actually, I'm not going to get into that, as I think my piece for H&H earlier this year said it all. (Although, Bennetts' piece echoes something I wrote in my article, that being men believe sex workers, be it hookers or strippers, enjoy what they're doing...and with whom they are doing it.) Instead, I'm going to excerpt what really caught my eye in her article, namely...

Buying sex is so pervasive that Farley’s team had a shockingly difficult time locating men who really don’t do it. The use of pornography, phone sex, lap dances, and other services has become so widespread that the researchers were forced to loosen their definition in order to assemble a 100-person control group.

“We had big, big trouble finding nonusers,” Farley says. “We finally had to settle on a definition of non-sex-buyers as men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or the services of a sex worker, escort, erotic masseuse, or prostitute.”

Okay, so to recap:

Because they couldn't find enough men who actually don't buy sex, they used criterion including those who visited strip clubs in the last year...but no more than twice and haven't used pornography more than once in the last month. Which means that while these men didn't buy actual in-person sex, they watched it, either in person, online, or in print, just not as often as other men.

Oh, one other thing. Those men who do buy sex say "they would rape a woman if they could get away with it." This is not just the expression of a fantasy; it's what they would do if they could, and I just don't see the reverse from women who read romance novels.

Other quotes that caught my attention, from those men who do pay for sex:

• “Prostitution can get you to think that things you may have done with a prostitute you should expect in a mutual loving relationship.”
• “You’re the boss, the total boss. Even us normal guys want to say something and have it done no questions asked. No ‘I don’t feel like it.’ No ‘I’m tired.’ Unquestionable obedience. I mean that’s powerful. Power is like a drug.”

That's enough from me...go read the article yourself!

Men and Sex

Let's Not Forget the Forgotten

A close friend of mine has a son who joined the armed services straight out of high school rather than going to college, not because he and his family were gung-ho hawks, but because he wanted to serve his country and because he thought it would help him become a man. He chose to become a grunt in the Marines; if he was going to do it, he was going to "do it right" by being on the front lines. He was injured yesterday in his second tour of duty in Afghanistan by IED attack. His injuries were considered minor, but the injuries of one of his buddies were far graver.

I think I've written before about the emotional dangers facing our soldiers, and that they seem to increase exponentially with each deployment. That's outside of the physical danger they face daily, and the unbelievable conditions in which they live. I remember the first time I saw this photo—these guys are sleeping, not dead—and having it hit home in a visceral way how brave these young (some as young as 18) men and women are; it's frankly unfathomable to me, in my air-conditioned suburban home surrounded by beautiful flowers and the ability to bathe and/or shower at will.

These "forgotten" wars of ours shame me, not only because we continue to fight them when the true enemies are elsewhere, but because they are forgotten. I continually wonder why we aren't exposed to these wars on a daily basis, on television, in newspapers, on online news outlets and blogs. Because of modern techniques more and more soldiers survive horrific traumas to their brains, psyches, and bodies that would previously have left them dead on the battlefield or in field hospitals. And yet most of us don't realize their survival comes at unimaginable costs to their long-term quality of life.

And now, I guess it's time to go shopping in order to support our troops this Memorial Day weekend.

Let's Not Forget the Forgotten

Gotta Love the Free Market

I just read that the U.S. lags behind other many other developed nations in terms of broadband access and speed. That according to the FCC, which, as we all know, is not exactly a market-neutral entity, as most recently evidenced by the so quick the revolving door gave me whiplash career change for Meredith Baker, who just a few months ago voted for the monopolistic merger of Comcast and NBC, only to have announced last week she'll be working as a lobbyist for Comcast.

Every day I read something that infuriates me, that makes the case that "we, the people," no longer are. Whether it's Net Neutrality, the wives of investment bankers getting bailout money, or the sale of our infrastructure to foreign interests, monied interests are not looking out for you and me...they're looking out for themselves, but have convinced many of us that it's government that's the problem, that taxes are awful, and that the free market can solve anything.

It's as though there never was a Great Depression, trust busting, or any ability in our minds to understand how credit inexorably links Wall Street to Main Street. Or that if we cede control over legislation and regulation to business, they come out on top at our expense.

We blame Obama (not entirely blameless), rather than remembering what he inherited. We refuse to pay for our wars by raising taxes, and believe ridiculousness like 90% of funding to Planned Parenthood is for abortion, 15% of our budget funds the NEA, and that foreign aid accounts for a quarter of our spending.

The "government is evil" bunch hasn't got it entirely wrong, but that's only because government is in so deep with big business that I believe this picture says a thousand words.

Gotta Love the Free Market

This May Help Explain Things

Over the weekend I read an article in @newsweek on the science of decision-making. Sharon Begley's article begins with this lead off: "The Twitterization of our culture has revolutionized our lives, but with an unintended consequence—our overloaded brains freeze when we have to make decisions."

Begley explains the science behind what Alvin Toffler coined as "information overload." I don't know about you, but I'm someone who always tries to research things. When it came time to buy a Blu-Ray player a few months ago, I made myself crazy in the process while trying to decide on precisely which one. At the time I wished for only three or four options...you know, the number I would have by going to a non-superstore that sold electronics.

I just came back from a trip to @ulta_beauty in an effort to buy some new skin care products. It took me an hour and a half to choose between the fifteen to twenty high-end lines. Honestly, had I done a similar shopping spree a decade ago, I know I would have been able to choose within a half hour.

What's going on in my brain that makes me dither? It's not just stress or being depressed...both well-known causes of dithering/mind-fucking. Begley explains that as we begin the process of selection on something, our brain activity increases. That's fine, but there's a mental circuit-breaker that shuts off when the line is crossed between enough information to make a well-informed decision and information overload. Before that point the part of the brain governing decision-making and controlling emotions is in charge, so to speak, but after we cross the line, activity in that part of the brain essentially shuts off, and our emotions "run as wild as toddlers on a sugar high." The result of too much information, therefore is that "people's decisions make less and less sense."

Which reminded me of Malcom Gladwell and the theory he posited in Blink: Successful decisions lie in between instinctive thinking and deliberate thinking. If, like me, you spend too much time researching prior to making a decision, you're not allowing your instincts enough input into the process. Over the years I've tried to "listen to my gut" when it speaks to me. At this point unless something is dreadfully, dreadfully wrong, I believe my gut isn't as "loud" as it used to be. Has it been muted by too much deliberate thought?

I discovered, for instance, way back when, when I worked in municipal management, that when a problem remained unsolvable for any period of time, that I needed to step away from it. I can't tell you how many nights I'd get into my car and drive home after too much thinking, when violà, the answer "came" to me. Even now, I often do my best thinking after going to bed, when I've given my brain a chance to relax. It's one of the main reasons I suffer from insomnia.

Reading Begley's article was like a kick in the pants for me to try and engage my instincts more and limit my deliberate thinking less.

This May Help Explain Things

Banned Books

Earlier in the week I read the "let's ban Slaughterhouse Five from our schools" editorial as written by that esteemed scholar Wesley Scroggins, in which he writes: "In English, children are also required to read a book called 'Slaughterhouse Five.'" Kurt Vonnegut's book is just one he believes is unsuitable for students in Missouri's Republic School District. The main target in his editorial entitled "Filthy Books Demeaning to Republic Education" is Laurie Halse Anderson's National Book Award nominee, Speak. Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer is also attacked; I'd like to read it for no other reason than that.

Anderson's cause has been taken up all over the Internet, and with this being Banned Book Week, many people are focusing on why books continue to be banned in 2010, particularly in the age of the Internet. As always, I tend to take a skewed view of things. What I find almost as appalling as the idea that 41 years after the publication of Kurt Vonnegut's now-classic novel, this book still requires defense from people whose heads aren't up their asses, is that this supposedly educated professor seems to have never before come across Slaughterhouse Five. I realize that he is not an English professor, but it shocked the hell out of me that any person who has earned a PhD in any field might not be literate.

FYI...the school district's superintendent reports that Slaughterhouse Five has since been removed from the curriculum. Guess that'll leave more time for students to learn chemistry - doesn't Missouri have one of the highest rates of meth lab activity in the country?

Banned Books

If a Nut Falls in the Forest, Ignore It

I just received a CNN Breaking News update indicating that Terry Jones has cancelled his Quran burning event scheduled for the weekend. This comes on the heels of another pastor, this one from Tennessee, indicating he would be holding his own Quran burning event. From what I gather, Jones has a following of about 50 people, begging the question that other people have stated better than I ever could: Why do the plans of some random nut constitute news?

I have 400 twitter followers...should I release a notice to the press that I plan to proclaim myself Queen of the World over the weekend? Would CNN and the NY Times come to my house and set up a round-the-clock vigil as I name my court and start handing down edicts? Actually, that sounds kind of fun, but you see my point.

Gail Collins argues persuasively in her editorial for today's Times that we give far too much power to the approximately 5% among us who are off their rockers. Why should our soldiers overseas be in even more danger than they already are as a result of Jones' ridiculous notions? Let him have a YouTube tirade, but here's an idea...when crazy people make crazy pronouncements, don't report them as news.

If you walk down a main street in most large cities, you're likely to see some crazy person trying to convince people of the end of the world. Do you stop and listen to his apocalyptic ramblings, or do you turn the other way - or perhaps cross the street altogether - to avoid him? Why do we treat people like Jones any differently? Before the advent of the Internet, before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, we didn't.

I wish we had Speaker's Corners in the U.S., or virtual ones, which would allow the crazies to make their crazy pronouncements while the rest of us went on with our lives.

If a Nut Falls in the Forest, Ignore It

Damn, I'm Pissed!

How ridiculous is the person who, after I post reviews at Amazon, immediately swings by to vote "not helpful?" I thought it was particularly hilarious this last time as the book won't even be released until next month, and given that it's among the launch books for a new fiction imprint for a publisher previously best known for the Chicken Soup books, it's not as though readers the world over have been holding their collective breath for reviews to surface.

Speaking of ridiculous, that's the term I'd apply to yesterday's Glenn Beck march. Beck chose the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech to ask that his Tea Party followers "turn back to God," and focus on what we've accomplished in this country as opposed to our failures. Ironic much?

I was in a foul mood for most of yesterday, but it wasn't until dinner that I realized my mood was based on this march. Watching video clips of person upon person upon person decry how the U.S. has become socialist and that we need to "take back" this country, I wanted to shout at all of them, "You are nothing but a puppet on a string!"

How did we get to a place where so many people believe "We're socialist because Obama wants to spread the wealth"...ah, I think I understand now.

We can start with Rupert Murdock, who has used his Fox News Network (and I use the term very loosely), to promulgate his far-right agenda. I'm not name-calling here; I'm not particularly happy with anyone at end of the political spectrum. But even if you are not among those who believe the "news" they see on Fox is "fair and balanced," you may not know about the brothers Koch. Their combined wealth is surpassed only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in the U.S., and they have quietly bankrolled the "grass-roots" effort of the Tea Party by spending $100,000,000 so far to convince people that our president wants to destroy our way of life. Their efforts are not benign, and they most assuredly are not out to help the "little guy," whose strings they are silently pulling. In other words, moneyed interests, once again, have somehow managed to set themselves up as the champion of the working class when their true agenda is more basic: It's my money, and I will do anything to keep it. I don't want you to have any of it, but I'll do whatever must be done to convince you that I'm out to protect your interests.

The Koch brothers are particularly dangerous in that they combine greed with down-right scary beliefs, such as the abolition of public schools, the FBI and CIA, federal regulatory agencies - such as the EPA - and Social Security. Why? Because funding any of this causes them to pay taxes...or limits their business profits. For instance, they are working to prevent the EPA from classifying one of their products - formaldehyde - as a "known carcinogen."

The view that government is the root of all evil and business is the natural protectorate of the people has gained a great deal of traction since George Bush became president. It's as though the world turned upside down and we forgot what led us into the financial crisis we see today.

The Koch brothers don't like paying taxes, they don't like government impinging on their bottom line, and they think government regulations and safety nets are for pussies. Who needs unemployment protection? If you give somebody unemployment protection, he'll stop looking for work. Public health? I pay my own way...why the hell shouldn't you, even if you earn a subsistence wage? Global warming? Believe us when we yell Poppycock...even though we're in the fossil-fuel business! And so on and so on.

People with such one-sided belief systems used to be known as the "fringe." Not so anymore, if you consider the popularity of Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, that nut-job Sharron Angle, not to mention the perpetually orange John Boehner, who once handed out money on the floor of the House from tobacco lobbyists. No spending because it'll increase the deficit...but by golly, let's cut taxes. No more money for the unemployed, even though the "official" unemployment rate stands at 10% and doesn't include those who have been unemployed so long they've given up looking for work, the bums! Hold BP accountable for the mess in the Gulf of Mexico? So sorry, I apologize for so much as thinking of it.

Were the Koch's to have their way, those such as the man directly implicated in the recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning, long considered a habitual violator and forced to pay fines in the millions of dollars over the years, would go blithely unchecked.

I can't wait to see what they'll come up with next...abolishing child labor laws, perhaps?

NYT columnist Frank Rich writes that the brothers Koch "must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests." He doesn't let Murdoch get away unscathed, though. While his network lambastes the "Ground Zero Mosque" and points fingers at a Saudi Prince said to be contributing to it, that same prince is "not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News' parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corp.) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox." As I like to say:

Just
follow
the
money.

Before I sign off, just one more depressing item in the news. The Republicans, who smell victory in November, are preparing to launch a series of investigations against the White House similar to those which occupied most of the Clinton presidency. An aide to one of the congressman overseeing the groundwork has already mentioned impeachment. In a nation where 41% of Republicans believe Obama was "probably or definitely born outside the country" and roughly one-third think that Obama is a Muslim (so what if he is, and I ask this as a Jew?), anything's possible.

Damn, I'm Pissed!

Business as Usual?

In another sign that our nation is veering headlong into corporate facism, both the FCC and Congress are engaging in closed-door meetings with ISP's to re-write telecom law, most likely to limit effects of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality, for those of you who have heard the term but are uncertain as to its meaning, is precisely what it says: that there be no restrictions used by those who provide the "pipes" for the Internet. In other words, An ISP must be neutral in allowing content through its pipes and cannot slow down access to or prevent users from access to online content.

Let me give you some personal, historical perspective. Years ago when AOL was still preeminent, AAR was not available to all of AOL's users. There was nothing as a content provider I could do about it. Indeed, I remember being stunned after speaking with somebody at AOL who told me, "We are not required to provide access to all websites online." Several years later, when a router in the Mid-West broke, AAR became unavailable for a good chunk of the country and the company that provided that router was not required to fix the break. Instead I was forced to pay AAR's host to create a fix around the break, and in the interim weeks, we lost untold thousands of users temporarily...and the number of users who simply thought we'd gone offline permanently remains unknown.

Let's jump to the future now, where Time/Warner exists and NBC and Comcast may be merging. Without Net Neutrality, when owners of the pipes that bring us content also own companies that generate large amounts of content, they can, quite legally, either slow down or stop the competition. In a case brought by Comcast against the FCC earlier this year, a federal appeals court stated that the FCC lacked the authority to require Net Neutrality, leading both the FCC and Congress scrambling to create some level of authority by regulation or law.

As public agencies do when preparing to enact regulatory changes, the FCC asked for public comment regarding Net Neutrality. Although 85% of respondents asked for Net Neutrality, these closed-door meetings signal yet another Obama administration deal limiting real change. Similar opaque, revolving-door meetings on Capital Hill - where nearly 3/4 of telecom lobbyists are former federal employees - are yet another sign of business as usual.

While I understand that changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary, it pains me to say that Barack Obama's efforts to avoid conflict and create compromise too often benefit the industries in need to regulation. It's one thing to hold meetings with telecom companies, but closed-door meetings stink of back-room deals.

Where's the sunshine?

Business as Usual?

Thanks to MediaFail

A week or so ago I joined the twitter feed for @mediafail and this morning clicked a link to the NYT, which I browse through daily anyway. The alert was for an article entitled 2010’s Debates Still Trapped in the 1960s, and though I am more a product of the 1970s than the 1960s, I was appalled at the lack of fundamental understanding about history's effects on the present exhibited by this article's author. I don't know how old Matt Bai is, but his argument reminded me of many an argument I've had with women younger than myself about feminism.

To say that race issues are nuanced today obliterates the fact that it was anything but nuanced in the 1960s. Had people not died for civil rights throughout the South in the 1960s, nobody could make the Tiger Woods and/or Barack Obama arguments about nuance that appear in Bai's article. To cavalierly say that times are different now not only fails to recognize the sacrifices made toward equality today, it also fails to paint an accurate picture of the country we would live in had the struggle not taken place.

When businesswomen in their late 20s or early 30s tell me that they are not feminists, I want to call them, as my friend Ellen would, "asshats," but as a civilized Coffee Party member, I'll refrain. I was lucky enough to have joined the professional workforce in the mid-80s, after the first wave of women had paved the way. Even so, I still contended with men who refused to take me seriously. I remember transforming a program at the City of Dallas from what previously had been a clerical dead-end into an extremely successful program that added hundreds of thousands of dollars into the City's coffers (that would otherwise have never been collected), and yet, until I practically threw my master's degree diploma at the face of the City attorney I'd be working with, he thought I was just "another female clerk."

For many the road had not only been paved but re-surfaced by the time they started their career journeys upon it, yet because their path has been smoother, they can't or won't recognize that they are living the lives of feminists, bought and paid for by the women that came before them. Whether it's complacency or they've bought into the "Femi-Nazi" trap, it's worth remembering that women still don't earn as much as men for doing the same job.

So please, Matt Bai, Rand Paul, and all you others who would have us believe that we live in a nuanced world today and need to change our worldviews in acceptance of it, please stop trying to dupe me. The fight by women and African Americans is still being fought. Yes, the world has changed and we no longer deny black men lunch-counter seats or chase women around desks, but the fight must continue. Women still make, on average, 79 cents for each dollar earned, on average, by men, and in the South, 47% of the population does not believe our president was born in the U.S. When that changes, come back to me and we'll have this discussion again.

Thanks to MediaFail

War by Sebastian Junger

War

Sebastian Junger

Grade: B+

War Memoir

Many years ago on my old blog I wrote about having a crush, in this instance, a nerd-crush, on the journalist Sebastian Junger. Junger and Fareed Zakaria are both journalists I keep tabs on. I watch Zakaria's Sunday CNN show without fail, and when War became available on my Kindle, I downloaded and read it. I just posted a review of it to Amazon and here's how it begins:

Sebastian Junger's reporting on Afghanastan pre-dates September 11th; he profiled Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Massoud for National Geographic in March 2001. Massoud, you may recall, was assassinated by al-Qaeda just two days prior to their attack on the U.S. Junger is best known for The Perfect Storm, but for years has reported from other hotspots like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Kosovo, often in advance of their becoming known to the wider public. For War, Junger embedded five times over a period of fourteen months with a platoon in the 2nd Battalion in the Korengal valley, Afghanistan, describing events not from a geopolitical perspective, but from that as a front-line soldier in a war most of us pay little heed. For me his book succeeds where Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor did not. While Luttrell's book begins brilliantly, his politics soon take over. Junger is more interested in what drives young men to fight, how they survive - not as individuals but as a unit - on a day-to-day basis in danger, isolation, and primitive conditions, and describes the nearly sexual thrill of combat...

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

War by Sebastian Junger

A Rant of Major Proportions

My husband graduated UT with an honor's degree in government. My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in political science. He has a law degree from SMU, which is where I earned my master's degree in public administration. Needless to say, we are both too knowledgeable for our own good when it comes to the world of politics and government, and when the Tea Party started becoming popular, it prompted a series of "what if?" conversations at our dinner table. They always become undone, however, by my need to erase history versus his insistence that we begin in the here and now and move forward. Let me explain.

My argument derives from the fact that for many a Tea Partier, our government should never have grown or changed since it began. Okay...I actually "give" them the first ten amendments to our Constitution, then stop. He doesn't. He doesn't believe we need to remove the Civil War or woman's suffrage and instead can defeat them simply if we start from 2010 and move forward, mostly because none of us are used to paying the true price for anything, be it milk or gasoline, and that if the federal government wasn't providing those subsidies, we'd experience such a lowering to our standard of living that either we'd be begging for increased federal input or the Tea Partiers would next set their sights on their individual state governments, which would have had to have increased taxes to make up the losses.

If the argument is that the federal government exists solely to provide for the public defense, they get a "gimme" in the national highway system; the impetus President Eisenhower gave for their creation of our interstates is the movement of troops. Of course, given the post WW-II migration from urban areas to the suburbs, that wasn't his only reason, but I'm feeling generous this afternoon.

That's because I have the New Deal on my side. I know it's become fashionable on the far right to decry FDR's New Deal as a bad thing, and, yes, I realize that it was a combination of the New Deal and WWII that lifted us out of the Great Depression, but even forgetting such New Deal creations as the FDIC, which today we hold as sacrosanct and which equally obviously does not contribute to our nation's defense, what about WWII itself? In my view, we would have entered into a war with Japan after Pearl Harbor, but would not have joined the Allies in Europe. And had we not stormed Normandy and taken part in battles across Europe, the Germans probably would have won, and as a Jew, I might not actually be alive today to blog about this.

I could go on and on...our dinner table discussions do, after all, but my point, and there is one, is that recent statements by Rand Paul, along with the Texas Board of Education's attempts to rewrite history through textbook changes, allow me to focus my ire. On the one hand, Rand Paul states that he likes the Civil Rights Act. And yet he then makes a statement that the federal government has overreached. How does somebody argue both and disconnect them as he attempts to do? Without federal involvement the South would not have been forced to desegregate as those at the forefront of maintaining the status quo - of segregated drinking fountains, lunch counters, and Jim Crow laws in general - were elected state and local officials. Of course, if there were no 14th Amendment to the Constitution, there would be no equal protection clause, and no reason to undo a century of "separate but equal." So is it the 14th Amendment or the CRA that featured federal overreaching?

And how about those textbook changes...wasn't it bad enough that the Virginia Governor "forgot" to include a mention of slavery in his Civil War proclamation? Should our textbooks be changed so that the Slave Trade becomes the "Atlantic Triangular Trade?" Should students study Jefferson Davis's inaugural as President of the Confederate States of America because they already study Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural? The board member who fought that argument won, and if the changes go through, you can look for Davis highlights in the future.

Did Phyllis Schlafly impact the U.S. as much or more so than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom the same board member wanted excised from textbooks altogether? That last one gets my dander up because I once actually heard Schlafly speak in person and my impression was that she only became as famous as she did because of the old "dancing dog" syndrome. In other words, because she was a woman with beliefs vastly different than other famous women, she was trotted out to dance. One could easily argue - and easily win, I think - that without Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Singer, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinham, and Bella Abzug, there would have been no Phyllis Schlafly, that without radical women forcing progress, women like Schlafly would never have been allowed to vote, let alone earned the chance to attend law school and become a darling of the right. Of course, if we took it back to the beginning, there would have been no 19th Amendment, and Barbara Cargill would likely not be sitting on the Texas Board of Education at all.

IIRC, no historians make up the elected Texas Board of Education, which meets today for a final vote on the proposed changes. Will this be yet another embarrassment for those of us who are thinking citizens of the state of Texas? And will Rand Paul's GOP nomination implode because logic demands it?

A Rant of Major Proportions

Financial Reform...It's Complicated (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

The national Coffee Party page on Facebook this morning reports on an amendment Senator Christopher Dodd is trying to attach to the Financial Regulation bill that would remove the derivatives spin-off portion requiring that the largest banks spin off their derivatives desks into regulated entities not guaranteed by taxpayers. He proposes to instead have the issue studied by a group of regulators whose members have "serious reservations about such a dramatic measure," and may try to kill it.

According to The Washington Post, it isn't just banks who are against the derivatives spin-off; regulators and officials in the Obama administration believe it "could drive the business into the shadows." Is this spin from Wallmerica or are those in agreement with Dodd's amendment correct in their assertion that the spin-off "would harm U.S. competitiveness or lead to less regulation of the derivatives market, valued at half a quadrillion dollars"?

The Coffee Party has taken a stand against the Dodd amendment and asks that you consider using a letter from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) that you'll find below as a template for those interested in writing your senators. If instead of a letter or email you wish to call your senator, please consider using the bullet points contained in the following when contacting the U.S. Capital Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Given that we live in a global economy, I thought I'd share what the European Union is doing about derivatives. According to an AP article on Yahoo News, new rules will increase oversight and set fines for manipulating trades. The European market for "largely unregulated" derivatives is worth $600 trillion. Key to the new rules is the registration of "all products and trading" so that regulators can access the derivatives...and the investors behind them because, "These people don't like coming out in the light so we are going to flood them with light," said EU Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier.

But back to the American market for the moment, and the AFR letter...

Dear Senator,

The over 250 consumer, employee, investor, community and civil rights groups who are members of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) write to express strong support for Section 716 (“Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities”) and our opposition to the new Amendment #4110 to replace the provision with a study. The study would put the final decision over implementing this important new structural reform in the hands of regulators who have already publicly expressed their opposition to it.

The following are rebuttals to the primary arguments that have been advanced against Sec. 716:

Swaps Desks will Remain within the Bank Holding Company: Sen. Lincoln has clarified that the amendment would only separate derivatives desks from the core bank within the bank holding company – that is, the insured depository institution that has access to the Federal Reserve window. Moving these operations outside of the federally-protected core of the bank will only reduce the risk of future bailouts, still enabling the holding company to benefit from this lucrative business.

716 Will Not Lead to Weaker Regulation or Flight Overseas: Americans for Financial Reform is committed to bringing derivatives out of the shadows; we would not support a provision that weakened oversight of derivatives dealers. Under the derivatives title, any major swap participant will be subject to oversight and safeguards for capital adequacy, transparency, anti-fraud and anti-manipulation. In addition, the claim that the market will migrate overseas ignores the economic turmoil in Europe that was in large part exacerbated by unregulated derivatives activities.

Derivatives Dealing is Not the Usual Course of Banking: Some have argued that derivatives selling should remain within the core depository institutions because it is part of the “usual business of banking”. If that were the case, then why do only 5 out of America’s over 8,000 banks – the Wall Street banks JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – account for over 90 percent of this market? The “usual” banking businesses in the U.S., represented by the Independent Community Bankers Association of America, support Sec. 716.

Banks Can Still Use Derivatives to Hedge Their Risk Under 716: Separating swap dealing operations from the business of banking does not mean that banks will be unable to hedge their banking risks. They will be customers and trade on open exchanges and clearinghouses.

Purely speculative financial derivatives now represent $78 for every $1 in true hedging by businesses and farmers. By quarantining highly risky swaps trading from banking altogether, federally insured deposits will not be put at risk by toxic swaps transactions. Moreover, banks will be forced to behave like banks, focusing on extending credit in a manner that builds economic strength as opposed to fostering worldwide economic instability.

For these reasons, Americans for Financial Reform urges you to oppose Amendment #4110. Please contact Lisa Lindsley, Director, Capital Strategies, AFSCME, for more information.

Sincerely,
Americans for Financial Reform

~Laurie G

Financial Reform...It's Complicated (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

The rallying cry for the Coffee Party is "Wake Up and Stand Up. Yet there is so much negative hateful rhetoric floating around these days that otherwise intelligent people are afraid. Afraid that by standing up, we will incite the fringe folk into doing dangerous things. So afraid, in fact, that they believe we must instead stand down, and further, pull the covers over our heads.

Obviously this is not a view to which I subscribe. Appeasement is never the answer. It failed when the Europeans tried it in the 1930s, and can you imagine what this country would have looked like had Abraham Lincoln appeased the South...or allowed secession rather than standing up for our Constitution?

We live in a polarizing time, with two entrenched sides who often cede control to the fringes rather than creating a larger, more inclusive tent in the middle. And so at times we have left-wing Democrats who are willing to cut their noses off to spite their own faces, refusing to settle for incremental changes while at the same time right-wing Republicans turn obstructionist, resulting in grid-lock that causes them to move ever-farther to the right.

Judging by his actions, Barack Obama is a moderate president. And yet he provokes even more anti-government rhetoric than Bill Clinton - another moderate president - did. Many of Obama's stances were once also taken by Republican presidents Reagan, Nixon, or Bush (take your pick as to I or II).

Whenever I can't use logic to figure something out, I remember something I learned in graduate school: Follow the money. And that's where I think much of the dissension lies. The billions spent by the health care industry to prevent health care reform, the millions the financial industry is spending to prevent reform, and the money just pledged by AT&T to gain a stronger foothold in the fight against Net Neutrality...what do each of these three things have in common? The bottom line is the bottom line. Lots and lots of people and companies became very, very wealthy during the Clinton and Bush II years, and as time went on, most of the money rose to the top and consolidated among fewer and fewer.

Since Barack Obama won the presidential election of 2008 and the birthers started yammering, I began to well and truly believe that among those who have accumulated the greatest wealth are those who would do just about anything to keep it. It is in their interest to distract us, to make and keep us angry. The middle class may indeed be disappearing, but when considering the cause, ask yourself, who has the most to lose? If you have difficulty answering this question, consider that the top 1% own 42% of wealth in the U.S. The next 19% own an additional 50%, leaving the remaining 80% of us owning less than 10%. Even more astonishingly, of all the new financial wealth created since the Reagan presidency, nearly half of it went to the top 1%...nearly 95% went to the top 20%.

If you come to the same conclusion that I have - that money funds anti-reform movements as well as obsfucating the truth from those ignorant enough to search for it themselves - you will undoubtedly conclude that now is the precisely the time for us not to stand down. Now is the time for us to stand up, to make the voice of reason rise above the voices of anger and ignorance.

~Laurie G

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

What if You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came? (Transferred from Short-Lived DCP blog)

Yes...I'm impatient. And because there are multiple admins on the Join the Coffee Party Movement, Dallas page on Facebook, as well as members posting, it's difficult for members to find some of what I'd like them to find. Namely, this blog and the @dallascoffee twitter feed I set up earlier in the week. Because right now I feel like I'm giving a coffee party by myself.

This morning I decided to get pro-active about it...even more proactive than actually setting up the blog, twitter feed, writing up blog entries and finding articles of interest to forward via the twitter feed. So I searched twitter using @coffeeparty as my search item and clicked the "follow" button for other Coffee Party feeds, and, in addition, some feeds that look like they focus -on the Coffee Party.

Here's problem one: When you follow another feed, all their tweets show up on it, which is why although @laurie_gold follows @dallascoffee, @dallascoffee does not follow @laurie_gold. If, in fact, the feeds I selected focus almost exclusively on Coffee Party matters, everything will be copesetic. If not, though, if there are as many non-topic tweets that exist in my personal feed, I'll need to unfollow, putting me back at square one. Unless, of course, the feeds I've picked up pick me up in return, which has happened...just once...today. Meaning that I am no longer the sole follower of @dallascoffee.

Although I've used twitter for quite a while now, tagging is new to me. My @laurie_gold tweets are meant for family, friends, acquaintances, and those involved with books, publishing, and the like. Today I realized if I find a way to condense my tweets even more so that I can fit in "#coffeeparty" within the allotted 140 characters, my @dallascoffee tweets will get picked up and read by others searching for tweets on the Coffee Party, which is what happened earlier when I tweeted a link to the NYT on financial reform.

Now, back to the Facebook page for a moment...and the multiple admins. As it stands, there is no distinguishing which admin posted to the page - until now. In learning how to handle my new Droid phone, I've gone back and forth between using Facebook's "full site" in non-mobile mode and the mobile app because I'm still learning the ins and outs of copying and pasting on various apps. Today I discovered that when I post to the Dallas Facebook page for the Coffee Party using the full-site method, my icon is the generic cup of coffee. But, when I post using the Droid app, my personal icon is what appears after I hit the "share" button.

That still leaves one issue hanging out there - the ability to change the default on the Dallas Coffee Party Facebook page so that the "Info" page rather than "Wall" is where visitors land. It seems to me that if we want to actually use the twitter feed and this blog to their utmost, we need to direct people here.

For instance, I'd love to properly publicize the showing at the Angelika on the 28th of the documentary film release Captain Jack and the United States of Money, to direct readers to the Facebook RSVP page. I'd love to use this blog not only to publicize events and meetings, but to use it as a forum to talk about issues in a unique way to promote discussion.

I'd like to continue posting articles like the two I wrote earlier in the week. I believe that by making connections others may not necessarily leap to, I can educate and inform without being pedantic or partisan. But if nobody's here to read the content, what, really, is the point? It becomes nothing but mental masturbation.

Facebook is a terrific and easy way to introduce a concept, but as a way to motivate and mobilize, so far I've been unable to tap its potential. If you can help me figure it out, please do, either by commenting here, or through an email up at Facebook. In the interim, for those looking for something substantive and tangible, here is an urgent notice from the national Coffee Party page on Facebook, followed by local Event Listings, their links, and some detail:

Join the Coffee Party Movement
URGENT: We have at least one more day to convince our senators to support the Merkley-Levin Amendment. Lobbying from the Big Banks are at a fever pitch in DC right now because this amendment spells real reform. It would ensure that American tax payers don't guarantee Wall St banks' risky bets and would stop banks from engaging in Goldman-Sachs-style bets against their own clients. Let's put (202) 224-3121 on speed dial and call: Klobuchar-MN, Nelson-NE, Brown-MA, Landrieu-LA, Lugar-IN, Corker-TN, Alexander-TN, Bayh-IN, Lugar-IN, Snowe-ME, Collins-ME, Hagan-NC, Warner-VA, Schumer-NY, Gillibrand-NY #coffeeparty

Captain Jack & the United States of Money A documentary about Jack Abramoff	5321 Mockingbird Ln. Dallas, TX 75206 Friday, May 28th from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Leadership Training For those interesting in hosting a Coffee Party event	Fish City on Henderson, Dallas, TX Saturday, May 22nd from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm

Help spread the word about these pertinent events and notices, make plans to participate somehow, and forward the link for this blog entry to other Dallas Coffee Party members.

~Laurie G

What if You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came? (Transferred from Short-Lived DCP blog)

What Lies Beneath? (Posted on Toe in the Water & short-lived DCP blog)

Today I read on the Huffington Post that according to USA TODAY, "Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency." Further, the newspaper reports that while personal income fell 2%, paid taxes dropped 23%, excluding Social Security. While it's true that spending has increased in order to help the country climb out of the recession, it's also true that among those polled by Gallup last month, those who believe taxes are too high are the same taxpayers whose taxes remain "near a 50-year low."

What lies beneath that sort of disconnect? Yesterday a YouTube video posted last September enjoyed a resurgence. The video, which features two candidates for Texas governor who belong to the secessionist movement, seem to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Indeed, what stuck in my mind as I watched it [again] was hearing Debra Medina announce, in response to shouts of "We hate the United States," that, "We are aware that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." Hearing Thomas Jefferson's words come out of this woman's mouth sickened me.

It was my daughter who actually alerted me to the video. She very much objected to the video's title at YouTube - Texas Filled With Insane Christian Republican Terrorists - particularly because the link was provided by one of the the other Dallas Coffee Party Movement admins on our Facebook page, and a core value of the Coffee Party Movement is to eliminate the name-calling that passes for political discourse these days.

I agree that the video's title was unnecessarily incendiary; its contents make the case without resorting to name-calling. That said, those heard on the video are actively shouting their hatred of the United States, bastardized the words of the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence, and by doing so advocated the violent overthrow of our government.

When George Bush took office, the projected 10-year budget surplus he inherited became a deficit that ballooned as a result of tax cuts combined with increased spending, as well as two unfunded wars, one of which was supposed to pay for itself. Interestingly, the same individuals now calling for the blood of tyrants and patriots to water the tree of freedom, were not doing so until Barack Obama was elected president.

It seems to me that the vehemence directed against Obama's "socialist" government grew out of proposed health care reform. In March on my personal blog, I wrote that in the rest of the developed world, citizens share health care while in the U.S. it's something we horde. They see it as a basic human right while we see it as a privilege, even though nearly 2/3 of personal bankruptcies, historically, are a result of medical bills. Could it be that all the money the health care industry spent lobbying Congress and with advertising aimed at the public against reform were successful in convincing the same people who believe their taxes are too high that, as reported in Salon, "healthcare reform helped 'other people' and not themselves"?

I can't help but wonder whether "other" is coded language that feeds into the worst impulses of a certain segment of Americans, perhaps those who preach that "others" don't have "small-town values." Is what lies beneath...black?

If you feel so inclined as to comment, please do so on the Coffee Party Blog...I'm hoping somebody will actually visit. It's very, very lonely!

What Lies Beneath? (Posted on Toe in the Water & short-lived DCP blog)

Corporate Fascism? (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

Earlier today a headline caught my eye on Larry Hardy's Facebook page. The summary read: As a nation, we have officially ventured down the rabbit hole of big corporate spending in political campaigns, as a Texas company recently placed the first campaign ad paid for solely by corporate profits. I clicked the link and read the full article at The Wonk Room.

Because blogs often mix opinion with straight reporting, I did a Google search to find additional reporting from newspapers and news magazines. There wasn't any that I could find. The second page of results that included blogs large and small, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and Newser, among others, I found a link to a transcript from CNN dated April 26th; further investigation into the owner of the Texas company revealed a link to The Houston Chronicle.

Details from both cable network's transcripts and the Houston newspaper match what The Wonk Room blogger wrote about, which is that for the first time, a company's profits were used to pay for political ads - in this case, against incumbent Chuck Hopson, who holds the East Texas 11th seat in the State Legislature. The company, KDR, is a real estate business whose owner, Larry Durrett, also owns a franchise restaurant business. In 2006 Durrett ran, unsuccessfully, against Hopson.

Prior to the Supreme Court's January ruling in the Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission case, which overthrew a 63-year-old precedent, this would not have been allowed under Texas law. After the Court's 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizen's United, the Texas Election Commission sanctioned unlimited political spending by corporations...and unions. A March 27th editorial in the Chronicle indicates that such spending can't be coordinated with candidate campaigns, although "joint efforts would be difficult to prove." Further, the editorial noted that "The content of Durrett's ads are notably similar to campaign pieces by Hopson's opponents."

Although in this instance Hopson defeated Durrett, many legal scholars and political scientists are convinced that corporate influence, most often felt these days through lobbyists (a substantial chunk of the $3.47 billion spent lobbying Congress last year was against health care), will grow even stronger. According to the editorial, "In the brave new world of post-Citizens United, multi-million-dollar corporate media blitzes directed against opponents for either personal or political reasons could become the norm." What the Court decided in January moves us one step closer to what I consider corporate fascism. Mussolini's definition of fascism, FWIW, is a merger of State and corporate power. What do you think?

In response to the January decision, Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen, joined by Republican Mike Castle, introduced a bill that would, among other things, require CEO's to appear in political ads, and to inform company shareholders about political spending. If I've read correctly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes the Congressmen are over-reacting. What say you?

~Laurie G

Corporate Fascism? (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)