This is pretty interesting. It's the annual Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders. It takes into account a huge range of factors from "do the reporters go to jail / get assassinated" to "are the reporters able to fully protect their sources?" Worth a read.

At the very least, no boys were involved this time around.
 

..

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

The show "The Untouchables" on the respected private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.

The Vatican issued a statement Thursday criticizing the "methods" used in the journalistic investigation. But it confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing "sadness over the publication of reserved documents."

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state's gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure.

Vigano, currently the Vatican's ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.

In one letter, Vigano tells the pope of a smear campaign against him (Vigano) by other Vatican officials who wanted him transferred because they were upset that he had taken drastic steps to save the Vatican money by cleaning up its procedures.

"Holy Father, my transfer right now would provoke much disorientation and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been rooted in the management of so many departments," Vigano wrote to the pope on March 27, 2011.

In another letter to the pope on April 4, 2011, Vigano says he discovered the management of some Vatican City investments was entrusted to two funds managed by a committee of Italian bankers "who looked after their own interests more than ours."

LOSS OF $2.5 MILLION, 550,000 EURO NATIVITY SCENE

Vigano says in the same letter that in one single financial transaction in December, 2009, "they made us lose two and a half million dollars."

The program interviewed a man it identified as a member of the bankers' committee who said Vigano had developed a reputation as a "ballbreaker" among companies that had contracts with the Vatican, because of his insistence on transparency and competition.

The man's face was blurred on the transmission and his voice was distorted in order to conceal his identity.

In one of the letters to the pope, Vigano said Vatican-employed maintenance workers were demoralized because "work was always given to the same companies at costs at least double compared to those charged outside the Vatican."

For example, when Vigano discovered that the cost of the Vatican's larger than life nativity scene in St Peter's Square was 550,000 euros in 2009, he chopped 200,000 euros off the cost for the next Christmas, the program said.

Even though, Vigano's cost-cutting and transparency campaign helped turned Vatican City's budget from deficit to surplus during his tenure, in 2011 unsigned articles criticizing him as inefficient appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

On March 22, 2011, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone informed Vigano that he was being removed from his position, even though it was to have lasted until 2014.

Five days later he wrote to Bertone complaining that he was left "dumbfounded" by the ouster and because Bertone's motives for his removal were identical to those published in an anonymous article published against him in Il Giornale that month.

In early April, Vigano went over Bertone's head again and wrote directly to the pope, telling him that he had worked hard to "eliminate corruption, private interests and dysfunction that are widespread in various departments."

He also tells the pope in the same letter that "no-one should be surprised about the press campaign against me" because he tried to root out corruption and had made enemies.

Despite his appeals to the pope that a transfer, even if it meant a promotion, "would be a defeat difficult for me to accept," Vigano was named ambassador to Washington in October of last year after the sudden death of the previous envoy to the United States.

In its statement, the Vatican said the journalistic investigation had treated complicated subjects in a "partial and banal way" and could take steps to defend the "honor of morally upright people" who loyally serve the Church.

The statement said that today's administration was a continuation of the "correct and transparent management that inspired Monsignor Vigano."

(Reporting By Philip Pullella)
..

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read.p...ARSDCCI1_UNEWS

Prison dilemma: surging numbers of older inmates
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer The Associated Press
Friday, January 27, 2012 7:12 AM EST

NEW YORK (AP) — In corrections systems nationwide, officials are grappling with decisions about geriatric units, hospices and medical parole as elderly inmates — with their high rates of illness and infirmity — make up an ever increasing share of the prison population.

At a time of tight state budgets, it's a trend posing difficult dilemmas for policymakers. They must address soaring medical costs for these older inmates and ponder whether some can be safely released before their sentences expire.

The latest available figures from 2010 show that 8 percent of the prison population — 124,400 inmates — was 55 or older, compared to 3 percent in 1995, according to a report being released Friday by Human Rights Watch. This oldest segment grew at six times the rate of the overall prison population between 1995 and 2010, the report says.


thats the first paragraphs.........interesting read and poses some real questions......

I'm glad to hear Antioch is back up and running, and this is and awesome way to kick off.
 

How to Get a $106,000 College Education for Free
Lynn O'Shaughnessy

Friday, January 27, 2012

How would you like to go to a private liberal arts college that will give you a full-ride tuition scholarship for four years? Sounds crazy? Actually, I'm serious.
Antioch College in Yellow Spring, Ohio, is waiving the tuition for all its students, who enroll in the next three years. How much are these freebies worth? The value of the free tuition for the current year is $26,500. The scholarship, based on that price, makes each scholarship worth at least $106,000. Some students, who file financial aid applications, will capture an even greater price break. If they qualify, they may get to skip the room and board charges or pay a reduced price. Antioch's room and board is currently $8,628.

Why So Generous?

Obviously, it's unheard of for a college to offer free tuition to its all students. There is, however, an explanation for the generosity. Antioch is crawling out of the grave. Antioch College, which was originally founded by abolitionists in 1850, shut its door in 2008 after years of decline. Terrible management decisions, among other reasons, led to the closure, but tremendous financial support from dedicated alumni, who were appalled at the closure, led to its rebirth.

Antioch welcomed 35 students into its inaugural freshmen class in 2011 and it hopes to welcome another 65 to 75 students in the fall. The school's goal is to have about 300 students attending the school by 2015. "We are a 160-year-old start-up institution with a lot of history," says Cezar Mesquita, Antioch's dean of admission and financial aid. The college wants to make an investment in hard-working, engaged students, "who can help restart this great institution."

Antioch had always been known for its work cooperative program and that tradition has returned. All students will have numerous work opportunities during their four years that include, local, national and international experiences. At this point, the school offers 12 areas of concentration ranging from environmental and health sciences to languages and social sciences.

Academic Profile of Antioch Students

The inaugural class, which hailed from states throughout the country, had an average unweighted high school GPA of 3.56 and an average ACT score of 27, which is roughly the equivalent of a 1250 on the SAT. If you're a high school senior, there is still time to apply! Antioch's admission deadline is Feb. 15.

Careful, folks
 

Not to be a downer about Antioch College, but please be aware of accreditation issues before you decide to send junior there for free. They are not yet accredited. It might be a fantastic school, but if it is not accredited, well.....

The free part makes sense now. They need some students to get accredited and in order to get kids to come to their lack of credentialed school, they need to make it free.

Bummer.


http://antiochcollege.org/about/accreditation.html

The school must have lost accreditation when it closed. Hopefully, that's a temporary situation. It was a great school for 156 years.

Here's what I tell the students at the state school where I teach. Be wary if -

- if the school has a banner ad on your email screen,

- if recruiters tell you to 'not worry about costs; financial aid will cover everything,'

- if recruiters call you multiple times (I have a recruiter calling my cell every couple days from Everest College - I've called back the number),

- if the school has pop up ads, if the application process seems incredibly simplistic,

- if it seems to good to be true.

There are schools that aren't accredited. Be wary and do your due diligence with any school or program you're considering.

Jedi finally recieve rights to same sex marriage!



FRC: 'Rebel Fleet Surrenders to Gay Empire'

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten...ers-gay-empire

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice



http://www.livescience.com/18132-int...sm-racism.html

Maddow to Media: Ask Romney About Antigay Donations



http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...gay_Donations/

Wonderful article, but I should keep my promise to myself to never read the comments on any news item that says anything critical about politically conservative people. Yikes!

While clarifying remarks linking civil rights to gay marriage, Gov. Christie calls N.J. assemblyman 'numbnuts'




http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/201...s_his_rem.html

http://www.npr.org/webapp#1008/145926123

'Consent' Asks: Who Owns The Internet?
By NPR Staff
January 30, 2012
Morning Edition [ 0 min. 0 sec. ]

While the Internet may aid the spread of democracy, democracy doesn't necessarily mean a free and open Internet. In her new book Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, Rebecca MacKinnon, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and co-founder of Global Voices, a citizen media network, investigates the corrosion of civil liberties by the governments and corporations that control the digital world.

"The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?" MacKinnon tells Morning Edition's Renee Montagne......<snip>

Transgender People are Completely Banned From Boarding Airplanes in Canada

The offending section of the regulations reads:

5.2 (1) An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if …
(c) the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents;

Panetta: Decision to Kill Americans Suspected of Terrorism Is Obama's

—By Adam Serwer

In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed more about the secret process the Obama administration uses to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial. According to Panetta, the president himself approves the decision based on recommendations from top national security officials.

"[The] President of the United States, obviously reviews these cases, reviews the legal justification and in the end says, go or no go," Panetta said.

"So it’s the requirement of the administration under the current legal understanding is that the president has to make that declaration, not you?" Pelley asked. Panetta replied, "That is correct."

The process by which national security officials determine whether or not American citizens suspected of terrorism can be killed remains opaque. The administration has leaked information about certain targets, but it has never released the legal justification for doing so, nor has it explained the system by which members of the National Security Council reportedly decide to put an American citizen on a so-called "kill list." In October, Reuters' Mark Hosenball wrote that the president doesn't necessarily explicitly approve strikes—instead, the attacks go forward unless the president objects.

Panetta's explanation of why he believes killing an American citizen without due process is legal wasn't exactly comforting. Here's the exchange:

PANETTA: Without getting into the specifics of the operation, if someone is a citizen of the United States, and is a terrorist, who wants to attack our people and kill Americans, in my book that person is a terrorist. And the reality is that under our laws, that person is a terrorist. And we’re required under a process of law, to be able to justify, that despite the fact that person may be a citizen, he is first and foremost a terrorist who threatens our people, and for that reason, we can establish a legal basis on which we oughta go after that individual, just as we go after bin Laden, just as we go after other terrorists. Why? Because their goal is to kill our people, and for that reason we have to defend ourselves.

PELLEY: They’re not entitled to due process of law under the Constitution of the United States? They lose their citizenship if this administration decides they’re a terrorist?

PANETTA: If this person wanted to suddenly raise questions about whether or not they’re a terrorist, and the were to return to the United States of course they would be entitled to due process. that’s something we provide any US citizen. And for that matter frankly any terrorist who is arrested, we provide due process to that individual as well. But if a terrorist is out there on the battlefield, and the terrorist is threatening this country, that person is an enemy combatant, and when an enemy combatant holds a gun at your head, you fire back.

Panetta's explanation isn't much more complex than "when we say someone is a terrorist, then we can kill them, because they're a terrorist." The entire point of due process, however, is to determine whether or not someone is actually guilty. The defense secretary's metaphor—that you can fire back when someone "holds a gun to your head"—might justify killing an American citizen who is fighting on an actual battlefield, like Afghanistan. But it suggests violence as an appropriate response to an imminent threat, rather than the actual circumstances under which say, radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki appears to have been killed.

President Obama just signed a bill that, if not for its many administrative loopholes, would "mandate" military detention for non-citizen terror suspects apprehended on American soil, so it's not accurate for Panetta to state that "any" suspected terrorist apprehended by the US receives due process. The vast majority of the nearly two hundred detainees at Gitmo have never been charged with anything, let alone tried and convicted. Osama bin Laden was the admitted leader of a group engaged in an armed conflict against US troops in Afghanistan; concrete evidence that al-Awlaki was more than a font for extremist propaganda has never been aired.

There's also an Orwellian element to Panetta's argument that anyone on the US kill list should simply turn themselves in and get a fair trial. As Glenn Greenwald reminds us, we only know that al-Awlaki was on the "kill list" because his name was leaked to the press. Any other Americans who might be on the list have no way of knowing they've been targeted absent leaks from administration officials or the sound they hear right before they're annihilated by a Hellfire missile. (Even calling friends, family, or a lawyer to turn yourself in could be the act that gets you killed.) If such an individual did know he was on the list, how exactly is he supposed to believe he'd have "due process" after giving himself up, given that he's already been sentenced to death by the administration? Is a fair trial even possible under those circumstances?

Report proposes dividing Great Lakes, Mississippi

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternew...-Lakes-290.jpg

(AP) TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Groups representing states and cities in the Great Lakes region on Tuesday proposed spending up to $9.5 billion on a massive engineering project to separate the lakes from the Mississippi River watershed in the Chicago area, describing it as the only sure way to protect both aquatic systems from invasions by destructive species such as Asian carp. The organizations issued a report suggesting three alternatives for severing an artificial link between the two drainage basins that was constructed more than a century ago. Scientists say it has already provided a pathway for exotic species and is the likeliest route through which menacing carp could reach the lakes, where they could destabilize food webs and threaten a valuable fishing industry.

"We simply can't afford to risk that," said Tim Eder, executive director of the Great Lakes Commission, which sponsored the study with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. "The Great Lakes have suffered immensely because of invasive species. We have to put a stop to this." The report's release is sure to ramp up pressure on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is conducting its own study of how to close off 18 potential pathways between the two systems, including the Chicago waterways. The corps plans to release its findings in late 2015, a timetable it says is necessary because of the job's complexity and regulatory requirements. A pending federal lawsuit by five states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania — demands quicker action. "This study shows that hydrological separation is both technically and economically feasible," said Rep. Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican.

A spokeswoman said the corps would not comment until it could review the report. The project that linked the two drainage basins began in the 1890s when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to flush sewage away from the city and into a newly built, 28-mile-long canal that created a connection between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. It is now a network of rivers, locks and canals. In their report, the two groups call for placing barriers at key points to cut off the flow of water between the two drainage basins by 2029. One alternative would put barriers in five locations near Lake Michigan. Another would erect a single barrier in the ship canal before it branches off into connecting waterways. A third plan would use four barriers. The report does not express a preference but says the four-barrier plan would cost less than the others — between $3.26 billion and $4.27 billion. That plan, the report says, would cause less disruption of waterborne commerce and fewer problems with flood and stormwater control, all of which opponents contend would result from dividing the two systems. It also comes closest to restoring the natural divide between the watersheds, said David Ullrich, executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

The report doesn't make a detailed proposal for covering the costs but says the four-barrier plan could be done if the average household in the Great Lakes basin paid about $1 a month through 2059. The five-barrier and single-barrier plans' price tags could reach about $9.5 billion. Despite the high cost, the report's sponsors said the project would save money in the long run by shielding both systems from species invasions. Zebra and quagga mussels and sea lamprey already have exacted a heavy toll on the Great Lakes economy, and the region's leaders fear the Asian carp could make things much worse. "Yes, it's expensive. But the cost of doing nothing is greater," Ullrich said.

Asian carp escaped from Southern fish farms and sewage treatment plants decades ago and migrated up the Mississippi and its tributaries, gobbling up plankton that is essential for other nourishing other fish. The study, commissioned by the two groups and developed by a private engineering firm, will make the idea of separation easier for people in the region to grasp, said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a Chicago-based environmental group. "It's a natural, practical, on-the-ground map of how to get it done," Brammeier said. Mark Biel, chairman of an Illinois business coalition called UnLock Our Jobs that opposes separating the watersheds, said the Great Lakes groups' proposals would take many years to carry out and would devastate cargo shipping and pleasure boating in the Chicago area while doing nothing to prevent species invasions elsewhere. "Calling this a solution is ludicrous," Biel said.

But the report's authors said their plan envisions upgrades to docks and other infrastructure that, in the long run, would boost water commerce while improving water quality and flood protection. The barriers themselves would make up just 3 percent of the total cost. The Army Corps of Engineers contends an electric barrier in the shipping canal is preventing Asian carp and other fish from swimming upstream toward Lake Michigan, although carp DNA has been found beyond the device. Eder said the barrier is a good temporary measure, but not a permanent solution.

"It's kind of like the old Clint Eastwood adage, 'How lucky do you feel?'" he said. "We can take chances that the electric barrier and other measures will work, but I don't think we should."

http://www.luresforfishing.org/wp-co...rp-jumping.jpg

Scientific American

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_1...s-mississippi/

Fact Check – Obama and ‘Equal Pay’ for Women
 

I don't remember this Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act he signed into law. If the goal was "equal pay" for "equal work", why is it called a "fair pay" act? Wonder why "equal pay" + "equal work" = "fair pay" reminds me of something along the lines of "separate but equal"?


Jan 31, 2012

Three years after he signed it into law, President Obama has made the little-known Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act the centerpiece of his re-election pitch to women.

It’s a “big step toward making sure every worker in this country, man or woman, receives equal pay for equal work,” Obama says in a video to supporters on his campaign blog.

The legislation repeatedly tops Obama’s list of accomplishments in stump speeches on the campaign trail and is cited as a fulfilled promise from 2008.

“Change is the first bill I signed into law that enshrines a very simple proposition,” Obama told a crowd of donors at the Apollo Theater Jan. 19. “You get an equal day’s pay for an equal’s day work.”

The idea that Obama has narrowed the gender pay gap is also the subject of an aggressive digital media push to promote his record and enlist new members to the group “Women for Obama.”

“Ensuring equal pay for women was @BarackObama’s first act as President, but not his last,” reads a message posted to the Obama for America twitter account for New Mexico, @OFA_NM.

Actress Kerry Washington, an Obama surrogate in Florida, was even more direct in a promotional video on the campaign’s blog: “There’s equal pay for women,” she declares outright.

The only problem? Women don’t enjoy equal pay, it’s improved little during Obama’s term and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has hardly been a “big step” toward the goal.

In 2010, the most recent data available, women on average earned 77.4 cents for every dollar earned by men holding the same full-time, year-round job, according to Census data analyzed by the National Committee on Pay Equity.

The gap was virtually unchanged from 2009, when it was 77 percent and 2008 when it stood at 77.1 percent, before the law was enacted.

Pay inequity remains most pronounced among women of color. African-American women made 67.7 percent of what was earned by men in 2010, according to the Census, while Hispanic women earned 58.7 percent, both figures largely unchanged from the year before.

Still, while the Lilly Ledbetter Act hasn’t directly resolved the issue of systemic pay inequality, it has helped some victims of discrimination pursue their compensation claims in the courts, women’s rights advocates say.

After the Supreme Court threw out Lilly Ledbetter’s pay discrimination suit against her employer Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., saying it exceeded the statute of limitations, Democrats in Congress with support from Obama enacted the law to extend the period for alleged victims to sue.

“After the Ledbetter law was passed, we saw specific cases that had been thrown out of court – pay discrimination cases – being allowed to be brought again,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “The cases still have to be shown to be true, but at least those who believe they’ve been discriminated against get their day in court.”

There’s no way of measuring whether the legal cases have or will contribute to a broader shift in pay equality to benefit women, Greenberger conceded.

“The focus on equal pay and how to make sure the promise of the law is turned into reality is also something the administration ought to not only continue to do, as it has been, but also that a spotlight will be shined on what these efforts are,” she said.

The Obama campaign has showcased Ledbetter’s story with a six-minute web video documentary, an email blast to supporters relating her story and an op-ed penned by Ledbetter in major national papers in an effort to put a face on Obama’s efforts for women.

Ledbetter, 73, says the law bearing her name is a reflection of Obama’s commitment to equality, even if equality hasn’t come quickly enough.

“It might not be such an important bill, because it just put the law back where it was,” the Alabama woman told ABC News in an interview late last year. “We, per se, did not gain anything except putting it back to where it was before the ruling in my case. But it sent a strong message. And I don’t think anyone has forgotten it.”


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...pay-for-women/

So Pa, So Good…But Must Activists Always Align With Corporations To Win?

By Russ Baker

It’s exciting to see how a coordinated Web blackout this Wednesday got members of Congress to reverse themselves so quickly—and do the right thing. By the end of the day, the number of Senators publicly opposing PIPA (the anti-piracy legislation that threatens free speech) jumped to 35 from five the week before. By the time you read this, those numbers may have jumped again. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if, with the tidal wave of public anger, we see 100 senators scrambling to get on the bandwagon. (Well, probably not 100, but a lot.)

However, it’s important to remember that, no matter how many citizens expressed themselves on PIPA (or the House version, SOPA), it was corporations partially driving this—in competition with other corporations. Basically, it is a battle between companies that create original content (especially movie and music makers) and those who derive their living from providing communications platforms where pretty much anything goes, including “borrowing” imagery, film clips, songs and more from their owners and creators for the purposes of a vibrant dialogue.

Putting aside the complicated pros and cons of the issue, in which both sides have legitimate concerns, and the overriding conclusion that the legislation could cast a severe pall over free discourse and Internet innovation, there is another matter to consider.

Namely this: What would it take for a public movement to get a similar response from elected officials, when billion-dollar interests were not lined up on the same side? Twitter, Reddit, Google, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, etc. may be cool, but they’re giant, or at least popular, for-profit enterprises with agendas of their own. Wikipedia and Mozilla are huge, albeit nonprofit, commercial-type enterprises with major brands to promote and protect. All of these and more were on the “free speech” side of this battle. And their role, up front and center, was indispensable in driving home the point, and making congress- members squeal.

As soon as the blackout went into effect, and these outfits got their users to begin a massive and immediate campaign of petitions, emails, and calls, elected officials reversed themselves faster than you can say “one term.”

But suppose the free-speech forces had to make their case without a turbocharging from interested parties? How would we get some other onerous piece of legislation blocked when there was no strong financial incentive for deep-pocketed corporations with slick marketing/publicity arms to mobilize?

For example, what about the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), with its onerous and vague provisions that could, under certain circumstances, potentially allow for the indefinite detention without charge of American citizens accused of connections with terrorist groups? Despite a public uproar, Congress went ahead and passed that bill. (Obama signed it, but in a “signing statement” said that his administration would not sanction indefinite detention of citizens – a proviso that offers no restraint on future administrations.)

The point is this: indefinite detention of citizens, even the remote threat of it, is surely as important a threat to our liberties as legislation that curtails our freedom to use copyrighted material on the Internet. Yet what corporations were troubled enough to join the ACLU and other liberties groups in opposing NDAA?

Before we get too self-satisfied over the SOPA/PIPA victory, we need to take a long, hard look at our increasing alliance with all manner of corporate entities to advance our own interests. We should ask ourselves: If we don’t believe that corporations should be treated as persons, why do we need to work with them as if they are? And how can we the people join together to attain political goals without an 800-pound corporate gorilla in our corner?

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/...ations-to-win/

Breast cancer charity ends Planned Parenthood funding
 

(Reuters) - Planned Parenthood said on Tuesday that the leading U.S. breast-cancer charity would no longer provide new funding to the group, which performs abortions and other services at clinics around the country.

In a statement, Planned Parenthood said the Susan G. Komen Foundation had "succumbed to political pressure" from anti-abortion groups in cutting the funding.

Komen had begun notifying local Planned Parenthood affiliates that their breast cancer prevention programs will no longer be eligible for new grants from the charity, it said.

Planned Parenthood said Komen had not responded to requests to meet and talk about the decision to cut the funding, which it said had helped thousands of women in rural and underserved communities get breast health education, screenings, and mammogram referrals.

But it said the Komen Foundation had been "repeatedly threatened" in recent years by anti-abortion groups upset with its affiliation with Planned Parenthood.

The Komen Foundation, best-known for the Race for the Cure fundraisers it sponsors around the country each year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

The foundation said it raised more than $1.9 billion for breast cancer research and programs and has affiliates in more than 100 U.S. cities and 50 countries. Its symbol - the pink ribbon - is widely recognized.

Planned Parenthood said Komen's funding had helped pay for 170,000 of the more than 4 million clinical breast exams the group had performed over the past five years, as well as more than 6,400 of the 70,000 mammogram referrals it has made during that time.

Planned Parenthood has come under attack by lawmakers in several states over the past year, including North Carolina, Indiana and Kansas, who have attempted to block any government funding of the group.

In Kansas, county prosecutors outside Kansas City are pressing criminal charges against Planned Parenthood, alleging the group failed to maintain required paperwork related to the abortions it provided.

Under current law, Planned Parenthood cannot use federal funds to provide abortions though it receives federal money to provide family aid to low-income women.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/breast-canc...020112565.html

Part 1
 

Obama's Destructive Urban Policy Alienates Low-Income Communities
Tuesday 31 January 2012
by: Yana Kunichoff, Truthout | Report

From the window of Ruth Long's apartment in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood, where she has lived for 33 years, Long can see a McDonald's where a man was shot, a building from which five families were forced out by development before the housing crash, and a "big, beautiful grocery store" where she can't afford to buy her food.

Long is an 85-year-old African-American woman who relies on a combination of Social Security, food stamps and Section 8 subsidized housing to stay out of the nursing home that she says, "would be disastrous" for her.

She is also one of an increasing number of low-income Chicagoans whose vulnerable standard of living is further at risk from the austerity measures and cutbacks hitting cities across the country.

Chicago has the third-highest poverty rate among America's cities, according to a 2009 study by the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, with 21.6 percent of the city's residents living below poverty level. But it tops the list in race-based poverty: one in three African-American people in Chicago, 32.2 percent, live in poverty.

These financial disparities are only part of what Chicago is known for; the Windy City is also the adopted home of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, and where he will be returning to run his re-election campaign for 2012. How has Chicago fared under the so-called "urban president," and what will Obama be able to offer a city leading the nation in black poverty in order to win its votes a second time around?

The Presidency and Urban Policy

"Our job across America is to create communities of choice, not of destiny, and create conditions for neighborhoods where the odds are not stacked against the people who live there. Barack Obama will lead a new federal approach to America's high-poverty areas, an approach that facilitates the economic integration of families and communities with efforts to support the current low-income residents of those areas."
-Change.gov

Barack Obama came into office in 2008 touting his credentials as a community organizer on Chicago's notoriously rough Southside, with his home in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood only blocks away from some of the poorest urban neighborhoods in the country.

One of his initial steps as president was to appoint the first White House director of urban policy, making him the first president since Lyndon B. Johnson to wear his plans for urban renewal in America's cities proudly.

Johnson, coming to power in the midst of the civil rights movement's push for social reform, pledged to fight "a war on poverty," created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), increased public housing and created Medicare.

But subsequent presidents all chipped away at Johnson's already underfunded Great Society safety net. Richard Nixon came out swinging against "liberal ideology" and latched onto what CityLimits Magazine called "the boilerplate version of modern American urban history ... that cities were destroyed by a menu of activist federal policies implemented during the 1960s."

The following presidents, from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush, introduced their own policies but didn't stray far from the same narrative, decreasing welfare payments and chronically underfunding city programs.

Meanwhile, federal devolution became an increasing trend - decision-making authority regarding funding for social programs was passed from the federal level to the state and local levels, which left the burden of most public investments, with the exceptions of Social Security and Medicare, financed by state governments.

According to a 2000 report from the Economic Policy Institute, the result of this was that "almost all grants in aid to state and local governments, with the exception of the Medicaid program, fall into the category of capped expenditures, so budget balancing rules entail an erosion of aid to governments."

As the infrastructure of cities slipped further and further into disrepair, the Democratic Party assumed that they were assured the votes of low-income communities, and urban issues slipped from the dialogue of national politics, according to the report.

With a continuing economic crisis, a growing part of the American population could benefit from the kinds of programs that were originally instituted to help urban communities: Medicaid, Medicare, subsidized housing.

Many of the national policies that most affect the lives of urban residents like Ruth Long aren't categorized as urban policies, say advocates and residents. Instead, they are education, housing and civil liberties, policies that are said to apply equally to all Americans but, when unsuccessful, hit low-income communities the hardest.

Housing

Communities prosper when all families have access to affordable housing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden supported efforts to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create thousands of new units of affordable housing every year. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will also restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and ensure that all Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs are restored to their original purpose.
- Change.gov

"Much of urban policy is tied up in urban real estate, and the housing market is fundamentally the legacy of the ongoing economic and foreclosure crisis," said Tom Feltner, vice president of Woodstock Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on a financial reforms system.

Obama had the misfortune of coming into office just as the housing market fell off the cliff it had been teetering on for years - the bubble popped in 2006 and, two years later, America was ushered into what some say has been the worst housing crisis since the Depression.

Cities across the country were hit hard, but Chicagoans have been losing their homes in record numbers. In 2010, Chicago was number one, above New York and Los Angeles, in foreclosures, and 6,112 properties were foreclosed on in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone. In addition, nearly half of Chicago-area homes are underwater, meaning the homes themselves are worth less than the mortgage.

The key components of Obama's housing policy included the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) and a cut for homeowners from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

The HAMP program, which was meant to lower mortgage rates to affordable levels for homeowners, helped a smaller percentage of people than it aimed to - only 70,000 people got help in 2009, according to The Washington Post, while 2.5 million people got foreclosure notices.

Patrick Brosnan, with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC), said that he has seen positive results from the money that the group received to fund the program initially, but it hasn't received the funding "to sustain all of its components."

"It has a dramatic impact, and it is directly connected to the local economy and the development and sustaining of urban communities," said Brosnan of the HAMP program. As a HUD-certified agency that offers pre- and post-purchase counseling for primarily low-income residents on Chicago's southwest side, BPNC is now fighting for sustained funding for HUD counseling services.

The Obama administration "haven't used all the resources at their disposal to deal with foreclosure in devastated communities," said Brosnan. "I just don't understand why."

Part of the issue, says Feltner, is that the administration didn't go far enough to fix some of the structural problems that led to the housing crash, such as "making sure borrowers with loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had access to loan modification.... And making sure that borrowers can maintain house ownership."

In its analysis of Obama's housing programs, The Washington Post sums up the administration's policy by saying: "they consistently unveiled programs that underperformed, did little to reduce mortgage debts owed by ordinary Americans and rejected a get-tough approach with banks.... Doing more to address the housing crisis may be crucial not only for an economy flirting with another recession but also for a president running for reelection."

Urban communities were also hit particularly hard by job loss and were more likely to be uninsured, an additional income drain that at times led to default on mortgages. And with 5 million more foreclosures estimated in the coming years, advocates expect the problems to continue mounting.

Education

"A world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs, but whether America can out-compete countries around the world. America's business leaders understand that when it comes to education, we need to up our game. That's why we're working together to put an outstanding education within reach for every child."

-President Barack Obama, July 18, 2011

In Chicago, the Renaissance 2010 program started by former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, bears a striking resemblance to some of the Obama administration's key education policies. The program, started in 2004, called for 100 new schools by 2010 in Chicago and closing those that were lowest performing.

The result of this change was an increased reliance on standardized testing, a jump in the number of charter schools in Chicago and, critics say, a leeching of much-needed funds from neighborhood schools. The minutiae of this plan includes widely using standardized testing to rate teachers, increasing the flexibility of school administrations to reward teachers who perform well on these metrics and fire those that don't, and reducing local control of education.

The Obama administration's two-pronged education policy - Race to the Top and an increase in charter schools - plays on a similar narrative: parental choice, healthy competition and the freedom to close low-performing schools.

Race to the Top opened a competition for a $4.35 billion pool overseen by the Department of Education (DOE), to "encourage and reward states that are creating the conditions for education innovation," and is seen as the Obama administration's answer to No Child Left Behind.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration came into office promising to heavily fund performing charters: "Barack Obama and Joe Biden will double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools," promised Change.gov shortly after the election. "Obama and Biden will also prioritize supporting states that help the most successful charter schools to expand to serve more students."

The administration moved quickly to execute this plan. In the last two years, 19 states have partially or entirely dropped limits on the number of charter schools that are allowed to open. Six school districts have more than 30 percent of their students in charters, and 18 school systems have more than 20 percent of their students attending the privately owned, partially publicly funded institutions, according to the demographics report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Struggling urban school districts house the highest number of students enrolled in public charter schools that receive government subsidies: Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago are home to the top five.

"I think it's been disastrous," said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, of the Obama administration's education policy. "It's as if these politicians have just bought into a very regressive educational context, and it's similar to the conversation we had about education at the turn of the last century, where blacks and immigrants were sort of pushed into a very narrow education caste. While there are phrases like 'college and career ready,' none of the policies have really done that."

Public and charter schools often serve the same population, but a disproportionate number of troubled students leave charters. An investigation by Catalyst Magazine and Chicago public radio station WBEZ found that 1 in 11 charter school students will transfer out or be expelled from a charter.

Funding for public schools comes from local property taxes, leaving low-income areas working with fewer resources initially, and critics of the policy say that it has only taken more money away from public schools. In Chicago, the money that goes to the publicly subsidized charter sector is an estimated $300 million in public funds each year, reported the Chicago Reader.

Most crucially for many urban students, says Lewis, is that a school with high teacher turnover or routine standardized testing doesn't help the other challenges they may face.

"What research tells us is needed for children that have much more challenging lives is that they need smaller class sizes, they need concentrated time for free play, for safety, for the creative part of the school lives. They need things that allow children to express their wonder and the world and to be a part of it."

Part 2 of previous article
 

Rahm Emanuel

Though it is not an explicit policy prescription, Chicago's new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has also come from the White House and hit Chicago's urban, low-income community hard through the city budget and changes to the parade ordinance that he has instituted in the first six months of his term.

The budget will shut down half of the city's 12 mental health clinics, lay off more than one-fifth of public library staff, privatize all seven of the city's neighborhood health clinics and cut funding for overnight outreach crews to bring homeless people to shelters ahead of what is expected to be one of Chicago's worst winters.

The changes to the parade ordinance would increase fines and require $1 million liability insurance for protesters, as well as mandate a much larger police presence for protests.

Long, speaking at a protest against the ordinance change, said, "I am greatly concerned that the proposal will regress our citizens to leave simple rights: leaving the most vulnerable citizens no redress to speak in defense of whatever misfortunates involve them."

A member of the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, a protest group focusing on senior rights, Long continued, "I need assurance that I'll be able to advocate for myself and other seniors."

Whether the primarily negative perception that Emanuel has amassed in his first six months in office will be a hindrance to Obama's re-election campaign remains to be seen, but Maritere Gomez, with Chicago's Occupy el Barrio, says that she sees Emanuel's policies as connected to Obama's.

"I think both of them have been ruling the country with an iron first, to be politically cliche," said Gomez. "What Obama has done to the immigrant community is harsh and cold-hearted, which is pretty much consistent with what Rahm is doing in Chicago. He doesn't waste time in disguising what he is doing to hurt democracy, freedom of speech, all of the critical rights."

Gomez, 24, is an undocumented student living on Chicago's Southwest side and working minimum wage jobs to help support her family. "I can't vote, and now I can't even protest," said Gomez, whose Occupy group focuses on the city's Hispanic communities.

Obama 2012

Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else - like education and medical research, a strong military and care for our veterans? Because if we're serious about paying down our debt, we can't do both.
- State of the Union Speech, January 2012

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, income inequality was a key component of Obama's speech. He touched on an unfair taxing system, the importance of helping young, undocumented people fulfill their dreams and the importance of an affordable higher education.

But he was telling this to a country that had already seen his administration extend the Bush tax breaks and fail to pass the DREAM Act, which would have offered a path to legalization for young immigrants, and that is in the midst of a growing student debt bubble.

Neither the White House nor the Obama for America campaign replied to multiple requests for comment.

Long is now an activist on senior rights, but says she still remembers clearly when she had to move to the back of the bus because she was "colored."

She plans to vote for the first African-American president a second time in the coming election. "I am pleased with our president, but I know this: the president can't go any further than he is allowed to go," said Long. "We live in a controlled society, by Wall Street and the rich and powerful, one percenters they are called."

But not everyone is ready to forgive Obama in time for the next election. Occupy, the newest political force, is likely to take a more critical position.

"The immigrant community is definitely and thoroughly disappointed in Obama. If anything, there are more broken up homes because of deportation, more tension in the workplace because of E-Verify," said Gomez. "There really is no hope, and I really hope that we come out and Occupy."

Arun Gupta, an independent journalist who has traveled to occupations around the country, says he has seen a mixed consciousness with regard to the coming Obama campaign.

"Obama's 2008 campaign was built on deception. He came into office with a huge mandate for change and a once-in-a-lifetime Democratic super-majority. Instead, we got the third George W. Bush term," said Gupta.

"So it's heartening to see that people realize electoral politics, on their own, don't result in progressive change.... People do not want the Occupy movement to become a left-wing tea party, and there are forces that are trying to push it in that direction."

"Like I always say, the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movement."
http://www.truth-out.org/obamas-urba...ies/1328042445

The Chicago 2012 budget was passed unanimously by the City Council....the vote was 50-0. Yes there are 50 aldermen elected from the 50 wards of Chicago....the thought of 50 members on any city council makes me want to run away screaming............I am entirely shocked all 50 could ever agree on a budget

On November 16, 2011, the City Council unanimously approved the 2012 Budget for Chicago. We heard your voice loud and clear throughout this entire process as we worked to fill a $635.7 million budget gap. More than 3,100 of you posted more than 10,000 ideas and comments on this site, generating 62,000 votes. At public town hall meetings, we took many your questions live and answered more than 400 online. We reviewed your letters, emails, Facebook comments and tweets. Working together, we created an honest budget.

http://www.chicagobudget.org/

The Biggest Risk to the Economy in 2012, and What’s the Economy For Anyway?
by Robert Reich

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the “critical risks” facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe’s chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices.

What about jobs and wages here at home?

As the Commerce Department reported Friday, the U.S. economy grew 2.8 percent between October and December – the fastest pace in 18 months and the first time growth exceeded 2 percent all year. Many bigger American companies have been reporting strong profits in recent months. GE and Lockheed Martin closed the year with record order backlogs.

Yet the percent of working-age Americans in jobs isn’t much different than what it was three years ago. Yes, America now produces more than it did when the recession began. But it does so with 6 million fewer workers.

Average after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation are moving up a bit. (They increased at an annual rate of .8 percent in the last three months of 2011 after falling 1.9 percent in prior three-month period. For all of 2011, incomes fell .1 percent.)

But beware averages. Shaquille O’Neal and I have an average height of six feet. Exclude Mitt Romney’s $20 million last year — along with everyone else securely in the top 1 percent — and the incomes of most Americans are continuing to slip.

Consumer spending picked up slightly in the fourth quarter mainly because consumers drew down their savings. Obviously, this can’t last.

Meanwhile, government is spending less on schools, roads, bridges, parks, defense, and social services. Government spending at all levels dropped at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the last quarter – and that’s likely to continue.

Some economists worry this drop is a drag on the economy. But it also means fewer public goods available to all Americans regardless of income.

Congress still hasn’t decided whether to renew the temporary payroll tax cut and extend unemployment benefits past February. If it doesn’t, expect another 1 percent slice off GDP growth this year.

Tim Geithner is surely correct that the European debt crisis and Iran pose risks to the American economy in 2012. But they aren’t the biggest risk. The biggest risk is right here at home – that most Americans will continue to languish.

All of which raises a basic question: Who or what is the economy for? Surely not just for a few at the top, and not just big corporations and their CEOs. Nor can the success of the economy be measured by how fast the GDP is growing, or how high the Dow Jones Industrial Average is rising, or whether average incomes are turning upward.

The crisis of American capitalism marks the triumph of consumers and investors over workers and citizens. And since most of us occupy all four roles – even though the lion’s share of consuming and investing is done by the wealthy – the real crisis centers on the increasing efficiency by which all of us as consumers and investors can get great deals, and our declining capacity to be heard as workers and citizens.

Modern technologies allow us to shop in real time, often worldwide, for the lowest prices, highest quality, and best returns. Through the Internet and advanced software we can now get relevant information instantaneously, compare deals, and move our money at the speed of electronic impulses. We can buy goods over the Internet that are delivered right to our homes. Never before in history have consumers and investors been so empowered.

Yet these great deals increasingly come at the expense of our own and our compatriots’ jobs and wages, and widening inequality. The goods we want or the returns we seek can often be produced more efficiently elsewhere around the world by companies offering lower pay, fewer benefits, and inferior working conditions.

They also come at the expense of our Main Streets – the hubs of our communities – when we get the great deals through the Internet or at big-box retailers that scan the world for great deals on our behalf.

Some great deals have devastating environmental consequences. Technology allows us to efficiently buy low-priced items from poor nations with scant environmental standards, sometimes made in factories that spill toxic chemicals into water supplies or pollutants into the air. We shop for great deals in cars that spew carbon into the air and for airline tickets in jet planes that do even worse.

Other great deals offend common decency. We may get a great price or high return because a producer has cut costs by hiring children in South Asia or Africa who work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Or by subjecting people to death-defying working conditions.

As workers or as citizens most of us would not intentionally choose these outcomes but as seekers after great deals we are indirectly responsible for them. Companies know that if they fail to offer us the best deals we will take our money elsewhere – which we can do with ever-greater speed and efficiency.

The best means of balancing the demands of consumers and investors against those of workers and citizens has been through democratic institutions that shape and constrain markets.

Laws and rules offer some protection for jobs and wages, communities, and the environment. Although such rules are likely to be costly to us as consumers and investors because they stand in the way of the very best deals, they are intended to approximate what we as members of a society are willing to sacrifice for these other values.

But technologies for getting great deals are outpacing the capacities of democratic institutions to counterbalance them. For one thing, national rules intended to protect workers, communities, and the environment typically extend only to a nation’s borders. Yet technologies for getting great deals enable buyers and investors to transcend borders with increasing ease, at the same time making it harder for nations to monitor or regulate such transactions.

For another, goals other than the best deals are less easily achieved within the confines of a single nation. The most obvious example is the environment, whose fragility is worldwide. In addition, corporations now routinely threaten to move jobs and businesses away from places that impose higher costs on them – and therefore, indirectly, on their consumers and investors – to more “business friendly” jurisdictions. The Internet and software have made companies sufficiently nimble to render such threats credible.

But the biggest problem is that corporate money is undermining democratic institutions in the name of better deals for consumers and investors. Campaign contributions, fleets of well-paid corporate lobbyists, and corporate-financed PR campaigns about public issues are overwhelming the capacities of Congress, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, and the courts to reflect the values of workers and citizens.

As a result, consumers and investors are doing increasingly well but job insecurity is on the rise, inequality is widening, communities are becoming less stable, and climate change is worsening. None of this is sustainable over the long term.

Blame global finance and worldwide corporations all you want. But save some blame for the insatiable consumers and investors inhabiting almost every one of us, who are entirely complicit. And blame our inability as workers and citizens to reclaim our democracy.

Taxing the Rich Won't Help the Poor
by Ted Rall

Reacting to and attempting to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Obama used his 2012 State of the Union address to discuss what he now calls "the defining issue of our time"--the growing gap between rich and poor.

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by," Obama said. "Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."

No doubt, the long-term trend toward income inequality is a major flaw of the capitalist system. From 1980 to 2005 more than 80 percent in the gain in Americans' incomes went to the top one percent. This staggering disparity between the haves and have-nots has created a permanent underclass of underemployed, undereducated and alienated people who often turn to crime for survival and social status. Aggregation of wealth into fewer hands has shrunk the size of the U.S. market for consumer goods, prolonging and deepening the depression.

How can we make the system fairer?

Liberals are calling for a more progressive income tax: i.e., raise taxes on the rich. Obama says he'd like to slap a minimum federal income tax of 30 percent on individuals earning more than $1 million a year.

Soaking the rich would obviously be fair. GOP frontrunner/corporate layoff sleazebag Mitt Romney earned $59,500 a day in 2010--and paid half the effective tax rate (13.9 percent) than of a family of four earning $59,500 a year.

Fair, sure. But would it work? Would increasing taxes on the wealthy do much to close the gap between rich and poor--to level the economic playing field?

Probably not.

From FDR through Jimmy Carter it was an article of faith among liberals that higher taxes on the rich would result in lower taxes on the poor and working class. This was because the Republican Party consistently pushed for a balanced budget. Tax income was tied to expenditures, which were more or less fixed--and thus a zero-sum game.

That period from 1933 to 1980 was also the era of the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society social and anti-poverty programs, such as Social Security, the G.I. Bill, college grants and welfare. These government handouts helped mitigate hard times, gave life-changing educational opportunities that allowed class mobility, closing the gap between despair and hope for tens of millions of Americans. As the list of social programs grew, so did the tax rate--mostly on the rich. The practical effect was to redistribute income from top to bottom.

Democrats think it still works that way. It doesn't.

The political landscape has shifted dramatically under Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes. Budget cuts slashed spending on student financial aid, food stamps, Medicaid, school lunch programs, veterans hospitals, and aid to single mothers. The social safety net is shredded. Most federal tax dollars flow directly into the Pentagon and defense contractors such as Halliburton.

As the economy continues to tank, there's only category to cut: social programs. "Eugene Steuerle worked on tax and budget issues in the Reagan Treasury Department and is now with the Urban Institute," NPR reported a year ago. "He says one reason no one talks about preserving the social safety net today is that lawmakers have given themselves little choice but to cut it. They've taken taxes and entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, off the budget-cutting table, so there's not much left."

Meanwhile, effective tax rates on the wealthy have been greatly reduced. Which isn't fair--but not in the way you might think.

Taxes on middle-class families are at their lowest level in 50 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal thinktank.

What's going on?

On the revenue side of the budget equation, the poor and middle-class have received tiny tax cuts. The rich and super rich have gotten huge tax cuts. Everyone is paying less.

On the expense side, social programs have been pretty much destroyed. If you grow up poor there's no way to attend college without going into debt. If you lose your job you'll get 99 weeks of tiny, taxable (thanks to Reagan) unemployment checks before burning through your savings and winding up on the street.

Military spending, on the other hand, has soared, accounting for 54 percent of federal spending.You have to rebuild the safety net. Otherwise higher taxes will swirl down the Pentagon's $800 toilets

In short, we're running up massive deficits in order to finance wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on, and so rich job-killers can pay the lowest tax rates in the developed world.

I'm all for higher taxes on the rich. I'm for abolishing the right to be wealthy. But liberals who think progressive taxation will mitigate or reverse income inequality are trapped in the 1960s, fighting the last (budget) war in a reality that no longer exists. The U.S. government's top priority is invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens. Without big social programs, invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens is exactly where every extra taxdollar collected from the likes of Mitt Romney would go.

The only way progressive taxation can address income inequality is if higher taxes on the rich are coupled with an array of new anti-poverty and other social programs designed to put money and new job skills directly into the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans who have seen no improvement in their lives since 1980.

If you're serious about inequality, income redistribution through the tax system is only a start. Whether through stronger unions or worker advocacy through federal agencies, government must require higher minimum wages. Maximum wages, too. A nation that allows its richest citizen to earn ten times more than its poorest would still be horribly unfair--yet it would be a big improvement over today. Shipping jobs overseas must be banned. Most free trade agreements should be torn up. Companies must no longer be allowed to layoff employees before eliminating salaries and benefits for their top-paid managers--CEOs, etc.

And a layoff should mean just that--a layoff. First fired should be first rehired--at equal or greater pay--if and when business improves.

Once a battery of spending programs targeted to the 99 percent is in place--permanent unemployment benefits, subsidized public housing, full college grants, etc.--the tax code ought to be radically revamped. For example, nothing gives the lie to the myth of America as a land of equal opportunity than inheritance. Aristocratic societies pass wealth and status from generation to generation. In a democracy, no one has the right to be born into wealth.

Because everyone deserves an equal chance, the national inheritance tax should be 100 percent. While we're at it, why should people who inherited wealth but have low incomes get off scot-free? Slap the bastards with a European-style tax on wealth as well as the appearance of wealth.

Now you're probably laughing. Even Obama's lame call for taxing the rich--so the U.S. can buy more drone planes--stands no chance of passing the Republican Congress. They're empty words meant for election-year consumption. Taking income inequality seriously? That's so off the table it isn't even funny.

Which is why we shouldn't be looking to corporate machine politicians like Obama for answers.

I appreciate the focus on Chicago and the budget crisis here not unlike the crises other municipalities are facing.


Remembering 1968 as Chicago Prepares for G8

http://c963862.r62.cf2.rackcdn.com/w...68-300x219.jpg

April 27, 1968: some 8,000 peaceful peace marchers walk about a mile to Chicago’s Civic Center where a phalanx of police wade in without provocation, beat dozens bloody and jail scores more who are tear gassed in the Center’s jail cells. Roosevelt University’s President Emeritus, Edward Sparling, led a citizens commission to investigate the incident and found total fault lay with the police and Mayor Richard J. Daley. It was obviously Daley’s forewarning of what would befall demonstrators who might show up for the Democratic National Convention in August. Call it batting practice.

It may have dissuaded some, but many came anyway. Daley fulfilled his promise with violence that stained Chicago’s reputation for decades and changed American politics for the worse. Flash forward 44 years: Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets the G8 and NATO to meet here in late May. The host committee remains highly secretive about the true cost to the city, while some in the business community are fearful. The host committee head is former Richard M. Daley aide, Lori Healey, whose last great fiasco was being second in command on the committee to bring the Olympics to Chicago.

Emanuel is much subtler than RJD in his warnings to protestors. As noted earlier, he proposed onerous ordinances boosting fines, authorizing unlimited funds for surveillance equipment and permitting the deputization of others to police the protestors. Some strictures were nearly impossible to comply with. Emanuel backed off a few after some aldermen and media complained—leading some to think he was magnanimous—but nevertheless passed provocative restrictions guaranteed to build in failure and almost automatically criminalize every participant.

My friend Todd Gitlin, the Columbia University author, historian and fellow veteran of 1968, recently summed it up in another publication: “…all applicants for permits (1) must supply at the time of application ‘a description of the size and dimension of any sign, banner or other attention-getting device that is too large to be carried by one person,’ and (2) that they obtain $1 million insurance coverage to ‘indemnify the city against any additional or uncovered third party claims against the city arising out of or caused by the parade, and agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or city property arising out of or caused by the parade.’ (If all that weren’t tragic and farcical enough, it now also becomes mandatory that the applicant submit ‘a list identifying the type and number of all animals that applicant intends to have at the parade.) The minimum fine for a violation jumps to $200; the maximum is $1000 and/or 10 days in jail….

“It is full frontal abuse of the First Amendment,” Gitlin charges. But wait—there’s more: He warns, “…the Feds may end up preempting the city by imposing their own still more stringent national security laws.”

This repressive ordinance was passed with the votes of some of our most progressive aldermen. Maybe they should have read it in the original German before voting “Ja!”

Very Troubling
 

Indiana poised to approve anti-union law
 

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - The Indiana state Senate was expected on Wednesday to give final approval to a new law allowing workers at unionized businesses to avoid paying union dues, the last major legislative hurdle to making Indiana the first "right-to-work" state in the nation's manufacturing belt.

No state has approved a right-to-work law since Oklahoma a decade ago, and Indiana is being closely watched nationwide during a presidential election year.

The measure was given preliminary approval by both chambers of the Republican-majority Indiana legislature earlier this month, but the Senate must give final approve to the House version of the bill.

Supporters of right-to-work, led by Indiana's Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, say it is needed to bring business and jobs to the state. Opponents call it "union busting" and say it will lower the wages of workers.

Daniels, who considered running for president last year and gave the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union message last Tuesday, has made passage of right-to-work one of his priorities for this year.

Indiana would join 22 other states with right-to-work laws, most of them in the South and West. Indiana's action could encourage other states to pass similar laws.

Democrats and their union supporters tried to slow the bill by boycotting the legislature and other delaying tactics, but Republicans supportive of right-to-work control both chambers of the legislature and the governor's office.

Organized labor could be a significant issue during the 2012 election year. In addition to the Indiana action, Democrats and unions are hoping to recall Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker after he championed a new law that severely restricted collective bargaining powers of public sector unions in the state. Ohio turned back similar attempts to curb public sector unions last year, voting in a state referendum against the proposal.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/indiana-poi...140910525.html

I think this belongs in some other thread, but I couldn't find the right one
 

Margaret Cho Rightfully Loses Her Shit



http://jezebel.com/5875219/cho-mad-twitter

We have daughters & it may apply to others...
 

The FDA Safety Information and Adverse Events Reporting Program

Lo/Ovral-28 (Norgestrel/EthinylEstradiol) Tablets: Recall - Possibility of Inexact Tablet Counts or Out of Sequence Tablets

AUDIENCE: OB/GYN, Healthcare Professionals, Consumers

ISSUE: Pfizer Inc. notified healthcare professionals and consumers that it recalled 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 (norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol) Tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol Tablets (generic) for customers in the U.S. market. An investigation by Pfizer found that some blister packs may contain an inexact count of inert or active ingredient tablets and that the tablets may be out of sequence.

As a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy.

BACKGROUND: These products are oral contraceptives indicated for the prevention of pregnancy. These products are packaged in blister packs containing 21 tablets of active ingredients and seven tablets of inert ingredients. Correct dosing of this product is important in avoiding the associated risks of an unplanned pregnancy.

RECOMMENDATION: Patients who have the affected product should notify their physician and return the product to the pharmacy. See the Press Release for a list of affected lot numbers.

Healthcare professionals and patients are encouraged to report adverse events or side effects related to the use of these products to the FDA's MedWatch Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program:

Complete and submit the report Online: www.fda.gov/MedWatch/report.htm
Download form or call 1-800-332-1088 to request a reporting form, then complete and return to the address on the pre-addressed form, or submit by fax to 1-800-FDA-0178
Read the MedWatch safety alert, including a link to the Press Release, at:

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/S.../ucm289803.htm

6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America
Without a dramatic rethink, our "free-enterprise" system may never again provide enough decent jobs for those who need them.

Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price. This week’s news alone bombards us with examples of how, absent a dramatic rethink, our "free-enterprise" system may never again provide enough decent jobs for those who need and want them.

1. iSlavery

Apple is arguably the world’s most successful company. Yet most of the 700,000 jobs needed to produce its cherished products are located abroad, especially in China. Why doesn’t Apple manufacture in the United States? Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher writing for the New York Times reveal that Apple is looking for a cheap, “flexible” workforce that can be put to work whenever and wherever it is needed on the company's terms.

One chilling example concerns the manufacture of glass screens for the iPhone to replace plastic screens which are easily scratched. With only weeks to go before the phone’s release in 2007, the late Steve Jobs demanded a switch to glass. But to get that done on time required deploying the pliable workforce of the giant Chinese manufacturing firm, Foxconn:

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.

Little wonder that Apple just announced that it doubled its already enormous profits over the Christmas holidays. Like the Pharaohs of old, it’s always paid to build great things on the backs of slave labor.

2. The Bain of Our Middle-Class Existence

A day doesn’t go by without suffering through another Mitt Romney defense of his career at Bain Capital, his highly profitable leveraged buy-out firm. Mitt repeatedly tells us that Bain created tens of thousands of jobs at Staples, Domino’s Pizza, Sealy, Brookstone, Sports Authority, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Toys 'R' Us.

For a moment let’s put aside the fact that Bain also drove a large number of companies into bankruptcy while loading them up with debt and extracting enormous profits along the way. Instead, let’s focus on the type of jobs that Staples, Domino’s et al. produce for the American middle-class. While these jobs are not as slavish as those sought after by Apple in China, most Bain companies pay so little and have so few benefits that it is impossible to support a middle-class existence from the jobs they create.

Since Romney likes to brag about Staples, we took a closer look at its average hourly pay (as reported on Glassdoor.com). Out of 61 job classifications listed, only three provide starting salaries of $20 or more per hour. The vast majority of those 61 jobs categories have pay scales that begin at $7 and $8 per hour and scale up over time to $13 or $14 an hour. I’d like to see Mitt raise his dog on that.

But wait! There really is some fairness in our economy when it comes to taxes. If you work at Staples and somehow climb your way up to a middle-class salary, you might be paying the same tax rate as Mitt who earns $20 million a year. Then again, since Mitt paid only 13.9% on his 2010 taxes, you might even pay a little more counting all your state and local taxes. (More on how he does it below.)

3. Surprise! Federal Auditors Find Big Pay for Bailed-Out Bankers

While the middle-class suffers, top executives are raking it in yet again, even at the companies bailed out by our tax dollars. You may recall that the Obama administration demanded that executives at the top seven bailed-out firms receive no more than $500,000 a year. Congress complied by passing a law to set up a “special master” to administer the salary cap. Well, this week we discovered that the special master got mastered, according to federal auditors.

Apparently, the bailed-out companies teamed up with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and company to pressure the special master to allow salaries 10 times as high for these failed executives. “Forty-nine people received packages worth $5 million or more from 2009-2011,” according to the auditor’s report. (What the auditor failed to mention is that the law only applies to direct bailout money. It does not cover the big Wall Street firms that took trillions in hidden loans from the Federal Reserve to avoid collapse. Those top bankers earn much more than those at the seven bailed-out firms.)

So what was the excuse for busting the pay cap? Without fatter paychecks, these poor executives would...quit.

Here’s the argument one bailed-out company used to claim a “hardship” exemption so the employee could receive at least $1 million in cash: “This individual is in their early 40s, with two kids in private school, who is now considered cash-poor.” Such people “would not meet their monthly expenses” if the $500,000 a year cap were applied to him. Ouch!

Why not let this executive walk? After all, his or her firm was a failure. It was only saved from destruction because of the generosity of the taxpayer. Where’s that executive going to go anyway, and couldn’t a suitable replacement be found at $500,000 a year?

Just count all the alleged “laws of capitalism” that are broken in this example: 1) the original bailout instead of bankruptcy; 2) the irreplaceable executive in an economy with massive layoffs even in the financial sector; and 3) a financial wage scale having no connection to real value produced (especially since the firm produced negative value and needed to be bailed out).

So while the Apple workers in China get up in the middle of the night from their company dorms to assemble phones, and while Staples workers try to live on $8 an hour, we the taxpayers are supporting financial executives who can’t make ends meet on $500,000 a year?

4. Economically Addicted to War

The news is hot this week with military strife. Iraq is drifting back to civil war. Afghanistan is already there. Iran is threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, and the New York City police got nabbed using an anti-American Muslim training film on 1,400 of its officers. What does this all add up to? Spending trillions on the military and then asking the middle-lass to tighten its belt to make up for deficits.

Since W.W.II pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression, massive military expenditures have been used repeatedly to keep the economy near full-employment. During the Cold War, these expenditures contributed mightily to a new form of state capitalism where public funds were used to subsidize private corporations which supplied the military. Along the way, this process also helped prop up the middle-class in defense industry jobs.

But over the last decade this military Keynesianism got a new wrinkle. The U.S. went to war without paying for it, thereby racking up nearly a trillion dollars in new debt. At the same time an enormous tax cut was handed over to the super-rich which proceeded to spend a good deal of it in the Wall Street casino which then crashed. In total, the unfunded wars, the tax cuts and the economic crash account for the entire deficit problem. Let me repeat, there would be no deficit at all were it not for the Bush tax cuts, the two unfunded wars and the Wall Street crash.

Nevertheless the middle-class must pay. We are told that the real problem is “entitlements,” including public support for healthcare, education, unemployment benefits and Social Security. Therefore we must cut, cut, cut, to pay for military adventurism and the lifestyles of our financial oligarchs.

5. Mitt Slithers Through the “Carried Interest” Loophole

Of course, one of the big news items of the week was Mitt’s tax returns, which revealed that he paid only 13.9 percent in federal taxes instead of the 30-plus percent high-income earners are supposed to pay. Like Warren Buffett, Mr. Romney probably pays a lower tax rate than his secretary at Bain Capital. How does he get away with that?

It’s not just that he has a legion of tax sharpies who know how to hide his money in secret Swiss accounts and in the Grand Cayman Islands. The real culprit is a gigantic tax loophole called “carried interest” that allows private equity moguls and hedge fund honchos to essentially lie about what they do for a living.

You will hear Mitt wax euphoric about how hard he worked at Bain to obtain his riches. What he doesn’t tell you is that he used the carried interest loophole to hide all that hard work from federal taxes. Instead of paying himself an income for the real work he performed (which would be taxed at 35 percent), he hid his income within a slice of the profits so that he could claim it as capital gains (which is taxed at 15 percent). If he worked at a big bank doing exactly the same kind of work and got big stock options as his bonus, he would have to pay 35 percent. But thanks to the largess of Congress, he and billionaires in the private equity and hedge fund rackets pay only 15 percent. And of course, every effort to remove this loophole has been stalled by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

This loophole is the poster child example of how the super-rich enhance their wealth at the expense of the rest of us. And the rest of us do indeed make up the difference either through increased taxes or decreased services.

6. How the Gringrich/Freddie Tryst Distorts History

This week also treated us with the release of Newt’s $600,000 a year consulting contract with Freddie Mac. Did he get paid for influence-peddling or for his prescient historical insights? Who cares? As sordid as his deal may have been, the real damage comes from the analysis of the financial crash that accompanies the story. We hear again and again by all, including the media, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled government housing agencies, caused the financial meltdown.

Not true!

Let’s start with some basic facts about these corporations. They are not government agencies. They are private corporations that have the implicit backing of the government to help provide a massive mortgage market for middle-class Americans (or they were before the crash). The big mistake was allowing these agencies to become for-profit organizations in the first place. But that’s another story.

The widely repeated erroneous analysis claims that Fannie and Freddie caused the crash by underwriting risky housing mortgages. Ron Paul, in particular, blames the Community Reinvestment Act for pushing Fannie and Freddie to buy up “risky” loans that enable underserved minorities in particular to obtain mortgages.

But Paul, who should know better, has it dead wrong. CRA mortgages were standard mortgages and not risky ones. Their default rates are just like other standard mortgages given to Anglo home buyers. CRA, in short, had absolutely nothing to do with Wall Street’s reckless gambling as big banks and hedge funds bought up risky mortgages and sold them in even riskier mortgage-related securities.

Fannie and Freddie also wanted in on that enormously profitable Wall Street derivative game. But they got there very, very late just as the crisis was starting to unfold. These flawed private/government backed agencies didn’t cause what already was fully developed. Instead they were left holding the bag. You can’t blame them for the mess that Wall Street already created.

Who suffers? The middle-class homeowner who is already underwater due to the housing crash, and those who will purchase homes in the future. The drumbeat of attacks on Freddie and Fanny will surely lead to the privatization of those functions, which in turn will drive up the costs of mortgages for the rest of us.

How do we put America back to work?

These recent examples demonstrate yet again that "free-enterprise" on its own can not create enough middle-class jobs. Neither Apple, nor Bain-Staples, nor Wall Street, nor deficit reduction will get us there. By the way, neither will small business.

We need to recognize that modern financialized capitalism is deeply flawed. Without enormous government support, it cannot function. Without enormous government support, there will be no sizable middle-class.

The solution is both simple and difficult for us to accept. We need to use public money to create jobs and decent wages doing the things that need doing!

- We need more education? Then make higher education virtually free as we did at the end of W.W.II.

- We need alternative energy? Then use government funds to perfect the technology as we did with the Manhattan Project to build the A-bomb, and as we did with NASA’s moon shot.

- We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Then hire a million workers to do it as we did during the Great Depression.

How do we pay for it? By now that should be conceptually easy: Wall Street should pay for the damage it has done. (A financial transaction tax would be a good first step.) And while we’re at it, get rid of the carried interest loophole so that Romney and the rest of his gang pay the same rates as the rest of us.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/1539...a/?page=entire

I thought just by the headline it was pretty sick, it gets worse once you read it.
 

Imagine that. This Palm Beach, Florida heterosexual millionaire can adopt his 42 year old girlfriend to help keep his money from the parents of someone he killed by running a stop sign.

But.......... in Florida, same sex couples are not allowed to adopt a child that needs care, love, financial, support, a family, a parent in his or her life. Why? Queer Phobia. Another sad example of control, fear and hypocrisy.

Tracey Cooper-Harris, Gay Army Veteran, Sues Over Denial Of Military Benefits

WASHINGTON — A gay Army veteran and her wife sued the federal government on Wednesday after they were denied military benefits granted to straight spouses.

The lawsuit announced in Washington involves a 12-year veteran of the Army, Tracey Cooper-Harris. After leaving the Army she married Maggie Cooper-Harris in California in 2008. Two years later, Tracey Cooper-Harris was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and she has received disability benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a result. But her application for additional money and benefits that married veterans are entitled to was denied.

The couple's lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles, argues that a federal law and military policy that resulted in the denial of benefits are discriminatory and unconstitutional.

If the couple were straight they would receive about $125 more a month in disability payments as a result of Tracey Cooper-Harris' illness, which has no cure. In addition, Maggie Cooper-Harris would be eligible for approximately $1,200 a month in benefits as a surviving spouse after her wife's death. The pair would also be eligible to be buried together in a veterans' cemetery.

"We're only asking for the same benefits as other married couples. We simply want the same peace of mind that these benefits bring to the families of other disabled veterans," said Tracey Cooper-Harris at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday.

During her military service, Cooper-Harris helped take care of drug and bomb-sniffing dogs. She met her wife, a former teacher, when the two played on opposing rugby teams in California. They now live in Pasadena, Calif.

The military has recently become more tolerant of gay service members. In September it ended its 18-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy and began allowing gay and lesbian service members to serve openly.

But the Pentagon has said that a federal law enacted in 1996 that defines marriage as the legal union between a man and woman prohibits the military from extending benefits to the partners of gay service members, even if they are legally married in certain states. The Defense of Marriage Act is being challenged in a number of court cases, including one by military service members filed in Massachusetts in October. Those service members were suing over a wide range of benefits that married couples receive. The Obama administration has said it will not defend the law in court.

The telephone message seeking comment from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday was not immediately returned.

Same-sex marriage is now legal in six states and the District of Columbia. Tracey and Maggie Cooper-Harris were married in California during a brief window in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal in the state before residents voted to ban it. Marriages performed before the ban are legal, though no new marriages are currently being performed.

The couple is being represented by attorneys from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization, and the law firm WilmerHale.

Danger!
 

Did you hear about the Burmese Python Invasion in Florida??? I wonder if Snow & Grant know.....

Stopping the Burmese Python Invasion


http://www.buzzle.com/img/articleImages/30122-37.jpg

I so loved seeing this on the news- when the state house secretary had to read the amendment to include this out loud while in full session!! The men appeared a little sqeemish....

It didn't pass, but she has introduced something else.

I love this!!!! In another state - I cant remember which - democrats extended the piss in a cup to get assistance rule to include legislators. If they fail the piss test they lose perks like parking and a laptop and such.

The Right-Wing Zombie Lie About Public Workers That Just Won't Die
...the Congressional Budget Office released a study this week on government employees' earnings that has the Right buzzing – and even some progressive pundits repeating the myth that government workers are “overpaid.”

http://www.alternet.org/story/153992...e/?page=entire




The above lie is the perfect companion piece to this congressional betrayal.
It’s okay to renege on the agreement to cut military spending because federal workers are overpaid anyway and besides we need all the money we can get for our next war (one would imagine with Iran.)

Capitol Hill Scrambles To Save Military Spending After Debt Deal
- Common Dreams staff

Republican leaders in Congress yesterday moved to avert potential cuts in the military budget that were part of a bipartisan budget agreement made last year.

The Hill reports today:

A group of Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would wipe out automatic defense cuts by reducing the federal workforce by 5 percent and extending a freeze on federal pay through June 2014.

The GOP senators, led by Arizona’s Jon Kyl and John McCain, wish to prevent $500 billion in automatic defense cuts set to begin in January 2013.

Their bill would eliminate the first year of the cuts by hiring back two workers for every three who leave. It would save $127 billion in all, with $110 billion covering automatic cuts to defense and non-defense spending scheduled for 2013 under last summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Republicans have zeroed in on the federal workforce as a way to reduce deficits. On Wednesday, the House approved extending a federal pay freeze in a bipartisan vote. Seventy-three Democrats voted with the GOP.

At Talking Points Memo, Brian Buetlers writes this morning:

Republican leaders in Congress have all but reneged on a key agreement they reached with the White House last summer rather than reconsider their unwavering stance against new tax revenue.

Relations between the Obama administration and the congressional GOP were already just about as bad as can be. But even so, this sets a precedent future Congresses and White Houses will remember when partisan mismatches force them to strike deals and govern.

“I’ve got concerns about the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Thursday. “I’ve made that pretty clear. And replacing the sequester certainly has value. The defense portion of the sequester, in my view, would clearly hollow our military. The Secretary of Defense has said that, members of Congress have said it. But the question I would pose is, where’s the White House? Where’s the leadership that should be there to ensure that this sequester does not go into effect.”

“Sequester” is budget-speak for across-the-board cuts. But the cuts he’s talking about were part of a deal he recently claimed he’d honor.