Republican Debate Highlights Disagreements On NDAA, Indefinite Detention

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The Republican candidates have sharp disagreements over a new policy to detain American citizens suspected of terrorism.

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow indefinite detention of such terror suspects. Many civil liberties activists believe the law is unconstitutional.

Front-runner Mitt Romney said he would have signed the law and insisted it was “appropriate” to detain American members of al-Qaida.

“Yes, I would have,” said Romney when asked whether he would have signed the legislation as President Obama did. Members of the crowd — most likely supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who believes the bill is unconstitutional — booed him.

“I do believe it is appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country, who are members of al Qaeda. Look, you have every right in this country to protest and to express your views on a wide range of issues, but you don’t have a right to join a group that has challenged America and has threatened killing Americans, has killed Americans, and has declared war against America. That’s treason. In this country we have a right to take those people and put them in jail.”

The crowd loudly applauded this response.

Romney then said that while he disagreed with Obama on most matters, he would give him the benefit of the doubt not to abuse the powers in the NDAA.

“I recognize that in a setting where they are enemy combatants and some of them on our own soil, that could be abused,” he said. “There are lots of things I think this president does wrong — lots of them — but I don’t think he will abuse this power, and if I were president I would not abuse this power.”

Other members of the crowd again booed Romney.

Rick Santorum said a U.S. citizen who is detained as an enemy combatant should have the right to a lawyer and to appeal their case before a federal court.

Ron Paul said holding American citizens indefinitely is a breach of the U.S. judicial system.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/republican-debate-ndaa-indefinite-detention_n_1209581.html

Obama Chooses Politics Over Principle in Naming Consumer Bureau Head: View

President Barack Obama bypassed the U.S. Senate and summarily installed Richard Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general, as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday.

Hours later, Obama filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, possibly the only agency Republicans dislike more than the consumer bureau.

The White House called these “recess appointments,” even though Congress technically wasn’t in recess. In doing so, the president is playing with fire. He risks an election-year legal challenge that could hamstring the consumer bureau and several other financial regulators whose pending confirmations will probably now stall. The president’s authority — and that of future executives — to fill administration posts without Senate approval may be limited by the courts. We think Obama risks too much to make what is largely a political point — that he, more than the Republican Party, stands by American workers and consumers.

Senate Republicans have blocked Cordray, not because they think he’s unqualified but because they want to revamp the agency. Its financing, for example, comes from the Federal Reserve, making it harder for lawmakers to bend the agency to their will than if they controlled the purse strings. As for the NLRB, Republicans say the board is advancing an anti-business, pro-labor agenda, especially after it filed a complaint against Boeing Co. (BA) for trying to build planes in South Carolina while workers were on strike in Washington state.

Deep Frustration
We understand why the president, out of deep frustration, went around Republican senators. Under the Dodd-Frank law that created the consumer bureau, it can’t issue rules or regulate many financial firms, including payday lenders, debt collectors and mortgage brokers, absent a full-time director. The NLRB, which enforces labor laws, is stymied with three out of five seats vacant — not enough for a quorum.

Nevertheless, our desire to have effective regulation doesn’t trump our reservations over the president’s unusual methods. If the goal was to improve government function, Obama might have achieved the opposite by all but inviting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sue.

The Constitution clearly gives the president the power to make appointments when the Senate is in recess. The issue, then, is what makes a recess a recess? The Congressional Research Service in December said decades of congressional practice and Justice Department opinions have backed the position that the Senate should be out of session for more than three days before the president can make a recess appointment.

Lawmakers have resorted to holding so-called pro forma sessions every third day while Congress is out of town to block undesired appointments. Like much of what happens in Washington, the sessions are make-believe events in which the Senate is gaveled into business but conducts no real work. Senate Democrats during the second term of President George W. Bush were especially adept with this stratagem.

White House lawyers have concluded that the pro forma sessions don’t prevent Obama from making appointments. We think the president, who is making confrontation with congressional Republicans a major theme of his re-election effort, is choosing politics over principle, and playing dangerously with the Constitution’s checks and balances, in choosing to tell the Senate when it is and is not in session.

From where we sit, it also looks as if the president is bowing to his liberal base, which has long urged him to act more aggressively on vacancies. Cordray even accompanied Obama on Air Force One to Ohio so the president could make the announcement in Cordray’s home state — likely to be a battleground in November.

Endangered Recovery
The appointment, moreover, will surely heighten the clash between Obama and Congress over a full-year extension of the payroll-tax cut for workers and unemployment insurance for the jobless, endangering the recovery. The president also needs Congress’s cooperation on pending Federal Reserve Board and other bank-regulator nominations.

Instead of playing gotcha, setting back progress on Dodd- Frank regulations and possibly upsetting the system of checks and balances, Obama and Republican leaders should agree on a set of recess appointment rules. Here’s one idea to get the ball rolling: In exchange for confirming Cordray, Obama and Senate Democrats would open talks on making the consumer bureau subject to the congressional appropriations process. That way, Obama could have his chief consumer watchdog, and Congress could make sure its role is not being usurped.

Posted by MaryPuma

RealClearScience’s Top 10 Stories of 2011

By Alex B. Berezow & Ross Pomeroy

December 26, 2011

2011 was truly a breathtaking year. From the Arab Spring to the Eurozone crisis, each day had the potential to bring earth-shattering change– for better or for worse.

Just as in politics and world affairs, this same intrigue held true for science. We were awed by many events in 2011– some wonderful, some catastrophic. So, before charging on to 2012, we pause to count down the top 10 science stories of 2011.

#10. Posthumous Nobel Prize.

Ralph Steinman became the first posthumous recipient of the Nobel Prize, winning the award in medicine for his 1973 discovery of the dendritic cell, a vital part of our immune systems. In many ways, a Nobel Prize immortalizes its recipient. But this year, Steinman was confronted with his own mortality before being given the prestigious award. Steinman had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he extended his life by using a therapy he designed. Sadly, he passed away three days before his prize was announced, which technically disqualified him from being considered. However, the Nobel Assembly was not aware of his death during their deliberations. This conundrum left them in a sticky situation: honor the rules or stand by their decision? The assembly wisely stuck with Steinman.

#9. Resurrecting the woolly mammoth is possible.

Scientists announced the possibility of cloning a woolly mammoth within 5 years. Just like Dolly the Sheep, the new mammoth would be cloned by a process called “nuclear transplantation.” Using a preserved femur recovered from the Siberian permafrost, scientists plan to extract the nucleus of a bone marrow cell and transplant it into an elephant egg cell. Following a 22-month gestation period in a surrogate elephant mother, a woolly mammoth could be born. However, because the DNA inside the bone marrow may be severely degraded, resurrecting the woolly mammoth is still a long shot– but well within the realm of scientific possibility.

#8. Climategate 2.0 & BEST Study.
 
The son of Climategate returned as Climategate 2.0. Yet another batch of unflattering emails — around 5,000 — were leaked onto the Internet in mid-November. The emails showed an apparent attempt by prominent climate researchers to be less than transparent about the scientific evidence of anthropogenic global warming. In stark contrast to the scandal redux, a leading team of scientists released the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study in October. Analyzing temperature data from over 39,000 temperature stations worldwide, BEST found that global warming is indeed real, reporting, “reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1950s.”

#7. Faster-than-light neutrinos are fun, but probably not real.

Physicists went absolutely bonkers when it was revealed that neutrinos may be capable of traveling faster than the speed of light. The story generated so much buzz that even political pundits felt the need to weigh in. The reason for the excitement is that the discovery, if true, would violate Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity which holds (among many other things) that objects with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. However, many researchers pointed out flaws with the results, including a potential systematic measurement error (ironically) caused by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Ultimately, faster-than-light neutrinos may end up being like unicorns: Fun to talk about, but probably not real.

#6. Fixing bad science is hard work.

Science and politics make very awkward bedfellows. Both Republicans and Democrats use science as a weapon to bash each other, and then they brazenly ignore it when it violates their worldviews. This year was no different. During the congressional budget battles, the James Webb Space Telescope was considered for cancellation (but ultimately saved). Concerns over a link between cell phones and cancer still linger, even though it violates basic physics. Fear over BPA also persists, mostly because the media likes to scare people. And Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann opined (incorrectly) that vaccines cause mental retardation. The fight for good science will continue to be a long, uphill battle.

#5. A new anti-viral drug could kill many different viruses.

Antibiotics have been a weapon in our medical arsenal for a long time. Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, antibiotics have been used to target every bacterial infection from strep throat to anthrax. Many “broad-spectrum” antibiotics can kill numerous different kinds of bacteria. However, this is not the case with antivirals. These drugs pose unique difficulties, not the least of which is that they tend to target specific viruses. However, that might change with the recent discovery of a drug called DRACO which has been shown to kill at least 15 different viruses, including influenza, Ebola, polio, and even the common cold. If the drug works in humans, it could be truly revolutionary, indeed.

#4. Earth 2.0: A plethora of habitable planets.

The search for “Earth’s Twin” holds a unique fascination for astronomers worldwide, and this year, their efforts in this endeavor moved closer to fruition. In May, scientists from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace published a study concluding that the previously discovered planet, Gliese 581d, has a climate that “is not only stable against collapse, but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and rainfall.” Revelations about Gliese 581d’s potential habitability were followed in December with NASA‘s discovery of Kepler-22b, the first planet confirmed in the “Goldilocks zone.” At about 2.4 times the size of Earth, Kepler-22b is thought to primarily contain water or a lot of gas. Estimates put the planet’s average temperature at around 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Not too hot, not too cold. Yes, just about right.

#3. End of an era: NASA’s final space shuttle.

What goes up must come down. For over thirty years, the NASA space shuttle program flew in the face of this reality. But on July 8th, it finally succumbed to it. Amidst the normal pageantry of a NASA launch, a slightly somber tone accompanied Atlantis’ blast-off from Cape Canaveral as it embarked on STS-135, the final mission of the 30-year space shuttle program. Costing approximately $209 billion over its lifetime, the space shuttle program was at times a source of intense controversy, incredible excitement, and universal sorrow. Polls showed that most of us were “disappointed” to see it go.

#2. The Meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi.

On March 11, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering tsunami waves at heights of up to 133 feet. The towering waves overwhelmed the beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, cutting off the vital electricity powering the reactor’s cooling systems. In the days that followed, three of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi would experience total meltdown, giving rise to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The long-term implications of the disaster remain to be determined, but the near-term implications have ranged from minimal to drastic. Here in the United States, Fukushima has been used more as a teaching tool, while in Germany, the disaster was used as a rationale to completely phase out nuclear power by 2022.

#1. The Higgs boson is probably real.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)– an enormous particle accelerator built under the border between France and Switzerland– may have finally struck (metaphorical) gold. Particle physicists have long sought after the elusive Higgs boson, the particle which is thought to confer mass upon other particles. Confirming its existence would bolster the widely-accepted Standard Model of particle physics, while failing to find the particle would cause headaches (but perhaps much excitement) for physicists as they headed back to the drawing boards. A final verdict may come as soon as 2012.

 

Dr. Alex B. Berezow is the editor of RealClearScience. Ross Pomeroy is the weekend editor of RealClearScience.

http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2011/12/26/realclearsciences_top_10_stories_of_2011_106259.html

Posted by Karel

Holiday Blues: 39 Percent Don’t Want to Fly

December 19, 2011

If the thought of traveling during the Christmas holidays makes you ill, you’re in good company. A new travel industry survey finds that 39 percent would rather take the bus than fly.

Irked by new travel security requirements, higher traffic and the clutter of presents, many air travelers express frustration about flying.

Lessening the hassles, said the U.S. Travel Association, could win back customers. “Our research shows that reducing hassle without compromising security will encourage more Americans to fly — as many as two to three additional trips a year — leading to an additional $85 billion in spending that would support 900,000 American jobs,” said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association.

We just received their Christmas-Hanukkah survey which found:

When it comes to holiday air travel, a striking number of passengers would rather not fly. Two out of every five passengers (39%) would rather take another form of transportation (e.g., auto, train, bus RV) than fly to reach their final destination.

-A majority of passengers (70%) say they will check at least one bag during their holiday travels.

-A majority of all passengers (58%) will bring holiday gifts with them.

-More than half (63%) will check their holiday gifts.

-One third (32%) will carry their gifts onto the plane.

-Most passengers traveling without gifts chose to ship them to their final destination (65%).

-About one third (32.8%) of travelers said they avoid flying with gifts because it is too much hassle.

-Most passengers (56%) are unaware of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) new pat down policy for children.

-More than one third (35%) of passengers don’t know how much airlines will charge for their checked bag.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/12/19/holiday-blues-39-percent-dont-want-to-fly

Posted by MaryPuma

Obama’s Campaign for Class Resentment

Charles Krauthammer

In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if in three years he hadn’t alleviated the nation’s economic pain, he’d be a “one-term proposition.”

When three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the “wrong track” and even Bill Clinton calls the economy “lousy,” how then to run for a second term? Traveling Tuesday to Osawatomie, Kan., site of a famous 1910 Teddy Roosevelt speech, Obama laid out the case.

It seems that he and his policies have nothing to do with the current state of things. Sure, presidents are ordinarily held accountable for economic growth, unemployment, national indebtedness (see Obama, above). But not this time. Responsibility, you see, lies with the rich.

Or, as the philosophers of Zuccotti Park call them, the 1 percent. For Obama, these rich are the ones holding back the 99 percent. The “breathtaking greed of a few” is crushing the middle class. If only the rich paid their “fair share,” the middle class would have a chance. Otherwise, government won’t have enough funds to “invest” in education and innovation, the golden path to the sunny uplands of economic growth and opportunity.

Where to begin? A country spending twice as much per capita on education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not underinvesting in education. It’s mis-investing. As for federally directed spending on innovation — like Solyndra? Ethanol? The preposterously subsidized, flammable Chevy Volt?

Our current economic distress is attributable to myriad causes: globalization, expensive high-tech medicine, a huge debt burden, a burst housing bubble largely driven by precisely the egalitarian impulse that Obama is promoting (government aggressively pushing “affordable housing” that turned out to be disastrously unaffordable), an aging population straining the social safety net. Yes, growing inequality is a problem throughout the Western world. But Obama’s pretense that it is the root cause of this sick economy is ridiculous.

As is his solution, that old perennial: selective abolition of the Bush tax cuts. As if all that ails us, all that keeps the economy from humming and the middle class from advancing, is a 4.6-point hike in marginal tax rates for the rich.

This, in a country $15 trillion in debt with out-of-control entitlements systematically starving every other national need. This obsession with a sock-it-to-the-rich tax hike that, at most, would have reduced this year’s deficit from $1.30 trillion to $1.22 trillion is the classic reflex of reactionary liberalism — anything to avoid addressing the underlying structural problems, which would require modernizing the totemic programs of the New Deal and Great Society.

As for those structural problems, Obama has spent three years on signature policies that either ignore or aggravate them:

•  A massive stimulus, a gigantic payoff to Democratic interest groups (such as teachers and public-sector unions) that will add nearly $1 trillion to the national debt.
• A sweeping federally run reorganization of health care that (a) cost Congress a year, (b) created an entirely new entitlement in a nation hemorrhaging from unsustainableentitlements, (c) introduced new levels of uncertainty into an already stagnant economy.
• High-handed regulation, best exemplified by Obama’s failed cap-and-trade legislation, promptly followed by an EPA trying to impose the same conventional-energy-killing agenda by administrative means.

Moreover, on the one issue that already enjoys a bipartisan consensus — the need for fundamental reform of a corrosive, corrupted tax code that misdirects capital and promotes unfairness — Obama did nothing, ignoring the recommendations of several bipartisan commissions, including his own.

In Kansas, Obama lamented that millions “are now forced to take their children to food banks.” You have to admire the audacity. That’s the kind of damning observation the opposition brings up when you’ve been in office three years. Yet Obama summoned it to make the case for his reelection!

Why? Because, you see, he bears no responsibility for the current economic distress. It’s the rich. And, like Horatius at the bridge, Obama stands with the American masses against the soulless plutocrats.

This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chávez. But with high unemployment, economic stagnation, and unprecedented deficits, what else can Obama say?

He can’t run on stewardship. He can’t run on policy. His signature initiatives — the stimulus, Obamacare, and the failed cap-and-trade — will go unmentioned in his campaign ads. Indeed, they will be the stuff of Republican ads.

What’s left? Class resentment. Got a better idea?

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2011 the Washington Post Writers Group.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/285324/obama-s-campaign-class-resentment-charles-krauthammer

The Life Reports II

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 28, 2011

A few weeks ago, I asked people over 70 to send me “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well. They make for fascinating and addictive reading, and I’ve tried to extract a few general life lessons:

Divide your life into chapters. The unhappiest of my correspondents saw time as an unbroken flow, with themselves as corks bobbing on top of it. A man named Neil lamented that he had been “an Eeyore not a Tigger; a pessimist, not an optimist; an aimless grasshopper, not a purposeful ant; a dreamer, not a doer; a nomad, not a settler; a voyager, not an adventurer; a spectator, not an actor, player or participant.” He concluded: “Neil never amounted to anything.”

The happier ones divided time into (somewhat artificial) phases. They wrote things like: There were six crucial decisions in my life. Then they organized their lives around those pivot points. By seeing time as something divisible into chunks, they could more easily stop and self-appraise. They had more control over their fate.

Beware rumination. There were many long, detailed essays by people who are experts at self-examination. They could finely calibrate each passing emotion. But these people often did not lead the happiest or most fulfilling lives. It’s not only that they were driven to introspection by bad events. Through self-obsession, they seemed to reinforce the very emotions, thoughts and habits they were trying to escape.

Many of the most impressive people, on the other hand, were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it or were grateful for it. When it comes to self-narratives, honesty may not be the best policy.

You can’t control other people. David Leshan made an observation that was echoed by many: “It took me twenty years of my fifty-year marriage to discover how unwise it was to attempt to remake my wife. … I learned also that neither could I remake my friends or students.”

On the other hand, some of the most inspiring stories were about stepparents who came into families and wisely bided their time, accepting slights and insults until they were gradually accepted by their new children.

Lean toward risk. It’s trite, but apparently true. Many more seniors regret the risks they didn’t take than regret the ones they did.

Measure people by their growth rate, not by their talents. The best essays were by people who made steady progress each decade. Regina Titus grew up shy and sheltered on Long Island. She took demeaning clerical jobs, working with people who treated her poorly. Her first husband died after six months of marriage and her second committed suicide.

But she just kept growing. At 56, studying nights and weekends, she obtained a college degree, cum laude, from Marymount Manhattan College. She moved to Wilmington, Del., works as a docent, studies opera, hikes, volunteers and does a thousand other things. She acknowledges, “I did not have the joy of holding my baby in my arms. I did not have a long and happy marriage.” But hers is a story of relentless self-expansion. I wonder how we can measure that capacity.

Be aware of the generational bias. Many of the essayists have ambivalent attitudes toward their parents. Almost all have worshipful attitudes toward their children. I’m not sure how to explain this pattern, but I don’t think it’s pure egotism. Many writers mentioned that given their own flaws, they are astounded that their kids turned out so well.

Work within institutions or crafts, not outside them. For a time, our culture celebrated the rebel and the outsider. The most miserable of my correspondents fit this mold. They were forever in revolt against the world and ended up sourly achieving little.

There are other patterns running through the essays. I was struck by the fact that almost nobody mentioned whether or not they were good-looking, though this must have been an important factor, especially when they were young. Many people lament the fact that they had to make the most important decisions in their 20s, at the age when they were least qualified to make them.

People get better at the art of living. By their 60s many contributors found their zone. Metaphysics is dead; very few of the writers hewed to a specific theology or had any definite conception of a divine order, though vague but uplifting spiritual experiences pepper their reflections.

Finally, the essays present disturbing quandaries. For example, we are told to live for others. But one savvy retiree writes, “Don’t stay with people who, over time, grow apart from you. Move on. This means do what you think will make you feel okay — even if that makes others feel temporarily not okay.”

Is that selfishness or hard-earned realism? That one you’ll have to answer for yourself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/opinion/brooks-the-life-reports-ii.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks

Thanksgiving – Celebrating the harvest

Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941, has been an annual tradition in the United States by presidential proclamation since 1863 and by state legislation since the Founding Fathers of the United States. Historically, Thanksgiving began as a tradition of celebrating the harvest of the year.^[28]

Thanksgiving in North America had originated from a mix of European and Native traditions.^[1] Typically in Europe, festivals were held before and after the harvest cycles to give thanks for a good harvest, and to rejoice together after much hard work with the rest of the community.^[1] At the time, Native Americans had also celebrated the end of a harvest season.^[1] When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest.^[1] Though the origins of the holiday in both Canada and the United States are similar, Americans do not typically celebrate the contributions made in Newfoundland, while Canadians do not celebrate the contributions made in Plymouth, Massachusetts.^[2]

Oven roasted turkey

Most of the U.S. aspects of Thanksgiving (such as the turkey or what were called Guineafowls originating from Madagascar}, were incorporated when United Empire Loyalists began to flee from the United States during the American Revolution and settled in Canada.^[5]

In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition traces its origins to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. There is also evidence for an earlier harvest celebration on the continent by Spanish explorers in Florida during 1565, as well as thanksgiving feasts in the Virginia Colony. The initial thanksgiving observance at Virginia in 1619 was prompted by the colonists’ leaders on the anniversary of the settlement.^[7] The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. In later years, the tradition was continued by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford who planned a thanksgiving celebration and fast in 1623.^[8][9][10] While initially, the Plymouth colony did not have enough food to feed half of the 102 colonists, the Wampanoag Native Americans helped the Pilgrims by providing seeds and teaching them to fish. The practice of holding an annual harvest festival like this did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.^[11]

According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden.^[12]

Contending origins

The claim of where the first Thanksgiving was held in the United States, and even the Americas has often been a subject of debate. Author and teacher Robyn Gioia and Michael Gannon, of the University of Florida, have argued that the earliest attested “Thanksgiving” celebration in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on September 8, 1565, in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida.^[13][14]

Similarly, many historians point out that the first thanksgiving celebration in the United States was held in Virginia, and not in Plymouth. Thanksgiving services were routine in what was to become the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607.^[15] A day of Thanksgiving was codified in the founding charter of Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia in 1619.^[16]

Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada (October), Liberia (early November), Norfolk Island (late November and the United States (fourth Thursday in November). In 2012, Puerto Rico will celebrate on the same date – November 22.

Excerpt from wikipedia

Posted by villager4ever

Occupy Fannie and Freddie

By Debra Saunders

The collapse of MF Global Holdings gives Americans yet another reason not to trust Wall Street. The firm filed for bankruptcy as federal regulators were looking for $600 million missing from customer accounts. Its CEO, former Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, had bet that European leaders would bail out smallish countries that were too big to fail. His bet did not pay off.

The only good news out of this story is that Washington won’t be bailing out MF Global. Corzine said he won’t take a reported $12 million in severance. If he truly wants to atone, then Corzine might dedicate himself to cleaning up after Occupy Wall Street activists. To use their lingo, let the 1 percent tidy up after the 99 percent.

Occupy Wall Street’s “unofficial de facto” website boasts that its New York financial district encampment strikes a blow “against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

What’s missing from this picture? An understanding of the starring role Washington played in creating the housing bubble that, when it burst, jammed up the U.S. economy.

Wall Street greed and hubris resulted in the $700 billion TARP bailout — with $309 billion going to banks and financial institutions — during the George W. Bush administration.

But the housing bubble was hatched thanks to President Clinton’s well-intended plan to boost American homeownership. As Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner wrote in their book, “Reckless Endangerment,” Clinton’s “Partners in Homeownership wound up decimating the middle class.”

Bowing to Washington, banks dropped traditional down payments and longstanding underwriting criteria. More people could afford to buy homes. Home prices rose past the point the market could bear.

The banks did not act alone. Government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were great enablers — the government’s contribution to crony capitalism.

Banks have repaid most of the TARP bailout. As a result, the expected tab to taxpayers, according to Investors Business Daily, could be as little as $19 billion. But the Fannie and Freddie bailouts have cost U.S. taxpayers close to $170 billion.

On Wednesday, a splinter group of Occupy Wall Street began a two-week walk to Washington, D.C. If activists want to fight corrosive power, they might want to set their sights on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Last week, Politico reported that the Federal Housing Finance Agency paid $13 million in bonuses to 10 Fannie and Freddie executives. It’s true that Fannie and Freddie bigs are making 40 percent less than the bygone execs who drove their organizations into conservatorship. But with Freddie reporting a $4.4 billion loss for the past quarter, bonuses hardly seem in order.

The problem with these government-supported entities is that, with Washington serving as the deepest of deep pockets, there’s no such thing as failure.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats have moved to block further bonuses. Of course, they’ll hold hearings — just to show how indignant they are.

But they’re not likely to do anything about the corrosive forces that fueled Fannie and Freddie. Boosters were able to claim that Fannie and Freddie could open the door to broader homeownership — at no cost to taxpayers. When the bill finally arrived, it was too big to stop.

// http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/10/occupy_fannie_and_freddie_112015.html

Normita Fenn: “What journalism means to me”

Normita Fenn

When I took up journalism last fall, it was as though I died and went to heaven! After years of reflections and contemplations of what life would have been for me if I had the opportunity to take up journalism, finally I am here, with a successful education and a career behind me that many people would have liked to achieve.

In this reflective moment, how sad it was when after high school my parents honestly told me that there was no money to send me to journalism school – but I am sad no more.

Journalism to me is to be curious on why things happen and out of that curiosity, do something to let the public know and be their eyes against anomalies.

Journalism to me is to remain true to the human spirit by minimizing the harm and sufferings of the afflicted.

 Journalism to me is to not be swayed by those whose interests lie for themselves and not for the public good. Journalism to me is to be accountable to no one but the public.

In total, I am a journalist who will endeavor to the best of my ability to give voice to those who are silent, to those who are unable to express their feelings about what goes on in the four corners of the home, in the streets and in the world around them, done with the highest standards of ethics and integrity – fair and accurate.

The landscape of journalism has evolved into the embracing of a new media – online news driven by the fast and furious internet technology. News is all around us 24/7 – from newspapers, television, computers, smartphones, all delivered in the comfort of our homes, trains and coffee shops. Events that happen in Europe and Asia are readily known in New York and San Francisco within nanoseconds.

In this new cycle of news, Charles Hoyt said, “What ties them together is the acceleration of the news cycle,” Keller told me. “We’re always on, which increases the danger that things will not get checked as they should.” He said news organizations have always had times when they have had to work quickly on deadline, and they know there is more danger of mistakes on those occasions. “The difference now is the deadline is always.” (The Danger of Always Being On, NYT, April 10, 2010)

The decisions journalists make to perform their responsibilities are critically important to the public and expectations for speed and reliability are crucial for competing media. But the guiding principles for journalists must remain constant:

1. Seek the Truth and Report It. An example is the scenario in the article by Clark Hoyt, “A Private Room with a Narrow View,” (NYT, May 30, 2010) about the blog posted by Corey Kilgannon, a Times reporter, on a jazz pianist, Jones, who died in a hospice. After interviewing Jones’ landlord, Kilgannon posted on the City Room Blog about Jones, referring to him in a light that was found by family members and colleagues as a false picture of Jones and an invasion of privacy.

This issue falls under the premise of courage on the part of the journalist to seek and tell the truth, “That courage requires disrespect, and it results in the relentless search for truth, no matter what the consequences.” (Woo, 25) In spite of this, would it have helped to have the editor look at the article before it’s posted?

2. Minimize Harm.  Minimizing harm is a very important component of the principle of truth telling. Whether to report in full, in part or not to report at all – journalists are faced with the dilemma in handling cases that could further harm and sufferings. “Minimizing harm is connected to the values of humaneness: fairness, compassion, empathy, kindness, respect.” (BSB, 40)

The availability of online blogs enables the public to divulge harmful information and an invitation to incivility. “The trick is how to reconcile these ethical values when a situation in journalism arises where two or more of our ethical principles are in conflict.” (Woo, 76)

3. Act Independently. According to Black, Steele and Barney, “Pressures come from those who try to divert a journalist’s loyalty away from audiences and steer it toward narrower vested interests.” (BSB, 45) Journalists are bound by ethical principles to be independent in the pursuit of news and reporting it. No private interest or individual should influence him or her from reporting something that the public need to know or could become suspect to conflict of interest issues.

The availability of information online behooves that journalists remain conscious of their ethical obligation by staying away from situations that put their integrity in question.

4. Be Accountable.  “Journalists are in the business of being “accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.” (BSB, 48)  Every news piece that carries the journalist’s byline must be carefully crafted to show objectivity in reporting. This includes fairness, impartiality and balanced reporting.

“The idea of abandoning objectivity as journalism’s highest ideal resonates with many practitioners of new media.” (F&S, 12) If there are inaccuracies, they should be acknowledged, checked and corrected as quickly as possible.

 The impact of today’s fast and furious internet-driven technology leaves more ground open to ethical questions that require decisions in the preservation of the organization’s credibility and ethical standards.

“It’s trying to do the best journalism you can in a way that is respectful of ethical values.” (Woo, 76) A compelling issue on ethical decisions is brought up in Paul Farhi’s article, “Traffic Problems.”

 The scenario depicts editors of major news organizations faced with decisions that need to be made on a given hour, on a given day in the name of drawing traffic to their site: Whether to ignore the out-of- the-norm stuff shown in their websites or to embrace it as a sustainable source of revenue.  “Here lies the importance for editors to be willing to struggle with the gray area and competing principles.” (BSB, 60)

I humbly say that for the profession to flourish journalists must tackle the challenge on how they can mirror the ethical principles of yesterday. No matter where they are in their profession, journalists need to remain educated and be reminded on the ethical principles that guide them – to be truth-seekers and sense-seekers if they are to deserve to be called “gatekeepers.”

To abandon that is to let the public down and de-value the work of those who came before them.
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Normita Fenn is a student at UMass-Amherst School of Journalism’s Certificate in Journalism Program.  She resides in San Ramon, California. Contact her at: nfenn@student.umass.edu.

 

To our loving Lanz

Lanz Fenn

In a tremendous strike of loss and grief, we are consoled by thoughts, prayers and loving embrace from one another. Nothing can ever replace the emptiness caused by the loss of our most loved Lanz who gave us so much of himself for 15 and a half years. Bob and I are lost without his presence in every corner of the house. May peace and strength dwell again someday. – Bob and Normita

Posted by Bob and Normita