With the endless promotion building up for the second season of MTV's Jersey Shore, it was inevitable that the show would not live up to the hype. Sure, I tuned in... but I DVR'ed it so the advertisers don't get my eyeballs. Strike One. "We're going to Miami, bitches" was uttered more times than was necessary. Last season, I was the last holdout for the show. It wasn't until Christmas vacation, snowbound in Rhinebeck, that I watched all the episodes back to back. Yes... it was brilliant. But, brilliant because it was like some kind of sociology experiment, observing creatures that would be considered study-able, becoming extinct like Chimpanzees or perhaps even legendary beings rumored to be walking the Earth like Chupacabra or the Abominable Snowman. These kids are like no one I have ever met, yet, we know they exist... clearly... on MTV. The first episode of season two was cute...ish. Repetitive beyond, and we learned nothing new about any of these characters. You know this show is in trouble if Angelina is the most likable of the Guidettes. "I am way too classy for these bitches," she says. Really? Think again.
Of course there were a few great lines, my favorite is the one from Ronnie's friend, "Double Bagger, you know, you wear a bag over your head, too, in case the bag falls off her head." Pearls of wisdom. Sure, Snooki is the main character, but if she doesn't get a good storyline, she will quickly become annoying...which she probably was before her good fortune of getting cast on the show. JWoww is a like a toodgie. Her instinct to beat someone's ass is less than interesting and sadly, she is now a role model of some sort. As school systems, teachers and parents are anxiously trying to harness rampant "bullying", here comes a barely-clad skank with nothing else up her sleeve besides a fist. That, my dears, is not a good thing. These Guidettes are like cheesy versions of the Sex and the City broads, known booze-hounds and sexual predators. What impact do these gals have on the women's movement? Surely not the women's movement I knew and admired growing up in the 70's. But, what do I know?
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Artists are told regularly that they must take an active role in the development of their careers, that they must invest their time and energy in this endeavor, rather than waiting for someone else (dealer? patron? MacArthur Foundation?) to do it for them. Many of these opportunities involve artists spending their own money, which brings up the question of whether or not self-pay garners the same art world esteem as when someone else is the underwriter. (I can say, for example, that what you are reading is a great article, but it is probably more meaningful for readers that this magazine chose to publish it.) For some time, the ground has been shifting, moving the line between what is and is not considered acceptable for artists to pay for. Renting out a gallery in order to show one's artwork still may be viewed as a vanity exhibition, for instance, but increasingly it is common for artists to split the costs of shows with gallery owners -- even galleries that exclusively represent these artists -- such as advertising and promotion, an opening reception and even repainting gallery walls. That split may be heavily weighted against the artist, but critics don't ask or seem to care about where the money came from before they review an exhibit, nor potential collectors when they visit the gallery; a review and sales far outweigh older concerns about breaking traditional rules about the roles of artists and dealers. Being the subject of a coffee table art book is another great benchmark in an artist's career, but the publishers of these books regularly are subsidized by the galleries of the artists and/or by the artists themselves ("One of the factors in the decision to produce a book is whether the artist is willing to contribute to the costs of publishing," said Carol Morgan, publicity director for Harry N. Abrams, the art book publisher). The means of financing these books are not revealed publicly, and readers don't inquire: They simply assume that the artist must be a big deal in order to merit the book, which is what the artist and dealer wanted in the first place. Throwing a veil over how the operations of the art world are actually paid for may help maintain older (needed?) illusions for collectors, critics and artists, but even what used to be called blatant self-promotion does not seem as out-of-bounds as it once had.
A growing number of artists have taken to self-publishing catalogues of their work, complete with high quality reproductions of their work and essays by noted critics, that look for all intents and purposes just like those created by galleries and museums.
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Mona Simpson's latest novel, My Hollywood, is an honest and poetic exploration of why caring for a child -- whether by a mother or a nanny -- still just can't get the respect or security it deserves. In her modern-day version of a situation portrayed in The Help by Kathryn Sockett where caring for young children is by and large done by someone who is paid to mind, protect, comfort, feed, clean and coddle the child, we see once again the contradiction of paying for love and care but not offering trust or security. In Alabama during the early 1960s, the help was paid little, trusted less, and yet the children were given blithely and with confidence that the best of care would be provided. When a certain age was reached, the child moved on, regardless of attachments formed on either side, and the help was given other work around the house. In Mona Simpson's Los Angeles, the help is paid better (although still without benefits or social security), trusted more (used as sounding board, shoulder for crying and companionship) but lied to more as well, and the children still given just as freely. When the children are ready to move on or the parents want to try something new, the help is, as Lola, Simpson's nanny narrator calls it, "chopped"-- fired with maybe a severance paid and a job reference or two. And once again, attachments between caretaker and child be damned. In other words, the parents of Simpson's novel still haven't figured out the respect that childcare deserves.
For Claire, the mother narrator of My Hollywood (the chapters alternate between her point of view and Lola's), childcare is necessary to allow her to pursue her composing career while her husband pursues his dream of writing television comedy. She meets Lola in a park and hires her on the spot. The hiring of Lola to watch over her son Will turns out to be one of the few wise decisions the beleaguered Claire makes. We can't help but feel sorry for Claire: She is so overwhelmed by angst, guilt, and frustration. She wants to be a good mother and she wants to be a good composer, and there just is not enough time in the day. Meanwhile her husband is free to work as long and as hard as he wants and then come home to a cared-for house, and a loving child. Paul doesn't seem to mind too much that his wife has zero interest in sex. He has his eyes on the prize -- his own show -- and that is all that matters.
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Overall and in sum, the creative approach and execution of these ads is bang-on: intimate, human but never quotidian. While quiet and without music to skew the emotions, the pieces are even a bit awkward. Such is life itself.
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Human thought in the twenty-first century needs to work towards a new model that immerses the human being within a vibrant energetic universe. However, this need not demand that we throw away what we already have; rather, we can expand upon the tools that have brought us to our present position. There is an eastern proverb that roughly translates as: "You may ride your donkey up to your front door, but would you ride it into your house?" In other words, when we have arrived at a particular destination we are often required to make a transition in order to continue the journey. In this sense we can be grateful to a vast knowledge base of scientific and religious thought for helping us arrive at the point where we presently stand. Yet it is now imperative that we move forward. As Deepak Chopra wrote his post "Consciousness and the End of the War Between Science and Religion," how we move forward is likely to be centered in our understanding of consciousness.
Our physical apparatus is spectacular; consider that each of us carries around a 100-billion-cell bioelectric quantum computer that creates our realities, with almost all its neurons established the day we were born. Still, this phenomenal "reality shaper" has undergone monumental perceptual change over our evolutionary history. What is required, at this significant juncture, is again another catalyst of consciousness change. This may come about through discoveries in the field of quantum biology, and the idea, emphasized by Ervin Laszlo in his previous blogs, that the form of consciousness we possess is likely to be the result of quantum coherence.
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This is the saga of a love affair gone awry between the liberals and their true love, President Obama. One only has to gaze at the furor in Obama's eyes on television to glimpse the depth of emotions, while listening to the liberals wail. Liberals wanted him to be their perfect spouse, and forgot that good relationships take hard work from all parties (no pun intended). As the honeymoon crashed and burned, liberals began abandoning their beloved. There is no forgiveness in their hearts, or room for mistakes. Patience has vanished. Oh woe is me; it's bad enough that Obama is getting battered from the right, but now his latte friends that loved and cherished him are turning away. He has ceased to be the "cool" kid that shoots hoops; rather he is the clumsy nerd that no one picks or wants for their team. It's like watching rats dive overboard, and leaving no life vest for their best buddy. And so it goes according to plan from the opposition that is wreaking havoc, distrust and suspicion. They knew this would happen because we liberals are so predictable. When the going gets tough, we don't want marriage counseling. Ick! We pick up our toys in a huff and expel a harrumph. Yes, it's a harrumph because we're having a tantrum. Is this any way to treat your beloved? Obama told us it would take a partnership, and we've forgotten. We're mad and watched him skin his knees. No lollipops for these folks. Sadly, the traps were so predictable that Carl and Frank must be dancing a jig together right now.
Just look at the result of the duplicity of bombastic right wing blogger, Andrew Breitbart. He tinkered with a video of Shirley Sherrod, and drove it into the liberals' weak spot -- racism. Breitbart admittedly isn't the brightest bulb, but he had expert coaching and the fallout is a bad dream. Dah, that was a no brainer. It was like dangling a young, zaftig thing in front of former President Clinton, and waiting for him to take the bait. We (liberals) should be mad as hell at the opposition, not Obama or his administration that fell over one another. As Ari Shapiro on NPR's "All Things Considered" finds, "there has been a pattern of conservative activists blurring the line between journalism and advocacy, and doing it with striking success." I'd go further, and call it what it is: pathetic, hate mongering journalism, libel, slander and all those bad things. Shirley should sue Breitbart, and if she wants to -- go back to work (please). We should stop tripping over ourselves, stop over analyzing and get over it. Anderson Cooper, we all embrace you, but enough is enough. Move on, there's so much work to be done in rebuilding this relationship between the Obama and the liberals.
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There has long been a debate regarding whether or not student athletes at the college level should receive financial compensation beyond their scholarships. Major universities make tens of millions of dollars from their athletic programs, but the athletes who generate all of that revenue get none of it. While there are numerous arguments on both sides of this debate - the merits of which I'll leave for others to dispute - there does not seem to be any reason why a third party should be permitted to profit off of the student athlete. That is exactly what numerous current and former student athletes contend Electronic Arts has been doing for years and they have filed a class action lawsuit in response.
Each year, Electronic Arts releases its popular NCAA Football video game. Pursuant to agreements with the NCAA, Electronic Arts obtains the right to use the names of all of the major college football programs in its game. NCAA regulations prohibit the student athletes from profiting from the exploitation of their names and likeness and the NCAA has no ability to license Electronic Arts these rights. However, that has not stopped Electronic Arts. Each team in Electronic Arts' game is populated with players that bear a striking resemblance to the actual players on the team. For example, if you chose to play Texas in last years version of the game, your quarterback would bear the same number as Colt McCoy. The virtual Texas quarterback would also share the same skin color, height, weight, throwing arm and even home state of Mr. McCoy. The only thing missing is "McCoy" on the back of the virtual jersey, but I for one believe that there really is no doubt that it is Colt McCoy being depicted in the game.
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Capitol Hill reporters relentless peppered White House press secretary Robert Gibbs with questions of why the White House rushed to judgment and demanded the resignation of Shirley Sherrod. A clearly flustered Gibbs could only say and repeat that the White House made its horrible decisions on faulty information. Gibbs promised a review to get to the bottom of why and how it happened. The surface reason the White House dumped Sherrod was made on faulty information, a doctored video, and simple ignorance of the true facts. It wouldn't have taken much of an investigation to find the truth. That wasn't done. Former Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Mary Frances Berry and others claim that Obama is scared stiff of being ripped by Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck and the conservative smear machine. That's just as spurious. If Obama sneezes, they'd attack him for polluting the Ozone, so there's no real fear of them. The decision to can Sherrod had everything to do with politics, and the tight cornered racial parameter of his presidency.
This was set the very first day of his presidential campaign. In his candidate declaration speech in Springfield, Illinois in February 2007, he made only the barest mention of race. The focus was on change, change for everyone. He had little choice. The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped. Obama would have had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, if there had been any hint that he embraced the race-tinged politics of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism. The month after he got in the White House he mildly chided Attorney General Eric Holder for calling Americans cowards for not candidly talking about race.
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This is my final post on Ring Festival LA, which concluded on June 30. Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed proclaimed that "LA Opera's Ring had become an LA Opera's Ring instant LA legend." And Donna Perlemutter commented in the Huffington Post that the"momentous production" was "a one-of-a-kind for the history books." We at LA Opera can justly celebrate the success of this enormous effort, while regretting the ephemeral nature of the performing arts. Ring Festival LA, and its 1,000 events that preceded and surrounded the Ring cycles, has come and gone, also. It, too, leaves memories and a kind of legend as a great city-wide arts festival. But the Festival leaves something more that will impact the future. The Festival gave birth to a spirit of community collaboration that will continue for years to enliven Los Angeles' cultural scene.
Ring Festival LA forged a model for community collaboration between cultural and educational institutions. With all the Festival partners doing their own events, at their own expense (and for their own profit), around a central theme, a synergy developed where the whole became greater than the sum of the parts. Surveys done during and after the Festival confirm that partners experienced more exposure and bigger attendance for their events than if they had not been part of Ring Festival LA. We showed that coordinated programming and co-promotion work. A spirit of participation and celebration developed throughout the city that would not have occurred if we were doing business as usual. Collaboration is not a zero-sum game.
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The Sweeter Theater Company in New York commissioned me to write a play -- a modern, "green" version of Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People. Little did I know that the topic I picked for contemporization -- hydraulic fracturing or "fracking", a controversial way of drilling for natural gas -- would explode in headlines across the country from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. The debate is especially fervent in upstate New York, which provides drinking water for millions.
I think it's pretty clear that Ibsen didn't intend for Enemy of the People to be an environmental debate. He was out on a rampage against the tyranny of the majority. When Arthur Miller adapted the play during the McCarthy Era he was interested in this aspect, but this didn't ring true to me in current culture. Of course, modern corporations and governments silence the truth, but that's been done in movies like Erin Brokovich or The Insider. And frankly, in this information age, it seems the public is overly aware of what is happening across the country, and there has been a slow chorus of "hell no!" rising in the air.
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It's now been two weeks since I've returned from my trip to South Africa. Maybe it's because I'm not a die hard soccer fan, but the images that dominate my memory of my trip are not the stunning views of the pitch from inside Soccer Stadium in Johannesburg, but rather the views of the crumbling slums out the window of my rental car as we road-tripped to Durban. Somehow the quiet of the wilderness region in Kwazulu-Natal region I visited is louder in my imagination than the collective thunder of the vuvuzelas.
The feeling that lingers is not so much the feeling of cheerfulness one is suppose to feel when traveling a distant land, but rather a feeling of uneasiness stemming from being a visitor in a country of have-nots as a carefree, vacationing American. The ugly feeling of privilege and status afforded by getting lucky in the lottery of birthplace (well in my case I was actually born in Tehran but lucked-out with determined to-come to-America parents, but you understand what I mean). A disquieting knowledge that only now, because of the World Cup, is the collective attention of the world being directed at South Africa. After all, ever since the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa remains a large-scale social experiment. One that has shown some early signs of success, to be sure, but one whose outcome is still uncertain. In my mind, Nelson Mandela, the lead designer of this experiment if you will, should be given all credit for this historic moment. I would have never eaten Bunny Chow after a long night out in Durban (the curry-inspired South African fast food) if he had not miraculously chosen peaceful reconciliation with the Afrikaners over violent and justified payback for decades of ruthless oppression and human degradation under apartheid. The world would not have experienced World Cup 2010 in South Africa if it were not for the acts of immeasurable courage, love and humanity of Nelson Mandela. For those of us who traveled to South Africa to watch the World Cup, the least we can do is tell people back home about what we saw -- the pretty and the ugly. Here's my go at it.
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July 15th, the day that the financial reform bill passed the Senate, will likely serve as a critical milestone in the campaign to create a new legal infrastructure for the financial industry, one that, hopefully, will serve as a bulwark against risky conduct and future financial crises. Much work remains to be done, however. What's more, financial reform legislation, the new regulations that need to be generated as a result of the law, and the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency will do little to compensate for the losses caused by the present financial crisis. If those responsible for the financial crisis are to be held accountable, grassroots efforts, like the Move Your Money campaign, will be well served by complementary efforts launched in the courts. Along those lines, another important event occurred on July 15th, one that may serve as a key turning point in the campaign to hold banks accountable for their responsibility for bringing about the present crisis.
As the whole world now knows, last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was settling its landmark securities fraud case against Goldman Sachs for some of the investment bank's shady securities practices. The practices challenged by the SEC included allegations that the investment bank created investment vehicles doomed to fail: vehicles that were created in large part for some clients to bet that they would fail, while still other clients were led to believe they would not. The settlement, for over $500 million, is one of the largest securities fraud settlements in history. While some may see it as a slap in the wrist for Goldman, the settlement may have profound repercussions across bank board rooms and litigation war rooms across the country. Many on Wall Street might hope that the Goldman settlement closes the book on accountability for the banking industry for its role in bringing about the financial crisis. While it may indeed be the beginning of the end for Wall Street accountability, it is more likely that this is, as Winston Churchill once said in the depths of World War II, only the end of the beginning.
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Last evening, in an email statement, National Incident Commander, Thad Allen, ordered BP to reopen the well at the completion of the current shut in test. He had ordered another 24 hours shut-in with extensive montitoring, which ends this afternoon. This morning, Doug Suttles, standing in for Kent Wells, held the morning McBriefing, providing scant information, then proceeded to not answer reporters' questions (one per customer, no follow-ups, no coupons accepted).
The only information that I was able to glean from the McBriefing was that pressure on the well was 6,778 psi, up 78 psi since the well was shut in some 63 hours ago. He said that the test was going well, and that the pressure is building as they expected. I find that interesting since they have moved the "everything is going according to plan" goalpost twice in the last 2 days. You'll recall that last Tuesday, July 13, Adm. Allen said,
"We will at some point try to get to 8,000 or 9,000 and sustain that for some period of time, and these will be done basically, as I said -- if we have a very low pressure reading, we will try and need (ph) at least six hours of those readings to try to ensure that that is the reading. If it's a little higher, we want to go for 24 hours. And if it's up at 8,000 or 9,000, we would like to go 48 hours just to make sure it can sustain those pressures for that amount of time."Adm. Allen then went on to say that the test would go from 6 to 48 hours, and only longer if the pressure was higher. No one from BP corrected that statement, so those numbers stood until Kent Wells moved the goalpost during his Friday, July 16 briefing, saying,
"We also said that if the pressure go above 8,000 pounds and really the number in 7,500 pounds, it would really say to us that we do have integrity under, essentially, any scenario."Very smooth. In one sweeping statement, that the press let him get away with, Wells moved the target pressure down as much as 1,500 psi from the 9,000 psi to 7,500, much closer to the 6,700 psi they were holding, which is actually at the lower end of the ambiguity range we talked about on Friday. Wells did it again yesterday, moving the "good integrity" range number down to 6,000 psi to 7,500 psi, saying,
"But at this point there is no evidence that we have no integrity and that's very goodSo, over the last 3 days, BP has walked the "integrity" goalpost down from as high as 9,000 psi to 6,000 psi, or at least the 6,700 psi, which happens to be where they are, give or take 100 psi. You know Adm Allen didn't just make up the 8,000 to 9,000, being a sea captain and knowing little to nothing about oil and gas. Somebody gave him those numbers. BP moved to goalpost and the timeline, and the press let them get away with it. Again.
and the fact that the pressure is continuing to rise is giving us more and more
confidence that as we go through this process."
Here's the rich part. Today, Suttles dodged virtually every inquiry as to exactly what BP intends to do, picking up the new mantra that Wells started yesterday, "Nobody wants to see any more oil going into the Gulf." He said it at least 5 times (seemed like 100). He said the facilities to take 100% of the flow would take until the end of the month, and coincidently, that the relief well would be ready for the kill at the same time. He also said this morning that, in order to open up the well for containment, they would flow oil into the Gulf for up to 3 days. 3 days. Wells said something similar yesterday, raising the specter of oil spewing into the Gulf on all of our television screens, claiming that they would have to do that to take pressure off of the well before containment could resume. Of course, no one asked the obvious question of why they would have to do that since they have 2 closed systems with chokes tied to the well that they've already used successfully. Unless I'm missing something, they can "relieve pressure" up the existing risers. If they can't do that, they can certainly put the Enterprise back on station, and run a riser with a latching cap to tie directly to the top of the stack.
So the stage is set. It sure looks like to me that BP is refusing to disclose critical data and playing chicken with the government while holding our Gulf of Mexico as hostage. They have every motivation to not produce the well, for all the reasons we've discussed before, most importantly, being able to measure the flow; and the ROV feed of oil roaring back into the Gulf is the gun to the head. The government should compel BP to release all the data from this test. Again, this well, this lease, this oil and gas belong to the United States. This well is in federal waters, and we are all owners here. As owners of this resource, we have a right to see all the information available. BP should immediately release all of the pressure buildup data, temperature data, acoustic data, and seismic data. They should also release their build up models including the Horner plot forecasts that Wells discussed yesterday. Only then can we make a judgment that BP is managing this in the best interest of the United States, not just their own. We need no more reason for this demand than the massive scale of this catastrophe.
One more thing...these McBriefings are almost useless, and we're just passively sitting there letting BP get away with "technical briefings" that are neither technical or briefings. It's time to start asking the hard questions, demanding the data, and to stop putting up with the one question per customer, no followups, no coupons accepted policy. These briefings should be live, with some reporters actually present rather than just by telephone. If the government won't do it, then we need to. This is too important.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
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Weekly Mulch: Kicking Our Addiction to AC--Why DC Needs to Step Up
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
This summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country's carbon emissions, America's share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.
But if it's hard for individuals to give up air conditioning on some of the hottest days in decades, it's even harder for the country to give up fossil fuels altogether. Just yesterday, BP finally capped the well that has been spewing oil into the Gulf--it took the company almost three months. Yet even in Louisiana, the state hardest hit by the BP oil spill, workers are supporting the oil industry and pushing back against the Obama administration's temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling.
How can the country give up the controlled climate it has become accustomed to? We depend on fossil fuels to keep us cool and to keep our economy pumping. In both cases, the answer is not to go cold turkey, but to come up with an innovative solution.
Brrr, it's cold in here!
Americans are as addicted to A/C as they are to oil. "Just since the mid-1990s, as the U.S. population was growing by less than 15 percent, consumption of electricity to cool the residential, retail and automotive sectors doubled," writes Stan Cox at AlterNet. That cool breeze creates greenhouse gas pollution--the equivalent of 400 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Cox talks to several admirable people who live without air conditioning. They offer advice like consuming pitchers of ice water, opening your windows at strategic times, and canny use of fans.
At Care2, however, GinaMarie Cheeseman rebels. "My response to the...premise that we just have to learn to live without air conditioning is a definite, 'Hell, no!'" she writes. Her solution? Not to give up a modern technology that improves many days, but to turn to an atmosphere-friendly product--a new-fangled A/C unit called DEVap, which is "50 to 90 percent more energy efficient than traditional air conditions," she reports.
Highway to 'Hell, no!'
Across the country, the response to an offshore drilling moratorium has echoed Cheeseman: "Hell, no!" After a federal judge (with a financial interest in the oil industry, of course) shut down the initial ban, the administration came back this week with a new version that "is based more on specific safety concerns and less on the simple depth of the well," as Public News Service reports.
In The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard talked to Louisianans who disapproved of the ban altogether.
"When a airplane crashes, do you ground every plane in the country? No. You find out what caused the problem and fix it. You don't punish the entire industry," one fisherman told him. Hertsgaard came away with a surprising conclusion:
"It may be shocking to read in The Nation, but a blanket moratorium on new deepwater drilling may not be the best policy to pursue in the wake of the BP disaster. No state in the union is more addicted to oil than Louisiana; the oil and gas industry is responsible for roughly 25 percent of the state's economic activity. If you abruptly cut off a hardened heroin addict, you can kill him; there is a reason physicians prescribe methadone rather than cold turkey."
At GritTV, Hertsgaard and I discussed the problem of how to move forward, if a ban on oil drilling won't fly. The country needs to adopt new solutions--like Cheeseman's A/C unit--before throwing out the old. Hertsgaard learned, for instance, that Louisiana has the strongest program for solar energy in the country.
"Louisiana has by far the strongest solar tax credit--50% off of your solar installation," Hertsgaard said. "And if you add onto that the 30% credit that Obama administration passed earlier in his presidency, Louisiana homeowners can go solar for 80% off."
PACE-ing ourselves
Why doesn't every state have such a strong solar program, though? Even a disaster like the BP oil spill could not budge federal leaders to move the country towards a safer, cleaner energy future via strong policies. The version of energy legislation that now looks most likely to come to a vote in the Senate drops a carbon cap altogether. It could require renewable electricity standards which mandate that a certain amount of electricity production comes from renewable energy sources, but many states already have similar, if not better standards.
One way to reduce the country's dependence on fossil fuels is to improve the energy efficiency of homes and businesses. There are huge gains to be made here. Better efficiency across the economy could reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030, according to the Center for American Progress. The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans encouraged homeowners to build houses that met federal efficiency standards. But a decision last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency essentially killed this type of assistance.
"Cities can continue to offer PACE, but then Fannie and Freddie must impose stricter lending standards on all local borrowers--even those who never intend to take out PACE loans," Alyssa Katz explains at The American Prospect. "In effect, the new guidelines force mayors and city councils to choose between promoting energy efficiency and improving the health of their already battered real-estate markets."
Two cities that were using the loans--San Francisco and Boulder--have stopped issuing them, Katz reports. Yesterday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) did introduced the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2010, which requires the FHFA to support PACE, but there's no guarantee that legislation will pass through Congress, Grist reports.
Policy trumps innovation
That chilling effect is exactly the opposite of the sort of policies the country needs from Washington. As Christian Parenti writes in The Nation, fancy devices (like Cheeseman's DEVap) cannot fix the climate crisis on their own:
"An overemphasis on breakthrough inventions can obscure the fact that most of the energy technologies we need already exist. You know what they are: wind farms, concentrated solar power plants, geothermal and tidal power, all feeding an efficient smart grid that, in turn, powers electric vehicles and radically more energy-efficient buildings."
"According to clean-tech experts, innovation is now less important than rapid large-scale implementation," Parenti explains. "In other words, developing a clean-energy economy is not about new gadgets but rather about new policies."
It would be nice if those new policies pushed the country to decrease energy use, instead of mimicking programs states already have in place, or worse, undoing good work that's going forward on the local level.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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Another week and another novel looking backwards. Last week I reviewed Anne Beattie's novella, Walks with Men, which looked back at being young and ambitious in New York City in the 1980s. In his latest novel, One Day, David Nicholls looks back at being young and ambitious in London in the 1990s and follows through with growing older into the new millennium. Nicholls does a lot of things just right with his looking backwards novel: he sets up a great premise -- the ups and downs of the relationship between a man and a woman over twenty years -- and rolls out the plot using cues of love, lust, despair, and loss, all cues both easily recognized by the audience and embraced as reflecting our own experiences over the past twenty years (or more). He creates great visual landscapes -- Edinburgh, London, Greece, Paris -- as well as specific locales, including a Mexican restaurant, a debauched nightclub, a cozy writer's garret, and an over-the-top wedding reception park with its own hedge maze and parking valets. He very accurately portrays how much humans stay the same even as we mature from young and hopeful into older and wiser.
And yet where Nicholls fails in One Day is at any attempt to deepen our understanding of the experience of growth and maturity. He shows a reflection of life but only the surface reflection, snapshots of change instead of examinations. Nicholls' cleverest device, that of structuring the book in chapters all set on the same day but on a subsequent year, works well to structure the novel but it does not allow a genuine reckoning of what went on in the days and months in between. The one-day-a-year device is also just too blatant an invitation to make a movie (Same Time, Next Year ring a bell?) and underscores all the other script-like mechanisms of the novel, including clichéd descriptions of the lead and supporting characters (classic good-looking, quirky good-looking, ice princess, geek); the lower-class/upper-class tension between the couple (Love Story ring a bell?); the friends/lovers tension between the couple (When Harry Met Sally ring a bell?); and the setting of the trendy, attractive locales mentioned above (sure, I loved reading about them and will enjoy seeing them on the big screen but they are clichés, nonetheless). This book has been adapted to a movie, with Anne Hathaway signed up to play the poor girl in love with the rich boy. I'm sure the soundtrack will be great and the stars will be lovely and the ending will bring tears. I'm sure I'll go see the movie and enjoy myself.
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Senate Bill 1070, Arizona's notorious anti-immigrant law, is set to go into effect on July 29. With days left to go, Organizers are in a race against the clock to minimize the bill's impact on immigrant communities. Meanwhile, legal experts are examining the strategy behind a federal Department of Justice suit recently lobbed against the Arizona law, and other immigrant rights supporters continue to pressure the state via boycott. All of these acts are contributing to a tumultuous fight that's escalating by the day.
A top concern is that SB 1070 will increase racial profiling and harassment against Latinos due to a provision that requires local law enforcement to check an individual's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is undocumented. The bill also requires immigrants with documentation to carry papers at all times.
At ColorLines, Jamilah King reports that "activists nationwide are stepping up their protests against the measure." As part of a new campaign called "30 Days, 30 Events for Human Rights," a variety of actions including works shops, concerts, and protests have been planned for each day leading up to July 28, the day before the bill is set to become law.
Border governors boycott Arizona
GRITtv has more coverage of the Arizona debacle, including commentary from Arizona state lawmaker Kyrsten Sinema and Suman Raghunathan of the Progressive States Network.
On top of that, ColorLines' Daisy Hernandez also writes that an annual meeting of Mexican and US governors set to take place in Arizona has been canceled over the controversial law. "Six governors of Mexico's border states have basically said there's no way in hell they're stepping foot in Arizona," Hernandez reports.
This year it was Arizona's turn to host the meeting, which has taken place for the last 30 years. But Arizona Governor Jan Brewer 86'd the event, citing lack of attendance.
Another lawsuit?
One might think Arizona officials have enough to worry about after spurring international outrage, boycotts, and countless lawsuits with the passage of one law. But now there are reports that the state may get sued by the Justice Department again if documented cases of racial profiling occur after SB 1070 takes effect.
As Gabriel Arana at The American Prospect explains, the Obama administration's suit against Arizona centers around the legal question of "whether the state is pre-empting the federal government's constitutional authority to regulate immigration," not the potential for civil rights abuses.
But New America Media notes that "in six months or a year, the Department of Justice plans to study the impact of the law on racial profiling," and if civil rights violations are found, Attorney General Eric Holder won't hesitate to take action.
Still hope for the DREAM Act
While media outlets direct their attention to Arizona, other immigrant rights supporters are actively working to support the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act on the national level. The DREAM Act is a federal bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants who were brought into the United States as children and have no control over their immigration status.
Feministing reports on the Campus Progress National Conference that took place in Washington DC last week, which featured David Cho, whose parents immigrated from South Korea when he was nine. Because he is undocumented, Cho, through no fault of his own, is barred from most schools and jobs.
Trapped in an 'invisible prison'
"My dad believed that my two younger sisters and I could fulfill the American dream," said Cho, who would like to be able to serve in the US Air Force. "But I feel like I am living inside an invisible prison cell. Because there are these invisible bars in front of me that limit me from doing the things I want to do."
The DREAM Act would benefit people like Cho, by allowing immigrants who came to the country before the age of 16 to obtain citizenship after graduating from high school by either going to college for two years or serving in the armed forces.
Mikhail Zinshteyn at Campus Progress reports that if the DREAM Act were enacted today, "800,000 individuals would qualify for legal status on a conditional basis or having already completed a high school degree," while an additional 900,000 would qualify upon turning 18. But it all depends on the Senate, and it remains to be seen if it will can tackle the issue by the end of the year.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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Sunday, BP surprised everyone by announcing that now that they had a "capping stack" set, they were not going to actually hook up all the ships they have on station to collect the oil; rather, they were going to run a well integrity test to see if they could shut-in this badly damaged well that has been flowing into the Gulf now for 86 days uncontrolled. My first reaction was What? Well integrity test? I've looked back through all of my notes, blog entries, and reviewed BP's and the Unified Command's communications. I've even done multiple internet searches, and found the first mention of a "well integrity test" related to BP on this past Sunday, July 11. Certainly I could have missed something, but I don't recall even a single mention of what I consider to be probably the most significant (and risky) operation BP has conducted since the much hailed, and utterly failed, top kill procedure that kept the masses enthralled during the Memorial Day weekend.
All of us who are paying attention have been watching ROV feeds, and listening to the briefings by Adm. Allen and Kent Wells that continue to be long on words and short on information. The press continues to let them get away with it, not asking the pertinent questions and holding them to a standard of transparency so we can really know what's going on. Wells is now actually holding 2 "technical briefings" a day, which are also long on words, short on technical, where he basically talks in long sweeping statements talking about safety and "making sure everyone knows what we're going to do", without actually telling anyone what they're going to do. This morning, we learned that, even thought the stack has now been set for 3 days, they actually haven't hooked up the two new valves. He also announced that yesterday, they pulled all of the ships off site to run a seismic survey, and, alarmingly, have stopped drilling the relief well, which is now only 4 feet away laterally from the blowout well. Since Dudley's letter to Adm. Allen last Friday laying out the relief well timeline, they have made little progress and have only 34 more feet to drill before they get to casing point for the last string of pipe. 34 feet, and they stopped. They're just sitting there circulating on bottom at 17,840. Just sitting there. Wells claims that they are doing that for "safety reasons" during the well integrity test. The one they're not going to run for at least another 24 hours. What?
I'm sorry, but I have to ask, What the hell are they doing? We now have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution of the Gulf (as well as measure it). We have great weather to get the relief well completed. We already know, without the "well integrity test", that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface equipment and casing. If that weren't true, the damn thing wouldn't have blown out in the first place. We also know that between the "capping stack" and the old BOP that there is a non-wellhead rated piece of equipment, known as the flex joint, along with the riser adapter, that we've talked about before. This piece of equipment, that normally sits above the BOP, is not rated to nearly those pressures encountered by wellhead equipment. All of the other components in this BOP are rated to at least 10,000 psi (new, off the shelf, and undamaged); this piece is by far the weakest link in the chain, especially since it took severe stresses as the rig sank and 5,000 feet of riser torqued it as it sank. Yesterday, Adm. Allen announced they were going to take the stack, including this flex joint, to as high as 9,000 psi for up to 48 hours. I have been unable to learn the model and rating of the flex joint here, but Oil States advertises their LMRP flex joints to be rated 600-6,000 psi, far below the 9,000 to which Adm Allen said they would potentially go; even with the 2,200 psi of hydrostatic pressure on the outside of the compenent caused by it being in 5,000 feet of water, it's still at least 1,000 psi differential pressure over the rating of the component.
Surely, I'm missing something here, but all of this seems like reckless rope-a-dope in the tradition of Muhammad Ali in his best rope-a-doping days. Either that, or there are so many cooks in the kitchen that the pot is boiling over while the chefs all stand around arguing about spices. Boxing and cooking analogies aside, I don't think anyone is actually in charge, and if anyone is, they are certainly not interested in giving any real information.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
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by Annie Shields, Media Consortium blogger
The June labor market report announced that the unemployment rate is down from 9.7 to 9.5 percent and 83,000 private-sector jobs were created in June. Unfortunately, the situation isn't quite so rosy. As Annie Lowrey reports in The Washington Independent, the real cause of the drop in unemployment was not more jobs, but fewer workers. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans have now been reclassified as "discouraged" workers who have not actively searched for work for four weeks. As such, they are no longer part of the system.
Unemployed and disenfranchised
What's worse, the unemployment crisis is hurting some more than others. Among the discouraged workers that have simply dropped out of the labor market, 65% are women. People of color have also been hit especially hard, as have young people that are just entering the labor market. As Katherine S. Newman and David Pedulla of The Nation write:
"The Great Recession is reminding us of how unequal the distribution of damage can be. While virtually everyone other than the top 1 percent is suffering in some fashion, the depth of the fallout varies a great deal by race, education and gender."
The economic disparities are stark. The unemployment rate for African Americans is nearly twice the rate for whites, while the rate among people 16 to 24 years old is nearly double the rate for all workers. And the disadvantages for these particular groups are expected to persist. According to The Nation:
"Young black men are the most disadvantaged of all in the job tournament, but young workers across the board are in terrible shape in this labor market. If previous recessions are an indication of what's to come, we can expect these stumbling entries into the world of work to translate into long-term disadvantages, relative to those who come of age in a climate of opportunity."
Foreclosed and forgotten
The recession is also continuing to devastate homeowners, as Seth Freed Wessler explains for Colorlines. Wessler documents "the country's long failure to address systemic racial inequity through public policy eventually threw the whole economy into free fall."
According to a recent report from the Center for Responsible Lending, nearly 6 million homes are at imminent risk of foreclosure right now. It's estimated that by 2014, 13 million homes will be gone. The report shows that Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and Alaskan Native/Pacific Islander borrowers are all at greater risk for immediate foreclosure than White borrowers.
One of the most startling findings is that between 2009 and 2012, "Black and Latino communities will be drained of $194 and $177 billion, respectively, because of the plummeting home values in the high foreclosure neighborhoods," Wessler writes.
Unfortunately, there's little relief in sight for these communities. Wessler explains that the Obama administration's attempt to help prevent foreclosures, the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has done more to help mortgage servicers than struggling homeowners. The recent defeat of an unemployment benefits extension only makes matters worse. Some advocacy groups are calling for a moratorium on foreclosures as a temporary remedy. Obama supported such a measure during his 2008 Presidential campaign.
Silver lining, but no silver bullet
If there is a silver lining to this ominous economic raincloud, it might be found in recent changes to to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), an anti-redlining measure from 1975. As Kat Aaron and Mary Kane report for The American Prospect, these changes are one result of a long fight against discriminatory lending practices, and could prove to be invaluable for "consumer activists, regulators, and researchers trying to identify egregious lenders and their loans." The American Prospect has more about the revisions to HMDA and what they might mean for the ongoing fair-lending debate.
Many Americans are also turning to timebanks as an alternative to the down economy. Timebanks provide a cooperative, egalitarian system for sharing skills and trading services with others, free of charge. As Mira Luna reports for Yes! Magazine, the trend might be a result of tough times, but it has an upside.
"Instead of paying professionals who we may never see again to provide services, we can use time exchanges to find neighbors who might provide service in exchange for hour credits, thereby saving scarce U.S. dollars for things like rent and medicine.
In the process, people get to know and trust their neighbors, establishing caring relationships that can help reweave the fabric of our communities, and replace our culture's over-reliance on individual financial security."
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Is your child learning to make a difference this summer? If she is enrolled in a Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools® summer program, you'll know the answer is definitely yes! Proudly rooted in the American Civil Rights Movement and the courageous efforts of college-age youths to make a difference, the CDF Freedom Schools program provides summer and after-school enrichment that helps children fall in love with reading, increases their self-esteem, and generates more positive attitudes toward learning. Children are taught using a model integrated curriculum that supports children and families around five essential components: high quality academic enrichment; parent and family involvement; civic engagement and social action; intergenerational leadership development; and nutrition, health, and mental health. Classes are taught by college-aged servant leader interns. The CDF Freedom Schools model embraces CDF's mission and encourages children and young adults to excel and believe in their ability to make a difference in themselves and in their families, schools, communities, nation, and world through hope, education, and action.
Service is a key part of the CDF Freedom Schools experience, and every year sites across the country participate in coordinated National Days of Social Action. This year's National Days of Social Action are focused on ensuring every child a Healthy Start in life and access to affordable, seamless, and comprehensive health and mental health coverage. The recent landmark national health reform legislation signed by President Obama will give 32 million people in America, including more than 95 percent of all children, access to health coverage previously beyond their reach. CDF Freedom Schools site coordinators, servant leader interns, and students were a critical part of this victory. During CDF Freedom Schools National Days of Social Action over the past two years, more than 12,000 youths across the nation held rallies, marches, had Congressional visits, and mounted letter-writing campaigns urging Congress to support health reform for all children. This year, children are able to see that their efforts really can make a difference.
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Yesterday, I watched Kent Wells' presentation to the press explaining the latest operation that the Coast Guard finally pushed them into starting today. Wells did a good job, as always, explaining the specific operation, but avoided key questions about what all of us want to know: the flow rate, and what happened to the BOP (blowout preventer). As we talked about earlier today, the Coast Guard insisted that BP use the present weather window to get what is now called the "capping stack", which is three ram blowout preventer cavities with hydraulically controlled flow valves between them. I don't know yet what rams are in the cavities (those are the big white things sticking out the sides), but obviously they have at least one set of blind rams. Here's a good illustration of the entire assembly:
The stack lands on the latching collar the will then be looking up from the spool. Once the flex hoses are connected to the production valves on the side of the stack, they're going to do shut-integrity tests. I assume this means they will close one of the rams partially and take pressure readings to see if pressure in the well is down enough to just shut it in. They declined to give any more detail on that question, too, so we'll just have to watch what happens. Here's Well's video from yesterday:
This is good progress, but my question is, that why did this stack take 2 1/2 months to build? In one of the presentations, they said that this was one of the first ideas they had. If that's true, why didn't they just build the damn thing? It looks like all standard Cameron components, and it doesn't take 10 weeks to weld up high pressure spools. This all seems like too little, too late, but I guess we all know why that is.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
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For the last 81 days, I've been watching the government, perpetually 2 steps behind BP, fail time after time to keep BP honest, or even understand the issues enough to not just take what they were saying at face value. It started from the first moment. Initially, when the Horizon sank after being incinerated for 2 days with flames roaring 250 feet over the rig floor and melting the derrick, BP said the well wasn't flowing. Then a day later, the Coast Guard announced, with BP's silent assent, that it was flowing 1,000 barrels per day; then a few days later the estimate was reluctantly raised to 5,000 barrels per day. For the subsequent 5 weeks, staring at the video feeds and knowing that the oil boiling out of the destroyed riser was far more than the volume that Adm. Thad Allen kept repeating, the BP rep almost always stood behind him, mum, or repeating the mantra that the volume was not important since the "response would be the same no matter how big." It's been a long, ugly road.
First, we watched the early, very heavily edited (and blurred) video feeds of the ROVs trying in vain to shut in the BOP (I still think some of that was file footage from Oceaneering). Then we watched the giant containment dome being built for days on the docks, the continuous coverage of it being shipped to the site, the days of waiting for the result. When they were building it, I kept thinking that first, it wasn't big enough to fit over the BOP, which is over 50 feet tall, and second "what were those wings they were building on it?" When I found out that they were putting it over the bent riser on the seafloor instead of at the wellhead, I realized that that whole effort was just for show. No serious person would have thought it would work, plus, the biggest leak was going to be out of the cracks in the top of the bent over riser, not 600 feet away, especially after days of sandblasting inside the valves and piping that were making things worse by the hour.
Thank God at around this point Ed Markey pitched a fit, demanding continuous video feeds rather than the days-old PR style videos we were getting out of BP. Suddenly, the whole world could see the gushing well 24/7; at least when the websites showing it weren't swamped with viewers. After the containment dome failed, we watched for weeks as the RIT (riser insertion tool) finally was finished and inserted, catching a mere trickle of the torrent of oil flowing out of the blown out well while BP reps claimed victory that finally, at least something was working. Sort of. I kept asking myself, why don't they just cut off the damn riser and get over the well with a flanged cap, or another BOP? No one from the press would ask that simple question, and, if they did, the Coast Guard would just defer to more double speak and platitudes from BP reps.
Then, the top kill came. After much hoopla, the effort started just before the Memorial Day weekend, and we heard breathless accounts of the horsepower, the pumping rates, the volumes of mud; all the oo-ahh snippets, but no real information. During the kill, Adm. Allen actually said that the kill was being successful, which anyone watching the feeds knew that it wasn't. BP and Allen kept repeating the newest mantra that it would take "24-48 hours before we know." On Saturday, I starting hearing that the effort had failed, but that BP would keep pumping through the weekend so they wouldn't have to announce it before the holiday and before the next containment cap was ready. That's when I came out with the story that it failed. In mid afternoon of that day, in a hastily called press conference just hours after my story posted on the Hurricane and Huffington Post, BP and the Coast Guard announced that the effort had indeed failed. A few days after, I heard that they had suffered some kind of downhole failure and the Coast Guard had ordered a halt to the procedure. The Wall Street Journal printed that same account shortly after.
Finally, they cut off the riser and put on the ill fitting containment cap. At least it was something. The problem was that the ship they had moved out there, the Discoverer Enterprise, could only handle about 15,000 barrels a day. People who were paying attention immediately started saying, "That's not big enough." Sure enough, when they got the cap on, it could only contain the 15,000 barrels a day, so the Q4000, used originally for the top kill, was brought in to take production off the kill manifold and burn it off. Even with that, oil is still gushing.
And on and on. Obfuscation about the flow rate; multiple teams of scientists pouring over blurry video footage and putting out a volume ranges of plus or minus 100%. Then we find out that BP had HD video of the well the whole time. The lame clean up effort; keeping media away from the worst areas; skimming and recovery assets not even close to what was needed. Orchestrated press conferences that were long on words, short on data.
Which brings us up to today. The Helix Producer has been on station now for over a week. It's an FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) vessel that can process 25,000 barrels a day. BP has been steadfastly putting off installing the latching containment cap, and hooking up the Helix, citing high seas, bad weather, hang nails and sinus congestion. Thursday, finally, the US government awoke from its leadership coma, demanding to know what's taking so damn long and what can you do to hurry up containing the well? We all know that BP is strongly motivated to not contain the whole flow, since we would then know exactly what it's producing and back-calculate how much they have polluted the Gulf since the well blew out on April 20. Surely, they were hoping to get it killed with the relief well before they got around to getting the flow contained so they could argue for lower volumes to reduce the massive EPA fines that will come. Heavy subsea dispersant use was also used to cover the evidence. Suddenly, BP is ready to go with the new containment system. They start installing it today, and is a subject of a post later today.
The government, while talking tough, has been complicit with BP, deferring far to often to the company's representatives and rhetoric. This disaster has dragged on far too long, but we can expect little else since BP remains in place as operator, allowed to continue running the containment effort while the Coast Guard stands aside and the White House stamps its feet, not knowing what to do.
While I don't presume that anyone in the White House actually reads this blog or watches my television appearances, but certainly I'm glad someone finally woke up, if just for a minute, to do what I, and other industry bloggers have been yelling about for weeks (months?).
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
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Ndagire Sarah walked the red dirt carpet in her perky hairdo and a beautiful blue and white gown. She carried herself like a rich lady in a gomesi, the formal dress of women in Uganda. When I saw her, I was overcome with tears of joy. I had met Sarah in 2006 when she was so sick with HIV/AIDS that she could hardly breathe. She lived in a slum in Kampala and was poor beyond belief, a widow who could not afford to feed her family or send her children to school, one of the hundreds of millions of women who live around the world in extreme poverty. But that was then. Today, just four years later, Sarah was being honored, with 21 other women for an incredible achievement. She had paid off a home that she built for herself in the village of Mukono, and was being awarded the title to the land she sat on. Sarah, who just a few years ago thought she would die and leave her children with nothing, was now a homeowner and one of the very small percentage of women around the world with land in her own name.
Sarah's transcendent moment came because of her partnership with BeadforLife. For many months she rolled beads out of recycled paper and saved her money for a down payment. Beads became bricks and a ladder out of poverty. She didn't eat the profits, worked hard, and became an entrepreneur who also raised poultry. Sarah was the pioneer in Friendship Village. She built the very first of 130 homes, even though the men who helped her thought she would not live long enough to sleep in it. Today she is the proud owner of a brick house with a tin roof. She has a lawn, a garden and 1000 neighbors. The women roll beads to pay off their mortgages and not a single one defaults. On this festival day, Sarah and 21 others call themselves brides, and they march from home to home. Each woman is given a certificate and dances with it on the porch she dreamed about. "This is really a day of glory for each of you," BeadforLife founder, Devin Hibbard, proclaims. She tells Sarah and the others to close their eyes. "Think about where you were and think about where you are now and my challenge to you is to create your next dream as you become homeowners today. What do you want to accomplish in the next three or four or five years? Can you picture yourself and where you will be if you accomplish your next big goal? Because this is not the end of the path. This is only the beginning for you."
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Arizona in an effort to overturn a stringent anti-immigration law passed in April. The move is a breath of fresh air for immigrant rights supporters. Democracy Now! and the Washington Independent have the story.
The suit will take on Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, a law that requires local law enforcement to check an individual's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that said individual is undocumented. The law has sparked national outrage and serious concerns that Latinos will be racially profiled by the police. Another provision of SB 1070 requires immigrants to carry papers denoting citizenship at all times while in the state.
Is SB 1070 unconstitutional?
At ColorLines, Daisy Hernandez reports that "the lawsuit, which was filed in a U.S. District Court in Phoenix, argues that it's against the Constitution for a state to make its own immigration policy" because of "the legal doctrine of 'preemption,' which says that federal law trumps state statues."
The key argument being that "the federal government already works with states to enforce federal immigration law," so there's no need for a law like SB 1070 to intervene, according to Hernandez.
A civil rights fiasco
Since April, the Arizona law has served as a rallying point for immigrant rights supporters, who refer to the bill as the "Juan Crow" law. The nickname references the Jim Crow laws that existed prior to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
Jessica Pieklo at Care2 notes that the DOJ suit "also contains a civil rights component and argues that the law would lead to law enforcement harassing U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants in efforts to hunt down undocumented workers."
Citizens react
At New America Media, Valeria Fernández gauges immigrants' and Arizona residents' reactions to the suit.
"I really feel that the Justice Department will be on the winning side of history," said Mary Rose Wilcox, a supervisor for District 5 in Maricopa County, AZ. "I think when justice needs to be served, you should never look at political costs."
An undocumented immigrant named Griselda told Fernández that she "jumped for joy when she heard the news," and "Thank God there's another one in the fight."
The immigration reform battle moves forward
Last week, President Barack Obama called for Congress to put politics aside and focus on immigration reform as quickly as possible. The speech and suit are fueling demand for comprehensive reform and it's clear that the issue won't be going away.
Yet despite the need for reform, there are roadblocks. As Paul Waldman writes for the American Prospect, "It's true that there is little incentive for politicians to produce comprehensive reform. It's guaranteed to displease much of the public, while there is a powerful incentive to play on people's fears and resentments."
However, there is hope in the organizing that's being done by immigrant youth. Undocumented immigrant and student organizer Tania Unzueta said in an interview with In These Times that immigrants from across the country are risking deportation and incarceration to come "out of the shadows and into the spotlight."
As Unzueta explains in the interview, "When you stop being afraid, there's a whole world of possibilities in terms of how much risk you're willing to take to fight for what you believe is just."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
As Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan begins her second week of confirmation hearings, Mother Jones' Stephanie Mencimer wonders why the anti-abortion protesters have been uncharacteristically subdued this time around. Normally, they live for these hearings. For hardcore anti-choice activists, a Supreme Court confirmation is like Christmas, Mardi Gras, and the World Cup all rolled into one.
Mencimer suspects that the antis were caught off guard by a revelation about Kagan's role in shaping a proposed partial birth abortion ban. Documents show that as a White House policy adviser Kagan worked with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to craft the organization's position on the whether partial birth abortion is ever medically necessary.
ACOG and "partial birth abortion"
ACOG originally wrote that its experts "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman." In short, ACOG dodged the question. As far as a health exemption is concerned, the is whether this procedure is ever the best option, not the only option.
The right is accusing Kagan of distorting science for political reasons. In fact, Kagan didn't distort the science at all. Like any good law professor, she suggested that ACOG restate the same idea in language that was more germane to the question at hand. It seems unlikely that the ACOG revelation will have a significant effect on Kagan's confirmation prospects.
ACOG told Kagan that the procedure is almost never medically necessary. The key words here are "almost never," which imply that the procedure is sometimes necessary. Documents show that Kagan urged ACOG to clarify its position.
She suggested the following language, which ACOG incorporated into its position statement: "[the procedure] may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman." This episode is a sore point for anti-choicers because the courts have deferred to ACOG's opinions on questions of medical necessity.
According to Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, the Republicans are still trying to derail Kagan's nomination by painting her as evasive. It's already a cliche to point out that Supreme Court confirmation hearings are a charade in which the nominee's job is to reveal as little as possible about her judicial philosophy.
Republicans are unlikely to summon much public outrage against Kagan for playing by the rules. The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Kagan next Tuesday, and the leadership wants a full vote before Aug 6.
Ending the CPC bait-and-switch
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has re-introduced a bill to stop false advertising by so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), as Noelle Williams reports for Ms. Magazine's blog. CPCs are anti-abortion propaganda outlets ("ministries") that try to pass themselves off as storefront women's health clinics. Some CPCs advertise in the abortion services section of the phone book alongside real providers. They've even been known to set up shop across the street from a real clinic.
The phony "clinics" lure women with promises of free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and referrals for abortion and contraception services--but that's just a prelude to a hard sell against abortion. A Congressional investigation found that CPCs routinely give false information about the dangers of abortion. Maloney's bill would end the bait-and-switch. The Stop Deceptive Advertising Women's Services Act (SDAW) would crack down CPCs that falsely advertise that they provide abortion services or referrals.
Contraceptives covered under health reform?
Thanks to health care reform, insurers may soon be offering contraceptives at no extra cost. However, as Monica Potts notes at TAPPED, the women's groups clamoring for free birth control are facing an uphill battle against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other conservative groups. The USCCB is trotting out the old line that contraceptives aren't preventative health care because fertility is not a disease. Potts notes the age old irony that groups so fiercely opposed to abortion are still fighting birth control.
UN addresses gender equity
In international news, the United Nations announced the launch of a new umbrella agency to promote women's rights and gender equity. Vanessa Valenti of Feministing explains that the UN is actually merging four existing women's rights bodies into a single organization. Valenti is concerned that local concerns will get lost in a new monolithic bureaucracy. However, she notes that the groups in the merger seem very happy about the prospect of joining forces.
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In Michael Hastings's report on the war in Afghanistan and General Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone magazine, the reporter brought to light a significant point of friction between U.S. troops and McChrystal -- "McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren't buying it."
Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. military has ever encountered in a war zone. It's "insurgent math," as he calls it - for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids. He regularly apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths. "For a while," says one U.S. official, "the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of McChrystal after a 'civ cas' incident." The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There's talk of creating a new medal for "courageous restraint," a buzzword that's unlikely to gain much traction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. military.
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[Program Note: Our usual Friday Talking Points column is going on a one-week hiatus, so that we are able to present a special offering today, for the Independence Day weekend. So as not to cause withdrawal symptoms among our fan base, we offer up two do-it-yourself suggestions for discussion this week (which sounds way better than: "assigning summer homework"), which were so unbelievable that they deserve mention here before we get all patriotic. The first comes from Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, who just wrote possibly the most monumentally stupid column she's ever penned (which is saying a lot, for her), titled: "Obama: Our First Female President" -- bringing the art of emasculation to new lows. Secondly (and much more fun to respond to) was John Boehner's interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper, in which he described the effort to pass Wall Street reform as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." Democrats have begun jumping on Boehner's comments, as well they should. Feel free to write your own talking points on these subjects in the comments section. Friday Talking Points will return in its normal time slot next week.]
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Interviewed by the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Frédéric Taddeï explains that, if he has invited French anti-Semitic activist Dieudonné to participate in his program, "Ce soir ou jamais" [Tonight or Never] several times, it is to demonstrate that there is no "lobby" forbidding the latter access to the media. And, carried away by the impetus of his virtuous and heroic confession, he adds, "I am the proof, and the only one, that there is no conspiracy." We read him correctly. We rub our eyes, but we read him correctly. If words have a meaning, if they were proofread and the presenter was not, as one might suppose, tricked or misrepresented, he is telling us, in a few sentences, several things.
1. The only way of combatting antisemitism (in other words, in the case in point, of combatting a theory of the «Jewish conspiracy» whose success and constancy in nourishing «the most lasting hatred» we have been aware of, at least, since Poliakov) is to give the floor to the antisemites themselves (meaning those who, not content to simply promote the said conspiracy theory, have made a regular business out of negationist provocation, the inherent casuistry of the theme of competition in victimization, and a rabid and increasingly nauseating anti-Zionism). One must admit, this is a thesis that is, to say the least, strange and risqué.
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Most documentaries about Mexico tend to focus on its embattled northern border--tales of drug wars and desperate migrants. In Circo, we're led into the belly of rural Mexico, town by town. New York director Aaron Schock offered LAFF audiences his ravishing portrait of a century-old Mexican circus dynasty as they struggle to survive their country's changes. Schock not only proves that a solitary filmmaker can prevail in terra incognita (he shot completely solo), but reveals more truth about how a family barely holds together than any reality-TV show. Most compelling are the bewitching children born into the ring, and the questions the film asks about whether they are lucky or trapped. To hear what Schock has to say about making Circo, click here:
Los Angeles Film Festival: Aaron Schock discusses his documentary, CIRCO. from Michael Kurcfeld on Vimeo.
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First, America, Happy Birthday! It's true what they say, time really does fly. 234 years young and you don't look a day over 150. I am so proud to be an American -- in fact I well up with tears if I sit and just think about the extraordinary blessing it is to be so privileged. I remember as a child getting goose bumps as I sat on my parents lap and watched the American Legion fireworks display. I would quietly witness the dusk sky melt from orange to dark blue, smell the gun-powder from the "bombs bursting in air" and listen to the sound of the emcee's booming voice proudly shouting "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"...that memory is the heart of what America means to me.
I believe that with the blessing of being an American also comes a duty for me to work to further civil liberties from which such happiness flows. Over the past month, I have been traveling around America, celebrating LGBTQA Pride Month or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, and Allies -- those that identify as heterosexual, but act as strong advocates of the community. Our Allies sometimes get left out of the acronym, but they play a vital role in the movement towards equality. While at these Pride Month events I raised money for local charities by signing copies of the June 2010 issue of PLAYGIRL Magazine, in which I "drop my labels," both literally, and politically. The PLAYGIRL project provided a forum for me to challenge prevailing concepts of sexuality, race and ethnicity, to explore artistically, and, as a political science student at The New School in New York, just what dropping our labels might look like. As I say in the PLAYGIRL Magazine interview (yes -- there is an interview!) I believe labels further stereotype and categorize us as separate from one another, when I believe our "sameness" to one another clearly trumps our "differences."
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