Aaron Swartz's father says MIT failed him

Time article

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Cutting food stamps is not only cruel, it will cost more money

Think Progress  - Food stamp cuts proposed by Republicans could boot over 5 million people off of the program and create health problems that would cost the country more than the cuts save, according to a new analysis by the Health Impact Project.

If Congress cuts $20.5 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the initial House farm bill would have done, “as many as 5.1 million people could lose eligibility for the program,” the report found. The vast majority of those affected – 83 percent – already live below the poverty line. On average, losing SNAP benefits would slice the group’s incomes by 38 percent.

Further weakening an already vulnerable population would increase disease rates and thereby raise the country’s health care costs. Building off of previous research that found children who receive food stamps become healthier adults than low-income kids who grow up without food aid, the report predicts a $15 billion increase over 10 years in health care costs related just to diabetes. The cuts would also increase the incidence of heart disease, asthma, and various mental health problems, making it very likely that the SNAP cuts would cost more than they save.

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NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

Guardian - A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

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Steve Colbert does in Ted Cruz

Video on Political Wire

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Word: The Manning case

Daniel Ellsberg - The truth is that he did not deserve a day in prison for informing the public here as he did. He certainly does not deserve an additional day after the abusive treatment he’s received here of three years awaiting trial, 10½ months in solitary confinement, part of that nude, a treatment which was described by the UN Rapporteur for Torture as, if not being torture – and he didn’t have all the facts there because he hadn’t been allowed to speak to Manning alone – but he said at the very least it was cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment, which is the definition of a crime under the Geneva Conventions we’ve signed and under domestic law. So he should have been released on the grounds of governmental misconduct, as was the case in my trial, but wasn’t.

Center for Constitutional Rights - The “aiding the enemy” charges (on which Manning was rightly acquitted) received the most attention from the mainstream media, the Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning. Government employees who blow the whistle on war crimes, other abuses and government incompetence should be protected under the First Amendment.” Manning’s treatment, prosecution, and sentencing have one purpose: to silence potential whistleblowers and the media as well.

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$4 million to college student DEA life without food or water in cell; had to drink his own urine to survive

USA Today article

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TSA staffers increasingly out of line

USA Today - Misconduct cases among Transportation Security Administration workers rose 26% over the last three years, according to a government watchdog Tuesday.

The number of misconduct cases rose to 3,408 last year from 2,691 in 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office. 32%  of the cases involved attendance and 20% dealt with violating security standards, such as allowing travelers and luggage to bypass screening.

47% resulted in letters of reprimand describing unacceptable conduct, 31% resulted in suspensions and 17% resulted in the worker leaving the agency, according to GAO.

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How life in America is driving us mad

Bruce Levine, Alternet - A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Life may or may not suck any more than it did a generation ago, but our belief in “progress” has increased expectations that life should be more satisfying, resulting in mass disappointment. For many of us, society has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity. So, we want to rebel. However, many of us feel hopeless about the possibility of either our own escape from societal oppression or that political activism can create societal change. So, many of us, especially young Americans, rebel by what is commonly called mental illness.

While historically some Americans have consciously faked mental illness to rebel from oppressive societal demands (e.g., a young Malcolm X acted crazy to successfully avoid military service), today, the vast majority of Americans who are diagnosed and treated for mental illness are in no way proud malingerers in the fashion of Malcolm X. Many of us, sadly, are ashamed of our inefficiency and nonproductivity and desperately try to fit in. However, try as we might to pay attention, adapt, adjust, and comply with our alienating jobs, boring schools, and sterile society, our humanity gets in the way, and we become anxious, depressed and dysfunctional.

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Great moments with Anthony Weiner

TPM - Tuesday was an angry day in Weinerland.

The campaign staff awoke to see their former intern, Olivia Nuzzi, on the front cover of the Daily News. Inside the paper was an article bylined by Nuzzi in which she told a rather unflattering tale of her experience working on Anthony Weiner’s mayoral bid.

Now, Team Weiner is firing back. TPM called Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan to discuss an unrelated story Tuesday and she went off on a curse-filled rant about Nuzzi, describing her as a fame hungry “bitch” who “sucked” at her job. Morgan also called Nuzzi a “slutbag,” “twat,” and “cunt” while threatening to sue her.

On Monday, Nuzzi, a college student and writer, published a story on the blog NSFWCORP that claimed multiple sources on the campaign told her there had been “six departures” from Weiner’s team, more than had been previously disclosed. She also claimed that staffers had been underpaid and that the former campaign manager, Danny Kedem, left over the weekend because Weiner “lied to him about the timing of his sexting scandal.”

Nuzzi’s post on NSFWCORP was followed up by Tuesday’s Daily News cover story in which she claimed Weiner incorrectly called multiple interns “Monica” and said people only joined Weiner’s campaign to curry favor with his wife, Huma Abdein, a close aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Along with these allegations, Nuzzi wrote in the Daily News that “a lot” of Weiner’s staff had “short résumés,” including Morgan, who Nuzzi derisively noted “last worked as the press secretary for the New Jersey state education commissioner.”

“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me,” Morgan told TPM, referring to a non-disclosure agreement. “And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.”

Morgan went on to suggest Nuzzi would be unable to get a job in New York City’s political scene as a result of her actions.

“Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.

According to Morgan, Nuzzi stopped interning for the campaign “like four weeks ago.” Nuzzi’s story on NSFWCORP described her as having spent “four weeks” as a Weiner intern. When asked whether the claims in Nuzzi’s stories were true, Morgan suggested many of them were “bullshit.”

“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”

Based on her colorful description of Nuzzi’s cover story, TPM asked Morgan whether she thought Nuzzi joined the campaign with the express purpose of penning a tell-all story.

“I have no idea, but I can tell you she … like accosted me at like our petitioning thing to be able to become my intern, begged me to be my intern, sent me something within like 20 minutes of meeting her and then proceeded to — she came in the next day and was like, basically, ‘I want to be your bitch all summer long, that’s all I want to do is be your righthand person,’” Morgan said of Nuzzi. “I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s not really glamorous, like, you’re going to do clips, and you’re going to do media catching, and you’re going to do x, y, and z and maybe I’ll get you to the point where you’re like doing some other stuff.”

Despite what Morgan described as Nuzzi’s initial enthusiasm, Morgan claimed her job performance left much to be desired.

“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like - she would like, she would just not show up for work,” said Morgan. “For the four weeks she worked there — she didn’t work weekends, so twenty days total. Of those twenty days, she missed probably five because she would just like not show up and not tell me she wasn’t going to be there. So, yeah, so there’s that.”

Morgan also expressed disbelief that Nuzzi criticized her credentials.

“And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey,” Morgan said. “You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”

Nuzzi declined comment to comment for this story. However, NSFWCORP Editor-In-Chief Paul Carr disputed the idea Nuzzi joined the Weiner campaign specifically to write about the experience.

“She certainly didn’t do it to get on the front of the newspapers,” said Carr.

Carr said Nuzzi began writing for the site “like a month ago” and initially “didn’t even mention she was involved with the [Weiner] campaign.” He said the Daily News “courted” Nuzzi for the cover story and claimed she subsequently denied a request to appear on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday evening. Carr also claimed he had to push Nuzzi to write about her experiences on the Weiner campaign after she mentioned them to him.

“She wrote that for us because I basically told her she had to,” Carr said. “If anything, I’ve had to constantly prompt her.”

Yes, there is more if you're up to it

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Big Macs would only go up 68 cents if McDonald's low wage workers had pay doubled

Alternet - A new study by a University of Kansas researcher has found that the fast food corporation McDonald’s can easily up the pay of its low-wage workers--even without substantially increasing the price of its cheap food. The Huffington Post’s Caroline Fairchild reports that the study shows that doubling the salaries and benefits of every single McDonald’s employee would only result in a slight increase in food prices--68 cents for Big Macs.

And every item on the Dollar Menu would only have to go up by 17 cents, according to the researcher, Arnobio Morelix. He examined the McDonald’s annual report and found that “only 17.1 percent of the fast-food giant's revenue goes toward salaries and benefits.”

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California town using eminent domain to save homeowners from banks

Unmentioned by the NY Times is the fact that Mayor McLaughlin is a member of the Green Party
 
Shaila Dewan, NY Times - Scarcely touched by the nation’s housing recovery and tired of waiting for federal help, Richmond is about to become the first city in the nation to try eminent domain as a way to stop foreclosures.

The results will be closely watched by both Wall Street banks, which have vigorously opposed the use of eminent domain to buy mortgages and reduce homeowner debt, and a host of cities across the country that are considering emulating Richmond.

The banks have warned that such a move will bring down a hail of lawsuits and all but halt mortgage lending in any city with the temerity to try it.

But local officials, frustrated at the lack of large-scale relief from the Obama administration, relatively free of the influence that Wall Street wields in Washington, and faced with fraying neighborhoods and a depleted middle class, are beginning to shrug off those threats.

“We’re not willing to back down on this,” said Gayle McLaughlin, the former schoolteacher who is serving her second term as Richmond’s mayor. “They can put forward as much pressure as they would like but I’m very committed to this program and I’m very committed to the well-being of our neighborhoods.”

Richmond is offering to buy both current and delinquent loans. To defend against the charge that irresponsible homeowners who used their homes as A.T.M.’s are being helped at the expense of investors, the first pool of 626 loans does not include any homes with large second mortgages, said Steven M. Gluckstern, the chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners.

The city is offering to buy the loans at what it considers the fair market value. In a hypothetical example, a home mortgaged for $400,000 is now worth $200,000. The city plans to buy the loan for $160,000, or about 80 percent of the value of the home, a discount that factors in the risk of default.

Then, the city would write down the debt to $190,000 and allow the homeowner to refinance at the new amount, probably through a government program. The $30,000 difference goes to the city, the investors who put up the money to buy the loan, closing costs and M.R.P. The homeowner would go from owing twice what the home is worth to having $10,000 in equity.

The banks and the real estate industry have argued that such a move would be unprecedented and unconstitutional. But Mr. Hockett says that all types of property, not just land and buildings, are subject to eminent domain if the government can show it is needed to promote the public good, in this case fighting blight and keeping communities intact. Railroad stocks, private bus companies, sports teams and even some mortgages have been subject to eminent domain.

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US corporations keep $1.2 trillion offshore

CNBC - Top U.S. companies, including General Electric and Apple are keeping nearly $1.2 trillion in profits offshore. The report by U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, which examined the public filings of the biggest 100 U.S. publicly traded companies. 82 companies keep subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions abroad.

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Social Security is our best anti-poverty program

Econonic Policy Institute -Social Security is, by far, the most effect anti-poverty program in the United States. Without Social Security, an additional 8.3 percent of Americans, or over 25 million more people, would fall below the SPM poverty threshold. Refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, kept 2.5 percent, or nearly 8 million Americans above the SPM poverty threshold. Other programs such as SNAP (food stamps), unemployment insurance, Supplemental Security Income, and housing subsidies also have a significant impact on the ability of families to stay afloat. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/social-security-effective-anti-poverty-program/#sthash.ZC0YEP3M.dpuf

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Monica Lewinsky sex tape thought destroyed returns to life

Radar article

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NY Supreme Court rules Bloomberg out of bounds on soda ban

Roll Call - The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division has upheld a lower court ruling blocking Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large sodas and other sugary drinks, the New York Daily News reports.

Politico: “The state Supreme Court’s appellate division determined in a unanimous ruling that Bloomberg’s effort exceeded the city’s authority because it was enacted without legislative approval. The court also concluded that drinking sugary soda is not inherently dangerous if done in moderation, and therefore, the Board of Health’s decision to restrict it is out of bounds.”

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A guide to the government's massive illegal spying on us

Washington's Blog article

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More great moments in Florida law enforcement

Huffington Post - An inmate's death from an untreated stroke has prompted a $1 million settlement and a government investigation.

The Tampa Bay Times reports on the circumstances surrounding Allen Daniel Hicks' last days:

Hicks, 51, was arrested in May 2012 after veering off Interstate 275 in Tampa. He was booked into jail without a medical screening, rambling incoherently and dragging his left leg.

More than a full day passed — during much of which Hicks lay on the floor of his cell or tried to crawl using only his right limbs — before he was taken to Tampa General Hospital and immediately diagnosed with a severe ischemic stroke. He slipped into a coma and died months later.

Police said they arrested Hicks because he failed to follow commands to get out of his vehicle.

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Senators claiming their votes on key issues are "classified"

Ali Watkins,  McClatchy - The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown.

There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided – outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.

In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

She was not alone. In a string of interviews over days, members of both the Senate intelligence committee or its equivalent in the House were difficult to pin down on their view of providing arms to the rebels. The senators and representatives said they couldn’t give an opinion, or at least a detailed one, because the matter was classified.

It’s an increasingly common stance that advocates of open government say undermines the very principle of a representative democracy.

“It’s like a pandemic in Washington, D.C., this idea that ‘I don’t have to say anything, I don’t have to justify anything, because I can say it’s secret,’” said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank.

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Obama bombs on income recovery

investors Business Daily - Research by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez shows that since the Obama recovery started in June 2009, the average income of the top 1% grew 11.2% in real terms through 2011.

The bottom 99%, in contrast, saw their incomes shrink by 0.4%.

As a result, 121% of the gains in real income during Obama's recovery have gone to the top 1%. By comparison, the top 1% captured 65% of income gains during the Bush expansion of 2002-07, and 45% of the gains under Clinton's expansion in the 1990s.

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Obama bombs on public works

Fiscal Times - U.S. public construction spending as a percentage of the overall economy has dropped to its lowest point in 20 years, after a big uptick before the Great Recession, according to Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider. Overall, just two percent of the U.S. gross domestic product goes to infrastructure construction, compared to 5 percent of GDP in Europe and nine percent in China, according to a government report.

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Morning line

The main reason Obamacare is in such trouble is because it is one of the worst constructed measures with an ostensibly  worthy goal. As a result, its good parts are sullied by the bad, the bad conceal the good and discerning the difference is obscured by a considerable portion that is unpredictable. But then, its ostensibly worthy goal was not its real one. That was to come up with a measure with some good parts that the health insurance industry would also buy. Follow a dysfunction goal and you get dysfunctional results.

Real reporters don't use propaganda phrases like grand bargain. Nothing grand has happened in Washington in decades.

No president since Nixon has gone to such excesses to cover up government wrongdoing and punish those who reveal it. The Espionage Act 1917 used to be an example cited of government completely out of control; for Obama it's standard operating procedure.

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Governor Snyder continues with plans to subsidize Detroit hockey stadium

Political Outcast - From CNN comes the news that the once-great city of Detroit, which recently filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history because of President George W. Bush’s economy, is moving forward with its plan to build a nearly half-billion-dollar hockey stadium for the city’s home team, the Red Wings.

Detroit’s unemployment rate for June was 9.4 percent. The argument that managed to convince Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, not to halt the construction plans is that building an arena for the whitest sport in America in one of the blackest cities in America will supposedly help boost Detroit’s economy and create jobs. Never mind that most of those will be temporary construction jobs.

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Concord NH wants to spend a quarter of million dollars to defend town against peaceful libertarians

Activist Post - Police in Concord, New Hampshire have applied for a grant to acquire a $258,000 armored vehicle from the DHS to combat domestic terrorism.

According to their application, they cited "active threats" from domestic "terror" groups like Free State Project and Occupy New Hampshire as the primary reason for requiring this military equipment.

New Hampshire's Union Leader newspaper reports:

In its grant application to DHS, the police department said New Hampshire's experience with terrorism "slants primarily towards the domestic type," and said "the threat is real and here." 

"Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges," the application stated. In addition to organized groups, it cited "several homegrown clusters that are anti-government and pose problems for law enforcement agencies."

Notably, these domestic groups were the only specific parties named as "terrorist" threats in the grant request.

Section B of the grant application precisely says:

The State of New Hampshire's experience with terrorism slants primarily towards the domestic type. We are fortunate that our State has not been victimized from a mass casualty event from an international terrorism strike however on the domestic front, the threat is real and here. Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges. Outside of officially organized groups, several homegrown clusters that are anti-government and pose problems for law enforcement agencies.

The police don't explain why they think Free Staters pose a violent threat to them.  It seems clear from all of their material that they represent non-aggression, liberty, and personal responsibility. Apparently those are dangerous concepts to an increasingly militarized police state.

None of the groups specifically named have ever threatened, committed or even been suspected of engaging in violent acts in New Hampshire.

Executive Director of New Hampshire's Civil Liberties Union [NHCLU] Devon Chaffee called the language "alarming."

"It's far from clear to us why an armored vehicle would be necessary to address what are generally, by and large, non-violent movements that in fact provide little or no threat to the security of our state," she said.

The exact vehicle the police hope to acquire is Lenco's BearCat which is a bomb and bullet proof "Specialized Response and Rescue Vehicle."

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Hundreds of American cities face sea level threat

Ben Strauss, Climate Central - Measurements tell us that global average sea level is currently rising by about 1 inch per decade. But in an invisible shadow process, our long-term sea level rise commitment or "lock-in" — the sea level rise we don’t see now, but which carbon emissions and warming have locked in for later years — is growing 10 times faster, and this growth rate is accelerating.

An international team of scientists led by Anders Levermann recently published a study that found for every degree Fahrenheit of global warming due to carbon pollution, global average sea level will rise by about 4.2 feet in the long run. When multiplied by the current rate of carbon emissions, and the best estimate of global temperature sensitivity to pollution, this translates to a long-term sea level rise commitment that is now growing at about 1 foot per decade.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , I analyze the growth of the locked-in amount of sea level rise and other implications of Levermann and colleagues’ work. This article and its interactive map are based on this new PNAS paper, and they include extended results.

To begin with, it appears that the amount of carbon pollution to date has already locked in more than 4 feet of sea level rise past today’s levels. That is enough, at high tide, to submerge more than half of today’s population in 316 coastal cities and towns (home to 3.6 million) in the lower 48 states.

By the end of this century, if global climate emissions continue to increase, that may lock in 23 feet of sea level rise, and threaten 1,429 municipalities that would be mostly submerged at high tide. Those cities have a total population of 18 million. But under a very low emissions scenario, our sea level rise commitment might be limited to about 7.5 feet, which would threaten 555 coastal municipalities: some 900 fewer communities than in the higher-emissions scenario.

To develop such figures, I combined my sea level debt findings with analysis from Climate Central’s Surging Seas project, which is a national assessment and mapping of coastal vulnerability in the U.S. based primarily on elevation and census data.

Nationally, the largest threatened cities at this level are Miami, Virginia Beach, Va., Sacramento, Calif., and Jacksonville, Fla.

If we choose 25 percent instead of 50 percent as the threat threshold, the lists all increase, and would include major cities like Boston, Long Beach, Calif., and New York City. The lists shrink if we choose 100 percent as the threshold for calling a community “threatened.”

 MAP

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Bookshelf: Presidential Puppetry

Rob Kall, Op Ed News - Read "Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters," a book just published this week by OpEd News contributor Andrew Kreig. and you'll learn a lot more than you could have imagined, and you'll start seeing the world, politics, and the justice system in a very different, clearer, smarter way.

Obama, for example, is reported to have worked for a CIA front company, Business International Corporation, in his early twenties. At the time, he was dating, in his first serious love affair, Genevieve Cook, the daughter of the head of Australia's CIA.

Obama thus developed, like George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton, career-enhancing intelligence connections in his early 20s, according to the book, which draws on declassified CIA materials and other reports. Obama's formative ties are just one of many examples of how the military-industrial complex and its Wall Street allies maintain a special relationship with presidents no matter which party prevails in any given election.

The reporting is entertaining and cutting-edge, and provides the kind of information we in the independent press believe vital to informed decision-making.

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Indian truth and reconcialition commisson making headway

Indian Country Today - In the spring of 2011 the chiefs of the Wabanaki nations and the governor of Maine signed a Declaration of Intent to Create a Maine/Wabanaki Truth & Reconciliation Process to investigate and document a child welfare system that once saw Indian children forcibly removed from their families and placed mostly with white foster parents that were often negligent and sometimes brutally abusive. By the end of this year, the Maine Tribal-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission – the first of its kind established in the country – will begin hearing people’s stories to help heal the wounds from that traumatic past.

Truth and reconciliation commissions have been established in various places around the world, most notably in South Africa, to deal with the violence and human rights abuses that occurred under the apartheid system. The idea is to work through acknowledgment of the wrong doings toward healing and reconciliation, institutional reform, and sometimes reparations. In Maine the idea is to create a common understanding between the Wabanaki and the state of Maine about what happened to Indian children in the welfare system; to use the information from the TRC process to improve the system; and to promote healing both among Wabanaki children and their families and the people who administered the abusive system.

[ Heather Martin, the TRC’s executive director,] said one of the challenges is getting everyone on the same page – or in some cases getting people to realize there’s a page to get on. Everyone knew what the issue was in South Africa and what needed to be discussed, but “here where we’re talking about a violation of human rights of indigenous people especially in relation to child care one half of the conversation is unaware that a conversation needs to happen – and that’s the white community. They don’t know that this is an issue and a lot of time when it’s brought to their attention it’s met with incredulity.” Martin said. “On the other hand is the Wabanaki community that’s very aware that what went on is not okay so the conversation there is how do we talk about this and what do we need to keep ourselves safe emotionally as we go forward and what happens when we take the lid off and start telling?”

Martin, whose background includes human ecology, political science and community organizing, has been seeking allies in the communities in churches and other groups and has garnered the support of the Maine Humanities Council and the Abbe Museum. ”I can tell you that since April I’ve put 12,000 miles on my car,” she said.

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Southern crops being rained out

NY Times - The tomatoes in Tennessee are splitting. Tobacco in North Carolina is drowning. And watermelons, which seem as if they would like all the rain that has soaked the South, have taken perhaps the biggest hit of all.

Some watermelon farmers in South Georgia say they have lost half their crop. The melons that did survive are not anywhere as good as a Southern watermelon ought to be.

Day after day, the rains have come to a part of the country that relies on the hot summer sun for everything from backyard tomato sandwiches to billions of dollars in commercial row crops, fruit and peanuts.

While the contiguous United States as a whole is about only 6 percent above its normal rainfall this year, Southern states are swamped. Through June, Georgia was 34 percent above normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. Both South Carolina and North Carolina were about 25 percent above normal. Alabama’s rainfall was up 22 percent.

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Role model update

National Enquirer - U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced to media a 39-count indictment, charging that the Giudices [of Real Housewives of New Jersey] defrauded the IRS as well as several banks between 2001-2008. According to the indictment, they conspired to illegally obtain mortgages and other loans from multiple banks by deliberately overinflating their incomes in order to obtain loans.

Reportedly, the Giudices also withheld vital information about their net worth from a U.S. bankruptcy trustee after filing for in 2009 which included including Teresa's actual income from the Bravo reality show.  Joe is also accused of failing to file income tax returns for the years 2004-2008, during which he allegedly earned $1 million.

The potential punishments for their actions are as follows: Up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 fine for mail and wire fraud, up to 30 years in prison and $1 million fine for bank fraud, up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for bankruptcy fraud, and failure to file tax returns nets up to one year and $100,000 fine for each year.

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Being a whistleblower is a tough life

Washington Post

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News without headlines

Based on logic, not law, Barack Obama is one of the biggest criminals in the country. The Constitution is the highest law of the land and Obama has wantonly broken several of its most important provisions, including freedom of the press, right of free speech, and its prohibition on warrantless searches.

He is a far bigger criminal, for example, than the medical marijuana growers he wants to send to jail.

Unfortunately, however, violating the Constitution is not a crime, but only an impeachable offense. In the worst case you only lose your job.

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Judge upholds firing woman because of her weight

Time - Most forms of workplace discrimination have been barred for years thanks to state and federal protections. But in 49 states around the U.S., there’s still at least one that’s legal: discrimination based on weight.

Last week, Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson Johnson ruled in favor of Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in a rare weight-discrimination case brought by 22 cocktail waitresses known as the “Borgata Babes.”

They argued that the casino viewed them as nothing but sex objects and were forced to endure frequent weigh-ins and were even suspended when they gained excessive weight, which could not be 7% more than their initial weight when they were hired. The court essentially told the cocktail waitresses that they knew what they were getting into by citing the application process for future “babes,” which stated that the positions were “part fashion model, part beverage server, part charming host and hostess. All impossibly lovely.” Judge Johnson also cited the fact that the casino’s “babes” signed statements agreeing to the 7% weight-gain policy.

“For the individual labeled a ‘babe’ to become a sex object requires that person’s participation and nothing before the court supports a finding of fraud, duress or coercion in connection with the plaintiffs’ hiring,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs cannot shed the label ‘babe’; they embraced it when they went to work for the Borgata.”

The case was part sex-based discrimination (the plaintiffs argued that the Borgata did not apply the same restrictions to their male counterparts) but also part weight discrimination. The judge, however, found nothing in New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination barring any of the casino’s actions. And in fact, only one state in the country specifically bars discrimination based on height or weight: Michigan.

In 1976, Michigan’s state legislature amended its Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include height and weight discrimination. The author of the amendment, then state representative Thomas Mathieu, told the Associated Press in 2010 that he introduced the bill because “he was ‘flabbergasted’ by the number of cases of unfairness involving women seeking office jobs who possessed the necessary skills and personality, but were overweight.”

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From Our Overstocked Archives: Before the drug war made us crazy

This 43 year old article in the DC Gazette, later renamed the Progressive Review, appeared one year before Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs. It was a time when people could still discuss marijuana in a rational way. The destruction of the war on drugs had not yet begun. The hearing was held by the DC City Council. Its chair was a Republican and prominent businessman. Other witnesses included a white judge, the US Surgeon General and the chairs of the local Republican and Democratic Party, as well as numerous members of the public.

DC Gazette, 1970 - Nobody can prove that the Father of our Country was a pot-head, but old George's diary shows evidence that he was well aware that only the flowering female cannabis sativa had uses other than rope— the male and female marijuana plants were meticulously separated at Mt. Vernon. Now, a couple of centuries later, near Washington's old homestead, the appointed overseers of the Congressional plantation carved out some of George's vast land holdings are publicly examining the medical, psychological, social and legal aspects of marijuana. The hardy plant seems to have yielded not only miles of hemp rope and volumes of literature on its other properties, it is now eliciting opinion from everyone — from City Council Chairman Gilbert Hahn and the Surgeon General of the United States to Joseph Alsop and Petey Greene's grandmother.

The Public Safety Committee of the City Council held two days of hearings this month to hear scientific and public testimony about marijuana. Most what it heard was expectable. Scientifically,  it is a mild consciousness- altering drug; it is not addictive, nor does it lead to the use of addicting drugs; it has been known and used and studied for literally thousands of years, and no physiological damage whatsoever has been discovered; instances of adverse mental effects resulting from its use are extremely rare.

Most significant to the Council's hearing — and to a good number of kids who are in prison on pot convictions — was the fact, reiterated by Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld, that "in the case of marijuana, legal penalties were originally assigned with total disregard for medical and scientific evidence of the properties of the drug or its effects…. I know of no clearer instance in which the punishment for infraction of the law is more harmful than the crime.”.

That touches on the ostensible reason the Council is so concerned, but Catfish Turner probably got closer to the reality of the matter when he noted that no one in the white establishment was concerned when the use of pot was limited to Mexican Americans , ghetto blacks and a few musicians.

"It's only when it gets into your suburbia and your white middle class colleges that you begin to get at all concerned, " Turner said. And Petey Greene, who testified alongside Turner agreed: "See, you people are just conning “

“What?” Councilman Daugherty asked.

“Faking, man, just faking. You're showing all this concern not for the community but just because some congressmen's kids got busted."

Marijuana smoking is now so widespread among the white middle and upper classes, said Greene, that "probably some of you up there got a little nickel (5-dollar) bag you go back to when this is over. "

The government has never worried about lying to the ghetto, but now, Catfish said, it is realizing that it "has got to stop telling these youngsters all these lies “cause they know you're lying and you know they do." Greene "testified" on behalf of his grandmother, whose opinions on marijuana are based on practical experience. She once told her grandson to quit: "Petey, you gotta stop smoking those reefers, because they make you too hungry, and I can't buy all that extra food."

Later, on comparing its effects with those of alcohol, "She said she'd rather me smoke reefers and just sit and smile at people than drink that old wine and come in throwing chairs around." While Council Chairman Hahn admitted that the Council has no power to make the use and possession of marijuana legal, "it may have the power by regulation to create an alternate lighter penalty for the use and possession of marijuana . " And more important, Hahn told reporters afterwards, the hearings provided an opportunity both to hear from and educate the public.

So the scientists were called in. (There were only a couple of cops guarding the Council chambers on that day and about five times that number the next morning when "the public" was to be heard.) The Surgeon General lauded the Nixon Administration’s position and seemed to be calling for an even more drastic reduction of penalties for pot. But he hinted at a possible ulterior motive of the Administration: since the present law has not served its purpose (many jurists won't invoke present penalties because they are too harsh), a "more realistic penalty structure" might do more "to control the use of marijuana than the present one. "

Harvard's director of psychiatric research, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, called for immediate legalization under controls similar to those now on alcohol. Grinspoon recommended continued study, but said under question that there is already rnore than sufficient scientific knowledge to conclude that "no amount of research will ever find marijuana as dangerous as alcohol or tobacco." Much of the other scientific testimony said as much about the testifiers as it did about pot. The John Hopkins Drug Abuse Center,  and the pharmacology departments of Howard and George Washington universities,  attempted to convince the Council that "we know so little" and that what was needed was a great deal more research money, presumably to their own institutions.

The testimony of representatives of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was notable for its meekness. Although the narcs still refer to marijuana as a killer drug before high school audiences, still try to imply that pot inevitably and immediately leads to heroin, still pass out 1930’s posters of marijuana  as the Grim Reaper—they backed off under Council questioning. The narc's Dr. Milton Joffe even allowed that although "legalizing simply for hedonistic purposes" was not warranted, "I'm not against pleasure.”

And there were few surprises in the public testimony from about thirty individuals and organizations.

Judge Charles Halleck recommended more realistic penalties, since present laws tend to cause the community "to lose faith in the entire system of justice. " James H. Heller of the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union called for legalization of pot. He said he saw no reason that it should be treated any different from alcohol. (He admitted to having tried grass once, "but it didn't have any effect.")

 "Maybe you just didn't know how to smoke it," Councilwoman Polly Shackleton consoled him.

Rev. John Bussey, President of the D. C. Baptist Ministers Conference, called marijuana evil and sinful and warned against the terrors of bending or reducing any penalties. "This is not the time to let up," said Bussey. Dr. Seymour Albert, speaking for the D. C. Medical Society, promised to testify only on medical grounds but could cite no medical evidence for his opinion that pot was more harmful than alcohol, expressed worry that "marijuana is only used in a deliberative effort to escapereality," said he had no opinion on legal matters but that marijuana should "be not legalized," and concluded that the penalties should be "left up to lawyers."

Virginia Riley of the D. C. Bar Association Mental Health Committee took the time to testify that the Bar Association had no opinion and no position on the matter. Father Robert Judge, a dean at Georgetown University, estimated that as many as 85% of Georgetown freshmen have used marijuana at one time or another. He felt that continued use might indicate a tendency to "cop out," but admitted that "often the continuing users are the better students." He recommended that legal sanctions against pot "should be extremely minimized."

The D. C. Republican Central Committee asked for more study, expressed the hope that it could after a year or so "make a more mature judgment," and under questioning hinted that penalties should be reduced. Dr. Dan Fivel of the D. C. Democratic Central Committee submitted its resolution (passed 7 to 1) that all penalties be eliminated "for possession, use, and distribution of marijuana except insofar as may be required to control sale to minors and use by persons operating motor vehicles." Hip blacks echoed Green and Turner that the Council exhibited its racist bias by ignoring the marijuana "problem" until it had spread outside the bounds of the ghetto. A couple of conservative Negroes asked for stricter enforcement of present laws.

Intense kids placed marijuana laws in their proper context of illegal draft laws, insane war, robot-producing public schools, and institutional racism. A couple of ex-addicts who had smoked, shot and drunk virtually everything they could get their hands on testified to the mild nature of pot. One even told the Council that it was liquor—not marijuana—that led him to heroin. The Capitol Hill Action Group recommended legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana— the tax revenues, would be significant to this tax-poor colony.

Terry Becker, a Quicksilver Times reporter, surprised everyone by calling for more stringent penalties and stricter enforcement. Becker wanted "everyone to turn on and everyone to get busted;" it would hasten the revolution, he said. " There were 100 to 125 spectators on each day of the hearings and WETA carried some of the proceedings so, as Chairman Hahn hoped, there was ample opportunity for "educating the public. " And Hahn made sure there was a full and accurate record.

Noting that Surgeon General Steinfeld had referred to the famous Alice B. Toklas marijuana or hash brownies but claimed the recipe was not to be found in Alice's cookbook, Hahn opened the second day of hearings by setting the record straight. You will find the recipe on page 273 of Alice B. Toklas, announced Hahn, and having fulfilled his public responsibility, he ordered the proceedings to proceed.

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Hillary Clinton and Wal Mart

Ward Harkavy, Village Voice 2000 - Twice in three days last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton basked in the adulation of cheering union . . . They would have dropped their forks if they had heard that Hillary served for six years on the board of the dreaded Wal-Mart, a union-busting behemoth. If they had learned the details of her friendship with Wal-Mart, they might have lost their lunches. . .

As she was leaving the dais, she ignored a reporter's question about Wal-Mart, and she ignored it again when she strode by reporters in the hotel lobby.

But there are questions. In 1986, when Hillary was first lady of Arkansas, she was put on the board of Wal-Mart. Officials at the time said she wasn't filling a vacancy. In May 1992, as Hubby's presidential campaign heated up, she resigned from the board of Wal-Mart. Company officials said at the time that they weren't going to fill her vacancy.

So what the hell was she doing on the Wal-Mart board? According to press accounts at the time, she was a show horse at the company's annual meetings when founder Sam Walton bussed in cheering throngs to celebrate his non-union empire, which is headquartered in Arkansas, one of the country's poorest states. According to published reports, she was placed in charge of the company's "green" program to protect the environment.

But nobody got greener than Sam Walton and his family. For several years in the '80s, he was judged the richest man in America by Forbes magazine; his fortune zoomed into the billions until he split it up among relatives. It's no surprise that Hillary is a strong supporter of free trade with China. Wal-Mart, despite its "Buy American" advertising campaign, is the single largest U.S. importer, and half of its imports come from China.

Was Hillary the voice of conscience on the board for American and foreign workers? Contemporary accounts make no mention of that. They do describe her as a "corporate litigator" in those days, and they mention, speaking of environmental matters, that she also served on the board of Lafarge, a company that, according to a press account, once burned hazardous fuels to run its cement plants. . .

And the Clintons depended on Wal-Mart's largesse not only for Hillary's regular payments as a board member but for travel expenses on Wal-Mart planes and for heavy campaign contributions to Bill's campaigns there and nationally. . .

Lisa Featherstone, Nation, 2005 - Unlike so many horrible things, Wal-Mart cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. The Arkansas-based company prospered under the state's native son Bill Clinton when he was governor and President. Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, were close to the Clintons, and for several years Hillary Clinton, whose law firm represented Wal-Mart, served on the company's board of directors. Bill Clinton's "welfare reform" has provided Wal-Mart with a ready workforce of women who have no choice but to accept its poverty wages and discriminatory policies.

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Some reasons why the Clintons don't think Anthony Weiner is up to them in sex scandals

1992

Former Miss Arkansas Sally Perdue goes on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show and says she had an affair with Bill Clinton. She will later tell the London Sunday Telegraph that state troopers often dropped Clinton off at her place in his jogging gear: "He saw my Steinway grand piano and went straight over to it and asked me to play. . . When I see him now, president of the United States, meeting world leaders, I can't believe it. . . I still have this picture of him wearing my black nightgown, playing the sax badly. . . this guy tiptoeing across the park and getting caught on the fence. How do you expect me to take him seriously?"

After the TV show, Perdue says she was visited by a man who described himself as a Democratic Party operative and who warned her not to reveal specifics of the affair. "He said there were people in high places who were anxious about me and they wanted me to know that keeping my mouth shut would be worthwhile. . . If I was a good little girl, and didn't kill the messenger; I'd be set for life: a federal job, nothing fancy but a regular paycheck. . . I'd never have to worry again. But if I didn't take the offer, then they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn't guarantee what would happen to my 'pretty little legs.'"

Perdue says she later found a shotgun cartridge on the driver's seat of her Jeep and had her back window shattered.

1994

Bill Clinton speaks to a group of Southeast Washington high school students about sex: "This is not a sport, this is a solemn responsibility." He tells the young men at the gathering that they should stop having sex "when they're not prepared to marry the others, they're not prepared to take responsibility for the children and they're not even able to take responsibility for themselves."

1998

The Lewinsky affair story breaks in the Washington Post. President Clinton appears on television and says that he "never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and that he "never told anyone to lie."

Standing by her man, Hillary Clinton goes on the Today Show and blames her husband's problems on a "vast right wing conspiracy."

1998

Prior to her testimony in the Clinton investigation, Kathleen Willey claims that the tires on her car were mysteriously punctured with dozens of nails and the cat she had for many years suddenly disappeared. Reports ABC's Jackie Judd, "Then just days before she testified in the Paula Jones lawsuit in early January, Willey was out jogging near her home when a stranger approached her. . .The man knew what had happened at her home and that he asked her if the tires had been fixed and if the cat had been found." The man then allegedly asked Willey, 'Don't you get the message?' and jogged off."

1998


Former state trooper Larry Patterson will testify in the Paula Jones case:

    Larry Patterson: [Governor Clinton] said, "I've got someone I need to see." I said "Okay, "Where are going?" He said "To Booker Elementary School. . . [Chelsea attended Booker] So we went to Booker Elementary School and he said, "I've a friend waiting down here, Larry and I'd like to spend some time alone with her." . . This particular lady was driving a small red compact car. it was parked beside the school underneath a streetlight. . . I was out of the car smoking, could see the action going on. Two Little Rock city policemen pulled up, said, "What are you doing here?" I I.D.'d myself. I said, "I've a friend that's meeting a married lady down here, and they'd like some privacy. The Little Rock city policeman on the passenger side said, "If the school gets burglarized, I hope you can cover this. . . I said, "Yeah I can cover this. No problem."

    Q: You said that the woman's car was under a streetlight and you could see what was going on?

    Mr. Patterson: Yes, Sir.

    Q: What was going on? What did you see?

    Mr. Patterson: I saw Bill Clinton on the passenger side of the front seat. I was the woman get into the driver's side. I saw her head disappear into what looked like his lap. . . .

1999

Neal Travis of the New York Post reports that, according to a new book on the Mossad, Israel blackmailed President Clinton with 30 hours of tapes of his phone sex talks with Monica Lewinsky. The agency allegedly agreed not to release the material in return for Clinton calling off an FBI hunt for a top-level Israeli mole supposedly in the White House. The allegation appears in "Gideon's Spies - The Secret History of the Mossad," written by Gordon Thomas. Lewinsky testified under oath that after a session of heavy petting and oral sex in the White House, Clinton told her a foreign embassy was tapping the two phone lines in her DC apartment. She claims Clinton told her that if questioned they should say they knew their calls were being bugged and were only joking to fool the tappers. Kenneth Starr does not pursue the matter. Thomas tells the NYP: "So far as anyone knows, the Israeli agent MEGA - a much more important spy than the imprisoned CIA traitor Jonathan Pollard, and probably his controller - is still in place at the White House."

1999

The New York Daily News quotes John Gotti as saying that Clinton got away with things a Mafia boss would never have gotten away with. In a conversation with his brother Peter, he is particularly struck with Clinton's taped conversation with Gennifer Flowers: "He's telling her, 'Why would you want to bring this out? If anybody investigates, you lie.' " Said Gotti, "If he had an Italian last name, they would've electrocuted him." Ironically, it was on the Gennifer Flowers tape that Clinton says that Mario Cuomo acted like a Mafioso.

1999

Federal judge Susan Wright holds Clinton in contempt for "intentionally false" statements under oath and "willful failure" to testify truthfully in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. This is the only time a president has been found in contempt of court.

2000

According to John Harris' book on Clinton, Tipper Gore was so disgusted in 2000 with Bill and Hillary that she stayed cloistered in a holding room instead of going to a New York reception with major Democratic fund-raisers where the Clintons would be. "No, I'm not doing it," she snapped to an aide. "I'm not going out there with that man."

Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clinton of having raped her, is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

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