Left Side of the Aisle #87 - Part 1

[Welcome to Jon Swift Roundup 2012 readers. If you're curious about what other posts of mine I thought about submitting, my Top 10 list is here. Just FYI, the posts are titled as they are because many are taken from my weekly show in local access cable - which, if you want to see, can be found on YouTube here.]

Guns, gun nuts, gun violence, Second Amendment nonsense, and the bloody results

One week ago, I gave my first "Hero Award" to Jason Whitlock and Bob Costas for having the courage to speak out about our gun culture. Little did they or I know how appropriate their words were about to become.

On Friday, December 14, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, wearing combat gear and armed with two semiautomatic pistols and a semiautomatic rifle, killed 27 people - 20 of them small children - in an attack in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Lanza was brutally efficient and chillingly accurate in his attack to the point of the evidence suggesting that the victims, including the children, were shot at point-blank range.

The names Sandy Hook and Newtown are now part of a grim and lengthening list that includes Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and dozens more names that now represent something other than mere geography.

The shock - especially the horror of six- and seven-year old children being methodically shot down - spurred the re-emergence of a phrase that has not been heard in the land for some time: gun control.

Gun control. The question is, are we going to get any of it. The answer is: Not if the right wingers and the gun nuts have their way.

It is worth noting that not a single pro-gun politician would appear on either Meet The Press or Face The Nation the Sunday after the massacre. The NRA - the Nutzoid Rabbit-brains of America - has been unnaturally and happily silent, with even its Facebook page taken down. They are supposed to be saying something later this week, after this show is taped (which occurs on Wednesday), but I don't expect it will be any different from the crap they have dumped on us for years.

Meanwhile, the other bozos have not been so reticent.

For example, Representative Mike Rogers says gun control is the "one thing I hope doesn’t happen."

Herman Cain, the man who proved that a black presidential candidate can be just as much a waste of air as a white one, declared himself "disgusted" by those who dared to suggest that golly gee whiz, maybe Newtown should make us think about, you know, guns 'n' stuff.

For his part, former Arkansas governor Mike HuckleberryHound insisted he knew why the massacre happened: It's because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools. "We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem," he said. "What we have is a sin problem."

Rep. Louie Gohmert and Gov. Rick Perry, who together reduce the average IQ of Texas by 20 points, insist that they know that the answer to preventing future such massacres in the US is for more Americans to carry guns. Perry wants teachers and administrators to be able to carry concealed guns around school. Gohmert told Fox News - where else - "I wish to God" that Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, who was killed while trying to rush Lanza, had had an M-4 in her office so that "when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."

Well, you know what? I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear the gobbledygook, the nonsense, the lies, the garbage. I don't want hear to any of the noxious venom spewing from the fangs of the snakes at the NRA. I don't want to hear the slimy excuses, the shopworn slogans, the stale talking points obediently invoked by the gun nuts' bought off lackeys in Congress.

What's more, I also don't want to hear it from the Obamabots, the sycophants for who he can do nothing wrong and who will whine that he's doing the best that he can, what with those mean ol' Republicans - not when there are things he can do on his own, by executive order, without Congress, such as banning the import of assault weapons.

Which means I especially don't want to hear any of the mealy-mouthed blather from Mr. Nobel Peace Prize himself, President Hopey-Changey, who talks big about "meaningful action" after five years of doing absolutely nothing about guns - except expanding the areas where people can legally carry them. Thanks to legislation approved and actively defended in court by the glorious Mr. O, you can now transport a gun via Amtrak train. Even better, you can now carry a loaded, concealed gun around in a national park.

So don't expect me to get all gooey about Obama's supposed commitment to "meaningful action" - not when he has never been a leader on the issue of gun control. Not as a state senator, not as a US senator, not as president, and not as a candidate for a second term. In fact, during this last campaign he was faced with one question, just one question, about gun control. It was a question about a ban on assault weapons. He answered with pap about wanting to have "a broader conversation about reducing violence."

And especially don't expect me to get gooey when his press secretary, Jay Carney, is telling reporters that Obama does not want to politicize a tragedy. “There will be a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but today is not that day."

So what the hell day is the day?

How many more have to die before it's "the day?" How many more have to be shot down before it's "the day?" How many mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, daughters, sons, have to lie in spreading pools of their own blood before it's "the day?" How many children have to cry out for mommy after a fall or a bee sting until someone has to gently as they can explain again that mommy is no longer there before it's "the day?" How many wives have to wake in the night and reach across the bed and have that moment of confusion before the pain of remembering - yet again - why there's no one there? How many parents have to suffer the repeated gaping empty ache of being in the grocery store and reaching for something before realizing - again - that they no longer have to buy that sort of cereal or that particular brand of peanut butter?

The days of those children, those spouses, those parents, are not measured in minutes but in pains; they are not marked by hours but by aches. So what day is the day? And why is today not the day?

So I don't want to hear it; I don't want to hear any of it. Not the time? Of course it's the time, it's way past the time. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, proving he's not a complete jerk, said that “Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action.”

Now Obama says he will support a bill to be introduced in the new Congress by Diane Feinstein to reinstate the ban on assault weapons. Well, whoop-tee-do. You'll "support" it. What are you going to do about it, Mr. President? What pressure are you prepared to bring? What political capital are you prepared to spend? Don't give me words, you've already given all of us lots and lots of words. Give me honest-to-gosh actions if you want me to take you seriously.

There are more than 310 million weapons in civilian hands in the US. That is about one-half of all weapons owned by civilians in the entire world.

There were 16,000 murders in the U.S. last year; 12,000 - three-quarters, 75% - were with guns. More than 60,000 more people were wounded, some of them permanently disabled mentally or physically. A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than in self-defense. The US has a rate of 2.8 murders by gun per 100,000 individuals. That is the highest rate in the entire industrialized world and almost seven times higher than the next 22 countries combined. Compared to Great Britain, you are 100 times - remember, this is the rate, not the absolute number, it is the risk - you are 100 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the US than in Britain, which despite its strict gun laws and contrary to what the polluted fantasies of the gun nuts would predict, seems to have retained more than a modicum of political freedom.

Every day we wait, more people die, more people are murdered with guns.

There have been at least 62 mass killings in US over last 30 years. In at least 49 of those cases, the guns involved were obtained legally. Of the weapons used, 72%, nearly three-fourths, were either assault weapons or semiautomatic handguns. Oh, and by the way, do you know how many of them were stopped by some civilian who was packing heat and going "Make my day?" Zippo. Not one. It has never happened.

There have been 23 mass shootings in the US in the last six years - bear in mind that "mass shooting" is defined here as at least five people killed in a single incident. Let's go through that list:

February 12, 2007 - Salt Lake City, UT: An 18-year-old rampaged through the Trolley Square shopping center until he was killed by police. 6 dead, 4 wounded.

April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech campus, Blacksburg, VA: Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at the school, shot and killed 32 of his classmates before committing suicide. 33 dead, 23 wounded.

October 7, 2007 - Crandon, WI: Tyler Peterson, 20, killed six people, including his ex-girlfriend, at a post-homecoming party. 7 dead, 1 wounded.

December 5, 2007 - Omaha, NE: Robert Hawkins, 19, went on a shooting spree at the Westroads Mall, killing eight people and then himself. 9 dead.

February 7, 2008 - Kirkwood, MO: A gunman opened fire on a public meeting in the city hall, killing six people before he was shot and killed by police. 7 dead, 1 wounded.

February 14, 2008 - DeKalb, IL: A former Northern Illinois University student, 27-year-old Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, opened fire on the campus, killing five people then himself. 6 dead, 21 wounded.

June 25, 2008 - Henderson, KY: After an argument with his boss at the Atlantis plastics plant, Wesley Higdon, 25, killed five colleagues and then himself. 6 dead, 1 wounded.

March 10, 2009 - Geneva County, AL: A 28-year-old man killed his mother then drove ten miles to kill several members of his extended family, neighbors and a bystander. The victims ranged in age from 18 months to 74 years old. 11 dead, 6 wounded.

March 29, 2009 - Carthage, NC: A gunman opened fire on a nursing home, killing seven residents and a nurse. 8 dead, 3 wounded.

April 3, 2009 - Binghamton, NY: Jiverly Wong, a naturalized immigrant from Vietnam, gunned down students and employees at the American Civic Association, where he had been taking English lessons. 14 dead, 4 wounded

November 5, 2009 - Fort Hood, TX: In the deadliest shooting to ever happen on an American military base, an Army Major serving as a psychiatrist went on a shooting spree that killed 13. 13 dead, 30 wounded.

November 29, 2009 - Parkland, WA: A Washington man walked into a coffee shop and shot four police officers execution-style. 5 dead.

August 3, 2010 - Manchester, CT: A driver for Hartford Beer Distributors killed eight people and then himself in a workplace shooting. 9 dead, 2 wounded.

January 8, 2011 - Tucson, AZ: Jared Lee Loughner, 22, opened fire in a Safeway parking lot, killing six people and injuring others including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at point-blank range. 6 dead, 14 wounded.

September 6, 2011 - Carson City, NV: Eduardo Sencion opened fire in an IHOP and then shot himself. 5 dead, 7 wounded.

October 12, 2011 - Seal Beach, CA: Scott Evans Dekraai, 41, stormed a hair salon where his ex-wife worked and killed eight people. 8 dead, 1 wounded.

February 22, 2012 - Norcross, GA: A man shot and killed two of his sisters and their husbands and then himself in a Korean health spa. 5 dead.

April 2, 2012 - Oikos University, Oakland, CA: 43-year-old One Goh, a former student at the largely Korean Christian campus, entered the school and opened fire. 7 dead, 3 wounded.

May 31, 2012 - Seattle, WA: A man opened fire in a cafe, fatally wounding four people, then killed another in a carjacking before killing himself. 6 dead.

July 20, 2012 - Aurora, CO: During a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," a gunman opened fire on the suburban Denver movie theater, killing 12 and injuring dozens of others. 12 dead, 59 wounded.

August 5, 2012 - Oak Creek, WI: White supremacist Wade Michael Page entered a Sikh Temple, opening fire on congregants. He later shot and injured a police officer responding to the scene. 7 dead, 4 wounded.

September 27, 2012 - Minneapolis, MN: Andrew John Engeldinger, a recently laid off employee of Accent Signage Systems, entered the office building and opened fire. 7 dead, 2 wounded.

December 14, 2012 - Newtown, CT: The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary was the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, leaving 27 dead - including 20 young children. 27 dead.

And that's just the mass shootings. Here are six more shootings from just this year that didn't make the cut because fewer than five people were killed.

July 8 - Dover, DE: Three persons walked onto a soccer field and killed the tournament organizer and a 16-year-old player. Two persons were injured by random gunfire. 2 dead, 2 injured.

July 17 - Tuscaloosa, AL: A gunman with a military-style assault rifle went to the house of a man who he believed knew someone else and shot that man. He then walked into a crowded bar and began shooting. 17 wounded.

August 13 - College Station, TX: A 35-year-old man, a self-proclaimed gun enthusiast, killed a constable and a passerby, and wounded four others, before police killed him. 3 dead, 4 wounded.

August 24 - New York, NY: Ten people are shot, 2 fatally, by a disgruntled former employee named Jeffrey Johnson in a shooting outside the Empire State Building. 2 dead, 8 wounded.

October 21 - Brookfield, WI: A man walked into a spa, killed his wife and two other women, and wounded four before killing himself. 4 dead, 4 wounded..

December 11 - Portland, OR: A gunman wielding an assault rifle opened fire in a mall crowded with Christmas shoppers, killing two people and sending at least one person to a hospital before being found dead from apparently self-inflicted wounds. 3 dead, 1 wounded.

Did that list seem long, seem tedious? Imagine how it seems to the families and friends left behind, a list that is not words but real people, a list written not with type but with blood. And every day we delay, the list of the dead grows longer.

Oh, yes, we're told, it's unfortunate, it's terrible, but it's the price we pay for freedom! The freedom we are guaranteed by the Second Amendment, the Amendment that itself guarantees our freedom!

Bull.

I'm going to have to get a little legalistic on you, but it's necessary because you can be damn sure that the gun nuts are going to trot out the Second Amendment argument over and over, the argument that goes "I can have my guns - the Constitution says so!" First, let's be clear on what the Amendment says: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The first important Supreme Court decision about the Second Amendment was Presser v. Illinois, which was decided in 1886. In it, the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment limited only the power of Congress and the national government to control firearms, not that of individual states. States could essentially put on whatever restrictions they wanted. That decision was affirmed in Miller v. Texas, decided in 1894. Now, this was before the idea of incorporation, the idea that the protections of the Constitution extend to the states as well as the federal government, became commonplace, so these decisions are not truly relevant the legal situation we face to today. But they do mean that right away this idea that the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own whatever and however many guns they wanted is totally bogus.

The next big case, the important one, was United States v. Miller. This was in 1939 and it concerned the National Firearms Act of 1934. That Act required that certain types of weapons be registered and taxed. A unanimous Court upheld the law, saying there was no conflict with the Second Amendment. The Court found that:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a [weapon of the sort involved in the case] has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. ...

With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

The syntax is rather stilted, but the meaning is clear enough.

For 69 years, that was precedent, relied on by all lower Courts and occasionally referred to by the Supreme Court itself. For 69 years, the legal standard was that states and the federal government were within their legitimate powers to regulate sale and possession of weapons which were not related to maintaining "a well-regulated militia" - which, in the absence of state militias (except to the degree that the National Guard could be considered such), pretty much meant any weapon at all.

Put another way, the guarantee under the Second Amendment was not an individual right but a collective one: It applied to the people as a whole, not to discrete individuals.

After 69 years, the narrowest majority of the Supreme Court, 5-4, decided to ignore those decades of precedent, or more to the point, to regard them as irrelevant. In 2008, in the case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment does provide an individual right to own a gun for "traditional lawful purposes," such as self-defense within the home. This decision only applied to federal enclaves - such as the District of Columbia. However, two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago, the Court ruled in another 5-4 decision that the finding in Heller applied to the states as well.

That is what the gun nuts now rely on, that is what they now argue: "Can't have gun control. Second Amendment. Supreme Court has ruled. Debate is over." The first thing is to ask those wackos if at any time during those 69 years that the Court said otherwise, in all that time did any of them just say "the Court has ruled, the debate is over." Of course they didn't. So don't expect us to do it now.

The other thing is more important: Those nuts - and, in fact, a lot of gun control advocates - don't know what Heller and McDonald actually said. I'm not going to discuss all the logical convulsions (the word is chosen deliberately) the majority had to go through to claim that the first half of the Amendment, about a militia, is completely disconnected from the second half, about bearing arms. The thing is, I don't have to.

In Heller and reasserted in McDonald, the majority of the Supreme Court actually embraced the concept of the 1939 Miller decision that the federal government and the states have the authority to regulate firearms and then argued that the Second Amendment only applies to weapons "in common use for lawful purposes." In fact, the Court said the ruling, quoting here,

should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

The majority also said that other existing or potential prohibitions, such as banning concealed weapons or the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons" were unaffected by the decision.

In fact, here's the real kicker: In these decisions the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment provided an individual right to possess a gun for "traditional lawful purposes," such as self-defense within the home. In other words, under this decision, you have an absolute right to have a gun in your house - but not necessarily anywhere else.

So the gun nuts who claim that the Second Amendment gives them the right to have pretty much any kind of gun they want and as many of them as they want wherever they want are, happily, completely wrong. Heller and McDonald are far more limited than gun nuts hope and control advocates fear.

Carrying concealed guns can be banned. Carrying guns into schools or government buildings - or, for that matter, on Amtrak trains or in national parks - can be banned. Assault weapons can be banned. Semiautomatic handguns can be banned. High-capacity magazines can be banned. Safety locks can be required. "Dangerous and unusual" ammunition such as hollow-point bullets and armor-piercing rounds can be banned.

Will any of that happen anytime soon? Maybe - I doubt it given the gross cowardice of too many supposed liberals in DC, but maybe, at least some of it. The shooting in Newtown has touched a national nerve in a way few things have of late.

But here’s one last thing, a bottom line: Based on current jurisprudence, the truth is that pretty much any kind of gun other than basic hunting rifles, shotguns, and ordinary handguns could be banned outright.

And dammit, they should be - ban them all. You want to hunt? Go with a basic rifle. Don't even try to tell me that you need an AR-15 to go after deer. In fact, why don't you use a bow? Or is the extra effort involved in having to track the deer to get close enough to take it down with a bow instead of dropping it from a couple of hundred yards away with your manhood too much for you?

You want to target shoot? Use a pellet gun. Yeah, yeah, I know they can be dangerous blah blah blah - but don't even try to tell me you need a Glock to shoot out a paper bulls-eye.

Ban them all. I know that's not going to happen. I know there is no chance of that in my lifetime and probably much longer, if ever. But it's not going to stop me from saying it and from wanting it - and as long as I am 100 times more likely to be killed by a gun here than in the UK, I'm going to keep on saying it and keep on wanting it.

Sources:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/17023686-452/president-slow-to-draw-on-guns.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/obamas-reaction-to-connecticut-shooting-sets-stage-for-gun-debate.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-spox-day-gun-debate-article-1.1220406
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/12/15/after-conn-massacre-despair-must-lead-action-gun-control/YNaanp5PceFun2wD5gdrDK/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/louie-gohmert-guns_n_2311379.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1218/After-Sandy-Hook-teachers-should-be-armed-says-Texas-Gov.-Rick-Perry-video
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/183554521.html
http://www.ydr.com/opinion/ci_22212204/walter-brasch-brief-review-2012-gun-culture-america
http://www.orlandoadvocate.com/index.php/the-seraaj-files/53394-mass-shooting-in-u-s-in-2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/mike-huckabee-school-shooting_n_2303792.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/david-gregory-pro-gun-rights-senators_n_2311559.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presser_v._Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._Chicago

Left Side of the Aisle #87

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of December 20-26, 2012



This week:

- Guns, gun nuts, gun violence, Second Amendment bullshit, and the bloody results
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/17023686-452/president-slow-to-draw-on-guns.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/obamas-reaction-to-connecticut-shooting-sets-stage-for-gun-debate.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-spox-day-gun-debate-article-1.1220406
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/12/15/after-conn-massacre-despair-must-lead-action-gun-control/YNaanp5PceFun2wD5gdrDK/story.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/louie-gohmert-guns_n_2311379.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1218/After-Sandy-Hook-teachers-should-be-armed-says-Texas-Gov.-Rick-Perry-video
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/183554521.html
http://www.ydr.com/opinion/ci_22212204/walter-brasch-brief-review-2012-gun-culture-america
http://www.orlandoadvocate.com/index.php/the-seraaj-files/53394-mass-shooting-in-u-s-in-2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/mike-huckabee-school-shooting_n_2303792.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/david-gregory-pro-gun-rights-senators_n_2311559.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presser_v._Illinois
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._Chicago

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 8

And Another Thing: 40th anniversary of Apollo 17

Wrapping up this week with And Another Thing, our occasional foray into things not political, usually some cool science thing or another.

This one starts with a memory: In 1962, I was in eighth grade. I can still remember how classes stopped so we could gather in one classroom and watch John Glenn take off to become the first American to orbit the Earth.

The was Mercury program, which was followed by the Gemini program and the Apollo program, capped - in a certain dramatic sense - by Apollo 11, when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon.

We sometimes forget that there were more Apollo missions after that - except of course when the movie "Apollo 13" comes on the TV again. But in fact there were six more Apollo mission after the first Moon landing, including the ill-fated number 13. But by the end of those, public interest had waned, NASA was facing budget stresses, and scientists were increasingly arguing that as much or even more could be learned by robotic missions - at less cost and less risk of life.

And certainly there have been some incredible advances and successes with so-called "unmanned" space shots. For example, we have sent a rocket to a comet to blow off a piece to look inside - and have gone back to same comet years later to see how it had changed in that time. We have landed a probe on an asteroid. We - and in all this by "we" I mean humans, not necessarily Americans - have taken a sample of an asteroid and brought it back to Earth. And of course there are the Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity, and now Curiosity. The judgment of those scientists has been proven correct.

But still it is worth noting, if only in passing, that Apollo 17 was the last Moon landing, the last time human beings landed on the Moon. And this past Tuesday, December 11, was the 40th anniversary of that event.


Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/14/japan-space-probe-asteroid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/11/apollo_17_40th_anniversary/

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 7

RIP: Ravi Shankar

I just had to mention this quickly:

Pandit Ravi Shankar, the best known contemporary Indian musician, one of the great musicians of the world, who among many other things won three Grammies, worked with both the Beatles and Philip Glass, recorded with classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and brought 400,000 people to their feet at Woodstock, died December 11 in San Diego, Calif. He was 92.

He had performed as recently as November 4 - but the stress of recovery from recent heart valve replacement surgery was too much.

He will be missed.

The video below is not from Woodstock; unfortunately I couldn't find a good video of that performance online. I do remember the rain, however. Anyway, the video is from Monterey Pop, which was two years earlier, in 1967. In a way, this may be a better one anyhow since this is the performance through which most of us got to know of Ravi Shankar and since (unlike Woodstock) it took place in the daytime you can see the audience reaction.



Sources:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/12/15853749-indian-sitar-virtuoso-ravi-shankar-dies-at-92
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 6

Clown Award: Rahm Emanuel

The Clown Award, given weekly for meritorious stupidity.

What got this award occurred a couple of weeks ago but I decided to include it because the dishonoree he is so thoroughly deserving. It is Rahm Emanuel.

Rahm Emanuel, the man who before spending a trillion - yes, with a T - dollars to bail out the banks, said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The man who as Obama's chief of staff called progressive opponents of his boss "retarded." The man who left DC to become mayor of Chicago and now continues to show his command of nutzoid indifference to reality.

The Chicago Transit Authority has announced significant fare hikes for its buses and trains. Commuters are understandably upset about the increases - but Emanuel responded with “Fares stayed the same. Basic fares stayed the same, which you cannot say about gas prices.”

Yes, basic fares, single-trip fares, are staying the same - but the cost of passes are going up significantly and the commuters, who make up 55% of the system's traffic, are the ones you use the passes, you twit.

But that wasn't enough for him: He suggested commuters who don't like the new fares are free to get behind the wheel and drive, saying "you will make that choice" - it's just a "choice" whether you will drive or take public transportation, ignoring the fact that many of the people who rely on the CTA don't have cars and can't afford them.

Rahm Emanuel - we always knew it, but thanks for confirming yet again that you really are a clown.

Sources:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-emanuel-on-cta-increases-not-fare-hikes-chicagoans-can-choose-to-drive-20121126,0,793097.story

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 5

Outrage of the Week: Children are military targets

This one is a little hard for me to stomach but I'll do it.

Back in October, there was an "incident" in Afghanistan.

"Incident" - what a wonderfully vague, anesthetizing word. I think of how my wife, who is a heart attack survivor, finds it so amusing that among the community of women who have survived heart attacks, the current vogue is to insist on calling each other "champions." You're not a survivor, you're a "champion." The other thing is referring to the heart attack itself as an "event." You don't ask someone "When did you have your heart attack," you ask "When was your event."

We don't want to use words that actually express what we're really saying. We want to shield ourselves from the reality, to hide behind euphemisms. My wife says "I didn't have an 'event,' I had a heart attack. I almost died." A block party, now that's an event. A movie premiere is an event. A heart attack - is not. It's nothing like those others. We use words to hide ourselves from the harshness of what we're expressing.

So in October, we had an "incident" in Afghanistan. In this "incident," three children, aged 8, 10, and 12, were killed by NATO bombing while gathering dung for fuel, something often done in the area since there aren't a lot of trees around. Reports, as always, conflicted: One said insurgents were bombed as they were digging holes to bury mines and the children were killed by shrapnel from the blast: They were "collateral damage," which is one of the all-time great euphemisms. Another, the only on-the-scene account, said that they went to the site right after the attack and there were no adult bodies there, just the children. The US at first - of course - denied any civilians were killed only to later say yeah, maybe we did kill some innocent people. But we done got us three insurgents and that's what counts - whoo-hoo!

Here's the thing: On December 3, Military Times published a despicable piece by two staff writers arguing in effect that children are legitimate military targets because sometimes insurgents use kids. They quote an unnamed "Marine official" at a Marine base in Afghanistan as suggesting the children were not innocent and in fact they were the three insurgents killed.

A senior Army officer in Afghanistan, one Lt. Col. Marion Carrington, referred to, in one of the more chilling of the euphemisms, "opening the aperture," the "aperture" through which the military looks at the world, so that our "aperture" now is not just looking for military-age males, all of who are assumed to be insurgents, but for in his words "children with potential hostile intent."

But y'know, maybe we shouldn't be surprised: This is not new. Maybe we shouldn't even be outraged - or, that's not true, rather we need to realize that this is not the root outrage.

Back in the early '70s, during the Indochina War, there was an outfit called NARMIC: National Action/Research on the Military-Industrial Complex. It was a project of the American Friends Service Committee, which as you may know is the social action arm of the Quaker church in the US. Well, NAARMIC produced a slide show called The Automated Air War in Indochina. It was about the use of anti-personnel bombs and more particularly for us here, about the use of electronic sensors to detect supposed enemy movements and so to direct bombing. It talked about how even at that time attacks were being directed by people far from the battlefield and about the military's plans to increasingly automate its wars. What we're seeing today, the drones, has been in development for a long time. It's not new, it's just more advanced.

Well, the real reason I bring up this old slide show is that it contained a quote from an Air Force training manual. Now, this was 40 years ago; I don't remember the particular name of the particular manual, but I did manage to locate the quote. This was the definition of a military target contained in that Air Force manual. A military target is:

Any person, thing, idea, entity, or location selected for destruction, inactivation, or rendering non-usable with weapons which will reduce or destroy the will or ability of the enemy to resist.

A military target, that is, is anything you think destroying will help you win your war. Anything you think will hurt "them" is a legitimate military target. So if you think blowing 8-year old children to smithereens with drone strikes and bombing is what will help you win, that is what you will do, because 8-year old children are legitimate military targets.

So if you buy into war, that is what you are buying into. If you buy into the Afghanistan War, if you bought into the Iraq War, if you buy into the bombing and drone attacks on Pakistan, on Yemen, and elsewhere, if you buy into the argument that drone strikes are okay or even a good thing because they are "better than ground forces," that is what you are buying into: You are buying into the idea that it's okay to bomb children because they might have "potential hostile intent."

And that is perhaps the most outrageous thing of all.

Sources:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171582/us-military-approves-bombing-children
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170599/more-civilians-slaughtered-afghanistan-us-airstrike
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2012/12/marine-taliban-kids-120312w

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 4

Means testing Medicare

Something else while we are on the topic of deceit and lies mean to harm the greater number of us. One of the proposals being kicked around to avoid the purely mythical fiscal cliff is the idea of “means testing” (or in the even more arcane version emerging recently, “income relating”) Medicare as a tradeoff for GOPpers accepting the increases in taxes on the very rich which the right wing is already conceding are going to come so why are the Dummycrats offering something in exchange which only goes to prove that yes, the Dimcrats are happy to cut Medicare, they just need a way to sell it to the public which overwhelmingly - even among a majority of Republicans - opposes any such thing.

But here is the really important thing about why the right wing would luuuv to "means test" or "income relate" Medicare. What "means testing" means is that you target benefits, payments, tax breaks, whatever, to people who fall below a certain income level while denying those same sort of benefits to people who are deemed too rich to need them.

Lots of federal benefits, both tax benefits and direct benefits, are means tested. Whether or not you get them and how much you get if you do is dependent on your income. However, for most of its life and still for the most part, Medicare is not. Once you reach age 65, if you have worked and paid Medicare taxes for at least ten years, then you’re eligible for benefits, no matter how high your income is. Medicare, that is, in insurance. You pay a premium, you get a benefit.

If you go to buy health insurance in the private market, they don't ask you how much money you make. The question is what level of coverage do you want. The benefit is based on the premium; the premium is not based on your income. If you buy life insurance, car insurance, homeowner insurance, renter insurance, travel insurance, whatever; when you go to insure your car, the agent doesn't ask for a copy of your latest income tax return. The benefit is based on paying the premium, not on having a certain income. Medicare is and has been insurance.

In 2007, a crack was opened in that foundation. Since then, the highest-income people who are enrolled in the program have to pay more for their benefits. That still only affects a very small part of the total: Only 5% of those who have Part B (which covers doctors’ office visits and outpatient care) and 3% of those enrolled in Part D (which is the prescription drug plan) pay the higher premium.

The right wing would love to expand this, would love to open that crack into a gulf. And it's not just the right wing. Dick Durbin is for expanding means testing of Medicare. Max Baucus is for it. Claire McCaskill is for it. Emanuel Cleaver, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, is for it. So is Obama - in fact, last year he proposed exactly that, presenting a plan that would raise Medicare premiums while keeping the income limits the same so that eventually 25% of those in Part B or D would be paying the higher premiums.

So what is the real problem? What is the problem with richer people paying more? Means testing Medicare fundamentally changes the nature of the program. Means testing Medicare changes it from insurance to "just another government giveaway," just more "welfare" for "the 47%" who "won't take responsibility for their lives." Means testing Medicare is just another right wing trap, just another snare the Dems will walk into with their eyes wide open, knowing full well what they are doing, knowing full well the weapon they are handing to the right wing to attack Medicare, because again, cutting the deficit is the most important thing evah because the banks must be served and whoever gets hurt as a result? Hey, what do they care about them? These people don't depend on Medicare.

Sources:
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15824325-in-fiscal-bargaining-buzz-over-means-testing-grows-louder

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 3

Michigan passes "right to earn less" law

Ever since GOPpers took control of the Michigan state government two years ago, they have been drooling at the thought of destroying the ability of workers to work together to defend and advance their interests. One of the plans was to make Michigan a so-called "right to work" state. But Gov. Rick Snyder said that "wasn't on the agenda" because it would be "too divisive."

But two things happened in November: One, a labor-backed proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have enshrined the right to collective bargaining suffered a clear loss, suggesting a moment of weakness for labor. Two, the GOPpers lost seats in the legislature, so their own position wouldn't be as strong once the new legislature was sworn in. Something had to be done and it had to be done now.

So last week, Gov. Snidelywhiplash announced at a press conference that he would support a bill to make Michigan a "right to work" state. That was at 11AM. By 8PM that same day, bills to do exactly that had been introduced in and passed by the state Senate without any committee hearings or opportunity for public comment. After a mandatory 5-day waiting period, the state House did the same and Snidelywhiplash signed it within hours.

Let's be clear about what the bull about "right to work" really means. First off, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with having a right to work; it has nothing to do with having a right to a job, so don't even think that. Legally, it means that workers can't be required to join a union or pay a fee equivalent to union dues in order to work at a unionized business. More exactly, these laws make it illegal for unionized workers to negotiate a contract that requires each employee who benefits from that contract to pay their share of the costs of negotiating and policing it.

In practical reality, what it means is the "right" to see unions undermined, the "right" to see unions forced out, and so the "right" to see workers returned to being serfs on the lords' feudal estates, the "right" to a shrunken future, the "right" to get less pay, lower benefits, and zero job security, the "right" to stand alone against the corporation and be told you are on equal footing. In other words, it is the "right" to get screwed.

These laws are being sold on two bases: One is More Jobs!

But studies have shown that "right to work" laws have not boosted employment growth in the states that have them. In fact, for states that are looking to high-tech jobs, to “knowledge” sector jobs, these laws can actually hurt their economies.

The other argument being used is “fairness” or, in its extreme version, “freedom.” Again, the "freedom" is the "freedom" to get paid less, the "freedom" to have no say, the "freedom" to have no protection, the "freedom" to be screwed.

But why the push? Why do these people want it? Why do they want it so bad? Because they know what they want to keep you from knowing, they understand what they desperately hope you don’t understand.

The top graph on the right is what they hope you don’t know, don’t understand: The red line is corporate profits as a percentage of GDP since the end of World War 2. The blue line is wages as a percentage of GDP over that same time. I want you to notice that blue line, the trend in that blue line since 1970.

Then look at the next graph. It's what's called a GINI graph, or more exactly a graph of a GINI index. The GINI index is a means of measuring the income inequality in a nation. The higher the GINI index, the greater the inequality. This graph shows how the GINI index for the US has changed since 1965.

So what has that got to do with this? What has that got to do with what I'm talking about?
Check the bottom graph: The blue line is the share of national income going to middle class over the last several decades. The red line is the portion of the middle class who are union members. You can see they go down together. The less unions, the less income. Do you really think there is no connection? Do you really think there is no connection between that graph and what's been happening? Do you really think there is no connection between that graph and the anti-union campaigns of these GOPpers and corporate flacks?

They look at the top graph and they know that they are the red line and you are the blue line and they see that blue line going down and they want it to keep going down. And they know that third graph is what keeps that red line going up and what keeps that blue line going down and that GINI graph going up.

When they say anything they do is for your benefit, they are lying to you.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/us/battle-over-labor-unions-cleaves-michigan.html
http://www.startribune.com/nation/182961211.html
http://www.freep.com/article/20121211/NEWS15/312110101/Michigan-Dems-warn-Snyder-of-negative-state-national-impact-of-right-to-work-law
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578157453687608428.html
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15825072-gop-set-to-deliver-blow-to-labor-in-union-heavy-michigan
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp300/

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 2

Hero Award #2: Joe Lueken

Joe Lueken of Bemidji, Minnesota, owns a small chain of three grocery stores. After 46 years in the business, Lueken, now 70, he has Parkinson's, so he is retiring to spend his time traveling the world with his wife. His sons were not interested in taking over the business and he had been presented with offers from large national chains to purchase his stores. So he decided to do what any decent retiring owner of a successful business would do: He is giving the business to his employees - giving as in it will cost those employees nothing. (Notice I said "decent" retiring owner, not "typical" retiring owner.)

“My employees are largely responsible for any success I've had, and they deserve to get some of the benefits of that," Lueken said. "You can't always take. You also have to give back."

The method chosen is an ESOP, an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Such plans provide employees an ownership stake in the business: They own stock in it. The amount of shares each employee will receive in this case will be based on length of service and salary. The program is expected to pay the Lueken family off for the sale in three to five years.

ESOPs were popular for a time in the '70s - I was among the proponents - until the bosses started perverting them by setting them up and funding them with "loans" from employee pension funds: In essence, they were looting the employees' pensions in order to support the company's current stock price. One real difference here is that here, the employees are not among the stockholders, they are the stockholders. The employees own the company outright, or rather will when the transfer is complete. What's more, the fund is required to buy back the shares of any employee who leaves or retires - which means that it is always the current employees who hold the stock.

One of Lueken's sons said "We could have hired a gunslinger from Minneapolis, but that didn't sit well because the reward wouldn't go to the proper people." It's disturbing and revealing that getting the rewards to "the proper people" - the ordinary workers that Lueken said were largely responsible for his success - is so unusual. Even so, it is worth recognition when it does happen.

Joe Lueken - you are a hero.

Sources:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/49984095/ns/today-good_news/t/grocer-gives-stores-his-employees-free/#.ULgrM4aNeSq
http://www.startribune.com/local/180550281.html

Left Side of the Aisle #86 - Part 1

Hero Award #1: Jason Whitlock and Bob Costas

Something new on Left Side of the Aisle. I've got the Outrage of the Week. I've got the Clown Award, which was supposed to be an occasional feature but has become a regular one because there are just so many clowns out there. So I'm going to balance that some with what - given the state of the world - I am confident will remain an occasional feature: The Hero Award.

To kick this off, I have two Hero Awards, the first of which actually goes to two people.

Shortly before 8AM on Saturday, December 1, Jovan Belcher, a starting linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, shot and killed Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his 3-month old child. He then drove to the Chiefs' practice facility, thanked his coach and general manager, and shot himself in the head right in front of them, killing himself.

There was some criticism of the decision that was made for the Chiefs to go ahead with their scheduled NFL football game just 28 hours later. Others defended the decision, talking about "moving on" and even how unfair it would be to fans of the Carolina Panthers who had traveled to Kansas City to see the game.

Jason Whitlock, a columnist for Fox Sports, didn't see it that way. He wrote:

I would argue that your rationalizations speak to how numb we are in this society to gun violence and murder. We’ve come to accept our insanity. We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.

Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.

NBC broadcaster Bob Costas used his halftime segment on "Sunday Night Football" to address the same issue. Mocking those who mouthed platitudes about "something like this puts it all in perspective," he said "Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective." He then quoted Whitlock's column, including his declaration that, even in the face of speculation about concussions and head injuries, quoting Whitlock, "What I believe is, if he," that is, Belcher, "didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

Costas, with his higher name recognition and bigger platform, got most of the backlash, including the predictable demands he get fired, but neither he or Whitlock have backed down.

At a time when federal courts are declaring that states can't ban the carrying of concealed guns, at a time when yet again again again we have someone walking into a public place and shooting it up, in this case a mall in Portland, Oregon, leaving three dead and another wounded, at a time when we tell ourselves the childish fantasy that even more people having even more guns will make us safer, at that time Jason Whitlock and Bob Costas said what needs to be said. And for that, they are heroes.

Sources:
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/jovan-belcher-kansas-city-chiefs-murder-suicide-tragedy-girlfriend-self-leave-orphan-daughter-why-still-playing-sunday-120112
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171559/how-can-they-play-murder-suicide-and-national-football-league
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171630/bob-costas-i-stand-what-i-said
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/bob-costas-gun-control-jovan-belcher_n_2229496.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/illinois-concealed-carry-_n_2278114.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/clackamas-town-center-shooting_n_2280786.html

Left Side of the Aisle #86

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of December 13-19, 2012

This week:

Hero Award #1
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/jovan-belcher-kansas-city-chiefs-murder-suicide-tragedy-girlfriend-self-leave-orphan-daughter-why-still-playing-sunday-120112
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171559/how-can-they-play-murder-suicide-and-national-football-league
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171630/bob-costas-i-stand-what-i-said
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/bob-costas-gun-control-jovan-belcher_n_2229496.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/illinois-concealed-carry-_n_2278114.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/clackamas-town-center-shooting_n_2280786.html

Hero Award #2
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/49984095/ns/today-good_news/t/grocer-gives-stores-his-employees-free/#.ULgrM4aNeSq
http://www.startribune.com/local/180550281.html?refer=y

Michigan passes "right to earn less" law
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/us/battle-over-labor-unions-cleaves-michigan.html
http://www.startribune.com/nation/182961211.html
http://www.freep.com/article/20121211/NEWS15/312110101/Michigan-Dems-warn-Snyder-of-negative-state-national-impact-of-right-to-work-law
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578157453687608428.html
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15825072-gop-set-to-deliver-blow-to-labor-in-union-heavy-michigan
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp300/

Means testing Medicare
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15824325-in-fiscal-bargaining-buzz-over-means-testing-grows-louder

Outrage of the Week: Children are military targets
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171582/us-military-approves-bombing-children
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170599/more-civilians-slaughtered-afghanistan-us-airstrike
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2012/12/marine-taliban-kids-120312w

Clown Award: Rahm Emanuel
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-emanuel-on-cta-increases-not-fare-hikes-chicagoans-can-choose-to-drive-20121126,0,793097.story

RIP: Ravi Shankar
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/12/15853749-indian-sitar-virtuoso-ravi-shankar-dies-at-92
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html

Apollo 17 40th anniversary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/14/japan-space-probe-asteroid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/11/apollo_17_40th_anniversary/

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 6

Outrage of the Week #6: What's missing from "Grand Bargain" talks

Last for this week, and I have very little time for this, so it will have to be short. It's about the so-called "Grand Bargain to avoid the Fiscal Cliff" - which, as I keep saying, ain't grand, ain't no bargain, and there ain't no cliff. In fact, while some have called it more like a "slope," the truth is it's even more like stepping off a curb.

I've been trying to talk about this, but in a way, that's hard to do because everything we've seen is just posturing. There has been lots of talk and bloviating about tax revenues and "entitlements" and everyone staking out positions the know the other side won't accept, and all of it just for show. It's all Kabuki theater, all stylized drama and makeup. There's nothing there to really grab on to as a source of intelligent comment.

So what needs to be noted is what is not in the script. Instead of being a matter of "there is no there there," this is like some of the "there" that should be there but isn't.

First is that there are not two sides here. There is one side, the "cutting the deficit is the most important thing evah" side, a side that takes as a point of faith that benefits to ordinary people must be cut. The only dispute is over just how to cut and just how deep to cut - along with how small can tax increases on the rich and powerful be while still looking like you're being tough on them.

Get outside the Beltway, outside that intellectually-stunted isolation booth filled on the one hand with pandering politicos and on the other by pundits more concerned with access than accuracy, and you find the American people as a whole are saying they don't care nearly as much about the deficit as they do about jobs and the economy.

But here is the real thing I wanted to mention today, the real outrage or at least one of them in this business.

Look at that graph on the right and realize that in all the discussions about spending cuts going on now, all the talk about all the ways to step away from this fantasized cliff, there is no proposal to take anything from the top half of that graph.

Not one penny. It's not even mentioned. You tell me how that is not an outrage.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki
http://www.alternet.org/economy/6-reasons-fiscal-cliff-scam
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/corker-and-clyburn-looks-like-beginning.html

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 5

Outrage of the Week #5: Senate rejects treaty based on ADA

In 1990, Congress passed and President Bush the elder signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's not perfect, but among the nations of the world, the ADA is considered the gold standard among nations for disability rights. As such, it became the basis for a UN treaty on the rights of people with disabilities. It was negotiated for the US by the administration of President Bush the younger. It was completed in 2006 and Obama signed it in 2009.

The treaty has been ratified by 126 nations, who are obligated under it to strive to assure that the people of their nation with disabilities enjoy the same rights and fundamental freedoms as their fellow citizens. That is, these nations are obligated to strive for what we are already striving for with the ADA - they are to strive, that is, to measure up to the standard we set.

The treaty would not affect US law at all - obviously, since our law is the standard for judging. It would, however, be a strong signal that we are serious about wanting other nations to live up to their treaty obligations. Our only obligation would be to every few years give a report (as would all other nations under the treaty) to a panel of disabilities experts, who could make non-binding recommendations on further improvements.

It came up before the Senate for ratification and had wide bipartisan backing: Besides both Bushes and Obama, there was Bob Dole, who came to the Senate floor in his wheelchair to show his support. On the floor, it was supported in the debate by John Kerry, John McCain, Richard Lugar, Dick Durbin, and Tom Harkin. Support was about as bipartisan as it gets in the Senate. It was backed by the disabilities community and by veterans groups.

On Tuesday, December 4, the Senate rejected the treaty. It got 61 votes but a two-thirds vote, or here 66 votes, is required to ratify a treaty.

The objections were the usual blend of ignorance, stupidity, and paranoid wackoness about UN world government, complete with the whoop-whoop of black helicopters flying in the background. The 38 GOPpers who voted "Nay" are a disgrace to their offices and to the nation. John Kerry called it "one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate." I just call it despicable - and an outrage.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opinion/treaty-rights-for-the-disabled.html
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/12/04/treaty-for-the-disabled-falls-short-ratification/Esvyz2zFLGdVzX5j42TSLM/story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/gop-opposition-sinks-un-disability-rights-treaty-a-frail-bob-dole-makes-senate-appearance/2012/12/04/b788e9c0-3e70-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 4

Outrage of the Week #4: Why cell phones were out in the wake of Sandy

Consider this a sort of Footnote Outrage to the preceding.

After Hurricane Sandy, a significant number of survivors in parts of New York City found their mobile communications services were out of commission for days, at a time when communications were unusually important.

Why? Five years ago the FCC, responding to findings that communications companies had supplied too little backup power during and after Hurricane Katrina, moved to adopt rules requiring those companies to have emergency energy sources. The companies sued, claiming that the commission had no authority over them. Before that case could be resolved, the Shrub administration said the rules would cost the companies too much and the matter was dropped altogether.

So the telcoms in New York had no backup power because they weren't required to have backup power and having backup power costs money, which hurts profits. So the didn't have it. And the FCC is not even allowed to asked the basis for or the consequences of that decision, even though about a third of people in the US rely on mobile service as their only means of voice communication.

What’s more, the telcoms are now trying to claim a constitutional right to operate without any federal oversight. Verizon has sued in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, arguing that neither the FCC nor even Congress has any authority over its networks, claiming that the First Amendment protects the company’s “editorial discretion.” That is, Verizon is saying it's just like a newspaper.

This is even spreading beyond wireless networks. Last week, AT&T filed a petition with the FCC seeking wholesale deregulation of its wires, which if it was granted would exempt the company from all laws relating to consumer protection, competition, and universal affordable communications.

Where can this lead? Here's a hint based on something that's already happening: Apple has twice rejected an app that adds a location to a map every time a drone strike is reported in the media and added to a database maintained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which is located in Britain. It does that - and nothing else: It adds a location to a map. Apple says the app is "objectionable and crude." What's really "objectionable and crude" here is that Apple, which has received over $9 million in Pentagon contracts in recent years, has decided to censor political information. In fact, I'd call it not just objectionable and crude, I'd call it dangerous - and outrageous.

Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-15/why-cell-phones-went-dead-after-hurricane-sandy.html
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6750

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 3

Outrage of the Week #3: NYC wants to shut Sandy recovery site

You know about Hurricane Sandy - although technically it was a tropical storm when it hit the mid-Atlantic coast. A few weeks ago I talked about some of the devastation - a proper word in this case - in the area where I grew up on the Jersey shore.

One of the places hard hit was the Midland Beach section of Staten Island. A man there named Aiman Youssef, a 42-year-old Syrian-American, saw his house destroyed in the storm. Remarkably, his response was to use the site to establish a 24/7 community pop up center. (That's him in the picture, at the site.)

Over the next month he was aided by hundreds of volunteers from the community and groups such as Occupy Sandy - whose skill at on-the-fly organizing proved quite valuable - and that stretch of pavement, which grew to be a half-block long, became a hub to gather and provide food, cleaning supplies, medical supplies, clothing, and blankets to the thousands of residents who were still without heat, power, or safe housing. Volunteers even formed teams to tear moldy drywall from flooded homes to begin the process of rebuilding.

This at a time when initially FEMA, the Red Cross, and New York City officials were nowhere to be found on the island. It was pure citizen-to-citizen aid and it earned widespread praise.

The city wants it shut down.

On November 30, a representative of the mayor's office showed up at Youssef's place and declared "we’re moving you out" because the relief center was "blocking the sidewalk." In a creepy echo of the excuses used across the country - including in New York - to shut down Occupy sites, the official insisted the site is "usafe." (As a sidebar, reported injuries at the site are zero.) The official then ordered a Red Cross truck that was delivering supplies to the area to leave.

As of Monday, December 3, the hub was still there despite official threats. Police told the volunteers they could stay if they didn't take up the whole sidewalk, so the volunteers moved the kitchen to a driveway and moved everything else three feet back from the curb.

But that hasn't stopped the pressure. The sidewalk is no longer "blocked" but the trailers that are used to deliver and store the goods are being ticketed and the sanitation canisters were removed, leading me to wonder how long it will be before "unsanitary" - the other near-universal excuse used against Occupy sites - is added to "unsafe." Volunteers at the site say that city agencies tell them that the mayor's office is twisting their arms.

The mayor's office says it is recommending - I love that, they are merely suggesting - the site be moved to an indoor location for "safety" reasons. Fine, say the volunteers. There are other hubs around the city and in other areas which are indoors. So fine. Bearing in mind that such a place must be adequate to the task, available for the medium to long term, close enough to still be useful for the neighborhood, and free, tell us where we can go.

The city, to what should be no one's surprise, has no answer. It doesn't have one because it doesn't want one. It just wants the site to go away. And that is outrageous.

Sources:
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/nyc-threatens-imminent-eviction-247-sa
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/staten-island-volunteers-fear-city-will-hamper-their-hurricane-relief-efforts/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/22/nation/la-na-sandy-homeless-thanksgiving-20121123
http://gothamist.com/2012/12/02/mayors_office_allegedly_calls_state.php
http://statenisland.ny1.com/content/top_stories/173277/midland-beach-volunteers-feel-pressured-to-move-their-storm-relief-center

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 2

Outrage of the Week #2: Ignoring climate change

Over 190 nations have representatives at the UN Climate Summit taking place in Doha, Qatar. With that in mind, here's some late news on global warming:

Start, as always, with the fact that it is all but universally agreed that the increase in average global temperature must be kept below 2 degrees Celsius - or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - to head off the worst effects of global warming. Get above that and you start seeing not only immediate effects but longer-term impacts such as accelerated melting of ice caps the the Greenland ice sheet, both of which are already disappearing but this would dramatically increase the rate, leading to significantly higher sea levels and a drop in the Earth's surface albedo, which is a measure of its ability to reflect sunlight. That is, less sunlight reflected, more heat absorbed, so more warming.

Okay, start with that two degree limit. According to the latest report from the United Nations' Environment Program, which involved 55 scientists from 22 countries, released a couple of weeks ago, in 2020 greenhouse gas emissions - greenhouse gases being those that contribute to global warming - could be between 8 billion and 13 billion tons above what is needed to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.

And the gap between what countries have pledged to do in the area of cutting emissions cut pledges and what is needed to stay under that two degree limit has widened since last year's estimate of 6-11 billion tons.

What's more, that 8 billion ton gap, in the words of the report, was "even if the most ambitious level of pledges and commitments were implemented by all countries and under the strictest set of rules."

Meanwhile, another report, this one from the World Bank about two weeks ago, predicted that the world is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century and extreme weather will become the "new normal", affecting every region in the world.

A third report, this one published this past week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, it appears inevitable that the world will not only hit the 2-degree mark, it will shoot past it to a four to six degree increase, which would be disastrous.

A November report from the International Energy Agency found that if greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly cut by 2017, existing power plants, factories, and buildings will be enough to push temperatures past the 2-degree mark.

And the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers recently warned that the only way the world can prevent the 2-degree rise is if the global economy cuts its carbon intensity by 5.1 percent every year from now to 2050 - which would mean essentially slamming the brakes on growth and keeping them on for the next 37 years.

Nobody expects that to happen, especially since even if the current round of talks were somehow to produce significant and enforceable requirements for cuts, the treaty wouldn't take effect until 2020 - so countries won’t even be required to start cutting their emissions for another eight years.

That's where we are. That's what we face. That shows the sort of dramatic action we have to take a damaged world to our children and even more our grandchildren.

So what's the outrage here? Our own responsibility as Americans. To put it into perspective, the EU's greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 18 per cent since 1990, so it can be done, while emissions in the US have gone up by 10.8 per cent in the same period. China is now the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, largely because it has so many people. But on a per person basis, the story is quite different: China's emissions have reached 6.6 tons per person, compared to the EU’s 7.3 tons and the US's 17.2 tons.

So what is our government doing at the Doha meeting? What is the word from the delegation sent there by Barack Obama, who makes claims of his deep concern over climate change?

Basically, what we're doing there is bragging about what a great job we claim we are doing and saying China and India are the ones who really need to act. Because, y'see, we are supposedly "on track" to meet our own self-imposed target of cutting greenhouse gas emission to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. But 2005 levels were higher than earlier years and Obama's target works out as a cut of only about 3-4 percent from 1990 levels.

But five years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, said that rich nations would have to cut emissions by 25-to-40 percent below 1990 levels in that same time to head off damaging effect of climate change. We are nowhere near that and are not even trying to be anywhere near that.

In fact, about the only nations that are near that are the members of the European Union. The EU's emissions, again, are already down by 18% compared to 1990 and could easily approach 25% or more by 2020.

One way the EU has tried to further cut its emissions is by a requirement that all commercial flights within the EU pay a fee based on their carbon emissions, a clear financial incentive for the airlines to limit their emissions. Recently, the EU wanted to expand that to include all flights into or out of the EU as a bloc - that is, including for example flights to and from the US to an EU country.

So what did Barack "I am so concerned about climate change" Obama do? Signed a bill exempting US airlines from having to pay the fee. Bluntly, he said that these corporations do not have to follow European laws even in Europe. Leaving aside the astonishing imperial arrogance here, there is the hypocrisy on global warming, emphasized by the fact that the US said that this needed to be solved through negotiations at the International Civil Aviation Organization, even though - shades of Israel and the Palestinians - the EU acted only after more than 10 years of such supposed negotiations had gone precisely nowhere.

Meanwhile, domestically, Obama remains close-mouthed on the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed pipeline that would bring tar sands from Canada to Texas for refining. I've talked about this before: Tar sands are about the dirtiest, foulest, most climate-change-increasing way of getting oil there is. In 2010 the EPA determined that on a well-to-tank basis, oil from tar sands produces 82% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude oil does: nearly double. The White House booted a decision until after the beginning of the year so he wouldn't have to make a decision before the election. But the very fact it's still on the table shows just how frail this supposed commitment to resisting climate change really is.

Meawhile meanwhile, in November two companies got the green light from the feds to begin pulling tar sands from places in Utah - and plans are to expand that to more sites with an estimated 32 billion barrels of oil. Sound like a lot? The world currently consumes somewhere around 36 billion barrels a year, so this would rip up the environment and massively increase the production of greenhouse gases - for the sake of less than one year's world consumption. And this, it appears, is fine with our oh-so-concerned administration.

Oh, and by the way, remember that because the Keystone XL pipeline would cross an international boundary, the State department has to pass judgment on if the project is in the national interest. Guess who has major investments in the company extracting oil from Canada’s tar sands, the company building the pipeline that will carry the oil across the US, and the Canadian banks financing the project: Susan Rice - our UN Ambassador who is expected to be nominated for Secretary of State and who would thus become the official responsible for making that determination.

And as a footnote: According to a poll by Yale and George Mason Universities, the portion of Americans who say climate change will affect them by a "moderate" amount or "great deal" rose from 29% to 42% between March and September - and remember, that was before Sandy. As is often true, the people are in front of the politicians - but they spend more time listening to the moneybags who are behind them.

Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/21/uk-emissions-unep-idUSLNE8AK01O20121121
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/it-s-already-too-late-to-stop-climate-change-20121129
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j98HqUGojlAMbvTwaGxCjbOjtNEg
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/1204/1224327438977.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/climate-talks-idUSL5E8N3HAV20121203
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/12/us-eu-airlines-ets-idUSBRE8AB0HB20121112
http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/
http://www.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/downloads/2010-09-TarSands_factsheet.pdf
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/12/04/nebraska-hearing-kicks-off-final-stage-of-keystone-xl-review/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/keystone-pipeline-decisio_n_2223387.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/keystone-pipeline-obama-84509.html
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8124-climate-change-disappears-from-keystone-xl-pipeline-debate
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/obama-signs-bill-to-exempt-us-airlines-from-eu-aviation-carbon-tax.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/28/obama-fails-climate-test-aviation
http://my.firedoglake.com/stevehorn1022/2012/11/21/second-us-tar-sands-mine-owned-by-former-exxonmobil-and-chevron-exec-approved-in-utah/
http://www.freep.com/article/20121203/NEWS07/312030143/Obama-laying-groundwork-for-climate-change-treaty
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Oil_watch/World_Oil%20_Table.html
http://physics.wwu.edu:8082/jstewart/physics101/worldconsumption.pdf

Left Side of the Aisle #85 - Part 1

Outrage of the Week #1: BP gets off easy

Do you remember the Deepwater Horizon? That was the rig that blew out in 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing a still-undetermined but massive amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling both the Gulf and the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle.

Well, just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced what settlement had been reached between BP, the oil company responsible for the rig, and the Justice Department.

As part of this settlement, we were loudly told, BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges including, we were loudly told, 11 charges of manslaughter for the deaths of the workers and one of obstruction of justice for lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling out.

The company was hit with, we were loudly told, a record criminal penalty of $1.3 billion plus another $2.7 billion in fines to various federal agencies, plus, we were loudly told, another $525 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle securities charges.

We were loudly told all of that, and all of this is true.

This is the part that was whispered: The total fines of $4.5 billion will be paid out over five years, or $900 million a year.

This is the part they didn't say at all: In 2011, BP recorded revenue of over $234 billion, with net income - that is, profit - of $16 billion. The total fine for 14 felony counts could be paid all at once with just one week of that one year's income, in fact with less than 15 weeks of that one year's profits. Since it's to be paid out over five years, at that rate we're talking less than two days income or just three weeks profit per year. Consider that in the most recent quarter, the one that ended September 30, BP netted, profited, $5.4 billion - $1 billion more than the total of the fines, in just three months.

BP still faces the possibility of other civil fines from the government under, for example, the Clean Water Act. It also faces civil suits from private individuals and, in what might be the most usual aspect of the whole thing, four lower-level executives have been criminally charged as individuals.

But look what we've got here: Corporations are people, remember? That's what the Supreme Court declared in the Citizens United case. For legal purposes, corporations are people, are legal persons. So what we have here is this legal person pleading guilty to 14 felonies including the deaths of 11 people and their total penalty is a fine equal to one week's wages. And this, we were also loudly told by some, is "fair" and "appropriate."

I say it's a moral outrage.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/bp-oil-spill-fine_n_2137339.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/bp-oil-spill_n_2136063.html

Left Side of the Aisle #85

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of December 6 - 12, 2012

This week:

Outrage of the Week #1: BP gets off easy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/bp-oil-spill-fine_n_2137339.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/bp-oil-spill_n_2136063.html

Outrage of the Week #2: Ignoring climate change
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/21/uk-emissions-unep-idUSLNE8AK01O20121121
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/it-s-already-too-late-to-stop-climate-change-20121129
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j98HqUGojlAMbvTwaGxCjbOjtNEg
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/1204/1224327438977.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/climate-talks-idUSL5E8N3HAV20121203
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/12/us-eu-airlines-ets-idUSBRE8AB0HB20121112
http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/
http://www.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/downloads/2010-09-TarSands_factsheet.pdf
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/12/04/nebraska-hearing-kicks-off-final-stage-of-keystone-xl-review/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/keystone-pipeline-decisio_n_2223387.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/keystone-pipeline-obama-84509.html
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8124-climate-change-disappears-from-keystone-xl-pipeline-debate
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/obama-signs-bill-to-exempt-us-airlines-from-eu-aviation-carbon-tax.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/28/obama-fails-climate-test-aviation
http://my.firedoglake.com/stevehorn1022/2012/11/21/second-us-tar-sands-mine-owned-by-former-exxonmobil-and-chevron-exec-approved-in-utah/
http://www.freep.com/article/20121203/NEWS07/312030143/Obama-laying-groundwork-for-climate-change-treaty
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Oil_watch/World_Oil%20_Table.html
http://physics.wwu.edu:8082/jstewart/physics101/worldconsumption.pdf

Outrage of the Week #3: NYC wants to shut Sandy recovery site
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/nyc-threatens-imminent-eviction-247-sa
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/staten-island-volunteers-fear-city-will-hamper-their-hurricane-relief-efforts/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/22/nation/la-na-sandy-homeless-thanksgiving-20121123
http://gothamist.com/2012/12/02/mayors_office_allegedly_calls_state.php
http://statenisland.ny1.com/content/top_stories/173277/midland-beach-volunteers-feel-pressured-to-move-their-storm-relief-center

Outrage of the Week #4: Why cell phones were out in the wake of Sandy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-15/why-cell-phones-went-dead-after-hurricane-sandy.html
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6750

Outrage of the Week #5: Senate rejects treaty based on ADA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opinion/treaty-rights-for-the-disabled.html
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/12/04/treaty-for-the-disabled-falls-short-ratification/Esvyz2zFLGdVzX5j42TSLM/story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/gop-opposition-sinks-un-disability-rights-treaty-a-frail-bob-dole-makes-senate-appearance/2012/12/04/b788e9c0-3e70-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html

Outrage of the Week #6: What's missing from "Grand Bargain" talks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki
http://www.alternet.org/economy/6-reasons-fiscal-cliff-scam
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/corker-and-clyburn-looks-like-beginning.html