Thanks, Jolie Justus!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: So it’s May 3, 2013, and it’s snowing in north Missouri. Rhonda says they have 5 inches in Chillicothe and Kirstin said 6 inches in Hale. So, last week, on my vegetable farm, we planted potatoes and then it started raining and I started to worry about rot. Turned out I needed to worry about freezing! All my fruit trees have bloomed—peaches, cherries, pears, apples, plums, all of them. Frozen fruit trees are fairly common in Missouri, but usually in mid-April. Early May? Not so much. If you wanted two years contrasting against each other, last year, 2012, when we had a drought and excessive heat by mid-May is a good contrast with this one, 2013. But it’s the same old politics. Tomorrow I talk to the League of Women Voters annual meeting in Jefferson City. What a delight to talk to activist women from all over the state. My text: Lessons from the suffrage movement. Lesson one: Persevere. Yeah, it takes decades, but at some point the stupids realize how ridiculous they are and they just give it up. Trouble is, when it comes to food and agriculture, they have the potential to change everything on the planet while they’re diddling around on the bad side. My state senator, Jolie Justus, has figured out that her constituents want the planet to last and want rural life to be here for the future and our kids, in a non-poisonous way. She has stood up for us in the face of the stupids, paid off to support HJR 7 and 11. So I called her at the end of the day to say thanks. Hope she knows I mean it. That’s all for today. It’s May 3, 2013.

The “prom ask” becomes new ritual for which to buy stuff and use consultants

It’s the American Way, or perhaps I should write, the American Process: create a new ritual to display a human emotion and then develop a range of products and services to help people express the emotion.

But now that we’ve run out of major emotions, like love for mother, father or significant other, we’re moved on to the trivial. Evidently asking someone to the prom has become a big deal. Young bucks are outdoing themselves in constructing elaborate asks—making fortune cookies with “ask” messages, creating flash mobs or appearing at the young lady’s front door in a giant teddy bear costume. One parochial high school is running a “best ask” contest.

The New York Times article in which I discovered this trend pays close attention to the consumer aspects of the phenomenon, detailing how “romantic events” companies and “etiquette coaches” are jumping on the trend. Since real holidays such as Christmas have devolved into a potlatch of spending, it makes sense that manufactured holidays or life events would quickly become commoditized into a series of goods and services—it’s another opportunity to meet an emotional need by spending money.

A few things strike me as interesting about the development of the elaborate prom “ask.”  The Times article and all the thousands of other stories about asking someone to go to the prom that are in the news media this week all assume that it is the boy who asks the girl. Not only could I find no reference to a gay individual asking someone to a prom, there was not one mention of a girl asking a boy. Shocking, but perhaps just to me, since in the late 1960’s I was asked to go to my prom by a girl.

Surely, some girl somewhere in the country asked a boy in a cute enough way to make the evening news this year.  Yes, there was one: a heart-warming story about a girl who asked a boy with autism to the prom as an act of kindness.  Admirable and maybe worth a human-interest feature in the evening news, but the hidden message about normal expectations is pernicious. My take is that the editors and writers who specialize in prom-type stuff are always striving to confirm a set of traditional values, including the “boy asks girl” principle, which is a corollary to the principle that “boy decides.”

Beyond the covert sexism in the reporting of the cute “prom ask” trend, there is the essence of the event—the anxiety that many teenage boys and girls feel when asking someone for a date. Of course, it’s not just teenagers who when dialing the phone suffer a deep fear of rejection even as they feel an exhilaration considering the possibilities. It’s typical for American companies to create anxieties or needs and then fill them with products and services. The “prom ask” is ready-made, since the anxiety always existed. Retailers, consultants and trend-setters just needed to channel that anxiety into a situation that required making purchases.

With or without the “prom ask” ritual, the prom gets too much attention nowadays: dresses have gotten too expensive and prom night has flowered into a series of rituals like the after-prom party, the hotel stay and events the following day, each of which raise the cost of participation.  The prom has come to exemplify Thorsten Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, which means the spending on luxury goods and services to demonstrate social status.

The prom has also become a stage for acting out social issues, as each year the news media uncovers stories about segregated proms, prom dress restrictions, anti-proms, use of social media in prom planning and the cost of proms.

In total, some 13.4 million stories popped up when searching for “prom” on Google News; “prom ask” yielded 49,700 of them. A search for “global warming” yielded 76,700 stories; “college loans” yielded 1.3 million; “Plan B,” which refers to FDA plans to allow the over-the-counter sale of Plan B birth control to prom queens and any other girl aged 15 or older, yielded 21,7000 stories.  In other words, in the narrow slice of time covered in any standard Google News search, more media outlets cared about how teens ask other teens to go to a dance than about a breaking news story related to sexual freedom for teenage girls.

Of course, there are so many possible ways for the mass media to cover proms: asks, dresses, corsages, decorations, social issues. But read closely:  virtually all the stories soon reduce to discussions of shopping for goods and services.

Can we go a month without GMOs?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Last night on Farm and Fiddle, the radio program that celebrates and explores rural life for today and tomorrow, we began our second annual "month without Monsanto," also called, "Nonsanto May" and "month without biotech." Dan rigged up a Facebook page for people to check in and we reviewed the rules. For the month of May, we try hard to delete biotech products from our lives. That means, basically, no processed foods, because they mostly contain GMO corn and soybeans, unless they are marked "USDA organic" or "GMO-free". Also, no cotton clothing manufactured after 1998 when the first GMO cotton was introduced. Even though we had prepared, we all had to admit exceptions. I was wearing linen pants, rayon shirt and linen jacket, leather shoes, BUT I had blown it by wearing cotton socks. Dan had a cotton t-shirt and Hannah had taken an ibuprofen after she fell off her bike. Hannah and I were both worried about animal feed. She has new chicks and was starting them on leftovers and grain from the health food store. I was able to give her some leftover wheat from 2011, which is non-GMO. But I have 2 bottle baby lambs eating formula. I know I'll have to buy that, and it contains soybeans. Today, I saw Dan at Cafe Berlin. He was wearing a vintage t-shirt. I had put on some wool socks. We congratulated each other. But what to eat? Luckily, the cafe has a good variety of vegetarian foods, but they generally cook with canola oil. I ordered an egg and tempeh, fried in olive oil. It was delicious.

Missouri Senate Bill 9

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: It happens that I just returned from a meeting at the county health department, learning the new rules of food handling for our county, when an e-mail appeared in my mailbox about Missouri Senate Bill 9. The notices says that Representative Casey Guernsey, Chair of the House Agri-Business Committee, has inserted anti-local control language onto numerous bills, and one of those bills, Senate Bill 9, is moving—It is slated to be heard on the House floor anytime! Here’s another example of the corporate ag community throwing local control under the bus. If it passes, in order to pass any local health ordinance, order, rule or regulation regarding factory farms, BOTH the county commission and the county health board must agree to and pass identical measures. That means that if there is an emergency spill into public waters, the health department could not act until the commission meets and passes a regulation with identical language. As the e-mail states: This mandate infringes on Local Control and creates an additional and unnecessary level of government bureaucracy.

When it comes to unscrewing the lid off the public information vault in Virginia, size matters

Over the past 24 hours, the mass media has devoted tons of paper, billions of bytes and miles of videotape to commemorating a very small step in the progress towards emancipation of a minority group representing from 2.5%-10% of the population. The media has trumpeted the opinions of elected officials, political and sports pundits, sports stars and the man-and-woman in the street, virtually all supportive of current professional basketball player Jason Collins coming out of the closet.

Meanwhile, the news media has practically ignored yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that confirmed the right of any state to restrict access to public files, a decision that takes a fairly significant step backwards when it comes to freedom of speech, open government and civil rights for everyone.  In the decision, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Commonwealth of Virginia to prohibit nonresidents from applying for state information under its freedom of information law. That means that Virginia and any other state can deny nonresidents access to public files. 

The chasmic difference in the amount of coverage of these two legitimate news stories is truly stunning. My morning search of Google News revealed 85.9 million stories mentioning Jason Collins. A mere 10 mention the Supreme Court case, McBurney v. Young. That’s ten—five plus five or five times two—the number of fingers and thumbs on both hands. In fact, total mentions of the U.S. Supreme Court in Google News for literally hundreds of different issues and cases comprised a mere 33.6 million stories.

It is easy to understand why we have placed too much importance on the one act of a sports figure publicly revealing his sexuality.  It’s a feel good story to most Americans and it confirms the current mainstream view of the country as open and tolerant. At the same time, the Collins leaves the closet story gives the intolerant right-wing another wrong around which to rally its dwindling troops.

It is also easy to figure out why the Supreme Court decision drew so little coverage. The many small but significant attacks on civil rights since 9/11 seem to get short shrift in the mass media all the time, unless the right to bear arms or publicly proclaim a Christian faith is at issue.

Moreover, while many news organizations filed briefs in favor of the two separate people who sued Virginia, the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t really affect the mainstream news media.  Virginia’s law makes an exception for newspapers and magazines with readers in Virginia and for TV and radio stations that broadcast there. The big national media and the networks can still tap Virginia’s shrove of public information. It’s just the little media and individuals who can’t.

My conclusion: when it comes to unscrewing the lid off the public information vault in Virginia, size matters.

Dow and Monsanto: The Invincibles Against Consumers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: As I wrote yesterday, HJR 7 and 11 have been dubbed the “Monsanto/CAFO protection act.” That’s the Missouri law that would “forever” guarantee “modern” farming methods in our state, regardless of what “modern” means. Robots caring for animals in confinement? Poisons sprayed all over the land to kill weeds? We don’t know. But, now, I see that maybe citizens should call HJR 7 and 11 the “Monsanto/Dow/CAFO protection act.” Because last week, Dow and Monsanto announced a “cross-licensing” deal that would stack the world’s largest chemical company and the world’s largest seed company in a ruthless “next generation” coalition. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch lined it out: “The world’s biggest seed company and the country’s biggest chemical company announced Thursday a cross-licensing deal intended to bring next-generation seeds and chemical mixes to farmers combating increasingly stubborn weeds and insects in the field. Creve Coeur-based Monsanto Co. and Dow Agrosciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., said Thursday that Monsanto will allow Dow to use a corn technology Monsanto is developing to kill corn rootworm, a major agricultural pest. In exchange, Dow will give Monsanto access to its new Enlist brand corn technology, which enables crops to survive applications of the chemical 2,4-D. The deal is the latest move in an emerging pattern that has seen major rivals in agricultural biotechnology license technologies to one another. The existing SmartStax corn product, for example, already contains eight biotechnology traits developed by Dow, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience.” That, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is a “response” to the problems farmers are having in the battle against increasingly chemical-resistant pests and weeds. I guess “response” is one way to put it, but to be honest the problems are due to increasing amounts of chemicals on the land to grow the seeds that the biochemical seed companies are creating. What’s really crazy about all this is that nobody has tested the “traits” on consumers, so if you buy these weird products, you’re ingesting the “traits,” whether they’re good for you or not. And, to make matters more complex, scientists can’t get permission to run tests on lab rats or even on worms or bugs because the “traits” are protected by patents. So who are the lab rats? Well, if you’ve eaten anything today made with corn, canola, soy, sugar beets or cotton seed, you can raise your hand now.

Treat Terrorists Like Common Criminals

The Obama administration made the right decision when it decided to go ahead and charge Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in US District Court on charges related to the bombings at the Boston Marathon. We have mixed emotions about the Department of Justice reserving the option to question Tsarnaev under a “public safety exception” before reading him his Miranda rights — but federal officials recognized that any information obtained during that interim questioning might end up excluded from any judicial proceeding against Tsarnaev.

Officials said they had no choice but to prosecute Tsarnaev in domestic court because he is a naturalized US citizen. Republican members of Congress had demanded that the 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings be turned over to military courts to be held and tried as an “enemy combatant.”

The death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old brother, after a shootout with police in Watertown, Mass., spared authorities a more dicey determination of how to proceed with the older brother who probably was the mastermind of the plot but had not become a citizen. In our view, the feds should not have the option of sending foreigners suspected of criminal activity in the United States to a military court system, where they can be denied a lawyer and other normal rights of due process. Republicans who sought that move, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Rep. Peter King of New York, ought to know better.
We agree with Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil LIberties Union, who said the public safety exception to providing the “Miranda” warning, when used, should be read narrowly. Romero noted that, after Tsarnaev was arrested, law enforcement officials indicated that there was no more imminent threat to the public. “The curfew had been lifted. And whatever the suspect’s connections to other possible accomplices, the government had ample surveillance powers to track their phones and access their email and Twitter accounts,” he said.

But as a practical matter, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been in the United States for a decade, he was graduated from high school in Cambridge and was attending the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. In that time, if he had not learned about the Fifth Amendment in his courses, he probably had been exposed to episodes of Law and Order, or other police procedurals, where the Miranda warning is frequently recited. [Editor's Note: After this was written, it was reported that after Tsarvaev was informed of his rights, he stopped talking. Apparently he was not a Law and Order fan.]

More important, every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. As Romero said, “We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions.”

Ever since 9/11 Congress has been seeking to protect us from the remote threat of terrorism at the expense of civil liberties. It is encouraging that a Washington Post poll conducted nationwide April 17-18 and released April 22 found that a plurality of 48% said they fear the government will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism, while 41% fear the government will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights.

Neither the habeas corpus clause in Article One, nor the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments detailing the legal rights of persons charged with crimes distinguish between the legal rights of citizens and those of non-citizens. Any prosecution that assumes such a distinction is on shaky legal and moral ground.

Americans seem willing to set aside basic constitutional rights to confront the threat from terrorists, which is the biggest victory the terrorists have scored. Chris Hayes of MSNBC noted that terrorist attacks in the US claimed 3,033 lives from 2000 through 2010, but our nation appears to be less troubled by the 60,394 Americans who died in workplace accidents in the same period and 335,609 people who died from gunfire in the US.

Four Democratic senators are coming in for harsh criticism from gun-control advocates for voting with the National Rifle Association April 17 to block expanded background checks for gun buyers. The proposal had a 55-45 majority in the Senate, but it needed 60 votes to proceed. (Majority Leader Harry Reid supported the proposal, but switched his vote to opposition so that, under Senate rules, he could bring up the proposal again.)

We think the expanded background checks was the least Congress should do in attempting to check the epidemic of gun deaths, which have totaled more than 30,000 per year during the past decade (with two thirds of those deaths accidental or suicides). The measure would force more gun buyers — particularly those who shop at gun shows and over the Internet — to pass a background check to make sure they had not been judged mentally unstable, felonious or otherwise ineligible to own a gun. But the NRA has demonstrated its willingness to lie about the amendment, claiming that it was just the first step toward the feds seizing the nation’s more than 300 million private guns.

Many Democratic senators made that tough vote to expand background checks, knowing that they will come under fire (figuratively, we hope) for that vote at home. But we don’t blame Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) or David Pryor (Ark.) for balking.
Even if all four of those out-of-line Democrats had voted for the amendment, the measure would still have fallen one vote short of advancing. But they would be resigning themselves to spend the next two years fighting Republicans and NRA members claiming that the Democrats had voted to grab honest people’s guns. And even if the gun control forces had found another Republican vote in the Senate, to join the four Republicans who voted for the “bipartisan” deal, all that victory would have accomplished was send the bill limping to the Republican House, where gun control advocates would be lucky to get a committee hearing before watching the bill die.

If 80 to 90 percent of Americans really support expanded background checks, as some recent public opinion surveys report, and if substantial majorities also support limits on magazine size and/or a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, voters are going to have to defeat Republican members of Congress in 2014 to show they are serious. But a recent Associated Press-GfK poll conducted April 11-15 shows waning public support for tighter gun laws, as 49% said gun laws should be made stricter while 38% said they should stay the same. The last time a Democratic Congress passed an assault weapons ban, in 1994, Democrats lost control of Congress in the next election. Backlash against gun control was a major issue in that turnover, particularly in rural areas. Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since then. If you think you are going to advance gun regulation by defeating Democratic senators in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota (Baucus is not seeking re-election in Montana), you are fooling yourself.

Proposals to limit magazine capacity on semi-automatic guns and to ban assault weapons also fell by wide margins in the April 17 round of Senate voting. Ironically, an amendment that came closer to passing was Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) NRA-backed proposal to require all states to recognize out-of-state permits to carry concealed handguns. That received 57 votes, with 13 Dems joining 44 Republicans (all but Mark Kirk, R-Ill.) in supporting the pro-vigilante measure. If your senators include Baucus, Begich, Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Heitkamp, Mary Landrieu (La.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), Pryor, Mark Udall (CO), Tom Udall (N.M.), Jon Tester (Mont.) or Mark Warner (Va.), let them know you’re disappointed.

States should have the authority to regulate who is packing heat in public — and even our right-wing Supreme Court appears to agree that states can regulate the carrying of firearms. On April 15 it refused to hear an NRA challenge of a New York law limiting concealed-carry permits to those who demonstrate that they have a special need for self-protection — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2013

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Copyright © 2013 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the May 15, 2013 issue

COVER/James Moore
Atlas has shrugged: West, Texas

EDITORIAL
Treat terrorists like common criminals

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; LETTER FROM THE DEVIL 

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Look out: Corporations promote ‘right to farm’

DISPATCHES
GOP refuses to negotiate on budget;
Flight delays get Republicans’ attention;
Baucus retirement raises progressive hopes;
Illegal oil auction derailer released from detention;
Regal execs get massive pay raises, cut employees' hours to avoid health costs;
Business as usual is the problem;
Perry still touts Texas’ lack of regulation;
Yes, Texans opposed Sandy aid but now seek help for Texas blast recovery;
'Stand with Rand' on quicksand;
Terrorists can still buy guns and powder in the US;
Sequester forces gun tracing cuts;
Senate bill would close online sales tax loophole;
GOP quits public policy debate;
The Great Mulligan;
Kochs eye Tribune papers ... 

BOB BURNETT
The future is coming: What’s the US plan?

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Tortured debate

JOSEPH B. ATKINS
By the handful

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Medicaid expansion

SAM URETSKY
All that glitters isn’t a good investment
WAYNE O’LEARY
Labor’s orphans in the storm

JOHN BUELL
Capitalism’s moral blinders

ROB PATTERSON
‘Zero Dark Thirty’: Controversial film 

POPULIST PICKS 

and more ...

Big ag money corrupts Missouri lawmakers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: There’s some big money behind Missouri’s HJR 7 and 11, which has been dubbed the “CAFO/Monsanto Protection Bill.” That’s the bill that wants to “forever guarantee modern technology” in agriculture, without saying what exactly that means. The Senate made the bill better, taking out the language that would have destroyed local control. That wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the huge number of phone calls and visits to legislators we generated. Now HJR 7 and 11 is going to a Senate/House Conference Committee where the House will try to put the bad language back in. Any day now. Our citizen lobbyists are tired and that’s exactly what the corporate expected and want. They hope we’ll give up. And, besides that, there are several agriculture omnibus bills (SB9 and SB 342) that would take away the right for county commissions and health boards to pass local health ordinances to protect the health of their citizens. This form of local control should be maintained. With only 3 weeks left in the session, you’d think they’d be bending their minds to better things, like passing a budget or working on the health care crisis that will undo our rural hospitals. But, no. Senate Bill 342 & Senate Bill 9 would mandate that any county health ordinances would have to be passed word-for-word by both the county commission and the county health board. It’s another level of unneeded government bureaucracy. Here’s the deal: Monsanto has just promised 600+ new jobs to the city of St. Louis. And St. Louis is the tail that wags the dog of our state. The newspapers are all excited about it, trying to out-gush each other with enthusiasm for the expansion. Monsanto expansion may, or may not, be real. We’ve seen these expansions fail a lot of times, and we’ve seen them succeed at government expense. Some kind of tax abatement promised, some kind of bonds issued. But, for Missouri lawmakers, the chance to say that they’re bringing new jobs to the state is enough to get them re-elected. That’s life in the heartland. So we need to call our representatives AGAIN to protect local control and the state constitution. We can’t give up. Meanwhile, the day turned dreary and all the chores took two or three times as long as usual. Tomorrow, sunshine is predicted, and a fun day with my pal Laura, travelling the countryside in search of the perfect foxtrotter horse for one of her customers.

Consumers are in charge of their food system

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: A gorgeous day today! I started it outside, when Jerry, still recuperating from heart surgery, came to trim the horses’ feet. Barb’s little white pony could hardly get out of the barn, but he trimmed her and said she’ll probably be fine. It’s really hard with an equine that’s foundered. When spring comes and the fescue gets green, they just overeat and whatever healing they did gets undone. We have several horses and ponies to go, but she was the most urgent case and Jerry left after trimming her and my big old fellow, Rocky. We made appointments for Tuesday and Thursday next week. Coming back inside, a phone call from a news reporter about my grain project, connecting consumers with local grain. Uprise Bakery, mid-Missouri’s finest, has started using local wheat for one of his bread recipes. What did I think of that? I think it’s fabulous. The reporter was very patient, trying to absorb all the details. It’s hard, when all your breads have come wrapped in plastic from who knows where, to understand how it all begins. Wheat. Farmers. Flour. Millers. Yeast. Bakers. Who knew? The main thing, as I told her, is the consumer. If consumers demand a certain kind of product, the stores will get it for them. Consumers are driving the system, but they hardly ever know it.

Let’s deep-six loophole that allows Apple & other U.S. companies to avoid U.S. taxes on foreign earnings

By Marc Jampole

For those still wondering who benefits from the government intervention into the economy, I refer you to the case of Apple.

Apple management wants to shore up its recently plunging stock by increasing the dividend and instituting a stock buy-back program.  Higher dividends tend to raise stock prices, as do stock buy-backs. Apple has plenty of cash, so why not? As of 18 months ago, the computer and gadget behemoth had some $76.2 billion cash on hand, more than the federal government had at that time.

Except that the cash-rich and debt-free Apple is borrowing money to pay investors and buy its own stock. And why would it do a thing like that? 

The federal government has forced interest rates to historic lows, so Apple can raise the money cheaply. But, you may inquire, wouldn’t it be cheaper still if Apple spent some of its golden horde?  The problem is that much of that money is overseas and before Apple can spend it to shore up its stock price, it must repatriate it, which means paying taxes.

Thus the net effect of a loophole in the tax laws for big multinational corporations and the Federal Reserve Board’s constant pressure to keep interest rates low is to give Apple a chance to have its cake and eat it, too: to pay off investors, yet to keep the money overseas and probably earning a good rate of return in a mix of high-yield bonds of foreign governments.  Keep in mind that Apple, like many multinationals, may have earned some of that money in the U.S. and through legal accounting stratagems transferred the earnings to its foreign entities, thus shielding the earnings from U.S. taxes.

The pretext for keeping interest rates low is to stimulate investment in job-creating businesses. That’s also the excuse that large corporations are giving for wanting to have a tax holiday from repatriated foreign earnings. They don’t mention that last time there was a tax holiday on foreign earnings in 2005, most of the money went to buy back stock and pay off executives.

Large companies seem to prefer to line the pockets of their owners and executives over investing in jobs, which in all likelihood reflects their collective belief that there is no additional market demand that would require expansion.

The government could create that demand by closing the loophole that allows companies to shield earnings by realizing them in foreign ventures. The additional tax revenues could be used to support the victims of our economic travails since the real estate bubble burst in 2007-2008. It could be used to invest in research to commercialize alternative energy like wind and solar. It could build mass transit systems or rebuild roads, bridges and government buildings. It could decrease the size of classes in elementary schools. Any or all of these government actions would pump money into the economy and give large corporations a reason to invest as opposed to sitting on their money. Of course with a stronger economy would come higher interest rates, and then Apple couldn’t borrow money to pump up its stock.

Let’s face it: The goal and end result of virtually all government intervention into the economy is to help a handful of large multinational corporations and investment banks. It’s called socialism for the large and wealthy and it works just fine in the United States—for about one percent of the population.

Genetically altered salmon in the pipeline

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Tomorrow, the comment period will close on whether industry can raise their genetically altered salmon and sell it to human consumers. This campaign has been going on for years. It started with a huge increase in salmon recipes in the ladies’ magazines and the newspapers. That, to develop demand. Omega 3, you know. The genetically altered salmon grow twice as fast as normal salmon, which means they would take over the native ecosystems by out-eating and out-growing the natives if they got into the wild. If approved, this will be the first animal to be genetically altered and raised for human use. This at the time when we’re trying to figure out what to do about the superweeds that industry created by releasing genetically altered corn, soybeans, canola, cotton and sugar beets. And if the salmon genes jump to other breeds, what then? One of my students has a habit of saying, when things are messed up, “It’s all good.” I think she means that things work out in the end. But, what kind of havoc are we releasing in nature? All good? Not.

Are we going to reduce ourselves to the level of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by executing him?

By Marc Jampole

 

If anyone deserves the death penalty, it’s Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother of the Chechen-American pair who planted the bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Three dead. Hundreds injured, some with limbs ripped out by shrapnel.  A shoot-out which produced another death and injury. Possible plans to inflict more damage on the innocent.

This guy deserves to die.

But we don’t deserve to kill him.

We’re better than that. We’re a civilized society.  We have incarcerated and will try Mr. Tsarnaev because he acted violently and took the lives of others. But by taking his life, even after a proper trial, we are resorting to his level, playing his game, using his rules.  When we take his life, he wins. His values ascend.  If we kill the killer, we become the killer.

There are many arguments against the death penalty:

• Juries make too many mistakes, and you can’t take back an execution.
• No studies show that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to crime.
• To ensure fair treatment, the cost of execution is now far higher than the cost to maintain the prisoner for life.
• There is an inherent bias against minorities and the poor in the implementation of death penalty sentences in the United States.
• No other industrialized nation retains the death penalty.

But as far I’m concerned, all these arguments fall to the wayside when compared to the simple fact that by not executing the killer, we assert our humanity and our belief in the sanctity of human life. 

Our need to deny the ethos of the killer becomes poignantly clear in the case of the mass murderer or terrorist. Their crimes are heinous and it’s impossible to imagine anything redeeming about their lives.  They certainly do not deserve to live.

 

Yes, we want to kill Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but let’s instead lock him up until the day he dies and show that we know a better way.

Let’s level the playing field by imposing sales tax on Internet merchants

By Marc Jampole

 

The Wall Street Journal is always quick to ignore the wrongs to the many to protect the rights of the few—in this case the few being Internet merchants located in New Hampshire, a state without sales tax, who would have to collect sales tax on items sold to people living in other states, while those undeserving New Hampshire brick-and-mortar wholesalers would not have to collect taxes for in-store purchases by tourists just traveling through. To ensure that this unfair situation doesn’t come to pass, a Journal article wants us to urge our Senators to defeat the latest attempt to make Internet merchants collect sales tax. 

The Journal forgets that in the current situation, Internet merchants have a tremendous advantage over brick-and-mortar stores because they don’t have to collect local sales tax, either for the jurisdiction in which they have their official “office,” or in the jurisdiction of the buyer. The new bill, as so many like it that have gone down to defeat in recent years, would level the playing field between Internet and brick-and-mortar businesses when it comes to taxation. It would end a subtle regressive element of the current situation—rich folk are more likely to buy on the Internet and so less likely to pay sales tax.  And it would increase much needed state revenues in virtually every state.

The Wall Street Journal is not the only big player pushing to defeat a bill that would require Internet merchants to collect sales tax. Over the weekend, John Donohoe, the chief executive officer of eBay, sent email missives to millions of eBay users asking them to oppose the legislation.  

As usual when defending the business prerogatives of the few, both eBay and the Journal hide behind the patriotic flag of small business. Both want a bill that exempts small businesses. In Donohoe’s case, that means firms with fewer than 50 employees and less than $10 million in sales. 

• Donohoe appeals directly to eBay sellers: “This legislation treats you and big multi-billion dollar online retailers—such as Amazon—exactly the same.  Those fighting for this change refuse to acknowledge that the burden on businesses like yours is far greater than for a big national retailer.”
• The Journal sees a conspiracy against small business: “So big business and big government are uniting to pursue their mutual interest in sticking it to the little guy. Any Internet seller with more than $1 million in annual sales would be forced to serve all of the nation's tax collectors.”

The argument is built on the fiction that the burden of collecting and paying sales tax is greater on the small business than a large enterprise. Can’t you just visualize thousands of plucky Internet merchants in their home offices slaving away with ballpoint pen at hundreds of tax forms, then licking the stamps and envelopes to mail hundreds of different checks each month to different state and local taxing officials? 

Didn’t these people ever hear of automated software or third-party payment services such as PayPal?  Did the opponents to collecting sales tax in a consistent manner ever think that maybe the vendors who have automated Internet purchases will also quickly develop software that handles everything involved in collecting and transmitting sales tax to the various taxing bodies—that is, if the software doesn’t already exist.  The technology can’t possibly be very hard to develop, considering that industry has already developed software that helps the little Internet merchant sell thousands of items with constantly changing prices and specifications, just like small brick-and-mortar merchants do. 

I certainly believe that the little guy should be protected from the predatory practices of large corporations.  But that’s not what this proposed new law is about. It’s about raising revenues in a fair and equitable manner.

Koch brothers buying Tribune Company would be newspaper business as usual.

By Marc Jampole

 

Progressives, liberals and maybe even a lot of centrists are shivering at the news that Charles and David Koch may buy part of the Tribune Company, including the largest newspapers in the second and third largest cities in America.

The Kochs, of course, are the right-wing financiers of the Tea Party and of a number of “thinkless tanks” that work against environmental regulations, unions, action on global warming and fair taxation policies.  These guys are as far right as can be and seem to have an open pocketbook for promoting wacky right-wing notions and dangerous lies.

The fear shared by those left of Attila the Hun is that the Kochs will infuse politics into the reporting and editorials of The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant. Additionally, throughout modern history, with right-wing politics has usually come a dumbing down and sensationalizing of the rest of a newspaper. 

We already see what right-wing politics has done to the media outlets part of the Murdoch empire.  A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that both the Wall Street Journal and Fox TV News distort news and opinion on global warming.

Fox TV News recently all but ignored the gun debate in Congress, knowing that 90% of all Americans, including an overwhelming majority of their viewers, were in favor of the background checks that the ultra-right Fox dislike.  Fox, of course, was among the first media outlets to practice “Matt Drudge journalism,” which consists of quoting a known liar who is lying so that the lie can be presented in the context of news.

The potential sale of the Los Angeles Times represents a particularly tragic case, since it was once a right-wing rag that under Otis Chandler in the 1960s and 1970s grew into one of the most distinguished and well-respected newspapers across the country.  But all these newspapers are centrist and under the Koch’s regime they would all take a sharp turn right.

But let’s face it. Nothing has really changed. Rich folk have always been the only ones who could afford to publish newspapers. The Chandlers, who owned the Los Angeles Times were loaded. So was Rupert Murdoch’s father. So were and are the Sulzbergers, who own the New York Times and the Pulliams, who owned the Arizona Republic and Indiana Star (and also produced that apotheosis of mediocrity, former Vice President Dan Quayle).  The Mellon scion who funded the silly investigations into President Clinton’s business dealings in the 1990s owns the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and many other newspapers in western Pennsylvania.

While there are rich folk who look beyond their own greed, most will support the status quo that is treating them so well, even if that status quo is unfair to many or causes many to suffer. So much of the left-right divide centers around issues of economic equity—minimum wage, government support of education and health care, unionization, government pension plans and even safety regulations. It makes sense that many of those with money will not want to share it, even if they made their bucks in large part because of an extensive civil, economic and physical infrastructure.  It’s because only the people with lots of money can afford to own newspapers that since the birth of the printing press, most non-government controlled media has been centrist or listed right (in the context of each era).

One early hope of the Internet was that it would level the playing field.  While it is true that the Internet enables people of all opinions to shout out, the sheer number of voices gives added clout to the Internet screeners such as Yahoo! and Google, which favor mainstream and right-wing media in their algorithms.  Those algorithms are subject to manipulation, which takes money, which only the big media has. Thus, while the Internet theoretically levels the playing field, the net effect is to extend the dominance of big media owned by rich folk. 

The replacement of large families by large corporations as media owners does not change the situation much, since single individuals or families can so easily control a corporation with as little as five percent of the voting stick.

Let’s face it. The rich will always be able to own the news. But the rich are not one unified monolithic group, but rather comprise a mosaic of opinions. If we can’t prevent media ownership from being dominated by the wealthy, we can at least spread ownership around, so we can achieve as large a diversity of ownership as possible. If we want a free market of ideas, we have to limit the number of media properties owned by any individual or corporation. 

The trend over the past 30 years has been to loosen regulations on ownership of media properties, which leads to greater consolidation.  We should instead be moving in the opposite direction.  I would propose that no company, individual or trust be allowed to own more than one print or broadcast media property in any given state and no more than five in all, plus one website per print/broadcast property.

Today, loosening regulations is leading to a loss of freedom speech and freedom of the press. Greater regulation will stem that tide.

Too Much Boston Marathon

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: This is the first Sunday morning in a decade when I haven’t watched Meet the Press on TV. I just can’t stand to see those images again—the explosions at the Boston Marathon, people screaming, running TO the emergency rather than FROM the emergency as every TV commentator, preacher and fireman has told us. And then the “manhunt” as the headlines say. We’ve been given a lot of language, haven’t we? I’m sad that it happened, sad for the Bostonians, sad for the Chechnyans and Muslims that will be painted with the same broad brush. I’m proud of the first responders, the people who ran TO the emergency, big shout out to all of ya’all. But I don’t want to re-live it, over and over, giving it the stature that we give news events when they are relentlessly exploited. I don’t want to see it raised to the level of, as they say, “iconic.” I don’t want to see other kids take revenge, and then other kids take revenge against the other kids. You know what I mean—we’ve seen it a million times. The only winners are the media and the advertisers. Better for society to say: this was a bad thing. People were killed unexpectedly, this happens every day in other places but not here. At the bottom of it all was a fearful fellow that listened to the wrong voices. How can we prevent it from happening again? Bottom line: we can’t. Especially if we succumb to the fear that’s driving all this hype. Let it go.

The E-Recyclers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: There was ice in all the buckets this morning when I went out to feed and heavy frost on the fields, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day after all. I was able to spend most of it doing silly little chores that just need to be done—checking fences, washing feed sacks, running errands and taking a TV and computer monitor to town for the E-Recycling truck. I told my neighbor I’d take their stuff, so I had a pretty good load in my little Honda Insight. When I pulled up, the guys joked that my car would just barely fit in their crusher. Not my car! I consider it a classic, an antique hybrid. It’s kind of appalling how much stuff we buy and throw out, and neither my neighbor nor I are trendy folks. When I buy something and it breaks, I get it fixed if at all possible, so my car is a 2001 and this computer a 2004. Only have had one cell phone and all it does is make phone calls, but that’s been enough so far. Still, this year the microwave gave up and we had a vacuum cleaner that was just a lemon from the start. All the stuff the E-Recyclers collect goes to a giant crusher in St. Louis and gets broken down, the metals separated out and sold. Hope they make enough money to keep it all out of the landfill.

Gun vote shows how money has corrupted our political system

By Marc Jampole

I have nothing to add to the millions of people who have expressed dismay and shock that the Senate could not pass a bill to increase background checks on gun buyers. As all the media except for maybe Fox News have reported, around 90% of all Americans supported increasing background checks. Yet the Senate couldn’t muster the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster, and so the bill failed.

The Senators who voted against the bill all have one worry: If they voted in favor of what their constituents wanted, gun rights organizations such as the rabid National Rifle Association and even more rabid Gun Owners of America would give exorbitant amounts of money to their opponents.

While I’m certain that a few of the 45 Senators voting against better background checks are gun crazy, it was the potential loss of their job that made many if not most vote thumbs down.

Forget about integrity or ethics. What happened to doing what the people who elected you want you to do?

Many blame the rules of the Senate for the failure of a bill supported by virtually every American. But I blame it primarily on money.  It should be clear to most Americans by now that money plays too great a role in American politics and political campaigns.  Congress should act to overturn the decision in Citizen’s United and institute real campaign reform.

I would start by limiting the amount of money that can be spent on any candidate’s campaign by anyone—different limits for different campaigns. Negative ads against one candidate would count against the total for every other candidate in that particular race. If a candidate is mentioned positively in an issue ad, say on gun control or abortion, it would count towards his or her total; if mentioned negatively in an issue ad, the amount spent on the ad would count towards the totals of the other candidates. I would begin the count the day after the previous election so that the total would apply to four years worth of spending for a presidential candidate, six years for a candidate for the U.S. Senate and so forth. Included in the count would be all spending for a candidate, including traditional and online advertising, social media campaigns, travel, consultants, polling and public relations efforts.

The immediate objection is that candidates have no control over other groups. Opponents might nefariously spend out a candidate in the first year of a four-year presidential cycle.  That takes a quick fix: forbid third party groups from mentioning a candidate positively or neutrally in an ad or brochure without the candidate’s permission.

I would keep the limits very low. Based on reports that Obama and Romney spent a combined $2 billion waging the 2012 presidential campaign, I would set the limit at $100 million a candidate for president and scale it down from there. The low limit would encourage more candidates and more parties and not give such an extreme edge to wealthy candidates such as Romney.

My proposal is a pipe dream, of course. It might take a constitutional amendment and it certainly would have a tough row through Congress. The political industry comprising consultants, lawyers, PR and advertising agencies, polltakers, IT specialists, graphic designers, printers, actuaries, telemarketing firms and social media companies would be against it. But most importantly, the people behind the money currently being spent on campaigns—be it gun makers, investment banks, multinational manufacturers or right-wing free market free booters like the Koch brothers—would be against it because they would lose their big edge in their battle against the majority—the ability to buy elections.

Tony Messenger Scorns Kurt the Curt

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Yesterday, I wrote about the discourteous Kurt Schaefer hiding behind his desk when constituents came in to ask him about his stance on the Medicaid bill. The story is more elaborate and more damning than I thought. The askers actually waited an hour in the hallway while the staff of His Curtness lied that he was not in. His Boorishness had scotch taped a barrier of yellow legal paper on the window of his office so people couldn’t see in, who does that? Other suits walked in and out of the inner chamber but the constituents had to stand outside and listen to lies. After an hour, somebody lifted a cell phone above the paper barrier and snapped pictures that showed the fool was in there. The capitol police came and stood, police-like, at his door. What was he afraid of? His voters? Turns out, he’s afraid of everything federal. That, at bottom, is his objection to Medicaid. Missouri went to war over that 150 years ago, defending states’ rights. Some of our citizens have been confused about the issue ever since. That’s the trouble with wars; they leave more confusion and anger than they solve. Among the laws this fellow disagrees with is a federal law requiring access to Conceal and Carry (CCW) licenses. The feds want to be able to compare CCW lists with the list of folks getting disability payments due to mental illness. Sounds reasonable to the ordinary person, since we don’t want weapons in the hands of mentally ill people. But Schaefer, along with House Speaker Tim Jones, have tried to whip the tea party gang into a frenzy. Today, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger wrote a scathing column which said, in part: “Schaefer and Jones are both lawyers, which means one of two things . . . They’re really bad lawyers or they know they’re lying for cynical political gain, and that must makes them horrible people.” Messenger speculates that these two guys “think the road to the Missouri attorney general’s office is paved with lies about mind control and microchips . . .” And, for Schaefer, capitol police and scotch tape.

Kurt the Curt Schaefer Rides Again

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: If the book of 2013 Missouri is ever written, it will be a sad tale of the richies trying to keep social benefits from the poors. And that sad tale can never have a happy ending. Yesterday, more than one thousand people gathered at the capitol to lobby for Medicaid benefits for more Missouri families. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, asks that benefits be extended to folks at 138% of the poverty level. For a family of four, benefits would be available if they made $26,000 or less, which takes in a huge number of rural families that have no health insurance now. That money would save hospitals, create jobs and result in healthier youngsters. In other words, it would benefit the entire state. But many lawmakers, Republican ones, refuse to pass a bill to accept the Medicaid expansion. So busloads of people, ordinary citizens like you and me, including my friends from Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Grass Roots Organizing, Faith Voices United and many other groups, came to the capitol to visit their lawmakers. They were joined by hospital groups and health providers. Far right observers called these “special interest groups.” Many of the lawmakers, Rs and Ds, were positive. They realize that the federal money is going to go somewhere and it should go to help Missouri folks. Columbia’s Kurt Schaefer was not among the positive ones. In fact, he hid from the lobby groups, taping yellow legal pad paper on the window of his office and pretending to be out, at a meeting. Who does that? Somebody held a cell phone above the paper and snapped a photo of curt Kurt hiding behind his desk. Everyone was laughing. What a fool!