From the beach-going John Pike who always has a smile on his face comes this link to The Nonist and What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression. Did you know that Blog Depression leads to loss of pleasure in the Internet, feelings of sadness and passive/agressive moaning? Oh Nooooo…!
I really didn’t expect to be writing two posts related to the terrorist nuclear threat (see Exporting Weapons-Grade Uranium…) today but sometimes things come together. I just finished reading Moral Hazard: How Conservatism Leaves Us Vulnerable To Nuclear Terrorism by J. Peter Scoblic in The New Republic Online.
Scoblic addresses how the lies from the White House on imagined weapons of mass destruction have put us in greater dangers from two countries — Iran and North Korea — that have real aspirations and capabilities of giving a credible nuclear threat to terrorists. His money graph is:
In other words, while Iraq was merely suspected of having a nuclear program that would take years to produce a nuclear weapon, North Korea, a known weapons proliferator, had a nuclear program that could produce plutonium for weapons within months; and Iran, whose terrorist ties were more extensive than Iraq’s, was clearly on the cusp of producing fissile material.
Yet, while the president and his advisers were warning of impending Iraqi mushroom clouds over U.S. cities, they dismissed the notion that the situation in North Korea was a crisis, and they ignored Iran. They went to war even after, on March 7, 2003, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported, After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
While hawks in the United States clamored about the danger from Iraq’s weapons, the inspectors on the ground in Iraq were telling us there were none. This judgment was confirmed after the war by the U.S. Iraq Survey Group, which concluded, Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, nor had it tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991. From a nuclear security perspective, then, the decision to invade Iraq looks horribly misguided.
The real lesson we’ve give terrorists and the countries that harbor and support them is this: develop nuclear weapons as fast as you can because once you have them, it becomes very unlikely that the United States will invade you.
That is not a message I’m happy with.
My Soundtrack: Louis XIV by Louis XIV on WOXY.
For those of you who think profiling Muslims is a good idea. Here’s a fun little exercise compliments of my dad. What you’ll see are photos of not-so-famous serial killers mixed in with programmers who made a difference in the world of computer science. Can you tell the difference between a coder and a cannibal? We’ll see. I hit a miserable .500.
In all the issues expected to be raised as the Senate prepares to consider President George Bush’s first appointment to the Supreme Court, there is a landmark case that seems to have slipped through the cracks. And it is the case that the neo/theocons would really like to see overturned.
Ms. Magazine, however, puts the story up front in it’s summer issue. In Public Triumphs, Private Rights, Ellen Chesler writes about the bedrock case on privacy rights: Griswold vs. Conneticut. Writes Chesler:
The story of Griswold begins in 1961, when Estelle, then executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton of Yale University”s Medical School opened a small birth-control clinic in downtown New Haven, Conn.
They intended to challenge the validity of the state”s official ban on birth control, and indeed, nine days later, they were arrested for dispensing contraceptives to a married couple. A month later they were convicted and fined $100 each.
When their case finally reached the Supreme Court, seven of nine justices agreed that a zone of privacy safeguarding birth control inheres in what Justice William O. Douglas called a “penumbra” (a shaded rim between darkness and light) of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Other justices felt it was covered by protections against search and seizure and other specific rights that could logically be extended to cover marriage.)
In other words, although the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not explicitly guarantee privacy rights to individuals, such rights are implicit within the documents. The landmark ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut paved the way for Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that extended these same privacy protections – and thus the right to obtain birth control – to unmarried women.
This is precisely the case that those who believe that government belongs in that most private aspects of our lives want to see overturned. Our right to privacy won’t be toppled like a statue of Saddam Hussein.
Rather it will be chipped away a piece here, a piece there. Some of it will disappear under the guise of fighting terrorism. Others will fall away to the cry for respect for life.
But we must pay attention to the little man behind the curtain. He’s pulling the levers, after all.
My Soundtrack: Elastic Days by The Heavenly States on WOXY.
My dad forwarded me a post about Ben Stein’s last column for E Online. Such items start my Lemmings Meter ticking. Sure enough, what I got wasn’t what Stein had written. It wasn’t a total fake, but people with an agenda had edited Stein’s words, without his permission, I’m sure. Here is what he wrote.
You’d think that with the way the world has changed since 11 September, the United States would do everything it could to halt the shipment of weapons-grade unranium. Congress, however, thinks selling the stuff to build a nuclear weapons is a good idea. According to Michael Grinwald in this morning’s Washington Post:
A provision tucked into the 1,724-page energy bill that Congress is poised to enact today would ease export restrictions on bomb-grade uranium, a lucrative [emphasis mine, JH] victory for a Canadian medical manufacturer and its well-wired Washington lobbyists.
The Burr Amendment — named for its sponsor, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) — would reverse a 13-year-old U.S. policy banning exports of weapons-grade uranium unless the recipients agree to start converting their reactors to use less-dangerous uranium. The Senate rejected the measure last month after critics in both parties warned that it would accelerate the worldwide proliferation of nuclear materials, but a House-Senate conference committee agreed this week to include it in the final bill.
Once again a politicians demonstrates that if the battle is between national or world security and the profit margin of a constiutent, the profit margins wins every time.
You might want to drop a line to Sen. Burr.
217 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3154
Fax: (202) 228-2981
This is what I wrote to the Senator:
Shalom Sen. Burr,
With your insertion of an amendment easing restrictions on the sale of weapons-grade uranium the defense of our country became more difficult. At a time when our president is fighting the War On Terrorism, why would you choose to sponsor the amendment that makes it easier for those who would destroy our nation to obtain this most dangerous of materials?
Your action has deeply saddened me.
B”shalom,,
Jeff Hess
havecoffeewillwrite.com
My Soundtrack: Happy With Myself by Over The Rhine on WOXY.
…Y No Sé Por Qué; I have a Che t-shirt and I don’t know why, is a catch phrase from young Agentinians. It sums up the message in The Killing Machine by Alvaro Vargas Llosa on The New Republic Online. I was once enamored with Che. Then I grew up. Che was a great maker of myths, but not much in the reality department, as Llosa carefully details.
Aaron McGruder is one of the sharpest comic wits in America today. His alter ego Huey nails events and attitudes in America again and again, as he does today with his take on what happens when the broadcast news division becomes a part of the entertainment division.
My Soundtrack: Alive And Kicking by Simple Minds on WOXY Vintage.
[Update — 1514, 30 July 05 — Tom and I are engaging in a longish, but I think fruitful, discussion on this post over on the No Cleveland Walmart version. Stop in and add your comments.]
From The United Church of Christ comes this announcement concerning Robert Greenwald’s latest film, Wal Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price.
From: United Church of Christ
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:10:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: JPANet Weekly Action — A Moral Appeal on Wal-Mart
Dear JPANet Member,
This fall, we hope you will join over 1,000 churches and faith-based organizations to help launch a Wal-Mart week of action November 13-18. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has 600,000 employees with no healthcare benefits, and the company is leading a race to the bottom in our economy that is devastating our communities.
This campaign begins with faith communities across the U.S. giving sermons on Wal-Mart and scheduling premier screenings on Sunday November 13 of noted filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s new film, WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price.
Unlike would-be blockbusters, the only way this film will get out is with your help and support. The UCC is joined in this effort by Sojourners, National Organization of Women, Move On, Sierra Club, Interfaith Worker Justice, African American Ministers in Action and many others.
A shortened version of the film (20 minutes) is being planned to show at your after-church hour and the full version of the film will be available at a low cost for members of the congregation to take home and share with others.
To sign up to host a screening and lift up a moral appeal to Wal-Mart in your sermon or after-church program on Sunday, November 13th click here. Make sure you fill in your church affiliation in the sign up form so our UCC staff can follow up with you this fall and help make your program a success.
For years the UCC has raised issues of dignity in the workplace and corporate citizenship with Wal-Mart. To learn more about past UCC actions on Wal-Mart and to get sermon tips and resources on low-wage work that can be incorporated into a sermon on Wal-Mart on November 13, send an email.
For more information on current Wal-Mart campaigns visit our website.
This could make for interesting dinner conversation in the Campbell household.
My Soundtrack: Pressure Point by The Zutons on WOXY.
From Curse Of The Cat Woman by Edward Field comes these final four stanzas. What captured me was the passionate desperation of the two lovers. The Black Panter is the perfect hunter made flesh; invisible under the branches until the final moment when eyes and teeth flash.
One night you are walking down a dark street
And hear the pad-pad of a panther following you,
but when you turn around there are only shadows,
or perhaps one shadow too many.
You approach, calling, “Who’s there?”
and it leaps on you.
Luckily you have brought along your sword
and you stab it to death.
And before your eyes it turns into the woman you love,
her breast impaled on your sword,
her mouth dribbling blood saying she loved you
but couldn’t help her tendency.
So death released her from the curse at last,
and you knew from the angelic smile on her dead face
that in spite of a life the devil owned,
love had won, and heaven pardoned her.
My Soundtrack: Breathe Me by Sia on WOXY.
Since Thursday, 23 June, I have been attempting to get a piece of information from Ohio’s Department of Transportation. When I attended the Thursday, 16 June presentation on the Quigley Road Connector, I noticed a piece of information was missing.
While ODOT told us what the traffic would be next year if the Quigley Road Connector was built or not built, it did not tell us what the traffic was this year. I sent emails to Columbus, but got an automated out-of-the-office from one contact and silence from the other.
I’ve sent a second email to the out-of-towner now that they’re back (at least according to the dates given on the automated message), and I’ll report the response when it rolls in.
In the meantime, Matt Lipsky has been doing yeoman work digging up traffic figures for Wal Marts around the country. In Traffic Mart, Lipsky writes:
It is first important to examine exactly how many vehicle trips a Wal-Mart supercenter actually generates. According to the Institute of Traffic Engineers, a 200,000 sq. ft. discount center on average results in 76,232 car trips per week (with the high end of the range being 92,806).
Yet this astoundingly high number may in fact be much too conservative considering that the Institute”s traffic estimates for “regular sized” discount stores are actually higher than for the larger supercenters. This paradox became quite important when Wal-Mart wanted to build in Pasco County, Florida.
Huh? Lipsky was a surprised as I am. He continues:
This Florida case reinforces the need for an independent traffic analysis when Wal-Mart decides it wants to site in an area. As we”ve said previously, the sole job of a developer-hired consultant is to minimize the project”s impact so that it will face less resistance.
According to these liars-for-hire, traffic never is a problem and can always be mitigated with better timed traffic signals, left hand turn lanes and improved off ramps.
I’m more anxious than ever, now, to see what numbers ODOT is going send me for traffic on West 14th and Clarke Avenue.
Lipsky has a long list of traffic woes around the country. And if Wal Mart is shaving numbers to make itself look good, even ODOT’s honest assessment could be bunk based on the principle of Garbage In, Garbage Out.
My Soundtrack: Book Of Flags by Q And Not U on WOXY.
The JAG memos are posted. From Andew Sullivan: Deep down, this is a debate about whether the president, in a war with no defined end, can simply place himself above the law whenever he so desires, in order to reverse America’s long-standing policy of treating prisoners humanely. It’s about resisting praetorian government.
I don’t live in Cleveland. I’m over the border in Cleveland Heights. I teach, but not in Cleveland (although I did spend four months earlier this year tutoring 6th graders at Rozelle Elementary in East Cleveland). This week I got an email from Linda Fox pointing me to a post on her website: Right As Usual.
I confess that I have not been following the details of the school levy vote in a few days because, by virtue of my residence, I won’t be voting in that particular election. But I read Linda’s post, and while I agree with her that such tactics are infuriating, I don’t see them as anything out of the ordinary for anyone professionally involved in politics. It sucks bilge water, but that’s the way it works.
Any good journalist — and that includes bloggers — keeps a circle of friends and experts to call upon when a topic is out of their league. In this case I called upon a Cleveland teacher whose opinion I high value: MaryBeth Matthews of Street Smarts.
I emailed the link to Linda’s post and asked MaryBeth her opinion. I caught her at a good time and she replied with clarity and passion. With her permission, here’s what she had to say:
Why would anyone be surprised?
This election strategy is not about the listening to the voice of the citizens. It’s about getting money to pay for the education of Cleveland’s children. Period.
The district is desperate.
The procedure for funding schools in the state of Ohio is so screwed up it was declared unconstitutional. There are committees and task forces in place to come up with a better way to pay for public education, but in the meantime the Big 8 districts are taking some big hits.
Cuts are devastating. Most affected are the kids in urban public schools, were the tax base has eroded due to abatements for big business, the flight of the middle class to the suburbs, and the fact big employers are either closing their doors, leaving the city, or are tax exempt non-profits.
This puts the burden of school taxes on the home owners, who rank the poorest in the nation. Children who have had the good fortune to be born to families a few miles away in suburbs that don’t need to abate taxes, are going to public schools that are safe and dry, have state-of-the-art technology, arts, sports, and small class sizes.
The voters in Cleveland turned down the school levy in November, but did they put any pressure on the state legislators to reform school funding?
No.
They simply pointed to Barbara Byrd Bennett’s salary, and wagged their fingers saying she was being paid too much. Perhaps they should be made aware of the salaries of the CEO’s of the more than 200 other non-profit organizations in the Cleveland area, and ask them what public benefit have they been doing to deserve their big fat pay checks.
Some of these folks make Barbara look like the poor relation. Start with Hundert at Case making 706K + perks and benefits.
(Feel like doing a little detective work. You can find the 990 and 990f tax forms here. )
We live in one big F—ed up system here in Cleveland.
Can our kids afford to wait until it gets fixed? If we don’t have an educated workforce, what companies will want to do business here? The kids are the first to be hurt by our misplaced priorities.
CMSD has done one crappy job of connecting and communicating with the citizens of Cleveland. People don’t understand the problems. The outrage of Clevelanders is misplaced.
Yes, there is waste in the district, as in any huge government organization. Comparatively speaking though, dollar for dollar the district has made huge strides in addressing some of these problems. The cuts have been huge. We need to look at these problems from a very different perspective if we are ever going to fix the schools.
The seeds of Cleveland’s future are our kids… but while we are busy building new playgrounds for the rich, the city’s core is starting to rot.
Because I’ve been spending so much time with the Wal Mart issue of late, I see a lot things through a Low Prices All The Time lens. Do we expect education to follow that path? Do we want to pay less and less for the education of other people’s children?
My figures are not current, but it wasn’t long ago that a Cleveland Height’s politician told me that 75 of the school-age students in the district were in private schools. It is my understanding that the figure is actually even higher in Beachwood.
Now more than 50 years since Brown vs. Board of Education we are living a whole new version of separate but equal. And the equal isn’t any more so today than in was in 1954.
Tim Russo has another take on the levy issue. Be sure to check him out as well.
My Soundtrack: El Manana by Gorillaz on WOXY.
In the ’60s it was privileged sons and daughters of America’s middle class that led the protests against the war in Viet Nam. And it was a tiny fraction of my fellow boomers who turned violent and formed groups like the Weathermen. It was the same in Europe. Everyone else was too busy trying to make a living.
That paradigm continues, according to David Ignatius, in the Middle East. In today’s Washington Post, Ignatius writes:
When you read reports that the Muslim terrorists who bombed the London Underground may have gotten together for a pre-attack whitewater rafting trip in Wales, you realize that this is a very particular enemy — and one that is recognizable to students of history.
This is the revolt of the privileged, Islamic version. They have risen so far, so fast in the dizzying culture of the West that they have become enraged, disoriented and vulnerable to manipulation.
Their spiritual leader is a Saudi billionaire’s son who grew up with big ideas and too much money. He created a new identity for himself as a jihad leader, carrying the banner of a pristine Islam from the days of the Prophet Muhammad.
The zenith of his warped amalgam of ancient and modern was having holy warriors fly airplanes into skyscrapers.
I had this conversation with my good friend and webgoddess Terry at I See Invisible People the other day. The model of the poor disadvantaged peasant succumbing to Islamic fanatics just isn’t playing out.
Only the wealthy can afford to send a child to a religious school. The overt poverty of the schools has more to do with the life of Mohammad in the mountains and less with the finances of the cleric overseeing the school.
The most dangerous demographic in any population is unemployed young men. It matters not if they are unemployed by a weak economy or the wealth of their parents.
Idle hands are the devil’s tools.
My Soundtrack: Baby I’m Drunk by Reverend Horton Heat on WOXY.
From Goodman Real Estate Services Group LLC comes this sales pitch (be sure to check out the data below the maps on its webpage):
Cleveland”s Steelyard Commons is a new 950,000 square foot regional power center serving an untapped trade area with no competition. “City [of Cleveland] residents in 2000 spent about $1.3 billion in retail purchases at suburban stores, according to a recent study form Oster Research Group of Iowa…” (Crain”s Cleveland Business, March 15, 2004).
Cleveland”s Steelyard Commons has direct access to all of Cleveland”s major highways and is situated in the middle of an enormous residential and daytime population. This development will create a new regional trade area in a previously underserved and impenetrable market.
No competition? Underserved? Impenetrable market?
Shakespeare got it wrong. Lawyers should not be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes; my vote is for sales and marketing people.
[Update — 2017, 27 July 05 — Bill Callahan works his magic with the information and paints a far more damning picture of Mayor Jane Campbell’s administration than I ever could. His analysis is what makes Bill’s blog so great.]
My Soundtrack: Hyperballad by Bjork on WOXY.
As always, Roldo Bartimole discusses what no one else will: who were the people paying bribes to do business in Cleveland during the administration of Michael White, and where were the honest city employee, civic leaders and business people in all of this? Roldo tells us that the most tragic of all of is:
…the corruption of affirmative action by paying black contactors but expecting them to do no work. These black front groups, aided by white contractors and their deals, results in many African-Americans being deprived jobs and, most important, the job education only attained on worksites that will deprive many of the opportunity to be gainfully employed in the future.
You won”t see a true examination of this corruption by corporate, legal and money people. You won”t read it in columns by PD reporters, including Phillip Morris, as he does about chiselers who ask for dimes and quarters on the streets of downtown Cleveland. Let”s by all means clean these people out, but where is the bile for the downtown suit and tie chiselers?
I’ve only lived in Cleveland for about 20 years. But when someone like Roldo talks about wanting to clean these people out, I’m just cynical enough to ask: and will the last one turn out the lights as they leave?
My Soundtrack: Patriot’s Heart by American Music Club on WOXY.
Does the second story that the Plain Dealer is working on have anything to do with Diebold, Blackwell and the Election of 2004? I took part in the hand-counting in the election, and so I get emails from those still digging for a full-picture of events before, during and after that election. Here’s the email I got this morning.
From a transcript of unofficial testimony by former CIA case officer James Marcinkowski: Each time leader of a political party opens his mouth in public to deflect responsibility, the word overseas is loud and clear — politics in this country does in fact trump national security. Please take the time to read the rest.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals thinks it’s a good idea to auction off Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski’s possession to pay part of the $15 million the murderer owes in restitituion to his victims. I think the judges are smoking crack. Even eBay has the good sense to not allow the sale of murderabilia.
It was eight shots, not five: seven in the head, one in shoulder. And witnesses now say that the plain clothes officers did not identify themselves as police. I cannot condemn the police. They’re operating in a horrible environment right now. I can condemn the leadership in England that lets hysteria terrorize its citizens.
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