Studies Show Art Audience Decline

Tuesday 16 June 2009

by: Jacqueline Trescott | Visit article original @ The Washington Post

Nine-year-old Eden Shiferwa participates in the Sketching After School program. (Photo: Suzanne Kreiter / The Boston Globe)

Two separate national surveys gauging youth and adult participation in the arts reported yesterday that visits to art museums are declining.

A study of nearly 4,000 eighth-grade students, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found dwindling field trips over the past decade. "The percentage of eighth-graders who reported that they visited an art museum or gallery with their classes dropped from 22 percent in 1997 to 16 percent in 2008," said Stuart Kerachsky, the acting commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the assessment.

The National Endowment for the Arts also released new data yesterday showing that fewer adults were choosing an art museum or a visual arts festival as a leisure-time destination. From 1992 to 2001, 26 percent of adults reported that they visited such attractions, but the number for 2008 dropped to 23 percent. The decrease is small, but it may portend coming declines as the most loyal part of the museum audience ages. The exception, the NEA said, was in the D.C. metropolitan area, where 40 percent of adults said they had visited a museum in 2008 - reflecting tourism and free admission at most major museums.

In addition, the agency noted sizable declines between 1982 (when it first started documenting arts participation) and 2008 in almost every performing arts field. It reported double-digit rates of decline for classical music, jazz, opera, musical theater, ballet and dramatic plays.

The NEA survey "shows that audiences for the arts are changing," said Patrice Walker Powell, the acting NEA chairman. "While many now participate in arts activities available through electronic media, the number of American adults who are participating in live performing and visual arts events is declining. The findings underscore the need for more arts education to foster the next generation of both artists and arts enthusiasts."

The National Assessment of Educational Progress report is part of a periodic federal look at how America's students fare in various subjects. Arts education was last measured in 1997, but because of budget constraints, the survey was limited this time to music and visual arts. The schools and students were selected at random, said a spokeswoman, and the questions took various forms.

Some results were promising. Students were asked to identify the instrument in the opening solo of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Fifty percent correctly identified the clarinet.

Other results indicated that students need improvement in basic skills. In NAEP's visual arts component, students were asked to do a self-portrait. Only 4 percent received the highest mark of "sufficient," while 57 percent received a "minimal" rating, the third-best ranking.

General accessibility to arts instruction remained constant, the NAEP report said. Music instruction was offered at least three or four times a week in 57 percent of the schools and visual arts instruction in 47 percent.

Yet there were several gaps in student scores. Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders scored 22 to 32 points higher than black or Hispanic students. On music questions, public school eighth-graders scored 14 points lower than private school students and nine points lower than their private school counterparts in the visual arts sections.

The recession's impact on school arts programs has not been statistically evaluated, but anecdotal indicators are not encouraging.

"School budget cuts are underway, with more projected next year," said Eileen Weiser, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, speaking of the economic climate in Michigan. David W. Gordon, the superintendent of the Sacramento County Office of Education, said California is cutting back on school buses, which would further jeopardize school trips.

»

Published on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

'Public Option' Pales Next to Single Payer

by Nicholas Skala

The following remarks were delivered to a closed-door meeting the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4, 2009:

Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory “exchange,” with one plan potentially being a “public option.”

The difference between these choices could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.

The “public option” preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing health coverage and controlling costs.

Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to the achievement of universal health care in every other industrialized country in the world. In contrast, public program expansions coupled with mandates have failed everywhere they’ve been tried, both domestically and internationally.

Many progressives accept that the “public option” is inferior to a single-payer system, yet support it because of its perceived political expedience. It is my aim today to convince you that the “public option” program currently being developed is not only bad health policy, but bad health politics.

On two separate occasions last month, physicians and nurses were dragged from the Senate Finance Committee in handcuffs for demanding that single-payer be considered in our nation’s health reform debate. These were American doctors and nurses, people who care for patients, people who want to practice medicine, not protest and disrupt Congress.

But these professionals risked their careers and their freedom. They did this not because they thought that the “public option” was “good” and single-payer “better.” They did it because they are firmly convinced, by well-established health policy science, that the so-called “public option” has no hope of remedying the systemic defects that cause their patients to suffer and die, sometimes before their very eyes.

Millions of dollars have been spent by political advocacy groups to commission polls and statistics “proving” that their health reform is “politically feasible.” Yet political winds do not make good health policy. Careful examination of science and experience do. And it is in the science and experience that we see that single-payer offers the only way to truly comprehensive, universal and sustainable health care, and that “public option” schemes offer only more of the same: tens of millions of uninsured, rapidly deteriorating coverage, an epidemic of medical bankruptcy, and skyrocketing costs that will eventually cripple the system.

First, because the “public option” is built around the retention of private insurance companies, it is unable - in contrast to single-payer - to recapture the $400 billion in administrative waste that private insurers currently generate in their drive to fight claims, issue denials and screen out the sick. A single-payer system would redirect these huge savings back into the system, requiring no net increase in health spending.

In contrast, the “public option” will require huge new sources of revenue, currently estimated at around $1 trillion over the next decade. Rather than cutting this bloat, the public option adds yet another layer of useless and complicated bureaucracy in the form of an “exchange,” which serves no useful function other than to police and broker private insurance companies.

Second, because the “public option” fails to contain the cost control mechanism inherent in single-payer, such as global budgeting, bulk purchasing and planned capital expenditures, any gains in coverage will quickly be erased as costs skyrocket and government is forced to choose between raising revenue and cutting benefits.

Third, because of this inability to control costs or realize administrative savings, the coverage and benefits that can be offered will be of the same type currently offered by private carriers, which cause millions of insured Americans to go without needed care due to costs and have led to an epidemic of medical bankruptcies.

Supporters of incremental reform once again promise us universal coverage without structural reform, but we’ve heard this promise dozens of times before.

Virtually all of the reforms being floated by President Obama and other centrist Democrats have been tried, and have failed repeatedly. Plans that combined mandates to purchase coverage with Medicaid expansions fell apart in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1992), and Washington state (1993); the latest iteration (Massachusetts, 2006) is already stumbling, with uninsurance again rising and costs soaring. Tennessee’s experiment with a massive Medicaid expansion and a public plan option worked - for one year, until rising costs sank it.

The Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (the model for a health insurance exchange) leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers uninsured, and has proven unable to contain costs.

Negative results in a recent series of randomized trials explodes the hope that chronic disease management will cut costs. And the CBO has thrown a wet blanket on the notion that electronic medical records save money.

As Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, have remarked, a public plan option does not lead toward single-payer, but toward the segregation of patients, with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan. A quarter-century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry-picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan - which started as a single-payer system for seniors and have now become a funding mechanism for HMOs - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill.

Progressive supporters of the “public option” readily concede that single-payer is a superior system. Indeed, their response to evidence that their plan won’t work is to commission more charts and graphs emphasizing its political feasibility.

The “public option” is truly the embodiment of health policy designed by sound bytes, cobbled together from snippets of information gathered from focus groups and public opinion polls, and centered around well-polling buzzwords such as “choice” and “shared responsibility.”

Such a plan may be enough to excite the political classes in Washington, who care more about what they think can pass the Congress than what will actually deliver universal, comprehensive health care for all. But doctors and nurses, the people who actually work in the health system, see right through it. They are going to jail because they know that this plan won’t work for their patients.

Nobody is going to jail for the “public option,” because the American people cannot be inspired by band-aids and half-measures it is impossible to believe in.

These doctors and nurses are the manifestation of a social movement, millions strong, that is waiting to be mobilized by the leadership of the Members in this room. Polls consistently show that two-thirds of the American people want single-payer. At a recent hearing in Montana convened by Sen. Max Baucus, only 10 people of three hundred said they were happy with the insurance they have. Sixty percent of physicians support single-payer, as do the U.S. Conference of Mayors and 39 state labor federations and hundreds of local unions across the country.

We’re told that holding out for single-payer is politically unwise, but to compromise and accept a bad plan at precisely the time when popular support and grassroots energy are on the side of true reform is the real political miscalculation.

The history of great social achievement is rife with instances in which the forces of institutionalized power told social movements - as they now tell this one - that what they wanted was too much, or too fast, or too soon. I think, of course, of the abolition of human slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the Civil Rights Movement, Social Security, the minimum wage, an end to child labor. In each of these instances, social movements held fast to their principles and soon discovered that they had been told was “politically unfeasible” one moment was political reality the next.

We currently have a better chance to pass single-payer than Lyndon Johnson had when he passed Medicare. Unlike the public option, single-payer - because it holds the potential to finally realize universal, equitable health care - can be a vehicle to inspire the American people for progressive change.

The voices of doctors and nurses can achieve extraordinary resonance when they speak selflessly in their patients’ interest. But your leadership is crucial to inspire the American people. It is my hope that you’ll see fit to provide it.

Nicholas Skala is a former senior research associate Physicians for a National Health Program. He is currently a Juris Doctor candidate and Harry L. Kinser Scholar for Health Law at Northwestern University School of Law. He can be reached at n-skala@law.northwestern.edu

BREAKING NEWS: New Report Projects Devastating U.S. Climate Impact‏

Report: Climate Change Already Affecting US
http://www.truthout.org/061709O
David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post: "Man-made
climate change is already lifting temperatures,
increasing rainfall, and raising sea levels around
the United States -- and its effects are on track to
get much worse in the coming century, according to a
report released this afternoon by federal scientists.
The report, 'Global Climate Change Impacts in the
United States,' covers much of the same ground as
previous analyses from US and United Nations science
panels. It finds that greenhouse-gas emissions are
'primarily' responsible for global warming and that
rapid action is needed to avert catastrophic shifts
in water, heat and natural life."

If you aren't sure why global warming is our top priority, please read this email.

Moments ago, the White House released a detailed scientific report forecasting devastating impacts of global warming in the United States if we don't take dramatic steps now to cut our global warming emissions.

As example of the kind of impacts we can expect in a warming world, the climate of Illinois could resemble the climate of Texas by the end of this century.

The report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, breaks down climate impacts region-by-region

The Northeast:

• Hartford and Philadelphia could average 30 days of 100+ temperatures per year while Boston could see more than 20 100-degree days per year;
• Native maple, beech, birch, spruce and fir forests could be almost entirely lost;
• The climate of New Hampshire could resemble the climate of North Carolina.

The Southeast:

• Much of Florida and southeast Texas could see more than 180 days in the 90s per year while other southeastern states could see more than 100 90-degree days per year;
• Spring and summer drought has already increased by 12 percent and 14 respectively over the last 30 years. The frequency, intensity and duration of droughts in the region are likely to increase;
• Sea level rise and stronger storm surges could inundate and ultimately flood coastal communities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The Midwest:

• The climate of Michigan could resemble the climate of Oklahoma and the climate of Illinois could resemble the climate of Texas;
• Deadly heat waves like the one that killed more than 700 people in Chicago in 1995, will become more frequent. Under higher emission scenarios, Chicago could experience up to three such heat waves every year;
• Higher emissions scenarios would cause a water level drop of 1-2 feet in the Great Lakes, threatening shipping, infrastructure, beaches and ecosystems.

The Great Plains:

• Hotter, drier summers will threaten the already overused High Plains aquifer, which irrigates 13 million acres and provides water to 80% of the people in the region;
• Increased temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels will threaten farming activities with more drought, pest infestations, and faster weed growth;
• Under higher emission scenarios, North and South Dakota, which currently see only a handful of 100-degree days, could see 50 or more days of 100+ temperatures per year.

The Southwest:

• Under higher emission scenarios, the southern half of Arizona, southeastern California and Las Vegas could see more than 120 days with 100+ temperatures;
• Most of the region could see precipitation levels decline by more than 40%, pushing already water-strained areas over the edge;
• Southwestern forests will be decimated with less water, more wildfires and more invasive pests. Under higher emissions scenarios, California's mountain forests could decline by 60-90%.

The Northwest:

• Mountain snowpack runoff, critical water needs, could run 20-40 days earlier, threatening water resources in summer months;
• Declining summer streamflows and warmer water temperatures could push salmon and other cold water fish species, already stressed by human activities, over the brink;
• 100-degree days are rare today in the Northwest. Under higher emission scenarios, much of the region could see 30-40 days of 110+ temperatures per year.

Without action, this is the future that awaits our children. We can't let it happen.

The good news? The U.S. House could vote on a landmark energy and global warming bill as soon as next week. We're doing everything we can to pass this bill and keep the pressure on the Senate to move a bill of its own.

Here are three things you can do now to help:

1. Take action to urge passage of the bill in the House.
2. Forward this email to all your friends and family.
3. Share facts about your region on Facebook or Twitter. Please include a link to our action alert: http://support.edf.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=118

Thanks for all you do,
Environmental Defense Fund

P.S. In addition to the human toll, this report reinforces the dire threat American wildlife face in a warming world. Go to our Warming and Wildlife campaign to meet and see seven "ambassador" species that face a bleak future in a warmer world.

Environmental Defense Fund
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20009
1-800-684-3322

Rhode Island passes new medical marijuana law‏

Great news! Rhode Island just passed a new medical marijuana law.

In landslide votes of 68-0 and 35-3, the Rhode Island General Assembly today overrode Gov. Donald Carcieri's (R) veto of legislation to allow the licensed, regulated sale of marijuana to seriously ill patients. Rhode Island will now become only the second state (after New Mexico) to license and regulate medical marijuana dispensing.

This expands the law that MPP passed in 2006, which protects medical marijuana patients from arrest and jail. Under that law, patients were allowed to grow their own marijuana or designate a caregiver to do it for them, but many patients didn't have regular access, and some were even assaulted trying to buy marijuana in the streets. Thanks to the new law, patients will now be able to obtain medical marijuana safely and legally from three state-regulated and licensed compassion centers.

MPP gives a special thanks to the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, an MPP grant recipient, for incredible organizing work.

If you support this work, would you please consider automatically donating $5 or more on your credit card each month to help us pass similar bills into law?

We're also making great progress in Delaware, Illinois, New Hampshire, and New York:

• On June 3, the Delaware Senate Health Committee voted 4-0 to pass the first modern medical marijuana bill ever introduced in Delaware. The bill is based on MPP's model legislation, and MPP's Noah Mamber testified in support of the bill. This is the first year MPP has funded medical marijuana work in Delaware, and we're making rapid progress.
  
  
• On May 27, the Illinois Senate passed a medical marijuana bill by 30-28. MPP has been lobbying and organizing in the state since 2004, and this year, we ramped up the pressure — running TV ads featuring two patients and generating more than 4,000 e-mails and 3,600 calls to legislators. After the Senate victory, a House committee swiftly approved the bill, but the legislature recessed only three days later. We have until the end of 2010 to pass the bill this session.
  
  
• In New Hampshire, MPP has retained a top lobbying firm and grassroots organizer to pass a medical marijuana bill, and it looks like the legislature will send Gov. John Lynch (D) the legislation to sign later this month. Back in March, the House passed the bill, 234-138, and on April 29, the Senate passed an amended version, 14-10. This is the first time either chamber has approved medical marijuana legislation, and we need your help for a final push, complete with radio ads, to urge Gov. Lynch (D) to let the bill become law.
  
  
• Our chances of passing medical marijuana legislation in New York this year got more complicated last week, when the state Senate tumbled into a major leadership battle. The Assembly has passed similar legislation twice (in 2007 and 2008), but it still needs to be voted on by the Senate, where it has already passed one committee. We've built an impressive coalition: Virtually the entire state medical community, including the state medical society, nurses' association, and hospice association, support medical marijuana access. And 76% of New Yorkers support the bill, including 55% of Conservative Party members (the state party to the right of Republicans).

This is amazing progress for just a few months. Our state lobbying efforts are costing quite a bit of money, but it's all paying off. Would you please donate today so we can continue pushing hard in these states?

Make a one-time donation to our work

Become a monthly pledger to provide us with ongoing funding for our work

Together, we're on the path to victory, but we need your help to keep going.

Thank you,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $2.35 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2009. This means that your donation today will be doubled.

The Earth Is Hiring: Paul Hawken's Inspiring Commencement Speech

By Paul Hawken, YES! Magazine. Posted June 11, 2009.

"Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."

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Editor's Note: The follow in the Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009 at University of Portland.

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.

Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food -- but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

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Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making that moment possible. Interested? Read an interview with Paul Hawken and David Korten.

NORAD and FAA committed perjury to 9/11 commission‏

newsviewsnolose@yahoogroups.com on behalf of dick.mcmanus

NORAD and FAA committed perjury to 9/11 Commission

It is now being reported that investigators for the 9/11 Commission drafted a memo in April 2004 stating they believed that the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lied to commission investigators by indicating the military's readiness was sufficient on 9/11. Commission staffer John Azzerello is reported to have given the memo to Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, a leading neocon, who then "buried it."

Commission investigators wanted a strongly worded criminal referral on NORAD and FAA perjury sent to the Justice Department but Zelikow downplayed the complaint and later told Phil Shenon, the author of "The Commission" and New York Times reporter, that he did not know of the criminal referral issue at the time.

CHENEY LED BRIEFINGS OF LAWMAKERS TO DEFEND INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES


June 3, 2009 Cheney's role in helping handle intelligence issues in the Bush
administration -- particularly his advocacy for the use of aggressive
methods and warrantless wiretapping against alleged terrorists -- has
been well documented. But his hands-on role in defending the
interrogation program to lawmakers has not been previously publicized.

An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with
lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared calculated to
give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program.
Cheney left it to the professional briefers to outline the
interrogation practices, while he mounted an impassioned defense of
the program.

For all but seven of the 40 meetings listed, however, the documents
outlined which agency led the briefing and which provided support.
And on at least five occasions, they spelled out that then-CIA
Director Michael V. Hayden led the classified meetings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060203999_pf.html

Read Pat Buchanan's book Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War and learn about the Germans in WWII who didn't have any military capability to attack England after the Battle of Britain, no air superiority and no ships to transport troops or equipment to England. Learn about how Hitler allowed the British to evacuate their troops from the shores of Dunkirk and flee back to England when Hitler's army could have killed them all on the beach. Learn about how the Germans didn't have a blue water navy and only a limited number of subs. Learn about why the US should have just let the Nazis and Stalinist kill off each other. Learn about how WWI was another war we should never have gotten involved in

CENTCOM now employs 242,657 contractors in its area of
responsibility

June 1, 2009: In a brief summary based on recently released reports about
contractors in the employ of the Pentagon in connection to the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, reported
that "According to new statistics released by the Pentagon, with
Barack Obama as commander in chief, there has been a 23% increase in
the number of 'Private Security Contractors' working for the
Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29%
increase in Afghanistan, which 'correlates to the build up of forces'
in the country. . . . Overall, contractors (armed and unarmed) now
make up approximately 50% of the 'total force in Centcom AOR [Area of
Responsibility].' This means there are a whopping 242,657 contractors
working on these two U.S. wars."

Source via Joe Thompson thru Mark Jensen

http://rebelreports.com/post/116277092/obama-has-250-000-contractors-in-iraq-and-afghan

===============

6a. World wheat output forecast

2005-2006: 605 million tons

2006-2007: 596 million tons, due to "dry and hot weather around the globe,"

2007-2008 ??

2008-2009 ??

2009-2010: ?? down about 4 percent from last year projected Jun 09

19 percent decline in production in the United States, a 9 percent decline in the European Union and a 27 percent decline in Ukraine

6b. US Corn output ( over one-third of total global output)

2007-2008: 791.63 million tons

2008-2009: ?? declined
2009-2010: about 785.1 million tons = a decline of 7 % from 2008-2009, but still the third highest total on record == – projected Jun 09

6c. Rice output:

2009-2010: A small increase – a little more than 5 million tons -- in total global production will not
represent a major increase in supplies projected Jun 09

7. World's food stocks enough to feed the world for: (world grain supply*)

1999-2000: 116 days (115 days)* average since 1960 has been about 79 days' supply. Today, it's about 49 days.

2006: 57 days (predicted) prices up 20%

2007-08: 53 day source: MAY 11, 2007http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/wasde/wasde-05-11-2007.txt

fall of 2007 45 days source: June 28. 2007 Source: Agora newsletter

2009-2010: Decreased production in both the corn and wheat sectors and nearly steady rice production could make 2009 an interesting year for commodities.

June 2, 2009 http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090602_global_economy_summer_harvest_and_global_food_supplies

So what went wrong with the Republican Party? It's all about religion!

Two religions have destroyed the Republican Party: evangelical Christianity and Christian/Jewish Zionism. Evangelical Christianity created the Religious Right which forever linked the Republican Party to the anti-abortion, anti-sex education, anti-evolution and anti-gay crusades.

Zionism, American-style is a politicized version of a religion. The neo-con side got traction when religious Jews became Zionists and when religious Christians (evangelicals) hopped aboard to hasten the "Rapture."

The result of the Republican Party being taken over by these religious groups was that we got George W. Bush. His idea of governance was a hands-off, all-government-is-bad-government neglect, combined with an unnecessary war in Iraq inspired by a form of Zionism that sees all Arabs as a threat, Islam as evil, America as an exceptional place duty-bound "by God" to keep the world safe for evangelical Christian "values," on the one hand, and militant Christian and Jewish Zionism on the other.

What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News.

The Republican party today serves the narrowly defined religious interests of two angry and fearful Jewish/Evangelical minorities who are themselves bastardized offshoots of their Christian and Jewish traditions.

Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical (!) and 15 percent said they are not.

The results of a new Zogby poll are interesting. They suggest that Obama would have strong support for a US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means tough pressure on Israel. According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/republican-disaster----th_b_205388.html

Will Congress declare war on Western Pakistan? Or did Congress authorize "hot pursuit" from Afghanistan into adjacent countries? Does the Constitution still require Congress to vote whether the US will go to war?

The Obama administration is increasingly treating its growing intervention in Pakistan as a separate counter-insurgency war for which it is demanding the same kind of extraordinary military powers obtained by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq.

$400 million requested by the Pentagon for a new Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund

The US government, still without a clearly articulated strategy, calls for a heavily militarized escalation of forces into a conflict that cannot be resolved through military means, we would be well advised to arm ourselves with the wisdom of the historical record. As it now stands, President Obama is being led into the graveyard of empires by the same misguided philosophers of war that helped spawn this disaster in the first place.

Afghanistan's Hindu and Buddhist roots and the invasion attempts of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Arab armies, the British armies and about a dozen other major intruders.

Already on the brink of implosion-- in the words of Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, "give the Soviets their Vietnam" -- the USSR collapsed soon after the conflict. But along with its demise came one of the most unfathomable humanitarian catastrophes in modern history. One million Afghans were killed during the war. Five million fled to neighboring countries. Two million were internally displaced. The nation's infrastructure was reduced to rot and rubble, and the landscape was scarred and pockmarked with landmines, many of which still claim victims today. In addition to the dead, over four million Afghans were horribly maimed or disabled.

http://www.truthout.org/053109Y

In the course of the discussion, Cheney used the exact words "blew up the World Trade Center " in reference to the al Qaeda network which, according to the official version, masterminded the 9-11 operation but absolutely did not "blow up" the World Trade Center since that implies implanted explosives and an inside job of some kind.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the man who killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11, blew up the World Trade Center , attacked the Pentagon, tried to blow up the White House and the Capitol Building . . . an evil man," said Cheney to Schieffer.

In December 2004, Rumsfeld stated the following from a podium when visiting Iraq, as excerpted in a brief video clip: "And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon. . . ."

The claims by some independent researchers that the real plane was shot down at a different, but nearby, location in Pennsylvania have always been dismissed by higher-ups in government and big media. Some say a cruise missile or similar device was shot into the ground, as a diversion, at the official "crash scene" in Shanksville, which left no distinct plane wreckage behind.

Comment: And the coroner couldn't even find teeth in the hole in the ground.

Also, in an Oct. 12, 2001, statement by Rumsfeld in Parade magazine, he refers to "the missile" that damaged the Pentagon, even though the official story says Islamic terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, and there was no missile. Again, there was no discernable commercial airliner wreckage. Even the lawn by the impact site was undisturbed.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/terrorists_911_177.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.

Iran's Twitter Revolution

Iran's Twitter Revolution

By The Nation

Forget CNN or any of the major American "news" networks.
If you want to get the latest on the opposition protests in Iran,
you should be reading blogs, watching YouTube or following
Twitter updates from Tehran, minute-by-minute.

The Public Option

June 16, 2009

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Nate Carlile

HEALTH CARE

The Public Option

Few issues are more pressing to President Obama right now than health care reform. As the New York Times recently reported, Obama has decided to "exert greater control over the health care debate," with an "intense push for legislation" that includes "speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers." Yesterday's speech to the American Medical Association (AMA) was a major part of this effort, since the group recently registered its opposition to the creation of a public insurance plan -- a key plank of Obama's health reform efforts. "The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend," Obama told the nearly 500 attendees at the address. Indeed, as The Wonk Room's Igor Volsky has explained, the public option remains the best way to "restore competition into the consolidated health insurance market, lower health care premiums, lead the way in innovation, and improve health quality." (The Wonk Room has put together a document debunking the top myths about the public option here, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund has a new analysis showing how few health insurance choices most Americans currently have.)

DOCTORS SUPPORT A PUBLIC PLAN: The AMA is opposed to the creation of a public health insurance option, claiming that it "threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans." While the organization has tried to walk back its criticism, it still seems to oppose the essential aims of a public plan: the ability to negotiate cheaper rates with providers and push private insurers to do the same. Obama's speech yesterday before the AMA's House of Delegates -- "the burial ground of health overhaul efforts past" -- was thus widely anticipated. In fact, he is the first president to address the group since Ronald Reagan in 1983. In the speech, Obama stayed firm in his commitment to a robust public option. "Insurance companies have expressed support for the idea of covering the uninsured -- and I welcome their willingness to engage constructively in the reform debate. I'm glad they're at the table," Obama said. "But what I refuse to do is simply create a system where insurance companies suddenly have a whole bunch more customers on Uncle Sam's dime but still fail to meet their responsibilities." Not all doctors are on the AMA's side. Although the group still calls itself the "house of medicine," only about half its members are actually practicing physicians and the group "represents maybe 20% of physicians in this country." Indeed, doctors nationwide have begun to distance themselves from the AMA. Doctors For America -- a grassroots organization representing doctors in all fifty states -- recently issued a statement and hosted a conference call in support of a robust public option.

THE GHOSTS OF 1993: Part of the drive behind Obama's recent "push" on health care legislation, according to the New York Times, is the memory of President Clinton's failure to pass reform. Yesterday, The Progress Report joined other progressive bloggers for a small meeting with Clinton at his office in Harlem. He said that Obama has a far better chance of passing health care legislation than he himself did in 1993, when Clinton faced a hostile political environment and severe budget constraints. "I had just passed a budget in which we raised taxes on the wealthy, cut taxes on the working poor, and were on track to reducing the deficit, and...we couldn't raise taxes again," explained Clinton. "So when I had an employer-mandate that in effect, guaranteed that the health insurance companies would be joined by the small business community -- at least the organized small business community -- which made it harder to pass." Clinton said that he believes Obama will work with the Senate to achieve the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. But he urged Obama to be ready to use the budget reconciliation process if necessary -- which would require just 51 votes to pass health care -- to achieve a bill that would ensure universal coverage, cut costs, improve the delivery system, and boost preventive care. "If he can't get a good bill, I wouldn't give away the store on that," he said.

CO-OPTING THE DEBATE: Although the AMA opposes the robust public option that Obama is proposing, it has said that it is "willing to consider other variations of the public plan that are currently under discussion in Congress." One of the alternatives that has received the most attention is Sen. Kent Conrad's (D-ND) idea of consumer-owned health cooperatives that would "be subject to the same standards [as private plans]." But co-opts, however defined, are not a substitute for a public plan with the capacity to "improve health quality by championing payment innovations or other delivery system reforms." As Volsky writes, "After all, one of the advantages of a truly national public plan is its ability to improve care quality by spearheading reforms and innovations."

TORTURE -- 9/11 MASTERMIND SAYS HE MADE UP STORIES IN RESPONSE TO TORTURE: Newly declassified documents show that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad said he lied about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden after being subjected to torture. "I make up stories," Muhammad said when talking about his reaction to the techniques personally authorized by President Bush. When told to reveal the location of bin Laden, Muhammad said he would relent and say, "Yes, he is in this area." This information "underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, the group that fought for the release of the documents. The documents also undercut Vice President Cheney's assertion that torture techniques resulted in "first-rate intelligence." According to the documents, which include transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Gitmo, detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times, said the CIA told him that "they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden." "They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,'" Zubaydah said. Ben Wizner, the ACLU's lead lawyer in the lawsuit, said there was no reason to keep the reports of detainee abuse secret. "There is only one explanation for the continued suppression. It is not to protect national security, it is to protect the CIA from accountability," Wizner said.

2 on Healthcare

Kevin Zeese | Congress to Transfer Hundreds of Billions 
in Tax Dollars to the Insurance Industry
http://www.truthout.org/061609M

Kevin Zeese, Truthout: "Yesterday, as Sen. Tom Harkin
(D-Iowa) left the health-care hearing room, he leaned
over to me and said: 'I used to sell insurance. The
basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive
the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools -
separate health care plans - and that is why health
care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient
and less expensive and one pool would be the least
expensive. That's why single payer is the answer.
' Nothing like common sense."


Obama Defends Government-Sponsored Health Insurance Program
http://www.truthout.org/061609O

Ceci Connolly, The Washington Post: "President Obama,
the American Medical Association on Monday, offered a
forceful defense of creating a controversial new
government-sponsored health insurance program as part
of a broad overhaul of the nation's system. Speaking
to a group that has voiced strong reservations about
the concept, he said: 'The public option is not your
enemy; it is your friend.' In some of his strongest
language to date, Obama took on critics who argue that
a new public insurance plan will undermine the private
sector and lead to a European-style single payer health
system, calling those attacks a 'Trojan horse.'"

June 16:

1884 : First roller coaster in America opens

On this day in 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success and by the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country.

Coney Island, a name believed to have come from the Dutch Konijn Eilandt, or Rabbit Island, is a tract of land along the Atlantic Ocean discovered by explorer Henry Hudson in 1609. The first hotel opened at Coney Island in 1829 and by the post-Civil War years, the area was an established resort with theaters, restaurants and a race track. Between 1897 and 1904, three amusement parks sprang up at Coney Island--Dreamland, Luna Park and Steeplechase. By the 1920s, Coney Island was reachable by subway and summer crowds of a million people a day flocked there for rides, games, sideshows, the beach and the two-and-a-half-mile boardwalk, completed in 1923.

The hot dog is said to have been invented at Coney Island in 1867 by Charles Feltman. In 1916, a nickel hot dog stand called Nathan's was opened by a former Feltman employee and went on to become a Coney Island institution and international franchise. Today, Nathan's is famous not only for its hot dogs but its hot dog-eating contest, held each Fourth of July in Coney Island. In 2006, Takeru Kobayashi set a new record when he ate 53.75 hot dogs with buns in 12 minutes.

Roller coasters and amusement parks experienced a decline during the Great Depression and World War II, when Americans had less cash to spend on entertainment. Finally, in 1955, the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, signaled the advent of the modern theme park and a rebirth of the roller coaster. Disneyland's success sparked a wave of new parks and coasters. By the 1970s, parks were competing to create the most thrilling rides. In 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, introduced the Kingda Ka roller coaster, the world's tallest (at 456 feet) and fastest (at 128 mph).

By the mid-1960s, the major amusement parks at Coney Island had shut down and the area acquired a seedy image. Nevertheless, Coney Island remains a tourist attraction and home to the Cyclone, a wooden coaster that made its debut there in 1927. Capable of speeds of 60 mph and with an 85-foot drop, the Cyclone is one of the country's oldest coasters in operation today. Though a real-estate developer recently announced the building of a new $1.5 billion year-round resort at Coney Island that will include a 4,000-foot-long roller coaster, an indoor water park and a multi-level carousel, the Cyclone's owners have said they plan to keep the historic coaster open for business.

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General Interest
1884 : First roller coaster in America opens
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihVideoCategory&id=52616
1958 : Leader of Hungarian uprising executed
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5096
1963 : First woman in space
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6930
1977 : Brezhnev is Soviet president
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5097

American Revolution
1738 : Patriot printer, publisher and postmistress, Mary Katharine Goddard, born
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=723