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A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin
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The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state’s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors.
The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.
In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms.
Snake breeder advertisement from Reptile magazine
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Unpaid jobs: The new normal?
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"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they’re going to outperform, they’re going to try to please, they’re going to be creative," says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it’s huge. Especially if you’re a small business."
In the last three years, Fallis has used about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations. She’s convinced it’s the wave of the future in human resources. "Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm," she says.
Guys this is America, where you’re free to work for free and die of curable diseases. If you don’t like freedom, why don’t you move to Europe and see how you like the tyranny of government-provided healthcare and a guaranteed decent standard of living.
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Worse Is Better
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Wow. The GOP prescription for higher employment is actually quite spectacular — it’s a thing of many levels, an ignorance wrapped in a fallacy.
Huge payout over US priests sex-scandals
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The Pacific Northwest chapter of the Roman Catholic Church’s Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million to settle more than 500 child sexual abuse claims against priests in five states, attorneys have said.
The decision on Friday compels a payout by the Society of Jesus in the Oregon Province, and is part of an agreement to resolve its two-year-old bankruptcy case. Lawyers for the victims said it is also the largest ever payout by a Catholic religious order such as the Jesuits.
Let’s talk about sex – to four-year-olds
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My son is three years old; he is learning to use the potty and brush his teeth at the moment. Next year, however, when he starts primary school, he will get his first lessons in sex education, during the so-called Lentekriebels week – the Dutch word for “spring itching” or “spring butterflies”. This is not a joke, nor am I bringing up my offspring in a hippy commune. We live in a quiet middle-class neighbourhood in Amsterdam. Lentekriebels is a government-subsidised project for children aged four to 12 that takes place every year in hundreds of primary schools all over the Netherlands. This year’s Lentekriebels has just finished, with an exhibition about relationships and sexuality in hundreds of schools all over the Netherlands.[..]
There is much to be said for the Dutch approach. Official figures show that the pregnancy rate here among teenage girls, 5.3 per thousand, is one of the lowest in Europe. The explanation is believed to be the open approach towards sexuality. And we see similarly low numbers when it comes to abortions and STDs.
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Twitter / George Bray
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Your mobile phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launch a bird into pigs.
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G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether
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General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
All these poor, poor corporations, being driven out of business by oppressive tax schemes. Thank goodness there’s a whole raft of business-friendly politicians finally installed in office who can give them the tax breaks they so desperately need to get the economy back on track!
3.2 billion = 64,000 50k/yr jobs.
Tell GE to take a hike, hire 64,000 people to build infrastructure, and get some of that 50k back in income taxes.
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Cartoons
Le duo des chats
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iPad 2: Wife Says No, but Apple Says Yes
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[Apple's] focus this week has been to troubleshoot all the iPad 2s that customers are returning to the stores. One iPad came back with a post it note on it that said "Wife said no." It was escalated as something funny, and two of the VPs got wind of it. They sent the guy an iPad 2 with a note on it that said "Apple said yes."
Meanwhile, in America…
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Urgent leak investigation needed
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Thankfully, AP has granted anonymity to this courageous whistleblower and will hopefully safeguard his identity in the event that a criminal investigation ensues. After all, leaking information that is "classified secret" is a crime which this administration takes very, very seriously.
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“That’s another of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he’s being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.”
— Bernard Woolley Yes, Minister.
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Florida Gov. Rick Scott orders random drug testing of state employees
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Gov. Rick Scott signed an executive order Tuesday that will require random drug testing of many current state employees as well as pre-hire testing for applicants.
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“I’m not sure why Gov. Scott does not know that the policy he recreated by executive order today has already been declared unconstitutional,” ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon said in a statement. “The state of Florida cannot force people to surrender their constitutional rights in order to work for the state. Absent any evidence of illegal drug use, or assigned a safety-sensitive job, people have a right to be left alone.”
Dear ACLU.. not sure why? Scott owns a chain of clinics which provides drug testing services.
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Trademark thought experiment: when should intermediaries be cops?
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A little trademark thought-experiment: under a proposed UN treaty, Internet Service Providers (as well as search engines, social media sites, online auctions, online games, and sites like Etsy and Thingiverse) will be responsible for detecting and interdicting trademark infringement and helping punish infringers by retaining and providing their personal information on demand from a trademark holder, without a court order.
Now, many coffee shops today are ISPs (that is, one of the kinds of intermediary targetted by this proposal). And many coffee shops today are the locus of trademark infringement — say, when you walk in with your kid clutching a fake Barbie from a stalls market or a blanket in Santee Alley or on Broadway. If you applied this intermediary liability standard to the real world, every barista would have to be on the lookout for this kind of trademark infringement. If someone in the shop were to say, "Hey, I work for Mattel, and that Barbie’s a fake!" it would be the barista’s duty to leap over the counter and take away the fake Barbie.
Imagine the kind of illegal things happening in hotel rooms…..
Supreme Court Weighs Rights Of ‘Deadbeat’ Parents
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The justices are hearing a case testing whether indigent parents who fail to make child support payments may be jailed for as much as a year at a time, without the state providing a lawyer. Though most states provide counsel for those too poor to afford legal help, a minority of states do not, including Florida, Georgia, Maine, Ohio and South Carolina.
The case before the justices comes from South Carolina, where Michael Turner, an indigent father, was jailed for a year for failing to pay child support.
He could have gotten out of jail earlier by paying the nearly $6,000 he owed, but with no money and no job, he could not make the payment. He served the full 12 months.
And how much money did he earn during those 12 months?
It’s a pity the US has a for-profit prison system, or the money towards this guys incarceration could have been spent on helping the kid instead. Oh wait, that would be socialism.
Thousands of Gulf Oil Spill clean-up crew are dying!
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Jennifer Rexford, a BP-hired oil spill cleanup worker has been documenting her condition that is getting worse by the day. Filming herself and her coworkers, all American workers, all are DYING and BP is NOT taking responsibility!
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Work around New York Times 20 article limit
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drag the following bookmarklet onto your bookmarks toolbar.NYTClean And click it any time nytimes.com blocks you on a page. It does nothing on any other website, but clicking it on a blocked NYTimes article will show the content as usual.
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The Return of “From Redmond with Love”
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It has been a tradition ever since Firefox 2: Whenever we ship a major Firefox release, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team sends us a congratulatory cake.
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Email to Wis. gov. initially favored union rights
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Seeking a way to counter a growing protest movement, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker cited his email, confidently declaring that most people writing his office had urged him to eliminate nearly all union rights for state workers.
But an Associated Press analysis of the emails shows that, for close to a week, messages in Walker’s inbox were running roughly 2-to-1 against his plans. The tide did not turn in his favor until shortly after desperate Democrats fled the state to stop a vote they knew they would lose.
How do you know a politician is lying?
His lips are moving.
next election, my vote is going to the ventriloquist
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South Dakota House Bill 1217 signed into law
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South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard has signed into law bill 1217 [pdf], which requires a three-day waiting period and mandatory counseling from a “pregnancy help center” before a woman may obtain an abortion.The law provides for several requirements:
Section 3: No abortion may be scheduled until a licensed physician has personally met with the woman (referred to throughout the bill as “the pregnant mother”), and the schedule must be at least 72 hours after the completion of this appointment.
Section 3.1: The physician must obtain the age of the father of the fetus (“unborn child” in the bill) and determine if the age difference is creating undue coercion
Section 3.3.a: The woman must have a consultation at a “pregnancy help center”Section 5 defines “pregnancy help center”. The requirements to meet this definition include that it “routinely consults with women for the purpose of helping them keep their relationship with their unborn children” (5.1) and “they do not now refer pregnant women for abortions, and have not referred any pregnant women for an abortion at any time in the three years immediately preceding” (5.4). They are permitted to interview the woman about whether or not she is being coerced, but may not discuss religious beliefs (Section 6).
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You need to wait longer to have an abortion than to buy a handgun. No state counseling is required in the event of your desire to own a lethal weapon, and you may carry it openly without a permit. Just saying, pro-lifers.
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Japan nuclear threat: The tsunami is the bigger tragedy
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The apocalyptic visions of destruction brought by the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami have been largely replaced in the media this week by reports of the struggle to control radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
This provides a gripping narrative – a brave team battling to contain the threat, warnings of catastrophe and claims of incompetence, families desperate to protect their children and leave the area.
But perhaps the media coverage tells us more about ourselves than it does about the threat of radiation.
Psychologists have spent years identifying the factors that lead to increased feelings of risk and vulnerability – and escaped radiation from nuclear plants ticks all the boxes.
It is an invisible hazard, mysterious and not understood, associated with dire consequences such as cancer and birth defects. It feels unnatural.
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Piracy: are we being conned?
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This month, a new lobbying group, the Australian Content Industry Group (ACIG), released new statistics to The Age, which claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs.The report claims 4.7 million Australian internet users engaged in illegal downloading and this was set to increase to 8 million by 2016. By that time, the claimed losses to piracy would jump to $5.2 billion a year and 40,000 jobs.
But the report, which is just 12 pages long, is fundamentally flawed. It takes a model provided by an earlier European piracy study (which itself has been thoroughly debunked) and attempts to shoe-horn in extrapolated Australian figures that are at best highly questionable and at worst just made up.
What’s more, the report attempts to provide a five-year forecast based on a single year of data and also attempts to calculate lost Commonwealth tax revenue. It suggests there is a direct correlation between internet traffic growth and lost jobs in the content industry – but includes no new research into jobs in the entertainment industry to back this up.
“The main objective is to lobby politicians with this and to scare the public into compliance,” IBRS analyst Guy Cranswick said.
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AZ Senate President Russell Pearce
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Libya: US fighter jet crash lands in field near Benghazi
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The two crew members on the F-15E fighter jet both ejected, suffering minor injuries.
One was quickly picked up by a US military helicopter. The other is said to be "safe" after being rescued by Libyan rebels.
Libya. The Movie, Coming next fall. Staring Nicolas Cage.
A Rule of Thumb: Pricing Should Be Simple
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Twitter / Dan Kaminsky
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Ah, Fark headlines. "AT&T is getting married to T-Mobile. There will be no reception afterwards"
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I’m surprised they bother with the FOI stuff. Lying, exaggerating and invention of facts is nothing to these b’tard sons of Karl Rove. Perhaps they’ve run out of ideas to actually lie about. Like a frigging dog whistle, their followers just follow the sound of incoherent ranting. Sad state of affairs.
Meanwhile, across the border, a leader of the opposition in the Canadian election has called the current Prime Minister “a liar” causing a collective sharp intake of breath, “Ooh!”
Sue, I like looking north for an example of lovely American Civilization – Call me naive? After reading the same bully tactic is being used up there, I certainly feel more so:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/936704–tories-accused-of-digging-up-dirt-on-liberal-profs
Back to the venerable question – how do you know when a politician is lying? Their lips move…