Our Spelunker-in-Chief has discovered another cave. Just when I thought there was some hope that he would start standing up to his Republican critics, my optimism was dashed. On December 24th it was announced that outlined a new policy that would pay doctors to council patients about end of life care that was outlined in Medicare.
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.
The move is an abrupt shift, coming just days after the new policy took effect on Jan. 1.
Many doctors and providers of hospice care had praised the regulation, which listed “advance care planning” as one of the services that could be offered in the “annual wellness visit” for Medicare beneficiaries.
While administration officials cited procedural reasons for changing the rule, it was clear that political concerns were also a factor. The renewed debate over advance care planning threatened to become a distraction to administration officials who were gearing up to defend the health law against attack by the new Republican majority in the House.
This reversal removes this valued conversation with your doctor from your annual physical. This is the government getting between you and your doctor about your treatment, the treatment that you want, or in some cases might not want, when you reach the end of your life and might not be able to make those decisions for yourself.
Rule No. 1: When you make policy decisions based on “The Republicans might attack us on this!” then you haven’t just lost politically; you’ve betrayed the things you allegedly believed in.
What’s particularly maddening about this isn’t just the cowardice; it’s the fact that this is a debate Democrats can easily turn to their advantage. First, it’s important to note that unlike in many cases, the press has taken a pretty firm pro-truth position on this issue, which sets an important context for how whatever discussion there ends up being would play out. Reports about it have overwhelmingly declared the “death panel” line to be false. It was PolitiFact’s 2009 “Lie of the Year.” Seriously — take a look at how it’s been reported. The press has done a good job on this one. And the main proponent of the idea, Sarah Palin, is one of the most unpopular politicians in America
(emphasis mine)
If this is Obama standing up to Republicans, I don’t have a lot of positive feelings about the next two years.
George Carlin said it bluntly a few years ago, and it was dismissed as comedy by more than a few who saw that it wasn’t – who saw that he he was using the comedic stage as a platform to deliver a serious warning, to pass on the truth as he saw it clearly:
They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, they’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting f*cked by a system that threw them overboard 30 f*ckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers – obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they’re coming for your social security money.
They want your f*ckin’ retirement money. They want it back. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.
Carlin was a unique talent – he had a stage presence that was fun to listen to and he had a way with phrasing and delivery that made the depressing message he had to pass on a little easier to swallow than dry facts would have.
But the dry and cold hard facts of the situation Carlin so eloquently described, unpleasant as they may be, are as much if not more important to know if anything is to be done, if the American people are ever to rise up, exert the power they have, and take back control of their country and their own destiny.
In the past week or so we’ve learned of a few attempts by various people to address from various angles some specific aspects of the overall problem Carlin ranted about.
We’ve heard veteran war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges note as recently as two days after Christmas 2010 that “We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse” and that over that past decade or so “Our manufacturing base has been dismantled” while “Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college.”
Chris does his best to warn that “Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit” but clearly points out what is obvious to many but to not nearly enough that “The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.”
The other day we heard Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri and author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” Michael Hudson talk with The Real News Networks’ Paul Jay about the 800+ empire of military bases the U.S. has established around the globe, about how all of the money that the military spends abroad is spent on foreign economies and is then “siphon[ed] up into the central banks. And the central banks would have nothing to do with these dollars but to keep their currency stable by recycling the dollars into US Treasury bills.” and about how “If it weren’t for the military deficit, America would have had to finance its own domestic budget deficit. It’s been foreigners that are financing the budget deficit.”
Hudson concluded with the observation that “Now that foreigners are essentially saying, we don’t want any more dollars, we’re not going to fund your deficit, all of a sudden they think: who’s going to fund the deficit if not foreign central banks? The answer is: American labor, the American middle class and working families are going to fund it, not the military.”
It appears the rest of the world has had enough of financing it’s own encirclement and subjugation by the U.S. military, and that from here on in it is you who is going to be paying that bill, along with a few other bills.
It also appears that Carlin’s “owners” seem to think that you will continue happily to be their personal ATM machine even if you have to go hungry – groceries being the luxury they are for many these days, while Jeannette Wicks-Lim at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) has concluded from her recent economic research that America has arrived at a point where most minimum wage earners can no longer afford the basic necessities of life in America, and while she tries valiantly to propose combining minimum wage and earned income tax credit policies to guarantee a decent living wage for all, few inside the beltway bubble, or anywhere else for that matter, listen if they even hear her.
William K. Black is professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri. Nearly two years ago, in an interview with Bill Moyers in April 2009, Black did his best to get the message and warning out that the U.S. banking collapse was driven by massive fraud, that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was covering up systemic U.S. bank insolvency – that American banks and credit agencies had conspired to create a system in which so-called “liars loans” could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive fraud at the epicenter of US finance.
[Black] equated the entire US financial system to a giant “ponzi scheme” and charged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, like Secretary Henry Paulson before him, of “covering up” the truth.
“Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?” asked Moyers.
“Absolutely, because they are scared to death,” he said. “All right? They’re scared to death of a collapse. They’re afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we’ll run screaming to the exits.
Black teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics. A former financial regulator, he held several senior regulatory positions during the Savings & Loan debacle, and is author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One (2005)” in which he focuses on the role of “control fraud” in financial crises. Black developed the concept of control fraud as frauds in which a corporate CEO or a head of state uses uses the entity he or she controls as a “weapon” to commit fraud. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined.
Black talks in this video interview released this morning with Paul Jay of The Real News Network, calls the current Republicans’ deficit ceiling bluff a direct attack on Social Security, and “an insane thing to do”, but goes on in his analysis to say that “it’s precisely the threat that the Republicans use, time after time, and they use it not because they’re insane but because it works, because it causes Obama and some other Democrats to suddenly give them things that they want“. In so many words, if the Democrats cave once again to Republican blackmail, it will be yet another example of the failure of Obama’s seemingly all or nothing drive for “bipartisanship” with forces decimating the U.S. economy, and it will be once again you who pays for the failure, on top of all the other bills being shoveled onto you by Carlin’s “owners” of America.
R.S., better known in the blogs as One Pissed Off Liberal, asked earlier today in Long live the rebels! that “As Americans, do we have an enormous tolerance for governmental lies wired into our psyches? Do they somehow get a ‘we’re the government’ pass on any and all violations of the law or good conscience? Are we, nevertheless, always and forever going to give them the benefit of the doubt? No matter what outrageous lies they tell us? No matter how much they steal? No matter who they torture? No matter who or how many they kill?” and pointed out that “It’s time to quit accepting, defending or even embracing what these bastards have done and are doing still. It’s time to stand up against these monsters. It’s time to do the right thing.”
Fortunately, there are some in academia and other places scattered few and far between who had internalized OPOL’s message before he wrote it. I’ve quoted from a few of them above. They write of their own warnings and of their own proposed solutions for some aspects of the overall problem, but can there be enough social pressure on the real owners of America and their employees (political appointees?) in Washington to force real changes without all of the population rising up to support and stand behind the lonely and too often thankless work they do?
These may be what seems to be overwhelming and insurmountable problems for a country and for you to face.
There are awesome forces arrayed against the population, it seems.
What can be done? What can you do?
Here is one suggestion from Rebecca Solnit, courtesy of the remorselessly upbeat Tom Engelhardt, shortly before Christmas 2010. You can be, as you’ve always been, part of the “Shadow Government” over which Carlin’s “owners” have no control and are most afraid of:
Who wouldn’t agree that our society is capitalistic, based on competition and selfishness? As it happens, however, huge areas of our lives are also based on gift economies, barter, mutual aid, and giving without hope of return (principles that have little or nothing to do with competition, selfishness, or scarcity economics). Think of the relations between friends, between family members, the activities of volunteers or those who have chosen their vocation on principle rather than for profit.
Think of the acts of those — from daycare worker to nursing home aide or the editor of TomDispatch.com — who do more, and do it more passionately, than they are paid to do; think of the armies of the unpaid who are at “work” counterbalancing and cleaning up after the invisible hand and making every effort to loosen its grip on our collective throat. Such acts represent the relations of the great majority of us some of the time and a minority of us all the time. They are, as the two feminist economists who published together as J. K. Gibson-Graham noted, the nine-tenths of the economic iceberg that is below the waterline.
Capitalism is only kept going by this army of anti-capitalists, who constantly exert their powers to clean up after it, and at least partially compensate for its destructiveness. Behind the system we all know, in other words, is a shadow system of kindness, the other invisible hand. Much of its work now lies in simply undoing the depredations of the official system. Its achievements are often hard to see or grasp.
[snip}
The official economic arrangements and the laws that enforce them ensure that hungry and homeless people will be plentiful amid plenty. The shadow system provides soup kitchens, food pantries, and giveaways, takes in the unemployed, evicted, and foreclosed upon, defends the indigent, tutors the poorly schooled, comforts the neglected, provides loans, gifts, donations, and a thousand other forms of practical solidarity, as well as emotional support. In the meantime, others seek to reform or transform the system from the inside and out, and in this way, inch by inch, inroads have been made on many fronts over the past half century.
The terrible things done, often in our name and thanks in part to the complicity of our silence or ignorance, matter. They are what wells up daily in the news and attracts our attention. In estimating the true make-up of the world, however, gauging the depth and breadth of this other force is no less important. What actually sustains life is far closer to home and more essential, even if deeper in the shadows, than market forces and much more interesting than selfishness.
Most of the real work on this planet is not done for profit: it’s done at home, for each other, for affection, out of idealism, and it starts with the heroic effort to sustain each helpless human being for all those years before fending for yourself becomes feasible. Years ago, when my friends started having babies I finally began to grasp just what kind of labor goes into sustaining one baby from birth just to toddlerhood.
If you do the math, with nearly seven billion of us on Earth right now, that means seven billion years of near-constant tending only to get children upright and walking, a labor of love that adds up to more than the age of this planet. That’s not a small force, even if it is only a force of maintenance. Still, the same fierce affection and determination pushes back everywhere at the forces of destruction.
[snip]
We tend to think revolution has to mean a big in-the-streets, winner-take-all battle that culminates with regime change, but in the past half century it has far more often involved a trillion tiny acts of resistance that sometimes cumulatively change a society so much that the laws have no choice but to follow after. Certainly, American society has changed profoundly over the past half century for those among us who are not male, or straight, or white, or Christian, becoming far less discriminatory and exclusionary.
Radicals often speak as though we live in a bleak landscape in which the good has yet to be born, the revolution yet to begin. […] both of them are here, right now, and they always have been. They are represented in countless acts of solidarity and resistance, and sometimes they even triumph. When they don’t — and that’s often enough — they still do a great deal to counterbalance the official organization of our country and economy. That organization ensures oil spills, while the revolutionaries, if you want to call them that, head for the birds and the beaches, and maybe, while they’re at it, change the official order a little, too.
ABIDJAN (AFP) – Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo will lift a siege on his presidential rival if former rebels protecting him go, a minister said Wednesday, insisting an amnesty for the embattled leader was not on the cards.
Foreign Minister Alcide Djedje said that strongman Gbagbo, who most of the world says lost November’s presidential run-off but has refused to relinquish power, would not go into exile despite offers aimed at ending the crisis.
“It was a question of the New Forces soldiers leaving the hotel, a condition for lifting the blockade,” Djedje told journalists, denying Gbagbo had said he would lift the siege as reported by African mediators.
ABIDJAN (AFP) – Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s troops kept up their blockade of his presidential rival’s headquarters Wednesday, despite a vow to lift the siege as a prelude to talks to resolve the stand-off.
African leaders struggling to mediate an end to the crisis had said on Tuesday that Gbagbo promised to allow free access to the hotel that has become home to Alassane Ouattara, the man the world says won a November election.
With no visible progress in the confrontation between the two presidents that has seen at least 180 people killed, mediators said that “there should be no vacuum” as they scrambled to send another crisis mission to Abidjan.
LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) – Thousands of Pakistanis braved tight security on Wednesday to attend the funeral of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, following the country’s most high-profile assassination in three years.
The 66-year-old provincial governor of Punjab, one of the country’s most outspoken voices against religious extremism, was shot dead by a member of his own security detail outside an Islamabad cafe in broad daylight on Tuesday.
His killing horrified Pakistan’s moderate elite and supporters of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), but was welcomed by members of the powerful religious right, sending shock waves through an already fragile government.
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – The governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was shot dead near his Islamabad home on Tuesday, in a brazen assassination that threatens to sink the nuclear-armed country ever deeper into chaos.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who is facing a fight for survival after losing his parliamentary majority, immediately appealed for calm with memories fresh of riots sparked by previous political killings in Pakistan.
Officials said Salman Taseer, 66, who was appointed governor of Pakistan’s most populous and politically important province in 2008, was killed by one of his bodyguards opposed to his public criticism of controversial blasphemy laws.
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) – Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq on Wednesday to a hero’s welcome in his stronghold of Najaf after nearly four years outside the country, an AFP correspondent said.
“Moqtada al-Sadr has returned to his home in Najaf. He arrived about 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) with several leaders from the Sadr movement,” a source in his movement said, adding that Sadr had returned to stay.
Hundreds of supporters took to the streets of Al-Hanana neighbourhood in Najaf, the central Iraqi shrine city where Sadr’s home is located, to celebrate the cleric’s return watched on by security forces.
MADRID (AFP) – Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang backed Europe in its sovereign debt battle on Wednesday, starting a three-nation tour by promising to buy more Spanish government bonds.
Li, widely tipped to be the next premier, delivered a significant vote of confidence given China’s world record foreign reserves of 2.648 trillion dollars (2.0 trillion euros), much of it in euros.
On his visit to Spain, Germany and Britain he is supporting Europe’s recovery efforts and seeking to soothe global market fears of a debt quagmire spreading from Greece and Ireland to Portugal and even Spain.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A tense new era of political power-sharing dawned in Washington on Wednesday as a new US Congress convened with President Barack Obama’s Republican foes in control of the House of Representatives.
Newly minted Republican House Speaker John Boehner warned lawmakers they faced “great challenges” as his party prepared a freshly invigorated assault on Obama’s agenda with an eye on thwarting his 2012 reelection bid.
“We will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, engage it openly, honestly, and respectfully,” he said after taking over from Nancy Pelosi, the first woman US speaker and now Democratic minority leader.
CHICAGO (AFP) – The Detroit Three US automakers outpaced most of their rivals in 2010 and on Tuesday predicted strong sales growth in 2011 as they reap the rewards of years of painful restructuring.
The strong 2010 results — Ford up 19 percent, Chrysler up 17 percent and General Motors up six percent — come as overall industry sales recover from the worst downturn in decades which thrust GM and Chrysler into government-backed bankruptcies.
They also come at the expense of Toyota, which saw sales remain at depressed 2009 levels after its once-stellar reputation was damaged by a series of mass safety recalls.
LAS VEGAS (AFP) – As the top US consumer electronics trade show prepares to open this week, organizers are forecasting that global gadget sales may top one trillion dollars this year for the first time ever.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said Tuesday that worldwide annual spending on mobile phones, computers, television sets and other items is expected to rise 10 percent in 2011 to 964 billion dollars.
“We may very well hit the trillion mark,” said Steve Koenig, director of industry analysis for CEA, organizer of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which kicks off in Las Vegas on Thursday.
DOHA (AFP) – Australia went some way to easing the pain of losing out to Qatar in the 2022 World Cup race by being awarded the 2015 Asian Cup on Wednesday.
Football Federation Australia was the sole candidate for the event but still had to adhere to the formal bidding process by making its final presentation to the Asian Football Confederation’s executive committee.
“Today the AFC met and decided Australia would be the host nation for the 2015 Asian Cup,” AFC president Mohamad bin Hammam said at a press conference in Doha ahead of the 2011 tournament that kicks off here on Friday.
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) – Anti-U.S. Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq on Wednesday from years of self-imposed exile in Iran, after his faction struck a deal to join a new government, Sadrist officials said.
A somewhat diminished maverick whose militia was once viewed by U.S. forces as the greatest threat to Iraq, Sadr’s return could boost Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as he tries to form his second government before a full U.S. withdrawal this year.
Mazan al-Sadi, a Sadrist cleric in Baghdad, said Sadr, whose movement battled U.S. forces and was accused of many sectarian killings after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, was visiting the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, one of President Barack Obama’s closest aides, said on Wednesday he will resign and become an outside adviser for Obama’s re-election campaign as part of a major staff shake-up.
Gibbs, 39, a fierce defender of the president during near-daily White House news briefings, will leave in early February, he told reporters.
A successor to Gibbs is expected to be named within the next couple of weeks. The short list includes Vice President Joe Biden’s top spokesman, Jay Carney, and two of Gibbs’ deputies, Bill Burton and Josh Earnest.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans took power in the House of Representatives on Wednesday with promises of a leaner, more accountable government but softened a pledge of deep and immediate spending cuts that helped them win November’s election.
The Republican takeover sets up potentially fierce battles in the coming months with President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats on spending, debt and healthcare.
Republican John Boehner, from a working class Ohio family of 12 children, was elected House speaker in the new Congress and warned of “hard work and tough decisions” on the economy as the United States recovers slowly from its worst recession since the 1930s.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – John Boehner, the product of a tough upbringing in America’s heartland, will bring a natural mistrust of big government when he takes over as speaker of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The conservative Republican — a former small businessman who worked his way through college as a janitor — will be in a position to slam the brakes on President Barack Obama’s largely liberal agenda, push spending cuts and shake up Washington.
Having led Republicans to victory over Obama’s Democrats in the November congressional elections, Boehner, 61, will be formally chosen by his colleagues as House speaker shortly after the new 112th Congress convenes at noon.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will let the yuan rise about 5 percent against the dollar in 2011 to combat inflation, an official newspaper said on Wednesday, while a former central bank adviser said the country needs to free up the currency.
But a Commerce Ministry official warned that any appreciation would do little to narrow China’s trade surplus with the United States, a constant irritant in the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
The yuan’s gains would be particularly strong in the first half of this year, the China Securities Journal said in a front-page editorial.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, bracing for battles with Republicans over the budget and other issues, is weighing several staff changes, including the hiring of a new top economic adviser and the possible selection of a new chief of staff.
Gene Sperling, a trusted Obama aide with first-hand experience with budget and economic clashes in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, is the front-runner to succeed Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council.
Obama is also considering tapping J.P. Morgan Chase executive William Daley as White House chief of staff.
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Republican state legislatures are ramping up a crackdown on illegal immigrants this year, in a concerted drive that risks alienating potential business allies and Latino voters.
At least seven states are tipped to follow Arizona’s controversial push last year to curb illegal immigration, and more than a dozen are harmonizing efforts to cancel birthright citizenship for the U.S. born children of illegal immigrants.
Lawmakers say the cooperation is unprecedented, and responds to a failure by Washington to secure the Mexico border and address the status of nearly 11 million illegal immigrants living in the shadows.
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press
1 hr 8 mins ago
NAJAF, Iraq – Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a fierce opponent of the United States and head of Iraq’s most feared militia, came home Wednesday after nearly four years in self-imposed exile in Iran, welcomed by hundreds of cheering supporters in a return that solidifies the rise of his movement.
Al-Sadr’s presence in Iraq ensures he will be a powerful voice in Iraqi politics as U.S. forces leave the country. He left Iraq in 2007 somewhat as a renegade, a firebrand populist whose militiamen battled American troops and Iraqi forces. He returns a more legitimized figure, leading an organized political movement that is a vital partner in the new government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Sadr can wield a bully pulpit to put strong pressure on al-Maliki – and is likely to demand that no American troops remain beyond their scheduled final withdrawal date at the end of this year. His return caused trepidation among many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis who remember vividly the sectarian killings carried out by his militia, the Mahdi Army, and believe he is a tool of Iran.
WASHINGTON – Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary and one of the most visible and forceful advocates for President Barack Obama, is quitting his job to become an outside political adviser, part of what he described as a “major retooling” at the top levels of the of the White House.
The change is among the many expected in the coming days as Obama redefines his leadership team to gear up for a re-election bid and a more powerful Republican Party.
Gibbs said he would be leaving the White House by early February. The top contenders to replace him are two of his deputies, Bill Burton and Josh Earnest, and Jay Carney, who is communications director to Vice President Joe Biden.
WASHINGTON – Newly elected speaker John Boehner hailed the Republican Party’s return to control of the House Wednesday, vowing a more open legislative process but acknowledging that “a great deal of scar tissue has built up on both sides of the aisle.”
GOP lawmakers, who picked up 64 House seats in the November elections, cheered loudly when Boehner defeated Democrat Nancy Pelosi in the roll call for speaker. The veteran Ohio lawmaker’s rise to the speakership was virtually guaranteed by his party’s midterm triumphs, which ended Pelosi’s four-year reign.
The new Senate also convened Wednesday, with Vice President Joe Biden administering the oath to lawmakers he had campaigned for and against last fall. Senators moved quickly to a debate over filibuster rules, with Democratic and Republican leaders accusing each other of obstructing progress and trying to game the parliamentary system.
CLEVELAND – With a deep, refined voice, one that had been sadly misplaced, Ted Williams simply asked for help to get him off the streets.
He’s been heard.
Left homeless after his life and career were ruined by drugs and alcohol, Williams has been offered a job by the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and is being pursued by NFL Films for possible work after he and his compelling tale became an online curiosity.
NEW YORK – Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven became Hall of Famers on Wednesday, the two-time World Series champions easily elected after narrow misses last year.
Sluggers Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell and Juan Gonzalez came nowhere close. Hall voters, for now, seem intent to prevent the cloud of the Steroids Era from covering Cooperstown.
Alomar was picked on 90 percent of the ballots by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The 12-time All-Star won a record 10 Gold Gloves at second base, hit .300 and helped the Toronto Blue Jays win titles in 1992-93.
MOGOSOIA, Romania – Everyone curses the tax man, but Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time are planning to use cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government.
Also among Romania’s newest taxpayers are fortune tellers – but they probably should have seen it coming.
Superstitions are no laughing matter in Romania – the land of the medieval ruler who inspired the “Dracula” tale – and have been part of its culture for centuries. President Traian Basescu and his aides have been known to wear purple on certain days, supposedly to ward off evil.
ISLAMABAD – Lawyers showered the suspected assassin of a liberal Pakistani governor with rose petals as he entered court. Some 170 miles away, the prime minister joined thousands to mourn the loss of the politician, who dared to challenge the demands of Islamic extremists.
The cheers and tears across the country Wednesday underscored Pakistan’s journey over the past several decades from a nation defined by moderate Islam to one increasingly influenced by fundamentalists willing to use violence to impose their views.
Even so-called moderate Muslim scholars praised 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri for allegedly killing Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer on Tuesday in a hail of gunfire while he was supposed to be protecting him as a bodyguard. Qadri later told authorities he acted because of Taseer’s vocal opposition to blasphemy laws that order death for those who insult Islam.
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Run by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, the new center would be a significant step in streamlining targeting operations previously scattered among U.S. and battlefields abroad and giving elite military officials closer access to Washington decision-makers and counterterror experts, the officials said.
The center aims to speed the sharing of information and shorten the time between targeting and military action, said two current and two former U.S. officials briefed on the project. Those officials and others insisted on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified matters.
DENVER – Hibernating bears would be off-limits to Colorado hunters under a new rule state wildlife officials are considering following a debate over whether a 703-pound black bear was sleeping when it was killed in a cave late last year.
The enormous black bear shot in northwestern Colorado set what may be a state record. But it sparked public outrage after the hunter told a newspaper that he tracked the male bear to a cave and shot it after five hours waiting for the animal to emerge.
Though the hunter said the bear was awake and snarled at him, a flurry of angry e-mails and calls to state wildlife authorities resulted.
WASHINGTON – A government watchdog says the Internal Revenue Service is tormenting struggling taxpayers in the midst of a slumping economy by increasing the number of liens the agency has filed against people who owe back taxes.
The IRS filed nearly 1.1 million liens in the budget year that ended in September, a 14 percent jump over the previous year. Liens punish taxpayers and often hurt their ability to pay back taxes, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson said Wednesday in her annual report to Congress.
“By filing a lien against a taxpayer with no money and no assets, the IRS often collects nothing, yet it inflicts long-term harm on the taxpayer by making it harder for him to get back on his feet when he does get a job,” said Olson, an independent watchdog within the IRS. “Absent data that show liens make a meaningful contribution to revenue collection and especially in this economy, I find it unacceptable that the IRS continues to torment financially struggling taxpayers in this way.”
WASHINGTON – The number of poor people in the U.S. is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans – many of them 65 and older – struggling in poverty due to rising medical care and other costs, according to preliminary census figures released Wednesday.
At the same time, government aid programs such as tax credits and food stamps kept many people out of poverty, helping to ensure the poverty rate did not balloon even higher during the recession in 2009, President Barack Obama’s first year in office.
Under a new revised census formula, overall poverty in 2009 stood at 15.7 percent, or 47.8 million people. That’s compared to the official 2009 rate of 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million, that was reported by the Census Bureau last September.
Once mocked as a fringe diet for sandal-wearing health food store workers, veganism is moving from marginal to mainstream in the United States.
The vegan “Skinny Bitch” diet books are best-sellers, vegan staples like tempeh and tofu can be purchased at just about any supermarket, and some chain restaurants eagerly promote their plant-only menu items. Today’s vegans are urban hipsters, suburban moms, college students, even professional athletes.
Even in troubled economic times, the long-running Honda Accord remains the second best-selling car in the United States. And no wonder it stays popular.
The Accord sedan is a recommended buy of Consumer Reports magazine and earned top scores recently in newly revised, tougher crash testing by the federal government. With refreshed styling, the 2011 Accord gets better gasoline mileage than its 2010 predecessor, too.
The new federal government fuel economy estimates of 23 miles per gallon in city driving and 34 mpg on the highway for the 2011 Accord sedan with four-cylinder engine, for example, are the best of all large, 2011-model sedans except for the 2011 Hyundai Sonata with four-cylinder engine.
INDIANAPOLIS – Cropland that’s left unplowed between harvests releases significantly smaller amounts of a potent greenhouse gas than conventionally plowed fields, according to a new study that suggests no-till farming can combat global warming.
Researchers said the findings could also help farmers make more efficient use of the costly nitrogen-based fertilizers used to promote plant growth. No-till farming apparently slows the breakdown of fertilizers in the soil, they said.
The three-year, federally funded Purdue University study looked at the amount of nitrous oxide released by no-till fields compared to plowed fields. No-till farmers don’t plow under their fields between crops and disrupt the soil surface as little as possible, although they do cut into it to plant seeds and inject fertilizers.
CHICAGO – Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis, suddenly a target of all the leading candidates in the city’s mayoral race, likely has just a few months left as top cop in the nation’s third-largest city. But he’s confident he accomplished what he set out to do when he took the job nearly three years ago.
The embattled police chief defended his tenure last week in a year-end interview with The Associated Press, as two mayoral contenders were calling for his replacement. On Tuesday, two more candidates – former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and City Clerk Miguel del Valle – said they too would not renew his contract when it expires in March.
Also among those lining up against Weis are some rank-and-file officers who’ve viewed the former FBI agent as an outsider. The chief’s critics cite low morale in the police force and community frustration with both crime and the reduced number of officers deployed on the streets because of budget cuts.
WASHINGTON – It looked like an innocent e-mail Christmas card from the White House.
But the holiday greeting that surfaced just before Christmas was a ruse by cybercriminals to steal documents and other data from law enforcement, military and government workers – particularly those involved in computer crime investigations.
Analysts who have studied the malicious software said Tuesday that hackers were able to use the e-mail to collect sensitive law enforcement data. But so far there has been no evidence that any classified information was compromised.
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Scientists whose genetics-based research became a lightning rod in the debate over protecting the Great Lakes from Asian carp have made their case in a newly published article that says at least some of the dreaded invaders have gotten beyond an electric barrier meant to block their path to Lake Michigan.
In the paper released Wednesday, the four-member team reports Asian carp DNA was detected in 58 water samples taken from Chicago-area rivers and canals past the barrier over nearly a year. They caution that while the findings suggest the presence of live bighead and silver carp, it’s unclear how many were in the waterways because individual fish could be responsible for multiple positive hits.
Still, the researchers argue that so-called “environmental DNA,” or “eDNA,” has proven a more effective means of detecting Asian carp than conventional methods such as electroshocking and netting. They predict it will become a valuable tool in efforts to prevent exotic species invasions and preserve species that are threatened or endangered.
DALLAS – A Texas man declared innocent Tuesday after 30 years in prison had at least two chances to make parole and be set free – if only he would admit he was a sex offender. But Cornelius Dupree Jr. refused to do so, doggedly maintaining his innocence in a 1979 rape and robbery, in the process serving more time for a crime he didn’t commit than any other Texas inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.
“Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.
Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, and Lawrence McKinney spent more than 31 years in a Tennessee prison.
SAN DIEGO – A war memorial cross in a San Diego public park is unconstitutional because it conveys a message of government endorsement of religion, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a two decade old case.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the unanimous decision in the dispute over the 29-foot cross, which was dedicated in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans.
The court said modifications could be made to make it constitutional, but it didn’t specify what those changes would be.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Mark Twain wrote that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.” A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with “slave” in an effort not to offend readers.
Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in “Huck Finn” and four times in “Tom Sawyer.” He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those “which people praise and don’t read.”
“It’s such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers,” Gribben said.
BERKELEY, Calif. – A federal appeals court said Tuesday it cannot decide if California’s gay marriage ban is constitutional until the state’s highest court weighs in on whether Proposition 8’s sponsors have the authority to defend the measure.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order asking the California Supreme Court to decide if ballot proposition backers can step in to defend voter-approved initiatives in court when state officials refuse to do so.
The high court does not have to respond to the 9th Circuit panel’s order, but legal experts expect it will. The panel suggested that without the state court’s input, it would have to dismiss the case.
HOUSTON – A Texas commission approved rules on Tuesday that pave the way for 36 states to export low-level radioactive waste to a remote landfill along the Texas-New Mexico border.
The 5-2 vote by the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Commission came after last-minute legal maneuvering on Monday failed to delay the meeting, environmentalists warned the dump would pollute groundwater and more than 5,000 people commented on the plan.
The expansion stokes the debate over where – and if – nuclear waste can be dumped in the United States, an argument that has taken on new importance since President Barack Obama vowed to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil, partly by building more nuclear power plants.
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press
Tue Jan 4, 7:52 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Foreshadowing the coming power struggles between the White House and a more Republican Congress, President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed a $1.4 billion overhaul of the nation’s food safety system as some lawmakers complained that it’s too expensive and threatened its funding.
The first major overhaul of the food safety system since the 1930s, the law emphasizes prevention to help stop deadly outbreaks of foodborne illness before they occur, instead of reacting after consumers become ill.
It calls for increasing government inspections at food processing facilities and, for the first time, gives the Food and Drug Administration the power to order the recall of unsafe foods.
By STEVE SZKOTAK and DENA POTTER, Associated Press
Tue Jan 4, 5:58 pm ET
NORFOLK, Va. – Navy Capt. Owen Honors was an officer with a bright future, a hotshot fighter jock who rose to become commander of one of the most storied ships in the fleet, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
His undoing was a sense of humor that seemed a throwback to the Navy’s raucous, macho Tailhook days nearly two decades ago.
Honors, 49, was sacked as commander of the Enterprise on Tuesday for what the Navy called a “profound lack of good judgment and professionalism” in making and showing to his crew raunchy comic videos three or four years ago. In the videos, Honors used gay slurs and pantomimed masturbation.
The only thing “new” is that incoming class of 2011 is already corrupt. Is this really what Americans’ voted for? Or are they really so stupid that they couldn’t see that these people will not represent their best interests.
Back in the summer, when it began to look like the Tea Party might get a boatload of political neophytes elected to Congress, Senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott sounded an alarm for Washington’s influence industry.
“As soon as they get here,” Lott said of the new wave of legislators, “we need to co-opt them.”
So as the new Congress convenes this week, no one should be surprised to learn that the co-opting is well underway.
On Tuesday night, just hours before they stood in the House chamber to swear their allegiance to the Constitution, at least a dozen new lawmakers sipped cocktails and got better acquainted with the capital’s lobbying corps at a glitzy, $2,500 per ticket reception thrown in their honor.
After campaigning against D.C.’s ways, new Republican lawmakers quickly turn to lobbyists and fundraisers.
?The new class of Republican lawmakers who charged into office promising to shun the ways of Washington officially arrives on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. ?But even as they publicly bash the capital’s culture, many have quietly begun to embrace it.
Several freshmen have hired lobbyists – the ultimate Washington insiders – to lead their congressional staffs. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s swearing-in, dozens of the newcomers joined other lawmakers in turning to lobbyists for campaign cash. And on Wednesday, congressional offices will be packed with lawmakers’ relatives, friends, constituents and lobbyists, all invited to celebrate the new Congress.
This picture of business-as-usual Washington clashes with the campaign rhetoric of many newcomers, some who were propelled by support from the anti-Washington “tea party” movement. It also muddles the image House Republicans hoped to project as they took the helm this week. In contrast to the public celebration thrown by Democrat Nancy Pelosi when she became speaker four years ago, incoming House Speaker John A. Boehner has tried to strike a subdued and earnest note as he takes up the gavel.
So it raised eyebrows Tuesday when several House freshmen held a fundraiser in a swanky Washington hotel. The event, organized in part by California Rep.-elect Jeff Denham (R-Atwater), stood out as the flashiest celebration of the new Congress.
“It’s important. Without money, the machine doesn’t move,” said Javier Ortiz, a GOP strategist and fundraiser, about the week’s schedule of fundraisers and other events. “No one should be surprised that newly elected or long-serving members ask interested constituents and others to support their campaigns by making donations.”
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
You just can’t close the door on this crowd. The party that brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, that led us into Iraq and the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that would like to take a hammer to Social Security and a chisel to Medicare, is back in control of the House of Representatives with the expressed mission of undermining all things Obama.
Once we had Dick Cheney telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and belligerently asserting that deficits don’t matter. We had Phil Gramm, Enron’s favorite senator and John McCain’s economic guru, blithely assuring us in 2008 that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”
A year on from the earthquake, more than a million are still living in tents and less than a tenth of aid cash has been delivered
Despite breathless promises to “build back better”, the international community has made only incremental progress in Haiti over the past 12 months. Our failures are especially stark when measured against the genuine displays of global solidarity with Haiti in the wake of the the January earthquake and financial pledges to reconstruction three months later, in March.
Even if some allowance is made for the extraordinary devastation wrought by the disasters, few disagree that the Haitian government’s handling of the situation has been spectacularly poor. Likewise, with few exceptions, the international aid sector’s record has been dismal. Notwithstanding efforts to signal political commitment to supporting Haiti’s transition – including UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon’s appointment of Bill Clinton as special envoy – few tangible outcomes have yet to be materialise. Haitians themselves are growing disillusioned and impatient, and signs of violence are apparent in the streets of wrecked Port-au-Prince.
And while 2010 was grim, there are few guarantees that 2011 will be any better.
If the incoming Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is serious about trying to repeal health care reform, there’s only one appropriate Democratic response: “Make my day.”
Just to be clear, there’s no earthly chance that a bill repealing the landmark health care overhaul could actually make it through Congress and be signed into law. Even if Republicans managed to hold together their new majority in the House, they would face the inconvenient fact that Democrats still control the Senate. And even if a repeal measure somehow sneaked through the Senate, President Obama would veto the thing faster than you can say “pre-existing conditions.”
So this exercise in tilting at windmills can’t even be described as quixotic, since that would imply some expectation of success, however delusional. The whole thing is purely theatrical-and woefully ill-advised.
How the Tea Party’s fetish for the Constitution as written may get it in trouble.
Members of the Tea Party are really into the Constitution. We know this because on Thursday, House Republicans propose to read the document from start to finish on the House floor, and they also propose to pass a rule requiring that every piece of new legislation identify the source of its constitutional authority. Even Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute-its popular pocket version of the Constitution is only $4.95!-agrees that these are largely symbolic measures, noting in the Wall Street Journal that as a legal matter, “at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do.” Nobody has suggested that legislators don’t have an independent duty to uphold the Constitution as they understand it. But that doesn’t change the fact that the courts, not Tea Party Republicans-even those with the benefit of extra-credit classes from Justice Antonin Scalia-get to make the final call.
This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does not do. It’s an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat, the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn’t because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It’s because the Constitution wasn’t written to reflect the views of any one American.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repeated on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday his hope that the United States can maintain at least two permanent air bases in Afghanistan. He was pushing back against Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge that the U.S. would be out of Afghanistan by 2014 “come hell or high water.” Graham has been wrong about almost everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half, so this harebrained proposal is hardly surprising. But it signals the harder line likely to be pursued by Republicans now that they have taken back the House of Representatives and have much strengthened their position in the Senate.
While pundit Bill Kristol has been tagged as perpetually wrong about everything for his various incorrect pronouncements about Iraq, Graham has largely gotten a pass for saying all the same things, from a greater position of power. Graham was among the earliest to be fooled by the ideologues around George W. Bush into thinking that the ramshackle Saddam Hussein regime posed a threat to the United States. Just after the “Axis of Evil” State of the Union address in 2002, Graham told Chris Matthews of Bush, “I think he was very direct about what the nation faces, about Iraq being a possible target sooner, rather than later.” He virtually salivated at the prospect of a war: “I think the danger to this country from Saddam Hussein is great. The president was amazingly direct about people who procure weapons of mass destruction.”
Remember “freedom fries”? That’s what the House Republicans, when they were last in the majority, renamed french fries, after France refused to support the invasion of Iraq. It seems like renaming fries might be just about the extent of food regulation that some in Congress are willing to support.
The new Republican majority threatens a barrage of investigations. California Republican Darrell Issa is the new chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa has been tweeting about the subjects he intends to investigate: “CONTINUED INITIAL OVERSIGHT INVESTIGATIONS LINEUP: WikiLeaks, the safety of American food/medicine and effectiveness of @FDArecalls …”
The timing of his tweet on food safety was impeccable, coming just one day before President Barack Obama was scheduled to sign into law the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, one of the last bills passed by the House before Congress recessed in late December. The new law will give the Food and Drug Administration authority to order a food recall, among other tools intended to protect people in the U.S. from foodborne illnesses. Believe it or not, before now, the FDA could only recommend a recall, not order one.
Perhaps President Barack Obama should give himself a waiver on the ban prohibiting U.S. government employees from downloading classified cables released by WikiLeaks, so he can better understand the futility of his Afghan War strategy.
For instance, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hidden from him Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s cables from Kabul, he might wish to search out KABUL 001892 of July 13, 2009, in which Eikenberry reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is “unable to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state building.”
And, while he’s at it, he should dig out the September 2009 cable from the U.S. Ambassador in Pakistan, Anne Patterson, in which she warns: “There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance … as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these [Taliban and similar] groups in Pakistan.”
The same conclusion is contained in the recent National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan. My advice to Obama would be: Don’t let anyone gist them for you; read at least the Key Judgments.
Cato the Younger, who inspired the eighteenth-century proponents of a free society who in turn inspired the libertarian Cato Institute, employed the filibuster to slow Julius Caesar’s consolidation of authority over the Rome Senate. Caesar jailed Cato at one point and then thought better of it; the consul released Cato, learned a few legislative tricks of his own and succeeded in circumventing the delaying tactic.
So let’s accept that the filibuster has a history.
Let’s also accept that the history is one of constant evolution that has always erred on the side of constraining rather than empowering the outliers who would use it to impose the will of the minority on the majority.
What are we to make of the fact that two of the top priorities for the 112th Congress, convening for the first time today, involve an irrelevant charade and an irresponsible threat?
Repealing health care, a pure symbolic activity, is one of the first votes scheduled for next week. House Republicans know their bill will not pass the Senate or clear a presidential veto. Maybe they want to get their irrelevant votes out of the way early. But it gets worse.
The bigger story is the truly bizarre threat to freeze the debt ceiling, which could theoretically place the U.S. in default and spark a larger recession or economic crisis. Alarmingly, the idea is picking up traction among conservative Republicans. And on cue, political reporters have begun speculating that Obama must grant concessions to the fiscal bully wing of the G.O.P.
The gravest threat (and “downside risk facing the global economy”) comes from the wave of austerity sweeping the world, as governments, particularly in Europe, confront the large deficits brought on by the Great Recession, and as anxieties about some countries’ ability to meet their debt payments contributes to financial-market instability.
The outcome of premature fiscal consolidation is all but foretold: growth will slow, tax revenues will diminish, and the reduction in deficits will be disappointing. And, in our globally integrated world, the slowdown in Europe will exacerbate the slowdown in the US, and vice versa.
…
I am not so bullish on Europe and America. In both cases, the underlying problem is insufficient aggregate demand. The ultimate irony is that there are simultaneously excess capacity and vast unmet needs – and policies that could restore growth by using the former to address the latter.
…
In both Europe and America, the free-market ideology that allowed asset bubbles to grow unfettered – markets always know best, so government must not intervene – now ties policymakers’ hands in designing effective responses to the crisis. One might have thought that the crisis itself would undermine confidence in that ideology. Instead, it has resurfaced to drag governments and economies down the sinkhole of austerity.
The bridge was named not for its distinctive orange color (which provides extra visibility to passing ships in San Francisco’s famous fog), but for the Golden Gate Strait, where the San Francisco Bay opens into the Pacific Ocean. The bridge spans the strait and connects the northern part of the city of San Francisco to Marin County, California.
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco. The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific’s automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.
Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city’s growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 500 ft (150 m) in depth at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.
1066 – Edward the Confessor dies childless, sparking a succession crisis that will eventually lead to the Norman Conquest of England.
1355 – Charles I of Bohemia was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan.
1477 – Battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold is killed and Burgundy becomes part of France.
1500 – Duke Ludovico Sforza conquers Milan.
1527 – Felix Manz, a leader of the Anabaptist congregation in Zürich, is executed by drowning.
1554 – A great fire occurs in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
1675 – Battle of Colmar: the French army beats Brandenburg.
1757 – Louis XV of France survives an assassination attempt by Robert-Francois Damiens, the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for regicides.
1759 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: French troops begin a siege of a British garrison on Brimstone Hill in Saint Kitts.
1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom.
1895 – Dreyfus Affair: French army officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
1896 – An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen has discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
1900 – Irish leader John Edward Redmond calls for a revolt against British rule.
1909 – Colombia recognizes the independence of Panama.
1913 – First Balkan War: During the Naval Battle of Lemnos, Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it did not venture for the rest of the war.
1914 – The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor.
1918 – The Free Committee for a German Workers Peace, which would become the Nazi party, is founded.
1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female governor in the United States.
1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.
1940 – FM radio is demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission for the first time.
1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.
1945 – The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland.
1957 – In a speech given to the United States Congress, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces the establishment of what will later be called the Eisenhower Doctrine.
1968 – Alexander DubCek comes to power: “Prague Spring” begins in Czechoslovakia.
1969 – Members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary damage property and assault occupants in the Bogside in Derry, Northern Ireland. In response, residents erect barricades and establish Free Derry.
1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.
1974 – An earthquake in Lima, Peru, kills six people, and damages hundreds of houses.
1975 – The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.
1976 – Cambodia is renamed the Democratic Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge.
1976 – Ten Protestant civilians are shot dead by a paramilitary group at Kingsmill in County Armagh, Northern Ireland (part of The Troubles).
1991 – Georgian troops attack Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, opening the 1991-1992 South Ossetia War.
1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.
1993 – Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the last legal hanging in America).
1996 – Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.
2003 – Police arrest seven suspects in connection with Wood Green ricin plot.
2005 – Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.
Today was a perfect winter day for a walk here in the Bronx. I took my camera, my first DSLR out for a test drive. I’m just getting used to it and enjoying how easy it is to use.
During a nice walk in Van Cortlandt Park the new bright viewfinder made all the difference from my usual compositions. Just a few more images of a crisp clear day below the fold.
Three shots looking across the Van Cortlandt Lake.
New V. Other premiers. Tonight’s highight is the final 5 new episodes of Caprica back to back. I’m still conflicted about it, the only ones I identify with are the Cylons and the Adamas.
Well, you see, Aborigines don’t own the land.They belong to it. It’s like their mother. See those rocks? Been standing there for 600 million years. Still be there when you and I are gone. So arguing over who owns them is like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they live on.
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. 
Recent Comments