This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

October 11 is the 284th day of the year (285th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 81 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1982, The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth.

The Mary Rose was a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight. The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971 and salvaged in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule.

The excavation and salvage of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost only to the raising of the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961. The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. Since the mid-1980s, while undergoing conservation, the remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the nearby Mary Rose Museum.

The Mary Rose had no known career as a merchant vessel. She was one of the largest ships in the English navy throughout more than three decades of intermittent war and was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics that employed it had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding and modern experiments. However, the precise cause of her sinking is still unclear, because of conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive physical evidence.

 1138 – A massive earthquake struck Aleppo, Syria.

1531 – Huldrych Zwingli is killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland.

1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1614 – Adriaen Block and 12 Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the New Netherland colony.

1634 – The Burchardi flood – “the second Grote Mandrenke” killed around 15,000 men in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.

1649 – Sack of Wexford: After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops (under Oliver Cromwell) stormed the town of Wexford, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians.

1727 – George II and Caroline of Ansbach are crowned King and Queen of Great Britain.

1776 – American Revolution: Battle of Valcour Island – On Lake Champlain 15 American gunboats are defeated but give Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.

1809 – Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder’s Stand.

1811 – Inventor John Stevens’ boat, the Juliana, begins operation as the first steam-powered ferry (service between New York, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey).

1833 – A big demonstration at the gates of the legislature of Buenos Aires forces the ousting of governor Juan Ramon Balcarce and his replacement with Juan Jose Viamonte.

1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney.

1862 – American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.

1864 – Campina Grande, Brazil is established as a city.

1865 – Paul Bogle led hundreds of black men and women in a march in Jamaica, starting the Morant Bay rebellion.

1890 – In Washington, DC, the Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.

1899 – Second Boer War begins: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State erupts.

1899 – The Western League is renamed the American League.

1906 – San Francisco public school board sparks United States diplomatic crisis with Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.

1910 – Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey in a plane built by the Wright Brothers at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri.

1929 – JC Penney opens store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 U.S. states.

1941 – Beginning of the National Liberation War of Macedonia.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Cape Esperance – On the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, United States Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.

1944 – Tuvinian People’s Republic or formerly Tannu Tuva is annexed by the U.S.S.R

1950 – Television: CBS’s mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

1954 – First Indochina War: The Viet Minh take control of North Vietnam.

1957 – Space Race: M.I.T. scientists calculate Sputnik I’s booster rocket’s orbit.

1958 – Pioneer program: NASA launches the lunar probe Pioneer 1 (the probe falls back to Earth and burns up).

1962 – Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.

1968 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.

1972 – A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.

1975 – The NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the host and Andy Kaufman, Janis Ian and Billy Preston as guests.

1976 – George Washington’s appointment, posthumously, to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States by congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 is approved by President Gerald R. Ford.

1982 – The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth.

1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

1986 – Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.

1987 – Start of Operation Pawan by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka that killed few thousand ethnic Tamil civilians, several hundred Tamil Tigers and few hundred Indian Army soldiers.

2001 – The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.

2007 – The record high of the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurs at 14,198.10 points.

How big government should be stirs debate

 

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Americans are having a crisis of confidence in their government.

A majority in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll disapprove of the jobs President Obama and Congress are doing and have unfavorable views of both major political parties. Only half express even a fair amount of trust and confidence in the people who hold or are running for public office. Just one in four are satisfied with the way the nation is being governed.

Meanwhile, six in 10 Americans say the government has too much power, and nearly half agree with this alarming statement: “The federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens.”

IN THE COCKPIT

PSU graduates are part of Marine unit that flies presidents, other world leaders

Chris Rosenblum



They’ve gazed at the Washington Monument’s exterior – from about halfway up – and watched the White House grow larger. Normally, flying low through the restricted air space would earn a trip to jail.

But for a select group of Marine Corps pilots, it’s all in a day’s work.

Fitzsimmons and Gaugler belong to Marine Helicopter Squadron One, HMX-1 for short, the famous unit responsible for ferrying the president, vice president, Cabinet members and foreign heads of state.

Both are also Penn State graduates, part of the university’s strong link to the Quantico, Va.-based squadron. Out of 75 pilots, six hold University Park degrees..

USA

Obama continues attack on Chamber of Commerce

 

By Dan Eggen and Scott Wilson

Washington Post Staff Writers

The White House intensified its attacks Sunday on the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its alleged ties to foreign donors, part of an escalating Democratic effort to link Republican allies with corporate and overseas interests ahead of the November midterm elections.

The chamber adamantly denies that foreign funds are used in its U.S. election efforts, accusing Democrats of orchestrating a speculative smear campaign during a desperate political year.

How Hank Paulson’s inaction helped Goldman Sachs

 

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers    

Henry Paulson has received widespread acclaim for his bare-knuckled decision-making as the treasury secretary at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, but former federal regulators say he missed multiple chances to contain the disaster.

Among the prime beneficiaries of Paulson’s inaction in 2006 and 2007 was Goldman Sachs, the investment banking behemoth he ran before he was named to former President George W. Bush’s Cabinet.

Paulson’s failure to take steps to curb risky mortgage lending also enabled top executives of other Wall Street firms to continue cashing big bonus checks, while less privileged Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings in the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Europe

New toxic sludge threat in Hungary



irishtimes.com – Last Updated: Monday, October 11, 2010

Workers raced to build an emergency dam in western Hungary as cracks in a reservoir widened, threatening to unleash a second torrent of toxic sludge on the village of Kolontar and nearby rivers.

About one million cubic metres of the waste material leaked out of the alumina plant reservoir into villages and waterways earlier this week, killing seven people, injuring 123 and fouling rivers including a local branch of the Danube.

Nearly a week into the disaster, a person was still missing.

Kolontar was evacuated on Saturday after cracks appeared in the northern wall of the reservoir, threatening a second spill of the toxic red sludge, which swept through neighbouring areas on Monday, toppling cars and wreaking havoc in houses.

7 July London bombings inquests to begin  

The inquests for the 52 people killed by four suicide bombers in the 7 July 2005 London attacks are due to start.

The BBC  

The hearings were delayed because of criminal investigations and questions over what the inquests should cover.

Lady Justice Hallett, the coroner, will preside over five months of hearings without a jury into the attacks on three Underground trains and a bus.

She will look at whether MI5 could have stopped the bombers – but many victims’ families still want a public inquiry.

Emergency services

In addition to the 52 people killed, some 700 other people were injured, many of them severely and permanently, when the four al-Qaeda-backed suicide bombers, all British men, detonated their devices.

The hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice in London are expected to last until at least March next year and will look into the precise details of the 2005 attacks..

Middle East

Israeli cabinet approves loyalty oath for non-Jews

Minister warns that divisive legislation will ‘incite Arab minority’

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Monday, 11 October 2010

A divided Cabinet yesterday approved a highly controversial measure that, for the first time in Israel’s 62-year history, requires new non-Jewish citizens to pledge loyalty to it as a “Jewish and democratic state”.

The 22-8 vote approving the bill, which was supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came despite a split within his own ruling Likud party, and a warning yesterday by a leading Labour minister in his coalition that the legislation was a “terrible mistake” which would “incite the Arab minority”.

Asia

Pakistan’s nuclear arms push angers America

Pakistan has been secretly accelerating the pace of its nuclear weapons programme, infuriating the US which is trying to cap worldwide stocks of fissile material and improve fraught relations with a fragile ally in the Afghanistan war.

By Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor  

The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog, has obtained satellite images showing that a row of cooling towers at Pakistan’s secret Khushab-III reactor has been completed. This suggests the plant could begin operation within months, allowing Pakistan substantially to increase its stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium.

Last year, Barack Obama, US president, called for “a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials”. In response, the Conference on Disarmament, a 64-nation coalition that negotiated the 1992 Chemical Weapons convention and the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, agreed to negotiate a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty, intended to cap production of weapons-grade enriched uranium and most forms of plutonium.

China’s security apparatus is as Orwellian as ever

COMMENT

JOHN GARNAUT

October 11, 2010  

BEIJING: When news broke on Friday that the political reformer Liu Xiaobo had won the Nobel peace prize while serving the first year of an 11-year jail sentence, I was listening to a member of China’s communist aristocracy tell me how he had recently been lured out of his home by a caller pretending to be a deliveryman.

”I don’t have any money,” he had protested, mistaking the motivations of the goons who had grabbed him, before they shoved him into a van and pulled a hood over his head.

His long interrogations at an unknown location revolved around a short cryptic joke that some recipients had misinterpreted as serious intelligence, and which had fed a worldwide rumour that a senior party figure was about to die.

Africa

Sudan president warns of greater conflict with south

Sudan’s president accused former southern rebels of going back on the terms of a peace deal, warning that conflict could re-erupt if the sides did not settle disputes before a referendum on secession.

KHARTOUM, SUDAN

The comments from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, reported on state media, raised the stakes in a war of words between Khartoum and the south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), five years after the sides ended decades of civil war with an accord.

In three months time, that peace deal is supposed to come to a climax with a referendum giving the people of the oil-producing south the right to decide whether to declare independence or stay part of Sudan.

Chombo feels the heat  

Residents of Harare challenge minister to explain how he acquired vast properties in the capital

By Sunday Times Correspondent  

Residents in Harare have demanded that the controversial Minister of Local Government, Ignatius Chombo, declare the vast properties he has acquired since he became a minister and prove that he did not corruptly acquire his vast wealth.

The Combined Harare Residents Association of Zimbabwe (CHRA) has written to Chombo demanding that he disclose his property interests.

Other residents associations and local authorities throughout the country are also said to be in the process of demanding the same from Chombo.

Latin America

Journalists and a clown leave mark on ‘Camp Hope’

 

By Guy Adams Monday, 11 October 2010

If the trapped miners were ever briefly tempted during the long months they have been stuck underground to wonder whether the world had forgotten about their plight, they are certain to be rapidly disabused of that notion when they eventually reach the surface.

As the operation to rescue “Los 33” enters its final stages, the scene at Camp Hope has come to resemble a rolling-news equivalent of Glastonbury, complete with row after row of camper vans and – judging by the growing stench – a pressing shortage of fully functioning mobile toilets.

Ignoring Asia A Blog  

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

US Air Force Gen. (Ret.) Michael Hayden, former CIA Director and NSA chief under George W. Bush, was a guest on State of the Union with Candy Crowley. Naturally the discussion was about terrorism, the recent European travel alerts and the drone attacks in Pakistan that are perpetuating the cycle of terror threats from Al Qaeda. Naturally the discussion also turned to the possibility of another attack in the US and that Americans are on edge based on recent polling done by CNN.

CROWLEY: I want to show you a poll that we took between October 5 and 7, so a recent poll. And the question was, “Will there be acts of terrorism in the U.S. in the next few weeks? Forty-nine percent said it’s likely. Forty-eight percent said not likely. What does the former head of the CIA say?

HAYDEN: I’m not surprised that people are on edge. I’m a little surprised at the spread, particularly since you gave it a time frame in the next few weeks. I don’t think any of us inside government who have a chance to see the variety of information would attach that imminence to the — to the attack. But the probability, I think all of us would agree to. We’ve been quite good since 9/11. We’ve worked very hard. We’ve taken the fight to the enemy…

Keep that fear factor going.

Ms. Crowley then turned the conversation to Pakistan

CROWLEY: We of course, in order to make up for the lack of action in northern Waziristan, have been sending these drones in, record number in September.

There is a cost to it, of course, because the Pakistani populace, which in general doesn’t like the U.S. — the Pakistani government has to make sure that they don’t — there’s no uprising from them because it looks like the Pakistani government is cooperating too much with the U.S.

Do you think these drones have been excessive, and do you think they’re always helpful?

HAYDEN: Well, as you know, I’m not here to confirm or deny any specific operational activity.

. . . But I do know that taking the fight to the enemy, being able to take Al Qaida’s senior leadership off the battlefield, as we say, and that began about July of 2008, in the current effort has been, I think, the single greatest factor in keeping America and our friends safe. I know all activity…All activity that we do…to take the enemy off the battlefield is done very carefully. It’s great precision, high confidence in the intelligence. So I think it’s an appropriate course of action. In fact, it’s one that, in conscience, it would be very difficult for any administration to stop doing.

CROWLEY: You sound as though you believe President Obama is doing a good job on the terrorism front.

HAYDEN: There are some things that I disagree with, and I’ve disagreed with publicly.

CROWLEY: Such as?

HAYDEN: Making the CIA Office of Legal Counsel interrogation memos public, stopping the CIA interrogation program and not really replacing it with any other interrogation program, even to this date.

But, by and large, there’s been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president, and I think that simply reflects the reality that both President Obama and President Bush faced in terms of the threat and the tools that are available to them.

(emphasis mine)

What digby said peas in a pod

Up Date: Glenn Greenwald picks this up today with this final comment:

Civil liberties and a belief in the need to check government power is something many people care about only when the other party is in control.  They seem to believe that there are two kinds of leaders — Good ones (their party) and Bad ones (the other party) — and it’s only when the latter wield power that safeguards and checks are necessary.  Good leaders, by definition, are entitled to trust and faith that they will wield power appropriately and for Good ends, thus rendering unnecessary things like accountability, transparency, oversight and even due process.  Of course, the core premise of our government from the start was that political power will be inevitably abused if it is exercised without constraints, that nothing is more irrational or destructive than placing blind faith in political leaders to exercise unchecked power magnanimously.  But the temptation to want to follow Leaders blindly — to believe in their core Goodness and to thus vest them with unverified trust — is almost as compelling a part of human nature as the abuse of power when exercised without checks and in the dark.

That’s why self-anointed defenders of the Constitution are instantly transformed into authoritarians and back again every time there is a change of party control:  many people don’t believe in these principles generally, but only when political leaders they dislike are in power. The problem, though, is that endorsing civil liberties abuses because one’s own Party is in power virtually ensures that those abuses will become permanent, available to future leaders from the other Party as well.  That was the argument which fell on deaf ears when made to cheering Bush supporters, and it’s barely more effective now.

(emphasis mine)

Do you hear this, Obama Loyalists? You CANNOT have it both ways.

Welcome to the third to last xx/xx/xx year in our lifetimes  Only next year and 2012 until we wait another 88 years for one.

Now that I have gotten your attention, actually MOST plastic bottles are not evil from a health and safety perspective, but the way that we use them certainly is evil.  I did say MOST, since by far the greatest number of plastic containers are made of polyethylene (PE, recycle code 2), polypropylene (PP, recycle code 5), or polyethylene terephthalate, (PET or PETE, recycle code 1).  These materials are not very apt to leach harmful materials into the contents.

Some plastics, notably polycarbonate (PC, recycle code 7 [7 is a catch all for “other”]) are apt to leach out harmful materials, particularly bisphenol A, strongly suspected as being an endocrine system disruptor because of its potential to mimic estrogen.  Polycarbonate containers are clear and usually thick, while PE and PP are translucent.  PETE is also clear, but usually quite a bit thinner than PC.  Just look at the recycle codes on the bottom.

This is not the topic for this evening.  As a matter of fact, I wrote a long post about the various plastics a year or more ago, and it is in the Big Orange archives somewhere.  The topic for this evening is what I consider to be the misuse of these wonderful materials.  This misuse has to do with them being thrown away and put into landfills in most cases.  There are at least three things wrong with this practice.

First, and this is in common with many other things that we use, such practices encourage a throwaway society where we use something once, then discard it.  That is in general a waste of resources.  Second, plastic containers, in the dark and anaerobic environment of a landfill, have essentially an infinite lifetime.  They just never go away.  Paper decays and releases methane which can be “mined” as a fuel source, but the plastic bottles just sit there.  This decreases the useful lifetime of a landfill because they always occupy space instead of decaying.  Third, the specific raw materials that go into plastic containers are too valuable to use once and discard.

All plastics are made of petroleum (including natural gas) feedstocks.  Obviously, these are nonrenewable resources, as opposed to paper which is renewable.  However, paper makes a pretty poor carton unless it is heavily impregnated with plastics, and that makes is just about as bad as plastic ones.  Glass is a good choice, since it is made from admittedly nonrenewable resources, but ones that are extremely abundant.  However, making glass is extremely energy intensive.

Plastics are unique in that they combine light weight and resistance to breakage along with ease of fabrication at relatively low temperatures, so they are not as energy intensive as glass, but unlike glass, plastics are essentially made of energy, in that they have a very high fuel value where glass does not.  Thus, a lot of energy we do NOT use to attain the extremely high temperatures to melt the raw materials for glassmaking we DO use as the container itself.  Thus we sort of have a zero sum game.

I am NOT against the sensible use of plastic containers.  However, sensible use does NOT include using a container once and throwing it away.  That makes no sense from a purely scientific viewpoint, but it makes a lot of sense when economics are considered.  Let us look back around 70 years or so.

At that time, you had only a few choices for containers, tin plated steel, glass, and paper products.  Liquid products for bulk consumption, such as soft drinks, milk, and beer all came, with extremely few exceptions, in reusable glass containers.  You would buy the product and pay a deposit for the container.  When you brought the container back, you could either use them for credit for additional containers, or just get your deposit back.  I am just a little young to remember milk bottles in common use, but soft drinks were available in returnable glass bottles.  This saves in energy costs for fabrication of new ones, but merchants always hated dealing with returnable containers.

They had to keep up with them, which requires clerical resources, store them, which requires space, and then someone had to pick them up for reuse, usually the dairy, brewery, or soft drink bottler.  Once the filler of the container received the empties, they had to clean and sterilize them for reuse, adding costs to their operations as well.  No one liked doing that, but it is the right thing to do.  When steel beverage cans were introduced, that was the beginning of the end for the returnable container.  As I recall, that was in the late 1930s and they were made very popular during World War II because they were much cheaper to ship than glass was, and could just be thrown away after draining.

Returnable soda bottles stayed around for quite a while, but, except for some very limited markets, are gone.  The last deposit bottles that I remember were the old returnable glass one liter Coca-Cola bottles, in use until the early 1980s.  Then the two liter, plastic bottle was introduced and returnables were phased out forever pretty much.  Now merchants did not have to devote resources to manage empty containers, and the bottlers no longer had to clean empties.  The same thing happened with beer, but with cheap, thin glass bottles rather than the thicker returnable longnecks (the ones without screw treads, but rather requiring a crimp cap).  I remember when I was a kid, my friend and I would go around my little town and pick up 10 ounce returnable soda bottles for quick cash (I remember deposits going from two cents, to five, and then to ten).  Glass beer bottles were everywhere, but no one bothered to pick them up since they were worthless.

The same thing applied to steel soda and beer cans.  The scrap value of them was less than it would cost to pick them up, so no one bothered.  That changed when the all aluminum can was introduced in the late 1970s, since they were worth the trouble of picking up and saving until you had enough to take to the recycling center.  Now days, you see lots of plastic and nonreturnable glass containers on the side of the road, but precious few aluminum cans because people scavenge them.  I think that we should reconsider for deposit containers.

California has a pretty good system.  Most beverage containers have a deposit (when I lived in Pasadena it was five cents) that you must pay when you buy the item.  Then, instead of burdening the merchant with managing the container, you take it to a recycling center.  Some of them are automated, so you just feed your containers into a chute, and the equipment scans it, segregates metal, glass, and plastic, and gives you a credit slip.  The one that I used was in the Ralph’s parking lot, so I could take my credit slip and Ralph’s would give me cash.  That works pretty well, but does not go far enough.

For one think, five cents is not enough to encourage compliance.  Second, many containers are exempt, for instance canned foods like soup and the like, certain alcoholic beverages, and milk.  I believe that essentially ALL containers should require a rather substantial deposit to encourage folks to recycle.  If we rely on the goodness of people’s hearts, recycling will NEVER realize its full potential.  An economic incentive is the only way for it to work, and during the first year or so, the deposits could be used to construct recycling centers near enough for essentially everyone to use.  This will only work if it implemented on a national scale, however.  If done state by state, states with high deposits will see an influx of containers from no or low deposit states.

As a matter of fact, a few years ago there was a scam where people were loading semi trailers with out of state containers and recycling them in California to get the CRV.  With plastic bottles, their profit, after fuel, was five cents per container.  The margin was not go good for aluminum cans, since they have intrinsic value.  My neighbor, Elmer, collects aluminum cans in a big way.  He tells me that it takes about 24 cans to make a pound, so at 48 cents per pound, he gets about two cents per can.  Thus, at that rate, the margin would only be three cents per can with the scam.  As I recall, those folks went to the big house.

Thus, this would have to implemented on a national level to reduce the frequency of such scams.  I would think that a deposit of around 50 cents to one dollar per container would be reasonable.  If you think about it, the cost to consumers would not really be very great at all, as containers already in their possession could be grandfathered in to they would not such a heavy out of pocket cost since their essentially worthless containers suddenly would be worth a buck.

I realize that this does not cover food wrappers and cups from fast food outlets, but we have to start somewhere.  With enough thought, there should be a way to address this as well.  These days, most of those containers are paper based, which is not nearly as environmentally bad nor as resource intensive as plastic, glass, and metal.  The benefits would be almost immediate.  Just about everyone would think twice before throwing out that empty soda or beer can.  Even when one went out the car window, someone would be there to pick it up, fast.  In California there is practically no litter from CRV eligible containers, because people having hard times will pick them up and get their five cents per item.  Imagine if that incentive were a dollar!

Also, it is much cheaper to recycle plastic, glass, and metal than it is to make new products, both in the energy required and the raw materials used.  Now, glass and plastic may not recycle back to new bottles, but metal will. The problem with plastic and glass is that there are so many different kinds that, without rather extensive and expensive separation efforts, properties that make for good containers can be degraded.  However, waste glass makes and excellent starting material for lots of things, like insulating air filled glass blocks and many other uses.  Since it is already glass, less energy is required to melt it than to melt the raw materials to make new glass.

Plastic is much more flexible.  It can be blended and extruded into plastic “boards” that have outstanding weather resistance and are already used for decking, playground equipment, and the like.  It will burn, and hotter than wood, so I do not see a big use in construction, but then again environmentally sound flame retardants can be added to reduce that hazard.  In addition, those containers can also be burnt directly to generate electricity, but that is sort of waste in my book.  The point is that both glass and plastic can replace other raw materials much more cheaply, especially if a stable and diffuse source can be developed, and this scheme would develop it well.

Metal is completely recyclable, and the energy required to recycle aluminum is just a few per cent of that required to make new aluminum.  Fortunately, much of the aluminum is already being recycled, but lots of steel containers are not yet.

We have limited resources of petroleum and metals, and it makes no sense just to throw a container away after using it once.  The technology for recycling is mature and I would think that quite a number of new jobs would be created if this sort of idea were adopted.  The financial incentive is the key to make it work.  This has a real advantage over curbside recycling, since the financial incentive would be a positive one rather than a negative one.  I know that I would much rather get money in my pocket by taking materials to a nearby recycling center than to get a penalty for not separating things at the curb.

Such programs, when well conceived and conducted, have been demonstrated to work.  For example, when I was a kid, most lead in use was virgin material from mines and smelters.  Now, almost all of lead used is recycled, mostly from old automobile batteries.  Last year I had to replace the battery in my vehicle.  After I had picked out the new one, the counter person asked me if I wanted to keep the old one, or to let them have it.  I asked how much it would cost for them to have it, since I really did not have a use for a bad battery.  He said, “Well, if we take it you get six dollars.”  I did not require much time to make a decision.  Now, I will admit that the demand for lead has declined on a per capita basis due to the reduction of it for plumbing applications, and especially to the reduction of lead to make tetraethyl lead, the antiknock compound in motor fuels that was phased out for the most part in the 1970s, but the fact remains that almost all of our current lead demand is met by recycling.

The time is ready to recycle these consumer products.  Maybe it does not sound like a lot, but with 300 millions of people in the United States, the collective impact will be tremendous after only a couple of years.  Landfill space would be used for things that are truly garbage and would cost more than it is worth to recycle, energy and raw materials would be conserved, and the litter problem would practically vanish if we can figure out what to do with fast food trash.

Well, you have done it again.  You have wasted many einsteins of perfectly good photons reading this trashy post.  And even though Cristine O’Donnell starts doing that nose twitch thing when she reads me say it, I always learn much more than I could ever possibly hope to teach by writing this series, so please keep those comments, questions, and especially corrections coming.  The comments are always the best part of these posts.  Remember, no technical or scientific issue is off topic in the comments.

On a completely different subject, everyone with taxable income is about to take a hit after the first of the year because the Congress did not act on the income tax rates.  It is almost certain that the current rates will be enacted into law, with or without that top income level being included.  The problem is that the new tax rate tables used to calculate withholding are already going out to payroll services and employers, so even if the Congress enacts a law to remain the same, it is likely that your withholding will be increased to the former levels.  There is an easy remedy:  file a new Form W-4 and claim an extra exemption to keep the dollar amount withheld about the same as it is now.  When the Congress enacts the extension and the new tables come out, file another Form W-4 to return to your old status.  Now, the risk is that the Congress will NOT enact an extension, so you will be underwithheld, so you will have to file one to increase your withholding so you do not get a penalty.  Any thoughts of that would be welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

Crossposted at Dailykos.com. and at Docudharma.com

Broadcast premiers.  The Amazing Race.  Sunday Night Throwball, Iggles @ 9ers.  You’d think Twins/Yankees on TBS, but the Yankees already closed out in 3 so you’ll have to settle for Phillies @ Reds on TNT.  No idea what TBS will fill with.

And how are our brackets doing?  Rays even up, told you the Rangers were not that good.  Braves even up against the Giants (pending this afternoon’s results, Giants 1 – 0 in the 7th as I write).  Phillies can close out.

• ABC Family– The Parent Trap
• AMC– The Kingdom, Rubicon and Mad Men (premiers)
• Food– Next Iron Chef (premier), Food Feud (Series Premier)
• FX– 27 Dresses, Baby Mama
• History– Ice Road Truckers, Swamp People (premiers)
• Lifetime– Ann Rule’s Too Late to Say Goodbye, The Client List
• Sci Fi– Silent Hill, Cold Creek Manor
• Turner Classics– Sweet Smell of Success, The Defiant Ones (Tony Curtis night)
• Toon– Sym-Bionic Titan, Clone Wars, Delocated (this week’s)
• USA– Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• Vs.– Bull Riding (yesterday’s and today’s)

Later-

• Discovery– Life marathon
• FX– First Daughter
• Sci Fi– Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, The Dunwich Horror
• Turner Classics– Trapeze, The Great Race
• USA– Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Childrens Hospital, Metalocalypse (premiers).  New Venture Brothers (last week’s episode Everybody Comes to Hank’s

Prepare every vessel that floats.  At dawn we go to war.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Rioters attack Serb police, ruling party HQ at Gay Pride

by Aleksandra Niksic, AFP

1 hr 6 mins ago

2 Hungary rushes to build dam in case of new toxic flood

by Janos Gal, AFP

57 mins ago

3 Rescuers begin reinforcing miners’ escape hole

by Gael Favennec, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 11:08 am ET

4 Rescue of trapped miners in Chile could start Wednesday

by Maria Lorente, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 3:15 am ET

5 Trees planted for global climate campaign

AFP

Sun Oct 10, 10:48 am ET

6 IMF, World Bank wrap up three days of talks

by Rob Lever, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 1:11 pm ET

7 Baptiste wins 200m as Lalang hands Kenya more gold

by Martin Parry, AFP

2 hrs 33 mins ago

8 I’m no saint, Mandela says in excerpt from new book

by Griffin Shea, AFP

2 hrs 29 mins ago

9 Wife meets China’s jailed Nobel winner: activists

by Goh Chai Hin, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 8:31 am ET

10 Vettel wins Japan Grand Prix

by Matthew Clayton, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 8:18 am ET

11 NATO supplies through Pakistan border resume

by Lehaz Ali, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 6:18 am ET

12 Thousands in Asia join global message on climate

by Madeleine Coorey, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 4:21 am ET

13 N.Korea puts power and heir apparent on display

by Jung Ha-Won, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 1:34 am ET

14 IMF fails to find consensus to ease currency friction

by Rob Lever, AFP

Sun Oct 10, 12:56 am ET

15 IMF told to toughen scrutiny of rich powers

By Lesley Wroughton and Emily Kaiser, Reuters

Sat Oct 9, 8:12 pm ET

16 North Korea’s heir debuts at giant military parade

By Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters

Sun Oct 10, 9:58 am ET

17 Chile rescuers prepare escape shaft for miners exit

By Cesar Illiano, Reuters

50 mins ago

18 Blunt U.S. warnings to Pakistan prompted by terrorism fear

By David Alexander and Caren Bohan, Reuters

Sun Oct 10, 12:32 pm ET

19 Landmark Kyrgyz election passes without violence

By Robin Paxton, Reuters

54 mins ago

20 Hungary races to build dam amid new sludge threat

By Gergely Szakacs, Reuters

Sun Oct 10, 12:44 pm ET

21 UAE to shut Canadian military camp over flights: source

By Mahmoud Habboush and Tamara Walid, Reuters

Sun Oct 10, 11:48 am ET

22 Hungarian factory sorry for those killed by sludge

By PABLO GORONDI, Associated Press Writer

29 mins ago

23 Govt: No call for Social Security increase in 2011

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 4 mins ago

24 Trapped Chilean miners argue over who’s out last

By FRANK BAJAK and MICHAEL WARREN, Associated Press Writers

2 hrs 7 mins ago

25 Pakistan reopens Afghan border crossing NATO uses

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 12:55 pm ET

26 Toxic coal sludge pollutes Ky. town 10 years later

By DYLAN LOVAN, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 48 mins ago

27 Ohio State is No. 1 in AP Top 25

By RALPH D. RUSSO, AP College Football Writer

28 mins ago

28 North Korea’s Kim and heir appear at lavish parade

By JEAN H. LEE, Associated Press Writer

43 mins ago

29 Wife allowed to meet jailed Chinese Nobel winner

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 1:03 pm ET

30 AP Enterprise: Questions raised on Congo slaughter

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 9:46 am ET

31 Roadside bombs kill 7, including 2 NATO troops

By ROBERT KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 1:54 pm ET

32 End to currency dispute eludes finance ministers

By HARRY DUNPHY and MARTIN CRUTSINGER, Associated Press Writers

Sun Oct 10, 6:27 am ET

33 Kyrgyzstan votes in historic national election

By PETER LEONARD, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 11:50 am ET

34 Hanoi throws extravagant 1,000th birthday bash

By MARGIE MASON, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 4:33 am ET

35 Ethnic spat erupts in changing OC district

By AMY TAXIN, Associated Press Writer

54 mins ago

36 Ivory Coast army officer held in gun-smuggling

By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 4 mins ago

37 Death row inmate seeks high court OK for DNA tests

By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 44 mins ago

38 Mass. law school seeks to foster its own recruits

By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 1:44 pm ET

39 Bankrupt MT resort founder faces criminal probe

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 10, 12:31 pm ET

Rube Goldberg, himself, could not have designed a more convoluted method to, in fact, fuck us. . . . .

Thank you, President Obama. You know it’s crazy when getting back to square one feels like a victory

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Where is the money to finance the campaign ads coming from to influence Americans elections? The campaign finance system is broken and no one wants to fix it.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

October 10 is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 82 days remaining until the end of the year.

On October 10, 1935, George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess premieres on Broadway.

Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy and the play of the same name which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward. All three works deal with African American life in the fictitious Catfish Row (based on the real-life Rainbow Row) in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s.

Originally conceived by Gershwin as an “American folk opera”, Porgy and Bess premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers-a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time. Gershwin chose African American Eva Jessye as the choral director for the opera. Incorporating a wealth of blues and jazz idioms into the classical art form of opera, Gershwin considered it his finest work.

The work was not widely accepted in the United States as a legitimate opera until 1976, when the Houston Grand Opera production of Gershwin’s complete score established it as an artistic triumph. Nine years later the Metropolitan Opera gave their first performance of the work. This production was also broadcast as part of the ongoing Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. The work is now considered part of the standard operatic repertoire and is regularly performed internationally. Despite this success, the opera has been controversial; some critics from the outset have considered it a racist portrayal of African Americans.

“Summertime” is by far the best-known piece from the work, and countless interpretations of this and other individual numbers have also been recorded and performed. The second best-known number is “It Ain’t Necessarily So“. The opera is admired for Gershwin’s innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms.

Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black beggar living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin’ Life, the drug dealer. Where the earlier novel and stage-play differ, the opera generally follows the stage-play.

The Porgy and Bess original cast recording was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress, National Recording Registry in 2003. The board selects songs on an annual basis that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

On July 14, 1993, the United States Postal Service recognized the opera’s cultural significance by issuing a commemorative 29-cent postage stamp, and in 2001 Porgy and Bess was proclaimed the official opera of the State of South Carolina.

 680 – Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Muslims as Aashurah.

732 – Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, the leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.

1471 – Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with the help of farmers and miners, repels an attack by Christian I, King of Denmark.

1575 – Battle of Dormans: Roman Catholic forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeat the Protestants, capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.

1580 – After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dun an Oir, Ireland.

1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1631 – A Saxon army takes over Prague.

1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.

1845 – In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.

1860 – The original cornerstone of the University of the South is laid in Sewanee, Tennessee.

1868 – Carlos Cespedes issues the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba’s independence

1911 – The Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.

1911 – The KCR East Rail commences service between Kowloon and Canton.

1913 – President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.

1920 – The Carinthian Plebiscite determines that the larger part of Carinthia should remain part of Austria.

1933 – United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.

1935 – A coup d’etat by the royalist leadership of the Greek Armed Forces takes place in Athens. It overthrows the government of Panagis Tsaldaris and establishes a regency under Georgios Kondylis, effectively ending the Second Hellenic Republic.

1938 – The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.

1942 – The Soviet Union establishes diplomatic relations with Australia.

1943 – Double Tenth Incident in Japanese controlled Singapore

1944 – Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp.

1945 – The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China. Later, the pact is commonly referred to as the Double-Ten Agreement.

1957 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he is refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.

1957 – The Windscale fire in Cumbria, U.K. is the world’s first major nuclear accident.

1963 – France cedes control of the Bizerte naval base to Tunisia.

1964 – The opening ceremony at The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, is broadcast live in the first Olympic telecast relayed by geostationary communication satellite.

1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force.

1970 – Fiji becomes independent.

1970 – In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.

1971 – Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

1973 – Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.

1975 – Papua New Guinea joins the United Nations.

1985 – United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.

1986 – An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.

1997 – An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.

1998 – A Lignes Aeriennes Congolaises Boeing 727 is shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 41 people.

2006 – The Greek city of Volos floods in one of the prefecture’s worst recorded floods.

2008 – The 10 October 2008 Orakzai bombing kills 110 and injures 200 more.

2009 – After having closed borders for about two hundred years, Armenia and Turkey sign protocols in Zurich, Switzerland to open their borders.

“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.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Christiane Amanpour goes on the trail to Connecticut this week with two Sunday exclusives — Senate candidates Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf comes to “This Week” for an exclusive interview, shares his views on the growing crisis between the United States and a critical ally, and discusses his return to politics. Can the Islamic republic win the war against extremism? Can al Qaeda and the Taliban be defeated? Will Pakistan’s nuclear weapons be kept in safe hands?

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Joining Mr. Schieffer on Sunday will be David Axelrod, White House Senior Adviser and Ed Gillespie, Chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee and Former Chair of the Republican National Committee

The Chris Matthews Show: This Sunday on Mr. Matthews’ round table forum Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post Associate Editor, David Brooks, The New York Times Columnist and Helene Cooper, The New York Times

White House Correspondent. They will discuss these questions:

Is Obama’s National Security Team at war?

What’s the evidence Hillary Clinton might bump Joe Biden?

Are Voters Set to Elect Some Extremists to the Senate?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: David Gregory moderates the first showdown between the major party candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois: State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) vs. Rep. Mark Kirk (R). Mr. Gregory will be joined by Joe Klein, a columnist for Time Magazine and Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, who will talk about the coming election and what voters greatest concerns

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: It’s an all-exclusive Sunday! As the midterm elections approach, we talk politics with two House leaders. First, we sit down with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and then Republican Chief Deputy Whip Kevin McCarthy of California joins us for his rebuttal. We then continue our discussion of the midterms by breaking down the numbers with pollsters Celinda Lake and Whit Ayres. Finally, we look at the landscape of current terror threats worldwide with the man who led the CIA under President George W. Bush, Retired General Michael Hayden.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This week on GPS: Fareed’s been saying for years that we need to talk to the Taliban. And now the Afghan government is in supposedly “secret” negotiations with them. Will this be the path to peace for Afghanistan? Fareed’s take: maybe, but don’t expect any miracles.

Then, Americans are gearing up to go the polls. The Tea Party is causing much tumult in the mid-term elections. But just what IS the Tea Party all about? And just what political tradition is it “steeped” in? A GPS panel of great historians and thinkers puts it in all context.

And if you think unemployment in the U.S. is bad then you won’t believe what is going on in South Africa. The World Cup was its coming out party but now that the party is over, will rampant unemployment and massive labor strikes cripple the country? And just who is to blame?

Next up, America’s “car czar”, Steven Rattner, with a behind the scenes look at the bailout of the automotive industry and the goings-on inside the White House. Were the car companies really worth saving at all?

And finally a last look at a politician topping the pop charts. You’ll be surprised to see who it is.

Turkana: Class Warfare

It’s not class warfare. Don’t you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn’t discuss money in polite conversation. And it’s important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don’t even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is. Wealth disparity is the fault of the disparaged. Unlike West Virginia Republican Senate nominee John Raese, the less affluent just didn’t have the wisdom and foresight to inherit wealth. This isn’t about class warfare, it’s about knowing how to pick your parents. To those that plan ahead even of their being born go the spoils.

Dahlia Lithwick: The Battle Cry of a Supreme Court Wife

RICHMOND, Va.-Of all the disclosures in the fascinating new biography of Justice William Brennan  by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel, one of the most powerful is this: The worst job in the entire history of the world has to be Supreme Court wife.

Virginia Lamp Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has learned this lesson well. As she addresses the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention  Friday night, she wants it to be perfectly clear that nobody is going to lock her in the attic anytime soon. She’s fighting for what she believes in, and for that she should get enormous credit.

But what, one wonders, might happen if she prevails?

Sally Kohn: Glenn Beck says ‘collective salvation’ is anti-American. Tell that to the Founding Fathers

New York – Fox News television host Glenn Beck  says the idea of “collective salvation” – that our fates are linked – is “dangerous to the Constitutional republic.” He argues that related notions of social justice, redistribution, and ending oppression are fundamentally anti-American, communist creeds. American’s Founding Fathers would disagree. They embraced collective redemption and the protection of the common good.

The Constitution made clear from its first lines the collectivist intent of the American enterprise:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Dana Milbank: Conspiracy theorists find validation from Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck has a friend in California.

“I would’ve never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there,” says this friend, Byron Williams. “And it was the things he did, it was the things he exposed, that blew my mind.”

“I do enjoy Glenn Beck,” Williams also says, “and the reason why I enjoy that is because… no other channel will speak about the same things that he’s talking about, and if you go and investigate those things you’ll find out that they’re true.”

Unfortunately for Beck, this satisfied viewer currently resides at the Santa Rita Jail near Oakland and stands accused of a freeway shootout with police. Williams pleaded not guilty to four counts of attempted murder of a police officer. But according to court documents, he said he had been on a mission to kill people at the liberal Tides Foundation, which happens to be a favorite Beck target.

In August, I wrote that while it’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committted by his fans, he would do well to stop encouraging extremists. Now, Williams has granted a pair of jailhouse interviews, one with the conservative Examiner.com and one to be published soon by the liberal group Media Matters. These recorded exchanges, which I have reviewed, show precisely why Beck is dangerous: because his is the one voice in the mass media that validates conspiracy theories held by the unstable.