Ryan Crocker was in bullish mood following the 20-hour militant assault on Kabul, but, around him, citizens are suffering To Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a 20-hour assault on Kabul from militants firing from a high-rise building on the US embassy and Nato compound while suicide bombers targeted police buildings across the city was “not a very big deal”. Earlier in the week he had told the Washington Post in an interview that the Afghan capital’s biggest problem was the traffic . The attack that began on Tuesday and concluded Wednesday morning with the killing of the last of seven Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and automatic weapons had at least solved that problem. Streets were relatively scant of vehicles as many Kabulis steered clear out of fear of more attacks, or as Crocker put it, “harassment” in the form of the RPGs. “That isn’t Tet,” he said, in reference to the offensive in Vietnam. Putting the two wars in the same sentence, even as a contrast, was unlikely to have been approved by his media advisers. “If that’s the best they can do, you know, I think it’s actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security it’s a real credit to the Afghan national security forces,” Crocker said. Later, he released a statement, with a more measured tone, that mourned the civilians, police and foreign forces killed or wounded and praised the security personnel that were “up to the task of thwarting such operations”. Yet few ordinary Afghans see it that way. They struggle to understand how the attackers could get so close with such an arsenal. They believe the militants have help on the inside of their indigenous security forces. And their trust in their own government is such that many don’t even believe the “official” death tolls following terrorist attacks. Kabul shopkeeper Mohammad Bashir Suleiman Khil summed up the thoughts of many. “Every 10 days there are attacks in Kabul,” he said. “There is no work, there is no business. People are not coming out of their homes today. We don’t have any hope here.” The Arabic-speaking Crocker, coaxed out of retirement by President Barack Obama, returned to Afghanistan this year as head of the embassy he reopened in 2002. He has had front-row seats to several attacks on or near US embassies over his long diplomatic career, which might explain his initial take on the 20-hour siege. He escaped a Beirut truck bomb that killed 60 at the US embassy in 1983, was airlifted from the same location eight years later because of terrorist fears and was bunkered down when protesters attacked the US embassy in Damascus in 1998. On the day he was sworn in as the US’s top man in Iraq in 2007, suicide bombers struck, killing 104 people in the city. Afghanistan United States Jeremy Kelly guardian.co.uk
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Ryan Crocker was in bullish mood following the 20-hour militant assault on Kabul, but, around him, citizens are suffering To Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, a 20-hour assault on Kabul from militants firing from a high-rise building on the US embassy and Nato compound while suicide bombers targeted police buildings across the city was “not a very big deal”. Earlier in the week he had told the Washington Post in an interview that the Afghan capital’s biggest problem was the traffic . The attack that began on Tuesday and concluded Wednesday morning with the killing of the last of seven Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and automatic weapons had at least solved that problem. Streets were relatively scant of vehicles as many Kabulis steered clear out of fear of more attacks, or as Crocker put it, “harassment” in the form of the RPGs. “That isn’t Tet,” he said, in reference to the offensive in Vietnam. Putting the two wars in the same sentence, even as a contrast, was unlikely to have been approved by his media advisers. “If that’s the best they can do, you know, I think it’s actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security it’s a real credit to the Afghan national security forces,” Crocker said. Later, he released a statement, with a more measured tone, that mourned the civilians, police and foreign forces killed or wounded and praised the security personnel that were “up to the task of thwarting such operations”. Yet few ordinary Afghans see it that way. They struggle to understand how the attackers could get so close with such an arsenal. They believe the militants have help on the inside of their indigenous security forces. And their trust in their own government is such that many don’t even believe the “official” death tolls following terrorist attacks. Kabul shopkeeper Mohammad Bashir Suleiman Khil summed up the thoughts of many. “Every 10 days there are attacks in Kabul,” he said. “There is no work, there is no business. People are not coming out of their homes today. We don’t have any hope here.” The Arabic-speaking Crocker, coaxed out of retirement by President Barack Obama, returned to Afghanistan this year as head of the embassy he reopened in 2002. He has had front-row seats to several attacks on or near US embassies over his long diplomatic career, which might explain his initial take on the 20-hour siege. He escaped a Beirut truck bomb that killed 60 at the US embassy in 1983, was airlifted from the same location eight years later because of terrorist fears and was bunkered down when protesters attacked the US embassy in Damascus in 1998. On the day he was sworn in as the US’s top man in Iraq in 2007, suicide bombers struck, killing 104 people in the city. Afghanistan United States Jeremy Kelly guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …15.1% of Americans Are Now Living In Poverty, Boehner Got 98% of What He Wanted
September 14, 2011 No CommentLet’s be clear: It wasn’t the bank failures alone that caused this economic disaster . It was the administration’s continued support for economic policies that deepened and extended the economic fallout and widened the class divide in hundreds of ways, and a Republican House that not only refused to support stimulus spending, it actively obstructed any attempts by the White House or Democrats to push any policies or nominations at all. It was a Federal Reserve that ignored their mandate to lower unemployment, and a Democratic president who echoed and validated the “deficit emergency” mantra of the Republican party: We have so many people out of work that it will be a very long time until we have a low unemployment rate again: Reporting from Washington— In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents’ home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor. Taken together, the annual income and poverty snapshot released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau underscored how the recession is casting a long shadow well after its official end in June 2009. And at the current sluggish pace of economic growth, analysts don’t expect many of these indicators of economic and social well-being to turn better soon. Census officials wouldn’t say definitively what caused the surge in poverty, but it was evident that the root of the continuing misery was the nation’s inability to create jobs . The total number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line last year rose from 43.6 million in 2009. Of the 2.6-million increase, about two-thirds of the people said they did not work even one week last year. Those with jobs were much less likely to be poor, but the recession and weak recovery have wiped out income gains of prior years for a broad spectrum of workers and their families . Inflation-adjusted median household income — the middle of the populace — fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year from a year ago and 7% from 2000. “It’s a lost decade for the middle class,” said Sheldon Danziger, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan.
Continue reading …15.1% of Americans Are Now Living In Poverty, Boehner Got 98% of What He Wanted
September 14, 2011 No CommentLet’s be clear: It wasn’t the bank failures alone that caused this economic disaster . It was the administration’s continued support for economic policies that deepened and extended the economic fallout and widened the class divide in hundreds of ways, and a Republican House that not only refused to support stimulus spending, it actively obstructed any attempts by the White House or Democrats to push any policies or nominations at all. It was a Federal Reserve that ignored their mandate to lower unemployment, and a Democratic president who echoed and validated the “deficit emergency” mantra of the Republican party: We have so many people out of work that it will be a very long time until we have a low unemployment rate again: Reporting from Washington— In a grim portrait of a nation in economic turmoil, the government reported that the number of people living in poverty last year surged to 46.2 million — the most in at least half a century — as 1 million more Americans went without health insurance and household incomes fell sharply. The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents’ home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor. Taken together, the annual income and poverty snapshot released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau underscored how the recession is casting a long shadow well after its official end in June 2009. And at the current sluggish pace of economic growth, analysts don’t expect many of these indicators of economic and social well-being to turn better soon. Census officials wouldn’t say definitively what caused the surge in poverty, but it was evident that the root of the continuing misery was the nation’s inability to create jobs . The total number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line last year rose from 43.6 million in 2009. Of the 2.6-million increase, about two-thirds of the people said they did not work even one week last year. Those with jobs were much less likely to be poor, but the recession and weak recovery have wiped out income gains of prior years for a broad spectrum of workers and their families . Inflation-adjusted median household income — the middle of the populace — fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year from a year ago and 7% from 2000. “It’s a lost decade for the middle class,” said Sheldon Danziger, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan.
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US treasury secretary urges European governments to use ‘overwhelming force’ to address eurozone’s financial woes. The US treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, has urged European governments to use “overwhelming force” to address the eurozone’s financial woes. Comparing Europe’s troubles to the US banking crisis, Geithner told a New York conference on Wednesday that Washington had been “behind the curve” when it came to tackling its financial crisis. Political leaders had put aside their differences to act swiftly, he said, “but we’re still living with scars of that crisis”. Geithner, who will attend a meeting of European finance ministers in Poland on Friday, said: “If you think about the basic lessons of the financial crisis, it takes a number of things to solve it definitively.” US stock markets rose as Geithner was speaking, cheered by news that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had moved to quash speculation that Greece was nearing bankruptcy or would be forced to leave the 17-nation eurozone. After a telephone conference with Merkel and the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said France would do “whatever it takes” to save Greece. But the US stock markets started to lose their gains as investors became more nervous about the scale of the European crisis. Nick Kalivas, vice-president of equities and financial research at MF Global in Chicago, said the US markets were being driven by news from Europe. Kalivas said good and bad news was acting to “push and pull” the market up and down amid scepticism from investors about the ability of Europe’s leaders to finalise a deal. “The US markets would be doing a lot better if the European crisis wasn’t around,” he said. Speaking in New York at the Delivering Alpha conference – organised by CNBC and Institutional Investor magazine – Geithner said Europe needed to take drastic steps to address its problems. But he said he was confident Europe would act decisively. “There is no chance that the major countries of Europe will let their institutions be at risk in the eyes of the market,” Geithner said. This will be the first time Geithner has addressed Europe’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council, known as Ecofin. The two-day meeting is being held in Wroclaw. “They invited to me come and I thought it would be polite to accept that,” he said. “What they’re doing is very challenging … They have a terrible growth problem.” Geithner has been pushing for some time for Europe to take more decisive action to address its debt crisis. The Wroclaw meeting is Geithner’s second European trip in seven days. Earlier this week he told the Group of Seven meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Marseilles, France, that they should “act more forcefully” to address the crisis. On Tuesday, the US president, Barack Obama, said Europe must do more to address its economic woes. “In the end the big countries in Europe, the leaders in Europe, must meet and take a decision on how to co-ordinate monetary integration with more effective coordinated fiscal policy,” Obama told reporters at the White House. Nicolas Veron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economics research group, said the US was sending very clear signals about the scale of its concern about Europe. “There is a feeling in the US that there is a risk of contagion,” he said. “And this justifies the US doing what it can to avoid a disorderly outcome.” European debt crisis Financial crisis European banks Banking United States Europe Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Here’s another reason why President Obama needs to stop paying homage to the deficit hawks and confidence fairies. These past few years, the Republican line on job creation has been simple: Cut government spending, tame the deficit, and unemployment will fall. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the day after, but soon. “To put it simply,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R- Va.) said last spring, “less government spending means more private-sector jobs.” But that’s not exactly a rigorous study. So here’s a rigorous study. In a new paper for the International Monetary Fund, Laurence Ball, Daniel Leigh and Prakash Loungani look at 173 episodes of fiscal austerity over the past 30 years—with the average deficit cut amounting to 1 percent of GDP. Their verdict? Austerity “lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more of a hit than others; it also raises unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment.” More specifically, an austerity program that curbs the deficit by 1 percent of GDP reduces real incomes by about 0.6 percent and raises unemployment by almost 0.5 percentage points. What’s more, the IMF notes, the losses are twice as big when the central bank can’t cut rates (a good description of the present.) Typically, income and employment don’t fully recover even five years after the austerity program is put in place. There’s also a class dimension here: A deficit cut of that size tends to cause real wage income, where lower-income folks get their money, to shrink by 0.9 percent, whereas rents and profits, which higher-income folks depend on, decline by just 0.3 percent. And, as the chart on the right shows, profits tend to bounce back faster than wages. Kevin Drum remarks: So what happens if we tighten our belts and cut back on spending, as Republicans unanimously want us to do? A new IMF study estimates the effect of a cutback equal to 1% of GDP, which amounts to about $150 billion in the U.S. According to both the GOP leadership and its crew of presidential candidates, this would be peanuts, a mere down payment on serious budget cutting. And maybe so. Unfortunately, as the chart below shows, a cutback of that size would lead to lower incomes and dramatically higher unemployment. But wait! There’s more! The IMF study says the effect is twice as big as the one in Chart 2 when central banks can’t cut interest rates. And guess what? The Fed already has interest rates at zero. They can’t cut them any further. In other words, the GOP’s version of belt-tightening would probably jack up unemployment rates by nearly a full point. Welcome to Rick Perry’s America. ( Via Brad Plumer. ) enlarge Credit: Washington Post Austerity reduces incomes and raises unemployment Ain’t austerity grand? Paul Krugman writes: In the first half of last year a strange delusion swept much of the policy elite on both sides of the Atlantic — the belief that cutting spending in the face of high unemployment would actually create jobs. I went after this stuff early and hard (I suspect that the confidence fairy will be one of my lasting contributions to economic discourse); still, it’s good to have a steadily mounting weight of evidence about just how wrong that view was. And what’s dangerous is that the Villagers are ignoring all the evidence and sticking with the right-wing economic model no matter what. I wish one rich beltway elite except for Thomas Friedman would come out and say what they really feel. For the working class and poor—’suffering is good.’ We are living in a morality play written by sociopaths, determined to make the poor suffer for the sins of the rich. George Osborne’s austerity programme will cut the living standards of Britain’s families by more than 10% over the next three years as those on the lowest incomes suffer most from the tax increases and spending cuts designed to reduce the budget deficit. A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK’s leading experts on the public finances, concludes that the chancellor’s strategy will result in greater inequality and rising child poverty, throwing into reverse progress made in the final years of the last Labour government. Well, not everyone of course…
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The Today show, which is a four hour program, on Wednesday devoted a scant 43 seconds of air time to a surprising loss by Democrats in a New York special congressional election. Both CBS and ABC offered more expansive coverage. ABC's Good Morning America saw the election of Republican Bob Turner as a “stunning upset.” Referencing another GOP win in Nevada, host George Stephanopoulos surprisingly speculated, “Landslide victories for Republicans in two key races. Could these early wins spell big trouble for President Obama? ” Reporter Jon Karl explained the scope of the defeat for the Democrats: “This is an election jolt for Democrats and the President. In New York City, Republicans scored a decisive victory in a district that hasn't sent a Republican to Congress since 1920.” GMA again featured the story in the 8am hour. News anchor Josh Elliott labeled the loss a “political shocker.” Over on CBS's Early Show, Nancy Cordes pointed out, “President Obama won the district by 11 points back in 2008, but he was polling very poorly in the past few weeks there.” She also noted that 40 percent of the district is Jewish and that this group isn't happy with the President's handling of Israel. The Today show could only manage two news briefs totaling just 43 seconds. In the first, Natalie Morales described the election as, simply, an “upset victory.” She added that “analysts believe frustration with the national economy and President Obama gave Republicans the edge.” In the second short story, Morales became slightly more descriptive, allowing that there are “political shock waves this morning in New York.” A transcript of the September 14 GMA segment can be found below: 7am tease GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And breaking overnight, stunning upsets. Landslide victories for Republicans in two key races. Could these early wins spell big trouble for President Obama? 7:02 STEPHANOPOULOS: But we're going to begin this morning with two special election defeats for the Democrats and President Obama. The biggest surprise, right here in New York where Republicans picked up the congressional seat held by Anthony Weiner. You might remember, he was forced to resign after that sexting scandal broke this summer. ABC's Jon Karl joins us with more. Good morning, Jon. JON KARL: Good morning, George. This is an election jolt for Democrats and the President. In New York City, Republicans scored a decisive victory in a district that hasn't sent a Republican to Congress since 1920. Republican Bob Turner scored an improbable victory in the heart of Democratic New York City. BOB TURNER: It is people like me who got off their couch and said, “I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.” KARL: Turner is best known as the creator of Jerry Springer Show and is a newcomer to politics. But the shockwaves from
Continue reading …Walter Bonatti, mountaineer, journalist and Italian hero, dies aged 81
September 14, 2011 No Comment
Chris Bonington calls him ‘among the greatest of all time’, yet the Italian climber’s life was overshadowed by controversy Italy is mourning one its greatest sporting heroes, the mountaineer and journalist Walter Bonatti , who died in Rome on Tuesday aged 81. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Born to working-class parents in Bergamo, Bonatti’s precocious talent made him famous by his early 20s, despite the privations of post-war Italian life. His climbs on the Grand Capucin and Petit Dru above Chamonix are regarded as landmarks in the sport, while his first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in the Karakoram in 1958 with his friend Carlo Mauri was one of the highlights of Himalayan climbing. “He was among the greatest of all time, without a shadow of a doubt,” the British mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington told the Guardian. Bonatti’s fame extended far beyond the climbing world. But his adventurous life was overshadowed by controversy over an ascent of K2, the world’s first, that encapsulated the optimism and hypocrisy of post-war Italy. Fellow Italian Reinhold Messner , the first man to climb all 14 peaks over 8,000m, said Bonatti had left a great legacy in fighting for almost 50 years to tell the truth about that climb. In 1954, Bonatti was part of a large expedition to K2 the world’s second-highest peak, that sought to recover some Italian pride after the agonies of the second world war. His job in the final push for the summit was delivering oxygen equipment to his fellow climbers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni . But they were anxious that the brilliant young alpinist, then just 24, shouldn’t try to share in their glory, so set their top camp higher than agreed. As night fell, they shouted down to Bonatti and a Pakistani porter, Amir Mahdi, to leave the oxygen and descend. But it was too late. Bonatti and Mahdi were forced to spend a night out in bitterly cold conditions at 8,100m. Mahdi lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite. Compagnoni and Lacedelli countered Bonatti’s outrage by accusing him of stealing some of the oxygen. “The Italian establishment wanted to sweep it all under the carpet,” Bonington said. Bonatti spent the rest of his life trying to clear his name, and was finally exonerated when Lacedelli confirmed his version of events after Compagnoni’s death in May 2009. Bonatti coped with the bitterness of the 1954 K2 ascent by the next year, climbing a new route on the Petit Dru above Chamonix in the French Alps. The climb, called the Bonatti Pillar, collapsed in 2005 in a huge rockfall. On Sunday, two days before his death, the Dru was again shaken as a large overhang fell from the cliff. Bonington said he first met Bonatti in 1961 while in competition for an unclimbed route on Mont Blanc. Bonatti had tried the route, the Central Pillar of Freney, earlier in the summer. One of seven French and Italian climbers who teamed up on the mountain, only Bonatti and two others survived a savage storm that lasted several days. He was later awarded the Legion d’Honneur for saving the life of Pierre Mazeaud, later a French sports minister. But he again faced criticism in the media. In 1965, fed up with sniping from Italian journalists, he made a final great route on the North Face of the Matterhorn and quit extreme climbing for good. He embarked on a new career of adventure journalist for Epoca magazine. His friend and fellow journalist Mirella Tenderini said: “People who never knew him for his climbing were thrilled by his reportage. By the end of his life he was so popular.” His memoir The Mountains of My Life was recently republished in English to celebrate his 80th birthday. “He was a complex person,” Bonington said, “and a sensitive one too. K2 always preyed on his mind. But he was also a man of great integrity. And a great gentleman.” Photograph: Jane Baker Mountaineering Italy Ed Douglas guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …“Just to clarify, for anyone – the FBI or whatever –who may be recording this conversation, we’re not discussing illegal activity.” – C&L Managing Editor Tina Dupuy So I had this conference call thing with C&L head honcho John Amato and Tina Dupuy the other night. Tina introduced me to John as “the fake Koch brother .” She always does that, like I’ve done nothing else worthwhile in life except prank call Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. One hit wonder. Chumbawamba. It hurts because it’s true. Anyway, John was musing on the possibility that his phone may have been tapped at one point. It was half joke, half liberal paranoia and, if my math is correct,100 percent possible. It happened to Antiwar.com ; the Feds also spied on a raided peace activists in Chicago ; it’s not unheard of. It’s how Patriots Act! This sort of 4th Amendment violation is one of the legacies of 9/11 – along with the illegal murder of hundreds of thousands. And bumper stickers. The amount spent on Homeland “Security” is staggering – $75 billion a year according to the LA Times . $205,000 of that went toward a nine-ton Bearcat armored vehicle – complete with gun turret – to protect Disney’s computer animation studio DreamWorks. The terrorists hate us for our Kung Fu Pandas. And via creepy sounding programs like “ If you see something, say something ,” our ode to capitalist gluttony, the Mall of America , has transformed itself into a vigilant shopping gestapo, ready to detain any and all shoppers who happen to be too brown – er, um, suspicious. Those are just a few examples of thousands, in which, under the guise of the Homeland Security, local police departments and security firms acquire the tools they need to do their jobs – because you definitely need a nine-ton armored vehicle to bust meth cooks. Haven’t you seen Breaking Bad ? Walter White will stop at nothing to protect his family. And you just can’t trust that Pinkman kid. The Military Industrial Complex now includes the Surveillance Industrial Complex, with cities installing cameras on every corner with federal grant money, and drones flying over the borders to protect us from yet more brown people. And in what appears to be the last wall in the American Panopticon , there’s currently a bill in Congress called the “ Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 .” Of course, we all want to protect kids from pedos, but the bill calls for your internet provider to record all your internet activity for an entire year. Yes, even your totally adult & consensual porn, the Asian midgets, the transsexual dominatrixes. The S! and the M. You just don’t deserve privacy, you sick bastard. It’s with all this domestic spying, surveillance and domestic mission creep in mind that I’d like to talk about a disturbing trend: the arrest of citizens for recording police officers. If I knew what band the kids were listening to these days, I’d say it was as big as that…Chumbawamba? One instance of a journalist being arrested for filming cops…let me think…oh yeah, ME! I know I’m a journalist because I’ve been condemned by the Society of Professional Journalists . And I know I was arrested because I was arrested. But there are plenty of others under similar circumstances: Recently in my neck of the Great North American Wilderness, a woman named Emily Good was arrested by Rochester police , for videotaping officers during a traffic stop from her front lawn. The cops said, they didn’t feel safe with her standing there. If you check out the video , the cops come across as petty thugs, and she comes off as the terrified party. Plus her name is Emily Good . Perhaps the most egregious instance of this insidious fad is the case of one Michael Allison . Allison, a 41-year-old mechanic from Illinois, faces a possible 75 years in jail, for recording public officials. The cops kept hassling him, concerning his right – or lack thereof – to fix cars on his mother’s property, so eventually he went to court. During the proceedings, he used a digital voice recorder in order to document the “ridiculous farce.” Now he’s being charged with illegal wiretapping. If he worked for the NSA, it would be part of his job description. Illinois is ass-first leading the way in the backward race against civil liberties . In July, 2010, Chicago police responded to a domestic disturbance call at the home of Tiawanda Moore. The cops separated Moore and her boyfriend, questioning them individually. Moore claims that the officer questioning her tried to chat her up, gave her his phone number and fondled her breast (smooth operator). Moore tried reporting the incident to Chicago police internal affairs. They discouraged her from doing so, and generally brushed her aside. Frustrated over the shabby treatment, Moore broke out her Blackberry to secretly record the exchange. She faced a minimum four year in the slam, for the Class A felony of recording an on duty police officer. In a moment of sanity, she was acquitted . There have been other victories against the surveillance state of late. A Massachusetts appeals court ruled that arresting citizens for filming police is a clear violation of 1st and 4th Amendments . A guy named Simon Glik saw some Boston police arresting someone and, in hos opinion, using excessive force. So he broke out his smart phone. He was charged under the same arcane wire tapping law, and they threw in some nonsense charges on top – “aiding in the escape of a prisoner.” The charges were dropped, but Glik sued and won. There are a lot more of these cases. And it’s not just passersby and citizens being punished, for the police’s vampire-like reaction to cameras. A freelance news cameraman from upstate New York, Phil Datz , was arrested in July of this year, for having the temerity to do his job. He caught the tail end of a high-speed pursuit, so he pulled over and started rolling. In the eyes of the officer on the scene, this was somehow criminal. He’s due in court this month. I don’t want to spoil my next C&L post by giving away too many of the comedic details surrounding my unlawful arrest, but I will say that it involved a gay marriage protest, a female cop with a Napoleon complex, factious charges to justify the arrest, erased camera footage, contradictory and error-riddled police reports, and a dildo-microphone. —– Murphy is the editor of The BEAST . This is his first piece for C&L. He also recently ran for Congress and started a Chumbawamba cover band.
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Deroy Murdock has an excellent column at National Review Online holding up the Reagan economic record vs. Barack Obama's. It's an excellent read. An excerpt follows the page break. Leave us your thoughts in the comments section: President Zero. The brand-new nickname for Barack ObamAA+ symbolizes America’s total net jobs created in August: Zippo. So, how many jobs emerged in August 1983, the analogous point in Ronald Reagan’s presidency? 278,000. Proportional to today’s population, that equals 365,000 new hires last month . Citizens pondering Obama’s latest jobs speech and how to get America working again should focus on today’s great Keynesian experiment. Ronald Reagan’s supply-side mixture of tax cuts, deregulation, and sound money competes directly against Obama’s big-government blend of Keynesian stimuli, rampant red tape, and promiscuous printing of money — as if dollars were wallpaper. The late Reagan trounces the leisurely Obama. Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 slashed the top federal income-tax from 70 percent to 50, and sliced business levies. Today, it would cost $1.86 trillion. (For consistency, I converted all of the historical numbers in this article for 1981, 1983, and 2009 into 2011 dollars. Nominal figures appear in an analysis available here .) Meanwhile, Obama’s “ stimulus ,” formally called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, cost $829 billion. Reagan deregulated America’s economy, as demonstrated by the relatively low 30,522 pages of rules added to the Federal Register in 1981 and 1982. Reagan continued President Carter’s loosening of restrictions on airlines, trucking , and other industries. The 45,696 pages that swelled the Register in 2009 and 2010 reflect Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA guidelines, pro-union favors, and other regulations — atop Sarbanes-Oxley, farm programs , lighting standards, and other hurdles that Bush-Rove erected. Confirming Reagan’s commitment to reliable currency and monetary restraint, gold ’s price fell 33 percent — from $1,396.79 per ounce during Reagan’s Jan. 20, 1981, inauguration to $937.37 on Sept. 7, 1983. By converting the Bureau of Engraving and Printing into a veritable currency copy shop, Obama helped gold climb 201.4 percent through Wednesday, from $898.53 to $1,810.00. Reagan accelerated Carter’s deregulation of oil prices and encouraged domestic production, as underscored by gasoline’s 6.75 percent fall from $3.11 per gallon on inauguration day to $2.90 in late August 1983. Obama’s domestic drilling limits and anti-carbon fetish helped gasoline climb 87 percent — from $1.93 when he arrived to $3.60 on August 29. The economic and political consequences of these conflicting visions are stunning.
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