Unlike Wis. and Ohio, Illinois, the Democrat ‘Deadbeat State,’ Gets Little Media Attention
October 15, 2011 No CommentSometimes it's really hard to understand why certain events get heavy national press coverage while others which are arguably at least as significant and serious get little if any notice. This is one of them. Scott Walker, who solved a $3 billion projected deficit in Wisconsin, a media and leftist (but I repeat myself) arch-villain because much of the balancing was done by adjusting public-sector employee contributions towards health and pension benefits to more closely but still more generously resemble what's seen in the private sector, and by reducing public-sector employees' ability to restore them to their formerly out-of-control levels through collective bargaining. Ditto for John Kasich in Ohio, where the projected deficit was $8 billion . Meanwhile, the state of Illinois defers billions of dollars of payments to vendors by four or more months because, despite 67% and 46% increases in personal and business income taxes, respectively, it still doesn't have the money to come even close to staying current. Yet virtually all we've see from the national press on the problem is one Associated Press story conveniently filed on a Saturday. Here are key paragraphs from the report by Christopher Wills (bolds are mine throughout this post): Deadbeat state: Ill. owes billions in unpaid bills Drowning in deficits, Illinois has turned to a deliberate policy of not paying billions of dollars in bills for months at a time, creating a cycle of hardship and sacrifice for residents and businesses helping the state carry out some of the most important government tasks. Once intended as a stop-gap, the months-long delay in paying bills has now become a regular part of the state's budget management, forcing businesses and charity groups to borrow money, cut jobs and services and take on personal debt. Getting paid can be such a confusing process that it requires begging the state for money and sometimes has more to do with knowing the right people than being next in line. As of early last month, the state owed on 166,000 unpaid bills worth a breathtaking $5 billion, with nearly half of that amount more than a month overdue and hundreds of bills dating back to 2010 , according to an Associated Press analysis of state documents. The true backlog is even higher because some bills have not yet been approved for payment and officially added to the tally. This includes the Illinois health care agency, which says it is sitting on about $1.9 billion in bills from Medicaid providers because there's no money to pay it. … The unpaid bills range from a few pennies to nearly $25 million. In early September, for example, Illinois owed $55,000 to a small-town farm supply business for gasoline, $1,000 to a charity that provides used clothing to the poor, $810,000 to a child-nutrition program. … Illinois leaders join in bemoaning the crisis but haven't been able to find a solution. “God, how much more can our people take?” said Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, a veteran politician responsible for trying to pay a seemingly infinite stack of bills with the finite amount of money approved by legislators and the governor. (Former Governor Rod) Blagojevich's replacement, Democrat Pat Quinn, raised income taxes and trimmed spending, but that money was gobbled up by other needs, primarily rising pension costs. Under budget agreements with legislative leaders, all Democrats, bills continued to go unpaid. As noted above, the tax increases were incredibly steep — yet nothing changed with vendor payments. Ohio and Wisconsin balanced their budgets without raising taxes — and their governors are really, really, really bad guys. As a reminder, the people of Illinois were specifically told that the vendor payment problem would be solved by the latest round of tax increases: “We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.” Obviously, that hasn't happened, and there is no realistic prospect that it will happen. Givebacks subsequent to the tax increases by the state's public-sector unions were almost non-existent. At the time of the tax increases, Governor Quinn thought he could prove that his state's way of “fixing” things would be as effective as Wisconsin and Ohio and would cause less pain for everyone. How's that workin' out for you now, buddy?Demonstrating its usual lack of class, the wire service which so often fails to identify a person's political party affiliation in circumstances involving Democrats involved in crime or scandal chose to run an accompanying photo not of Quinn but of Ms. Topinka , and made sure to tag her as a Republican — as if the state's comptroller has power to do anything about the decrepit situation the state's Democratic governor and legislature have handed her. Do you think the mess in Illinois would remain so relatively invisible if the state decided to wait 90 days or so to pay its employees so that vendors and employee alike would be on an equal footing? How is seriously delaying payments to independent contractors, consultants, small and large businesses, and small or large not-for-profits any different? It's really not. So why is it getting so little attention. Why should I not believe that the reason has a lot to do with Quinn's and the legislative majority's political party, and the fact that tax-and-spend is really working out to be tax-and-bankrupt? Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .
Continue reading …Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com Today, over 1000 cities in 80 countries staged Occupy protests. The focus of them here is the planned Times Square Thousands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters have streamed into Times Square while cops try to contain the crowd. They are arresting people and putting them into vans. Now they’ve ordered everyone to leave or face arrest: “Step back from the barrier.” The crowd is chanting: “YOU step back!” and “We love you!” You can also watch here .
Continue reading …
Helga Weiss, now an artist in Prague, escaped death at Auschwitz by lying to Josef Mengele about her age and saying she was fit to work On an Auschwitz station platform in 1944, Helga Weiss and her mother fooled one of the most reviled men in modern history, Josef Mengele, and managed to save their lives. Not long into her teens, Weiss lied about her age, claiming she was old enough to work for her keep. Her mother persuaded the Nazis under Mengele’s command that Helga was in fact her daughter’s older sister, and she was sent to the forced labour barracks and not the gas chamber. The story is one of many recorded in a concentration camp diary that was sold to publishers around the world at the Frankfurt book fair. The private journals of Helga Weiss are to be published in the UK for the first time next year by Viking Press, while foreign rights have been snapped up by publishing houses across the world. Weiss, an artist in her early 80s who lives in Prague and is also known by her married name of Weissova-Hoskova, mentioned her journal during occasional public appearances, but until now public interest in her written story has always been overshadowed by her success as a postwar painter. The British publisher Venetia Butterfield heard of the diary’s existence last summer when Weiss visited London for a concert at the Wigmore Hall commemorating fellow inmates at the Terezín camp in former Czechoslovakia. “I heard about the event and called someone in north London who knew Helga. They told me she was just about to get on a plane back to Prague, but that she was coming round for a coffee first,” said Butterfield. “I raced up to see her and we talked for no more than 10 or 15 minutes. She is an amazing woman with a great, feisty attitude.” Butterfield, who also publishes Anne Frank’s diary, asked to see a sample of the writing in one of Weiss’s surviving exercise books. “We had an academic report done, and once it was clear what the diaries were I went to Prague to see her. Accounts of the past are often shaped by the knowledge of what was to happen next. What is so important about the diary is that it is Helga’s reality. You are there with her. It is a very different thing from a memoir.” Before Weiss was sent to the Nazi-controlled ghetto of Terezín as a child, she witnessed the insidious progress of the Holocaust in Prague. “One thing after another was forbidden: employees lost their jobs, we were banned from the parks, swimming pools, sports clubs. I was banned from going to school when I was 10,” Weiss told the Observer at the time of the London concert. “I was always asking my parents, ‘What’s happening?’, and became angry at them if I thought they were trying to hide something, to protect me.” The Weiss apartment was handed over to Germans and the family were transported to Terezín by rail. Known as Theresienstadt in German, the city on the north-west perimeter of Prague had become a transit hub where Czech Jews were put to work before being sent on to extermination camps. Her diary, which begins in 1939, records noises that still haunt her; the “thunderous steps, the roar of the ghetto guards, the banging of doors and hysterical weeping always sound – and foretell – the same”. “She was obviously very clever and quite mature,” said Butterfield. “She was obsessed with school at first, like any child of that age. Then there are terrible goodbyes as her friends begin to be taken off to Terezín. At each point Helga thinks the worst thing has happened to her so you see how people become used to bad things. Eventually, when the family are sent to the camp they take some cake and eat a little every
Continue reading …
Two-week courses at centre offer ways to beat speech impediment For Michael O’Donoghue, getting close to his eldest son was almost impossible. “I don’t ever remember us just sitting and having a chat. I was thinking his childhood would be over and I’d never have engaged with him.” Reggie, 11, has had a serious stammer since the age of two. The fact that things have recently improved for Reggie and his parents is thanks to the experiences of another boy decades ago who had trouble getting to know his own father, comedian Michael Palin. At the newly refurbished centre that bears Palin’s name, Reggie and other children are offered innovative, intensive therapies that are turning around their lives. Palin said he felt closer to his own late father through involvement with the centre. “I feel closer to him, but I just feel sad that he missed out [on therapy] because I think he would have been a happier man. With him it was just something like a curse that we could never talk about. If you talked about it, it was like rubbing salt into his wounds.” More than 100,000 UK children are affected by stammering. Four in five will grow out of the condition, but for those who do not it can have a desperate impact on every part of their lives, their friendships, families and education. Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech did much to raise awareness of speech impediments. A documentary to be shown on BBC1 this week, The Kid’s Speech , provides a moving insight into the condition today. Film-maker David Brindle followed Reggie and two other children at the new Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children, which provides intensive two-week courses. Reggie’s parents say the changes in their son have been remarkable. “Before, he was very isolated and would lock himself away in his room. Now he just babbles and babbles away,” said his mother, Victoria. “The main thing is his confidence; it’s a wonderful change in him. The course was exhausting mentally and physically, but so worth it.” Elaine Kelman and her fellow speech and language therapists at the centre work not just with the child, but with the parents to help them understand the effect the condition has and to show them ways of coping. “It is very upsetting for parents to witness their child’s struggle and it’s a very emotional issue for the family,” said Kelman. “Often other people do not know how to react to a child stammering, so they will either walk away, wanting to end the child’s struggle, or try to finish their sentence for them. The message children get, unfortunately, is that no one wants to talk to them or to listen to what they have to say. The best thing for people to do is to have patience and wait and listen. They will get there in the end.” She said many of the families, who come from all over the country to the centre for the course, are “desperate people” isolated by their child’s difficulties. “The children tell us that,” said Kelman. “They feel like they are the only person in the world who has a stammer.” The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, is also involved with the centre and visited the children in the middle of the course. He tells them about his own stammer. “Sometimes people write about me that I’m a cured stammerer, but that’s not the case.” He has learned to live with it, he says, and works his speeches around what he can’t say. “I can’t start a sentence with an H, that’s a killer,” he said. While the success of The King’s Speech is “doing a fantastic job” of raising the profile of stammers and speech therapy, the downside, said Kelman, was the film’s fuelling of the myth that a dysfunctional upbringing can be responsible for a stammer. “That was the one unfortunate part and was perhaps what they thought back then. Many parents come here with a strong sense of guilt, they feel it is something they have done, but there is no evidence that parenting can cause stammering.” Palin, who was there to see Reggie and the other children make speeches to mark the end of their two weeks at the centre, said he had endless admiration for the spirit of the children affected by stammering: “It’s all there, in your head you’re just like everyone else, and then suddenly you open your mouth and nothing comes out. Imagine that.” The Kid’s Speech will be shown on BBC1 on Tuesday at 10.35pm Children Disability Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …France’s young Socialists back François Hollande to reignite fires of 1968
October 15, 2011 No Comment
A new fervour on the left has propelled Mr Normal into pole position in the final round of the presidential primaries The celebrated Bataclan nightclub in the edgy 11th arrondissement of Paris was stiflingly hot and, even by its own standards, it was heaving. A young crowd in the audience cheered, shouted, applauded and whistled – a not unusual racket in a cutting-edge venue that once hosted an unknown Edith Piaf and, more recently, Pete Doherty. Avant-garde bands and cult rock stars pull them in here. After the music, the youngsters will spill out on to the streets and talk will invariably turn to late-night parties and where to go next. Last week, however, the Bataclan hosted an unlikely headline act: a balding, bespectacled man in a spectacularly dull suit whose nickname is Mr Normal. And the excited chatter was of political parties, where next for France, and who will triumph in the second, deciding round of the Socialist party primaries, which takes place today. “François, president. François, president,” shouted the crowd, supporting their favourite presidential candidate, François Hollande . Outside on the pavement, others watched on a hastily installed television screen. When France’s Socialists announced months ago that for the first time they would hold American-style primary elections to choose a presidential candidate, the process promised to be worthy, admirable even, but dull. Instead, it appears to have kindled the political fire in a new generation of voters. It helped that among the six candidates were two newish, youngish faces: Arnaud Montebourg, 48, the surprise runner who beat the Socialists’ 2007 presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal,to take third place in the first round last Sunday, and Manuel Valls, 49, who finished just behind Royal. The injection of new blood into a party once said to be run by “elephants”, combined with profound disappointment in the country’s current leaders, and in particular the deeply unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy, appears to have inspired a wave of youngsters on the left. After 17 years of rightwing rule, they are ravenous for change. Their grandparents’ generation took to the streets, throwing up barricades and calling for education reforms and an overthrow of the “old” society in the May 1968 student uprisings . Their parents’ generation came of age during the 14-year leadership of Socialist François Mitterrand, the Fifth Republic’s only Socialist president. Today’s young Socialists are hoping for their own revolution during the presidential vote next May. They also worry about education and the environmental issues that came to the fore in the 1980s, but above all they are galvanised by the worsening economic crisis and fears of how it will affect their chances of getting a job and affording a place to live. Florence Assan, 21, a medical student who has been campaigning for Hollande’s main rival for the party nomination, Martine Aubry, says the Socialist primaries have given a voice to the young. Unusually, the primary vote was opened to any adult who paid €1 to the Socialist party and pledged support for leftwing values, but also to teenagers aged 15-18 if they were registered with Young Socialist organisations. “Most of our lives all we have known is the right in power,” says Assan. “Now we want change. We want politics to put people – including young people – at its heart.” Sylvain Lobry, 20, an engineering student, agrees. “They said we were the generation that had turned its back on politics, but we have proved this wrong. The primary elections have proved this wrong. Even if we don’t win [the presidential election], we will have done something extraordinary.” Hugo Hanry, 17, a lycée student, admits to being both impatient and confident for the result of the decisive second-round vote. He plans to vote for Aubry. “There is a renewal happening. Young people are becoming more and more interested, and more and more involved in politics. The Socialist party primaries have been an excellent democratic exercise,” he says. Last Sunday, at a polling station in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, as left-leaning residents queued to vote in the first round, the atmosphere was almost festive. Families turned out with young children in tow, while jovial young Socialist activists hovered looking for an excuse to engage in conversation. Asked about turnout or predictions, they tapped furiously into BlackBerrys and iPhones before producing answers correct to two decimal points. “This is the home run,” said one young man. To the primaries or the presidential? “Hopefully both,” he replied. At the Socialist party headquarters at Solférino on the Left Bank, Anthony Aly, spokesman for the Young Socialists Movement, and others he refers to as “camarades” were hunkering down behind the security gates as riot police gathered to see off a demonstration by members of the far-right National Front. “I’m told they’re angry because we are giving foreigners the chance to vote in the primaries,” he says, adding: “But the fact we opened up these elections for the first time to people who were not party members and young militants has provoked a great deal of interest among young voters.” Frédéric Dabi, of the French opinion pollsters Ifop, said surveys had shown that most of the 2.5 million French voters who turned out last Sunday to choose a Socialist candidate were over 50. However, he added: “It’s true that because two of the candidates were relatively young, and because both François Hollande and Martine Aubry made issues concerning youngsters, like education, key to their campaigns, there has been a renewal of interest in politics among the young.” Back at the Bataclan, Hollande, the man who would be president, is responding to the adulation with republican France’s equivalent of the royal wave, the two-handed bring-it-on gesture footballers use when they have scored. The crowd roar, jump to their feet and begin chanting
Continue reading …Mitt Romney leads the charge as Mormonism moves into the American mainstream
October 15, 2011 No Comment
With two Mormons contending for the presidency and a growing media profile, the church has never been so popular – nor so closely scrutinised The stone-clad building stands on a busy intersection in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There is little to distinguish it from any other modern place of worship in New York: it has a simple design, subtly decorated windows and a modest spire – one topped by a golden statue of a trumpet-wielding angel. And that is the difference: the angel, unfamiliar to most Christians, is called Moroni. The building is the Manhattan temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known around the world as the Mormons. There are other temples scattered throughout New York, serving a growing community in the city of one of the world’s youngest but fastest-spreading faiths. Normally associated with the desert mountains of Utah, where it has its headquarters, the church’s 6 million-plus members are rapidly rising to prominence in America’s consciousness: two Mormons are running for the Republican presidential nomination. Indeed, Mitt Romney is a frontrunner in that race and by 2013 the US could have a Mormon president. There are already 15 Mormons in Congress, including Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid. Rightwing media firebrand Glenn Beck is a Mormon. So is rock star Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Killers, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, contending with Romney for the Republican nomination. Mormons run businesses such as hotel chain Marriott International, and shows about them – such as the HBO drama Big Love – are television hits. For a faith that has often been persecuted, Mormonism, it seems, has never been more American. “I am not only a New Yorker and a Mormon, but I am proud to be so. I have raised a family here,” says David Buckner, a business consultant who worships at the Manhattan temple. For Buckner, 48, who has called New York home since 1995, the city and Mormonism are a perfect fit. “There is a deep respect for different religions here in New York. People are respectful of our mores and values.” That is not true everywhere. Robert Jeffress, a leading conservative Baptist minister with links to Romney’s rival for the nomination Rick Perry, recently launched a blistering attack on the faith, calling it a “cult” and saying it is “not Christianity”. Others appear to view the emergence of Mormonism into everyday life with nervousness: a poll in June found one in five US voters would oppose a Mormon candidate for president. Nor is that a reflection of concern only on the religious right. Mormonism takes a strong view against gay marriage: it has provided financial backing for campaigns to stop same-sex couples getting full married rights, notably in California in 2008. The church’s actions triggered nationwide protests by campaigners. Fred Karger, a gay Republican running at the back of the pack in the 2012 nomination race, has become a vocal critic of Mormonism. “My major concern with the Mormon faith is the basic tenet of obedience. If a President Romney got a call from the president of the LDS [Latter Day Saints], he has no choice but to obey. It is obedience over family and country,” he says. That comment echoes criticisms levelled at President Kennedy, when his Catholicism – and theoretical obligation to the papacy – came under attack. But it also raises the questions of just what Mormons believe in and where the swiftly spreading religion comes from. “In general, a lot of Americans know very little about the Mormon faith,” says David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron. It began in the 1820s in upstate New York when the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered a holy work, inscribed on a set of golden plates, called the Book of Mormon . It included an account of Jesus appearing in the US. Smith drew together a group of followers and, fleeing persecution, began a movement west before being killed by a mob in Illinois. His successors settled in Utah and continued the church’s controversial acceptance of polygamy, allowing men to take multiple wives. The modern church, however, has long condemned plural marriages, though it continues with several practices at variance with other Christian faiths. For example, many members wear special underwear, known as “temple garments”. The church also places special emphasis on converting the dead: because of their belief that families are eternal, Mormons feel a duty to posthumously baptise ancestors so that all may be together in heaven. That is why the church is behind a huge genealogical effort to collect family histories. Sometimes boundaries are overstepped in the tracing of ancestors. The church became embroiled in controversy after Holocaust victims were found on its databases. In 2009, it was discovered that Barack Obama’s recently deceased mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, had been posthumously baptised. Of course, while to non-Mormons much of this can seem strange, the same could be said about many traditional practices of other faiths. What Mormonism is dealing with is not its beliefs, but its newness. Other religions’ prophets lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and have become an accepted part of human culture. Mormonism was born in the industrial era. Its expansion is coming at a time of iPhones and the internet, and its entry into the mainstream is bound to involve scrutiny of its agenda. “The church is eager for it to be better known and a bigger player. They see that as part of their churchly mission,” says Matthew Burbank, a political expert at the University of Utah. The LDS is also nothing if not media-savvy. It has launched an ad campaign to “normalise” its image, with portraits of people from diverse backgrounds under the slogan “I’m a Mormon”. “There’s a national conversation going on about Mormonism and we want to be a part of it,” says LDS spokesman Eric Hawkins. But it is not hard to find Mormons in Manhattan. Take Natalie Hill, 30, a Broadway dancer. She does not drink or smoke, which the faith discourages, but that does not interfere with her enjoyment of New York; she even pens a blog called Mormon in Manhattan . “People are sometimes afraid of what they don’t know,” she says. “I am just like every other New Yorker, but I have a deep faith that roots me in where I come
Continue reading …In response to questions about Occupy Wall Street-related protests at the Denver capitol, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (D) said that protesters couldn’t stay past 10 p.m., offering a potential fire as his excuse. “Come at 6 o’clock in the morning, make all the free speech you want until 10 at night,” said Hickenlooper, who stepped away from a charity event to talk to the reporters. “But we can’t let you stay overnight. With all these tents … with these tents all next to each other. They could catch fire. “What happens if suddenly one catches on fire, suddenly four or five tents burn. Who are you guys going to blame? You guys are going to be all over us like white on rice. In a second. The whole community will say how can you take that risk?” The excuse seems quite far-fetched and a fire breaking out seems like a very small reason to limit the free speech and assembly rights of citizens. While camping in the area is a misdemeanor, Hickenlooper and others are suggesting that the crimes that some on Wall Street and in state capitols are getting away with are less of a concern than failure to get a permit for camping. The story above also includes several insinuations by the reporter that the protesters included significant numbers of homeless people or that they were breaking the law in significant ways. Neither of these allegations is substantiated in the report.
Continue reading …