enlarge Widespread cheating on Atlanta standardized tests? It seems so, and eerily similar to accusations of cheating in Washington DC public schools while under the management of education “reform” darling Michelle Rhee. Atlanta Journal-Constitution : Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes. Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible. Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn. For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal. My first instinct when reading this was to think that Gov. Deal was working toward the right wing agenda of declaring public schools dead so they could be privatized, but no. It’s real and it’s ugly, and it lands right at the feet of Superintendent Beverly Hall, who held herself out as a Rhee-style reformer for years. A major reason for the ethical failures in Hall’s administration, the investigators wrote, was that Hall and her senior staff refused to accept responsibility for problems. “Dr. Hall and her senior cabinet accepted accolades when those below them performed well, but they wanted none of the burdens of failure,” the report said. The district’s priority became maintaining and promoting Hall’s image as a miracle worker. The report also touched on the support the Atlanta business community has provided Hall for years. Her supporters were so concerned the district’s problems would reflect poorly on the Atlanta “brand,” the report said, that they attacked those who asked questions about the district’s purported success . A senior vice president at the Metro Atlanta Chamber, for instance, suggested a report commissioned by business and civic leaders that found cheating was limited to a dozen schools would need to be “finessed” past Gov. Sonny Perdue, the report said. Sound familiar? In 2008, Hall, Rhee, and Green Dot ‘s Steve Barr “debated” the best way to deal with failing schools. Hall trumpeted her success with school closures in that debate. Hall, now in her 10th year as superintendent, said she spent a lot of her first three years talking with parents in their living rooms. She closed 17 failing schools. “Success began to change people’s minds. Now, she said, “there’s less pushback”—even though she was in the process of “transforming” a sentimental favorite: the high school attended by Martin Luther King. Of course, that “success” now appears to be mostly the result of successful cheating, and not just for a couple of years, but dating back to 2001 when NCLB was first adopted! The scope of the cheating is breathtaking and systemic. The report specified three reasons for the cheating: The investigators gave three key reasons that cheating flourished in Atlanta: The district set unrealistic test-score goals, or “targets,” a culture of pressure and retaliation spread throughout the district, and Hall emphasized test results and public praise at the expense of ethics. Because the targets rose each time a school attained them, the pressure ratcheted up in classrooms each year. Cheating one year created a need for more cheating the next. “Once cheating started, it became a house of cards that collapsed on itself,” the investigators wrote. Educators most frequently cited the targets to explain cheating. “APS became such a ‘data-driven’ system, with unreasonable and excessive pressure to meet targets, that Beverly Hall and her senior cabinet lost sight of conducting tests with integrity,” the report said. The investigators said Hall’s aloof leadership style contributed directly to an atmosphere that fueled cheating. She isolated herself from rank-and-file employees, the report said. Mazyck, the district’s general counsel, told investigators that her job was to provide Hall with “deniability,” insulating Hall from the need to make tough choices. Of course, those of us who have opposed NCLB as the wrong way to improve education for years feel a bit vindicated by this, but not vindicated enough to forget that nearly a generation of children has been cheated because Atlanta’s school management not only condoned, but actually facilitated cheating. Let’s just pare down those three reasons to one: NCLB. The day that test scores became the benchmark by which schools would receive federal funding (or not), the day that the benchmarks were set so high they were unattainable in the time frame laid out, the scene was set to invite widespread cheating. Atlanta is not the first nor will it be the last. The similarities between Atlanta and Washington DC aren’t coincidental. Rhee and Hall are cut from the same cloth. The “win at all costs” mentality, the gaming in order to prove a point, and the general lack of integrity from both of them proves how hollow NCLB is, and what a disservice Rhee does to educators who actually care about educating students. Read the entire AJC article. It will make you sick, but also draws a picture of how this stupid law has corrupted our education system. Which is, of course, exactly what the Bushies hoped would happen.
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Credit: New York Times On July 4, U.S. officials, foreign dignitaries and conservative luminaries gathered outside the American embassy in London to unveil a $1 million statue of Ronald Reagan . As it turns out, the timing was more than a little ironic. Because even as the Gipper was honored in Britain, it’s increasingly clear he would have no place in today’s Republican Party. From Grover Norquist’s anti-tax promise and the Republican Study Committee’s “cut, cap and balance” pledge to the draconian anti-abortion oath of the Susan B. Anthony List, hardline conservative litmus tests are proliferating at a dizzying pace. And Ronald Reagan would have failed them all. If a reanimated Ronald Reagan suddenly appeared in 2011, there is little question his GOP descendants would brand him a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and cast off him off into the wilderness. (As California Rep. Duncan Hunter put it, “a more moderate/former liberal like Ronald Reagan…would never be elected today in my opinion.”) Here’s why: Reagan tripled the national debt Reagan raised taxes 11 times Reagan expanded the size of government Reagan supported the “socialist” Earned Income Tax Credit Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers Reagan signed abortion rights law in California Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate 1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt As most analysts predicted, Reagan’s massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous “rosy scenarios.” Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It’s no wonder Stockman lamented last year : “[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.” And that would be a big problem for Utah Senator Mike Lee and the Republican Study Committee now pushing the government-gutting “cut, cap and balance” plan. With its draconian limit on federal spending at 18% of GDP, President Reagan would have broken that promise every year he was in office . And the supposed great tax-cutter would have been in violation of the Constitution’s new balanced budget amendment eight years running. 2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is “false mythology.” (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California’s state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was here.” His hagiographer Grover Norquist may be the man behind the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project to “to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after the Gipper.” But as he did with Oklahoma reactionary Tom Coburn, Norquist would have to conclude that the tax-raising Reagan ” lied his way into office .” 3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government Marking Reagan’s 100th birthday earlier this year, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, “We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size.” If that’s the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan . As USA Today pointed out five years ago, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, average annual federal spending dropped far more under Bill Clinton (-1.8%) than Ronald Reagan (-0.6%). And as Slate’s Michael Kinsley explained ten years ago in marking Reagan’s 90th birthday: Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent–a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3 million. (Yes, it increased even if you exclude Defense Department civilians. And, no, assuming a year or two of lag time for a president’s policies to take effect doesn’t materially change any of these results.) Under eight years of Big Government Bill Clinton, to choose another president at random, the federal civilian work force went down from 2.9 million to 2.68 million. Federal spending grew by 11 percent in real terms–less than half as much as under Reagan. As a share of GDP, federal spending shrank from 21.5 percent to 18.3 percent–more than double Reagan’s reduction, ending up with a federal government share of the economy about a tenth smaller than Reagan left behind. As the Gipper’s biographer Lou Cannon aptly summed it up, “He was no Tea Partier.” 4. Reagan Supported the “Socialist” Earned Income Tax Credit Both during and after the 2008 presidential campaign , Republican candidates and commentators blasted Barack Obama’s proposals to offer Americans expanded tax credits as “socialism”, “welfare” and worse. If so, they should also be directing their ire at Ronald Reagan. While virtually all working Americans pay the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes ( levies increased by President Reagan ), many don’t pay federal income tax thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted in 2005, the EITC was not only very successful in lowering poverty, the provision “has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, and President Clinton all praised it and proposed expansions in it.” While many of his conservative heirs now express disdain for the working poor , Ronald Reagan championed the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit. As the American Prospect recalled in 2006: Almost 20 years ago, as he signed into law the tax bill expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, President Ronald Reagan hailed it as “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” 5. Reagan Negotiated with Terrorists in Tehran . Criticizing President Obama as weak on Iran, Sarah Palin declared in December that “just as Ronald Reagan once denounced an ‘evil empire’ and looked forward to a time when communism was left on the ‘ash heap of history,’ we should look forward to a future where the twisted ideology and aggressive will to dominate of Khomeini and his successors are consigned to history’s dustbin.” That would be the same Ronald Reagan whose policy consisted of giving the mullahs in Iran a cake, a Bible – and U.S. arms. The Iran-Contra scandal , as you’ll recall, almost laid waste to the Reagan presidency. Desperate to free U.S. hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon, President Reagan provided weapons Tehran badly needed in its long war with Saddam Hussein (who, of course, was backed by the United States). In a clumsy and illegal attempt to skirt U.S. law, the proceeds of those sales were then funneled to the contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And as the New York Times recalled, Reagan’s fiasco started with an emissary bearing gifts from the Gipper himself, including “a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders” and “and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ”opening” to Iran.’” The rest, as they say, is history. After his initial denials, President Reagan was forced to address the nation on March 4, 1987 and acknowledge he indeed swapped arms for hostages ( video here ): “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages.” 6. Reagan Sought to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons In late 2010, hard-line Republicans opposed President Obama’s new START treaty calling for joint reductions in the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles. Sadly for GOP hawks, it was Ronald Reagan and not Barack Obama who declared, “m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” And as the Washington Monthly recalled in 2003, Reagan’s idealism startled and shocked his advisers and allies: Driven by this dream, Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev and initiated a series of negotiations that ultimately alarmed everyone in his administration. Hardliners like Patrick Buchanan, Richard Perle, and Caspar Weinberger reacted in horror to the very idea of engaging the Soviets in such talks, warning against the “grand illusion” of peace. “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as clout,” echoed New Right leader Paul Weyrich in The Washington Post. Administration pragmatists like George Shultz and Robert McFarlane, who supported negotiations but believed in deterrence, were shocked by how far Reagan took them. At the Reykjavik summit, he and Gorbachev almost agreed to the “zero option” to eliminate both sides’ thermonuclear arms. Reagan’s unwillingness to give up his cherished missile-defense program doomed the agreement, though the talks did yield the signature arms-reduction pact of his presidency, the 1987 INF treaty. 7. Reagan Gave Amnesty to Millions of Illegal Immigrants Codifying the growing xenophobia within the Republican Party, the 2008 GOP platform insisted: “We oppose amnesty. The rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity. The American people’s rejection of en masse legalizations is especially appropriate given the federal government’s past failures to enforce the law.” Which is why, as ThinkProgres s again helpfully highlighted, conservatives are now so eager to hush up RINO Reagan’s history on immigration: Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives. 8. Reagan Approved Protectionist Trade Barriers Ronald Reagan believed in free markets and free trade. Except when he didn’t. In 2004, Alan Tonelson praised what he called Reagan’s “trade realism” : Reagan’s tactics were flexible. In autos, machine tools, and steel, his administration subjected foreign producers to so-called voluntary export restraints. In semiconductors, Reagan officials negotiated an agreement to secure a specific share of the Japanese market for U.S. companies, and then imposed tariffs on Japanese electronics imports when Tokyo briefly refused to keep a promise to halt semiconductor dumping. But it was Reagan’s decisive intervention to save legendary American motorcycle maker Harley Davidson which drew the ire of conservatives at the time, if not now. The libertarian Cato Institute groused about the 49.4% import tariff on foreign motorcycles Reagan authorized in 1983: Last spring, the import duties on large motorcycles were raised drastically. By any economic criterion, the new tariff is counterproductive, and the Reagan administration was fully aware of it. The decision is thus an interesting case study in the political economy of protectionism. 9. Reagan Signed Abortion Rights Law in California Despite his paeans to the pro-life crowd, RINO Reagan did very little to advance their radical anti-abortion agenda. As ThinkProgress summarized his record on reproductive rights: As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice. Remember that Reagan put Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, who in Planned Parenthood v. Casey advocated the “undue burden” standard for protecting women’s access to abortion services. For the folks at the Susan B. Anthony List now waging war on reproductive rights, Reagan would have been beyond the pale. 10. Reagan Eventually Debunked AIDS Myths Republicans Continued to Perpetuate Not wanting to anger his allies on the Christian right when it came to what they deemed the “gay plague,” Reagan remained silent on the exploding AIDS epidemic throughout most of his presidency. And when he did speak up in 1985 (as he did at the urging of staffer and future Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ), Reagan ignored both basic science and basic compassion in setting back the cause of truth and public health: “I’m glad I’m not faced with that problem today [sending children to school where another student has AIDS] and I can well understand the plight of the parents and how they feel about it…And yet medicine has not come forth unequivocally and said ‘This we know for a fact, that it is safe.’ And until they do I think we have to do the best we can with this problem. I can understand both sides of it.” The next day, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and the chief scientists at the National Institutes of Health called a news conference to correct President Reagan’s tragic error and confirm that AIDS was a blood-borne sexually transmitted disease not spread by casual contact. In what would be the first high-impact celebrity intervention among Republicans, it took a plea from Elizabeth Taylor to get Ronald Reagan to deliver a speech at the 1987 meeting of amfAR , the American Foundation for AIDS Research: As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance… The Public Health Service has stated that there’s no medical reason for barring a person with the virus from any routine school or work activity. There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet A. AIDS is not a casually contagious disease. We’re still learning about how AIDS is transmitted, but experts tell us you don’t get it from telephones or swimming pools or drinking fountains. You don’t get it from shaking hands or sitting on a bus or anywhere else, for that matter. And most important, you don’t get AIDS by donating blood. Education is critical to clearing up the fears. Education is also crucial to stopping the transmission of the disease. Fourteen years later, then Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat, as a disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested. And so it goes. Reviewing the state of the Republican Party, conservative columnist David Brooks lamented today that “the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party” which “has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.” Given its required pledges and near-sacred oaths, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen aptly called the GOP simply the “Grand Old Cult.” A cult, it turns out, that would eject its former icon, Ronald Reagan. And by so doing, today’s Republicans would fail the Reagan Litmus Test. (For more debunking of the right-wing mythology surrounding Ronald Reagan, see these recent articles from the Washington Post , CNN , ThinkProgress and CBS . For the definitive account of the conservative revisionist history project, see Will Bunch’s excellent book, Tear Down This Myth .)
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After more than 130 missions over 30 years and at a cost of £120bn, the space shuttle programme ends on 8 July with the final launch of Atlantis. Two veterans of the flights talk about the thrill of takeoff, the view from above and the next step for mankind in space The ritual of hurling people into space is ingrained in the fabric of Florida’s space coast , a 40-mile strip of eastern shoreline that runs from Titusville through Cape Canaveral to Palm Bay in the south. In 1961, crowds gathered here to see Alan Shepard blast off aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket and become the first US citizen in space. The Apollo programme to land men on the moon came swiftly after. From here, astronauts flew to the moon, trundled around in buggies, struck a few golf balls and collected lumps of moon rock before heading home. But this area, which lives in the shadow of the space programme, is facing the end of an era. For the past 30 years, Kennedy Space Centre has been home to the space shuttle, Nasa’s great hope for making space travel cheap and commonplace. Tomorrow, one million spectators are expected to gather at vantage points along the coast to witness the launch of Atlantis, the 135th shuttle mission, and the last flight of the fleet. When Atlantis returns in 12 days time it will be dismantled and dispatched to a museum. The space shuttle fell famously short of expectations. Estimates put the cost of each launch at an exorbitant $1.5bn. Preparation for a mission took months if not years. And flights hardly became routine. Rather than journeying into space once a week – as designers had hoped – Nasa managed only a handful of launches a year. And then there is the human cost. In 1986, the shuttle Challenger was destroyed on takeoff when a rocket booster exploded, killing its crew of seven. Nasa took great efforts to fix the problem and looked hard at the management failures that led to the accident. Then, in 2003, another shuttle was lost high up in the atmosphere, this time when super-hot plasma tore into the wing of Columbia after it sustained damage from foam falling off the main fuel tank during takeoff. Another seven lives lost. Michael Griffin, the former chief administrator at the US space agency, who bemoaned Nasa’s ambitions in space as doing no more than endlessly circling the Earth, called the shuttle “inherently flawed”. The end of the shuttle era brings fresh focus on the shortcomings and mismanagement of the Nasa programme, but amid the criticism, it is worth recalling the achievements too. The shuttle launched and repaired – several times – the Hubble space telescope, which continues to capture spectacular images of the cosmos. The shuttle carried the Chandra x-ray observatory into orbit. And, of course, it was the workhorse behind the $100bn International Space Station , a 500-tonne orbiting outpost as roomy as a five-bedroom house. Thanks to the shuttle, astronauts know how to build spacecraft in space, knowledge that will underpin any future attempt to fly humans to other planets. For those who flew on the shuttle, it was the experience of a lifetime. No other rocket has carried astronauts into space and flown them back down through the red hot glow of the heated atmosphere to touch down like a glider on a runway. Here, two veterans describe the experience. Scott Altman flew four missions, including two to repair the Hubble telescope. Piers Sellers, from Crowborough, Sussex, flew three shuttle missions, and clocked up nearly five million miles aboard Atlantis last year. Preparing for takeoff Scott Altman You wake up around five hours prior to going out to the vehicle. It reminds me of Christmas morning, the level of excitement as you get up and have that last meal, get into your orange launch-and-entry suits in the white room and then get on the bus that takes you out to the pad. There’s a background level of anticipation, looking forward to the event. You get out to the pad about three hours prior to the launch. The commander gets in first and is strapped in. The vehicle is on the pad pointed upwards, so everything has been tilted 90 degrees and it is like getting into a different vehicle than the one you trained in. It takes a little effort to get all strapped in, but finally I’m in and the rest of the crew comes in after me. Everything starts to look like the simulators we’ve spent thousands of hours in. The rhythm feels like the simulators. You forget this is actually launch day and not just another simulation. But as the clock keeps ticking, you go through your checklist, you get down to the point when everything’s sealed up and you start thinking this is a little different. You’re heart is beating a little quicker. Piers Sellers A few minutes before launch, the whole shuttle vibrates as it cranks its engines to one side and the other, and backwards. There’s a real feeling that the machine is awakening. The seconds go by and everyone is watching. At exactly 10 seconds before launch, all the navigation instruments go from a rest position to active, you can see that navigation is tracking, that it knows where it wants to take the shuttle. A few seconds after that, the main engines light. You can’t really feel or hear much at that point. You see the power come up on the indicators in the cockpit, you see the thrust go up from zero to 100% on three engines and then you feel the whole stack sway forwards towards your feet, and that is because the thrust of the engines is so great that it bends the shuttle and stack on its hold-down bolts, and pushes it to one side. They call that the twang. The twang goes all the way, about 4ft, and then the whole stack bounces back. And at exactly the right moment, zero, the solid rocket boosters light and the hold-down bolts explode and off you go. It feels as if someone lit a bomb underneath your back. You just go flying up into the air, like a gigantic hand pushing you up into the sky. You see the launch tower fall by down one side and you are headed upwards into the sky. There’s a tremendous feeling of power, there’s a lot of vibration, noise, people yelling over the radio, and you get the feeling there’s this 2,500-tonne ship going straight up. You are banging around in your seat, while everything is moving around, swaying around in the cockpit, trying to look at the instruments, trying to concentrate, but tremendously excited. SA The vehicle is shaking incredibly. You can get to switches – you have to take your time and focus on what you’re doing and make sure you get to the right switch. As the commander I can see out of my forward window. Mostly you are facing up, so it’s nothing but blue sky. On my third mission, though, there was a thin cloud deck and I looked up out of that window and I saw it coming and all of the sudden it was like “whoooosh!” right through it. PS After about 45 seconds, you get the call that the main engines are going to throttle down so that the shuttle can ease through the transonic region , and you watch the thrust fall down on the instruments and then you are aware that you are going supersonic about one minute after you launch, but you are going supersonic straight up, not along, straight up, which is kind of incredible. At some point you see the sky go from blue very quickly to black as you punch out of the atmosphere. You keep hammering along like this at first stage for the first two minutes. There’s a lot of vibration, a lot of rattling and rolling in the cockpit, until you get to about two minutes and then the solid rocket boosters fall off, each side of the shuttle, and things smooth right out. You have to make an effort to pull the air into your lungs. Expulsion is not a problem at all, your chest just collapses again. SA At main engine cut-off, all three shuttle engines shut off and “bang!”, just like that you’re floating. The transition is instantaneous and you feel your body going forwards as if it’s a compressed spring and anything that’s not tied down goes floating by. You can’t see the ground too easily until a point when the whole stack rolls upright and you go from inverted over the Earth to upright, and as you sweep through that roll, you can look out of the window and see the Earth opening up underneath you. I’ll never forget that sight on my very first flight when we rolled in the direction and I was looking out of that window. I saw the curvature of the Earth, and the ocean there, the thin blue line at the horizon that is the atmosphere, and it was just an incredible sight. And then it was: “OK, come back in on the dials, let’s get back to work.” Floating in orbit PS We have a plan to get us through the first day in orbit. You get out of your suit, hang it up, then convert the shuttle from being a rocket into being a spacecraft. You’re putting out computers, moving bags around, stuff like that, and that takes longer than you’d think, about four or five hours. The next day you catch up with the Space Station and the day after that you dock. And that’s exciting. The Space Station goes from being a very distant star when you can first see it to a brighter and brighter light, and then eventually this gigantic silver structure that’s hanging there in the black sky above you. You sneak up below it and at the appropriate moment, the shuttle does a pitch around manoeuvre, where in effect it does a loop 600ft below the station, so the guys on the station can photograph the shuttle and see if there’s been any damage and send all that digital data back to the ground. You do that and then you come up level with the station and slowly ease yourself in towards it, a bit like a very delicate parking job. PS The extraordinary thing, particularly when you’re spacewalking, is that sometimes it looks like you’d expect it to look, which is you’re flying over a huge rotating ball with a black sky and it’s breathtakingly beautiful. That’s how you’d expect it to be, only better. But sometimes your perceptions can play some tricks on you. Often you feel that the world is like a big wall on one side of you and you are flying horizontally around it. At other times it’s like a big ball above you and you’re going underneath it. So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere, and you’re going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it. When you look at the world it’s incredibly bright. The seas, the oceans, they look like blue neon. It’s so bright, it hurts your eyes. You can see everything on the continents, you can see the rivers, the mountains, forests, cities, all sorts of things. You can even see big fields if you look carefully. SA I joined Nasa just before the 10-year anniversary of the Challenger accident. I really felt that Nasa had done its homework, that we’d learned the lessons from Challenger and that basically it was a management failure: the signs were there but Nasa didn’t heed them as well as they could have. Six of the seven astronauts on Columbia [which was destroyed on entry in 2003] were very close friends of mine. Three were my classmates, the other three were in the class right after me. Dave Brown had been my flight surgeon in the navy. It was a shock to me to realise that basically we did almost the same thing again, in that we missed the warning signs: foam falling off the vehicle was a threat and we hadn’t learned from that mistake. A long time ago, during the Apollo 1 fire, Frank Borman (a former Apollo commander) said what we had was a failure of imagination, to imagine what could have gone wrong and try to stop it from happening. I think the same thing happened with Columbia. Returning to Earth PS To leave, you undock and fly around the Space Station and that’s all very slow and balletic and pretty, but not very dramatic. You then spend a day coasting around the Earth, packing things up and getting ready to come home. On entry day you get up early and it’s a sprint. You have to pack everything away, secure everything and get in your pressure suit. The whole business really starts at the de-orbit burn. You turn the shuttle so the tail is pointing into the wind, if you like, let rip with the engines for a long burn to kick the shuttle out of orbit, then flip the shuttle over so its nose is pointing the right way for hitting the atmosphere. Very quickly after that you start descending into the upper layers of the atmosphere. You don’t see much to start with, but after a while you get this beautiful cherry-red glow all round the shuttle and you can see it snapping over the tail. It kind of pulses, but over the forward cockpit windows it’s just a beautiful cherry red that you can see through. In daylight you can see through this red haze and see the world. We actually saw a sunrise come up through the red glow of the entry. SA From the moment you do your final de-orbit burn, when you’re about 12,000 miles from your landing point, one thing you know for certain is that in about an hour the shuttle is going to hit the surface of the Earth. The challenge to you, as commander and pilot, is to make sure where you hit the Earth has a runway underneath it. You really don’t have any sense of gravity yet, but as you go through the entry a little bit, you’ll go to hang a card on a Velcro spot or something and let go of it and notice it slowly floats to the floor, and you’re like, “Wow, look at that!” And you do it again: “Hey, gravity, we haven’t seen that in two weeks!” It’s amazing. Your perspective has changed. You don’t expect things to fall any more and when they start doing so, it’s almost like a new experience. You’re coming through the atmosphere and if it’s night where you are, you look out of the overhead window and you start seeing this little green glow, which is the atmosphere heating up by the friction of the shuttle smashing through it. As you go further and lower, you start to notice it going a little bit darker, into the yellows. On my second entry, I was looking out at that and I started to see it get a little bit darker, so I floated up in my seat a little bit and looked towards the nose and I could see it transitioning from yellow to kind of pink and I floated up a little higher and it was starting to go red, and it was like – “I don’t know if I want to look any more” – so I floated back down in my seat because it just looked too hot, too brutal out there. PS The shuttle does a couple of big S-turns to slow down over the Pacific ocean. In our case, we came zipping across Panama and Cuba and up towards Florida very fast, in just a few minutes. You pop out of the sky at Mach five [3,840mph], and everyone below you hears a double bang as you go transonic. Then you do this great sort of spiral dive over Florida and come down shooting towards the runway, nose pointed almost at the dirt. At the last minute, the commander pulls the nose up and squeaks it on to the runway. You feel the main wheels go down, then the nose wheel, they deploy the chute to slow you down, and then you gradually roll to a stop. At that point there are a lot of smiles. People are happy. Hopefully the mission went well, nobody got hurt, all the tasks got accomplished, and you did it all without disgracing yourself or your friends. I’ve flown on two shuttles and they both felt a little bit different. They are real ships with their individual characters and their own nicks and bumps. You look at the shuttle, it’s not as if it’s this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it’s got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done these incredible voyages all with their individual characters. I am personally very fond of the shuttle. When they wind up in museums I’ll go and see them and I’ll be happy to see them like old friends. The future of space PS You will hear that the shuttle cost a lot of money, and it’s very complicated and has some embedded risks in its design and all of that is completely true. But if you take the long view, you have to look at what was achieved with the shuttle. You got a beautiful space station, an international space station, a complete 500-tonne orbiting laboratory run by 16 countries that I think is going to deliver some real home runs over the next 10 to 15 years. You got Hubble, not only launched but repaired and serviced four times, Chandra, and a whole lot of other instruments of science. But I think the most important thing that came out of it was we took the business of working and assembling things in space to a high level of artistry. If we go somewhere else, such as Mars, we are going to have to assemble our spaceships in orbit. We know how to do that now. Having put the Space Station together, we know how to do work in orbit, to assemble big structures and complicated pieces of engineering. We’ve taken a big leap forward in our technology and our operations. SA Nasa is re-focusing, re-grouping. I think the whole country needs to decide what they want out of a space programme and where we should go. I do think that, in the future, the big things we do in space are going to take the cooperation of the whole world. So the International Space Station is a great partnership to start that effort moving forward to put people on Mars and explore the outer planets and to start extending humanity from our foothold here on Earth into the stars. I am hopeful that the spirit of cooperation will be good not just for efforts in space but for humanity in general, as we learn how to work together. I think we have made a transition into a somewhat unusual place for Nasa, that we’re not exactly sure what the next vehicle is, what the next step is. But I think in the end human spaceflight is something that’s important to people in general and to humanity as a whole, for looking out and pushing ourselves to ask the next questions and figure out what’s out there. Final space shuttle mission Nasa Space The space shuttle Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …After Mocking Rick Perry for Calling Twitter ‘Tweeter’ Chris Matthews Does it Twice in One Show
July 6, 2011 No Comment
John Lennon in the '70s sang about instant karma getting you. On Wednesday's “Hardball,” two weeks after mocking Texas governor Rick Perry for calling Twitter “Tweeter,” the pathetically pompous Chris Matthews made the same mistake not once, but twice (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: And check out Rick Perry getting a new media award — that's for knowing what you're talking about — and then saying, quote, “You can always follow me on tweeter.” I think it's Twitter, brother. That's how Matthews teased the segment during his “Hardball” introduction on June 21. Later in the program, before breaking for a commercial, Matthews continued to belittle Perry: MATTHEWS: Up next: Texas Governor Rick Perry wins a new media award, then says, you can follow me on tweeter. This guy may be more like George W. than we thought. Catch it in the “Sideshow” coming up next. After the commercial break: MATTHEWS: Back to HARDBALL. Now to the “Sideshow.” First up: It's all Greek to me, or all Greek to Rick Perry. In a media made for the RightOnline Conference, the Texas governor urged fellow conservatives to follow him on Twitter — or did he? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: Until then, if you have had enough, take out our phone and text fed up to 95613. And you can always follow me on tweeter @GovernorPerry. Thanks for this award. God bless you. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, tweeter? The kicker: Governor Perry was accepting an award recognizing his use of new media. Well, with the ghost of John Lennon possibly at his side, Matthews Wednesday made the same mistake – twice: MATTHEWS: But the big challenge obviously is to get those numbers jacked up again to 2012 where he can have at least the same participation. Will Tweeter, will Twitter help? A few minutes later: MATTHEWS: So what good’s Tweeter? Twitter? Tweeting? You see, it's funny when a liberal makes a mistake. But when a conservative does it, it disqualifies him or her as being a serious candidate for high office. By the way, to quote Matthews, the kicker: This was a segment about the President's town hall meeting taking questions from – wait for it! – Twitter. Cue John Lennon:
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Relatives of members of armed forces killed in combat told their details appear in Glenn Mulcaire’s notebooks The families of members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been told they were targeted by a private investigator who worked for the News of the World. Officers at Scotland Yard have contacted relatives to tell them their names and contact details appear in notebooks belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, who this week apologised for hacking into a huge number of mobile phones on behalf of the paper. The revelation is likely to further shock the public, who have already reacted with horror to news that the paper intercepted voicemails left on a phone belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and targeted the phones of families of victims of the 7/7 attacks . MHP Solicitors, whose clients include Samantha Roberts, the widow of Sergeant Steven Roberts of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, said they had been contacted on Wednesday and told Roberts’s phone may have been hacked, along with a mobile belonging to Geraldine McCool, her lawyer. “We have been contacted this morning in connection with a possible phone-hacking on our clients, and Geraldine McCool, arising out of high profile military inquests in 2006/2007,” a statement from MPH said. “We are making efforts to verify this information.” Sergeant Roberts was one of the first Britons killed in Iraq in 2003, in a friendly fire incident. McCool said there was no evidence confidential information had been obtained, saying: “Solicitors are cautious when leaving messages due to client confidentiality and my military clients and their families come from a background that works on a ‘need to know’ basis.” However, McCool added: “I sincerely hope that any future revelations do not involve our clients and that full disclosure of the extent of this diabolical practice is now made”. The latest development in the ongoing scandal surrounding the Sunday tabloid sparked anger among relatives of dead servicemen. Graham Knight, whose son Ben was killed in the Nimrod explosion in Afghanistan in 2006, said: “It’s disgusting but it doesn’t surprise me.” The paper’s owner News International said it was contacting the Ministry of Defence to verify the claims. It said in a statement it would be “absolutely appalled and horrified” if they were true. An MoD spokesman said: “This is a matter for the Metropolitan police who are investigating these allegations. “It would be inappropriate for us to comment whilst this investigation is ongoing.” Phone hacking Military News of the World Glenn Mulcaire Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Relatives of members of armed forces killed in combat told their details appear in Glenn Mulcaire’s notebooks The families of members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been told they were targeted by a private investigator who worked for the News of the World. Officers at Scotland Yard have contacted relatives to tell them their names and contact details appear in notebooks belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, who this week apologised for hacking into a huge number of mobile phones on behalf of the paper. The revelation is likely to further shock the public, who have already reacted with horror to news that the paper intercepted voicemails left on a phone belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and targeted the phones of families of victims of the 7/7 attacks . MHP Solicitors, whose clients include Samantha Roberts, the widow of Sergeant Steven Roberts of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, said they had been contacted on Wednesday and told Roberts’s phone may have been hacked, along with a mobile belonging to Geraldine McCool, her lawyer. “We have been contacted this morning in connection with a possible phone-hacking on our clients, and Geraldine McCool, arising out of high profile military inquests in 2006/2007,” a statement from MPH said. “We are making efforts to verify this information.” Sergeant Roberts was one of the first Britons killed in Iraq in 2003, in a friendly fire incident. McCool said there was no evidence confidential information had been obtained, saying: “Solicitors are cautious when leaving messages due to client confidentiality and my military clients and their families come from a background that works on a ‘need to know’ basis.” However, McCool added: “I sincerely hope that any future revelations do not involve our clients and that full disclosure of the extent of this diabolical practice is now made”. The latest development in the ongoing scandal surrounding the Sunday tabloid sparked anger among relatives of dead servicemen. Graham Knight, whose son Ben was killed in the Nimrod explosion in Afghanistan in 2006, said: “It’s disgusting but it doesn’t surprise me.” The paper’s owner News International said it was contacting the Ministry of Defence to verify the claims. It said in a statement it would be “absolutely appalled and horrified” if they were true. An MoD spokesman said: “This is a matter for the Metropolitan police who are investigating these allegations. “It would be inappropriate for us to comment whilst this investigation is ongoing.” Phone hacking Military News of the World Glenn Mulcaire Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Lawyer still in prison after speaking to foreign media about case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani Human rights activists have raised serious concerns about a lawyer who fell foul of Iran’s Islamic regime for highlighting the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. On the first anniversary of the international uproar that forced Iran to temporarily halt the punishment of Mohammadi Ashtiani, campaigners said they had fears for her lawyer, Houtan Kian, who remains incommunicado in prison nine months after he was arrested and has been reportedly tortured. Kian was arrested last October with Mohammadi Ashtiani’s son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, and two German journalists who were interviewing them without the government’s permission in the western city of Tabriz. A few weeks before his arrest, Kian had complained that his house had been raided by security forces and his files confiscated. The 37-year-old lawyer was appointed by the government to represent Ashtiani. Despite threats from the regime, he spoke to foreign media in support of his client, whose stoning case prompted international condemnation from human rights groups and celebrities. Despite the outcry, Ashtiani’s fate remains unclear in the face of a series of ambiguous and often contradictory comments made by Iran’s judiciary and government. But, thanks to the media frenzy, her immediate sentence of death is on hold. Shadi Sadr, a prominent Iranian lawyer who has represented many women facing stoning sentences, said: “I have received new information from a source in Tabriz that Kian had been severely mistreated and tortured while in jail. “Kian and Mohammad Mostafaei [Ashtiani's other lawyer], became victims themselves only for defending their client.” Mostafaei also fell foul of the regime for speaking to media in support of Ashtiani, and was forced to flee Iran. He now lives in Norway. Other Iranian lawyers have been targeted by the Iranian regime in recent months in what is seen as a new crackdown. Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 11 years in jail last year and Mohammad Ali Dadkhah received nine years two days ago. In March, a letter that was apparently written by Kian and smuggled out of jail, circulated around Iranian websites but did not receive coverage in the west due to concerns over its authenticity. Sadr said on Wednesday she had received confirmation that it was in fact written by him. In the letter, he wrote: “All the signs of torture remain on my body … I have been burned by approximately 60 cigarettes on my legs, testicles and feet (5 cigarettes there). I am only given one meal a day, in the morning; once it was a small piece of cheese, another time, three dates. “My teeth have been almost completely broken by blows with boots, as has my nose, which bleeds permanently. At midnight, in cold weather, I was soaked with a fire hose and left, with hands and feet bound, in the courtyard until four in the morning, when I was taken to be interrogated.” Some Iranian websites have reported that Kian was sentenced to 11 years in jail but this could not be independently confirmed. Sadr said the history of political activity in Kian’s family also contributed to his current situation. Kian’s father was executed after Iran’s revolution in 1979 for supporting an opposition group. “Mistreatment of Kian in jail is a clear message from Iran to human rights activists for continuing their work,” Sadr said. The embarrassment caused by Ashtiani’s sentence becoming known forced Iran to react in various ways. The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in an interview last year in New York that a death sentence by stoning had never been handed down. Iran’s judiciary, on the other hand, confirmed her stoning sentence but attempted to alleviate the impact by portraying her as a murderer of her husband. Last December, Iran’s state-run English-language television channel, Press TV, which has its main office in London, broadcast a programme that showed Ashtiani and her son participating in the reconstruction of her alleged part in the murder of her husband. The broadcast of the interview was described by human rights activists as “forced confessions” and “unethical” but in response to a complaint to the broadcast of the programme, the media regulator Ofcom ruled in March, to surprise of many, that the Iranian station did not breach UK’s broadcasting rules in transmitting the programme. According to Amnesty International, Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning for “adultery while married” but was also given a 10-year prison term in 2006 for the murder of her husband, which her lawyer said was subsequently reduced to five years for “complicity” in the crime. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, an Iranian human rights activist based in Norway who is also a spokesman for the NGO Iran Human Rights which has monitored Iran’s history of stoning, said seven people have been stoned to death in the country since 2006 and at least 14 Iranians are facing death by stoning. Iran Middle East Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani Religion Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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At least 131 people to receive some form of protection after series of assassinations in tussle over land and resources The Brazilian authorities are to provide government protection to activists threatened with murder following a series of killings in the Amazon. The measures, announced on Tuesday, should see at least 131 people receive some form of protection, among them environmental activists, rural leaders and human rights defenders. “The most important thing is to guarantee that those behind the threats are identified, held responsible and punished,” said Brazil’s human rights minister, Maria do Rosário, launching the measures. “Among those who are threatening people today are some who have killed in the past and enjoyed impunity.” An official from Brazil’s human rights secretariat said the protection would come in “various different modalities”, ranging from regular visits to 24-hour armed security. Protection would be given to those cases considered “serious” but would not necessarily involve “individual treatment”,” the official said. Several human rights activists in the Amazon already have permanent armed security. Murders are nothing new to the Brazilian Amazon, where an ongoing tussle for land and natural resources continues to claim lives. But the violence made international headlines in May when two rainforest activists were ambushed and killed near their home in Nova Ipixuna, Pará state. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, had spent more than a decade fighting illegal loggers, ranchers and charcoal producers, and had repeatedly alerted local and federal authorities to the threats they suffered as a result. “I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared,” Ribeiro told a TEDx conference in Brazil in November. “I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist.” A month after the couple’s deaths, no arrests have been made, but few doubt it was the work of hired guns, known as pistoleiros . Part of one of Ribeiro’s ears was cut off by his killers – apparently a means of proving the assassination had been carried out. In an interview at the end of last year, Ribeiro told one Brazilian TV channel he had a R$5,000 (£2,000) price on his head. Calls for government action grew last month after another four killings in the Amazon. Members of a special paramilitary national force were deployed to the region and Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, launched a series of operations against illegal loggers and charcoal producers. Last week a team of Ibama operatives shut down 12 illegal sawmills in Nova Ipixuna, with support from heavily armed members of the army and federal police. Following the murders of Ribeiro and his wife, activists handed the federal government a list of 207 people who had received death threats, of whom 42 had already been killed. “We cannot offer police escorts to all of the threatened names,” Rosário said at the time. “It would be unrealistic to say we were in a position to attend a list with so many names.” One of the highest-profile Amazon killings in recent history was the murder of Dorothy Stang. The the 73-year-old American nun, a well-known social and environmental activist, was gunned down near the town of Anapu in February 2005. She reportedly read an extract from the Bible to her killers moments before being killed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” she told them. Her brother, David Stang, said she had been defiant to the end. “She called me the day before her murder and said, ‘I will not run away from these people,’” he told the Guardian during a 2009 trip to Brazil. “The needs of the people are not being met,” he added. “They are being murdered. They are being impoverished. The land is being destroyed.” In the wake of Stang’s murder the Brazilian government dispatched hundreds of federal troops to the region to restore order. But six years on those forces have now withdrawn from Anapu and local activists claim the violence has returned. Even the police chief, Melquesedeque da Silva Ribeiro, this week admitted fearing for his life, after conducting a recent operation against illegal deforestation. “I fear threats from diverse sectors,” he told Brazilian reporters. According to the CPT, a Brazilian human rights group that compiles annual lists of the country’s “walking dead”, 918 people were killed in the Brazilian Amazon between 1985 and April this year. Trials were held in just 27 of the cases, the CPT claimed. Brazil Amazon rainforest Forests Deforestation Activism Tom Phillips guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Al-Qaida could use hidden ‘belly bombs’ to attack passenger planes, US warns
July 6, 2011 No Comment
Airlines told of terrorists developing ‘surgically implanted’ explosive compounds in effort to beat airport security American officials have warned airlines that they believe al-Qaida is developing “belly bombs” to beat airport security and allow suicide bombers to launch terror attacks on board passenger planes. The department of homeland security has sent a bulletin to airline executives saying it has identified a potential threat from terrorists who could “surgically implant explosives or explosive components in humans”. Although many airports use advanced imaging technology that can “see” through people’s clothing, the technology might not pick up a bomb which is hidden inside a body. “Due to the significant advances in global aviation security in recent years, terrorist groups have repeatedly and publicly indicated interest in pursuing ways to further conceal explosives,” said Kawika Riley, spokesman for the department’s transport security administration. “As a precaution, passengers flying from international locations to US destinations may notice additional security measures.” Experts say the explosives could be implanted in abdomens, buttocks and breasts allowing suicide bombers to pass undetected through airport body scanners. Explosive compounds such as pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) could be implanted, then the person’s wounds allowed to heal, making the material difficult to detect. On board the plane, the material could be detonated by injection. US officials have been on high alert for terror attacks since US forces killed al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden in May. They say there is no intelligence about a plot, but US and international carriers are being urged to consider the threat. The bombs are thought to be a particular risk in Europe and the Middle East where full body scanners are not as widely used as they are in the US. Authorities told ABC News that these “belly bombs” were thought to be the work of 28-year-old Ibrahim Asiri, who became a high-profile target for the US after his failed attempt to hide bombs in printer cartridges being moved from Yemen to Chicago. He was also believed to be behind the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on 25 December 2009 by the “underwear bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian had a pouch of PETN in his underwear. He tried injecting the pouch with a chemical to create a detonation but he set his clothes on fire instead and was overpowered by passengers. Research conducted by the BBC after the underwear bombing suggests that Abdulmutallab would have failed to damage the plane’s fuselage even if the bomb had gone off. The BBC documentary claimed that the blast would only have been strong enough to kill the bomber and the person who was sitting next to him. Al-Qaida terrorists are known to have hidden explosives inside their bodies for suicide bombings. In August 2009 Asiri’s brother, Abdullah Hassan, died trying to kill Saudi Arabia’s deputy interior minister with a bomb hidden in his anal passage. al-Qaida Global terrorism Air transport United States Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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enlarge To listen to the Tea Party, you’d think government existed solely to do bad things to individual liberties, that it is incapable of doing nothing good, and that the best government is no government. Right? Not so much. Via Huffington Post : WASHINGTON — For years, Tennessee lawmakers have advocated for the construction of a major port on the northwest corner of the state on the Mississippi River. Known as the Port of Cates Landing, the project would include a 9,000-foot slack-water harbor, an adjacent 350-acre industrial park, improvements to local roads to connect it to U.S. Highway 78, and a short-line railroad to a larger rail line 28 miles away. It would, by some estimates, create thousands of jobs — a much-needed boon for the Lake County region, 37.8 percent of whose residents live below the poverty line. It also would cost a fair amount of cash. By the spring of 2011, more than $33 million had been invested in the project; an additional $20 million — $13 million from the federal government, $7 million from the state of Tennessee — was on its way. But as Congress, in an effort to avert a shutdown, began looking for federal expenditures to shave off the budget, Cates Landing’s future suddenly became unclear. It was, among other transportation projects, on the chopping block. Infrastructure! Yay, infrastructure! But wait. That district is represented by Republican freshman Stephen Fincher, a ‘small government’ Tea Party Republican . Bummer. No pork for the Tea Party, right? But wait. On March 8, 2011, Gannett news service reported that the funding for Cates Landing was being targeted by lawmakers looking to slash the federal budget. The same day that report came out, Fincher spoke directly with Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about the funds. The next day, he wrote a follow-up letter seeking assistance in “obligating” the $13 million grant for the port. And behold, it worked. The grant was approved on March 18th. And then what did Fincher do? Two days after writing LaHood, Fincher voted for the a Republican House budget that cut billions of dollars, including from many other transportation priorities. His office put out a press release scolding “out of control” and “reckless” federal spending. As lawmakers prepare to cut trillions of dollars from the budget as a condition to raising the nation’s debt ceiling, the story of the Cates Landing project underscores the dilemma that faces many members of the Republican-run House and the freshmen class in particular. Federal spending is derided as nothing short of a threat to the country’s future — unless, of course, it happens to be directed at that congressman’s home district. Gosh, we used to call that pork until the TeaPublicans decided pork was a bad thing and removed it — and earmarks — from consideration. Fincher isn’t the only one. The Huffington Post article mentions Bill Johnson (R-OH), Rick Crawford (R-AR), Joe Walsh (R-IL), Stephen Palazzo (R-MS), and Allen West (R-FL), among others. Here’s the thing. Infrastructure spending is one of the things government should be doing more of, not less. So I have no quibble with these Representatives acting in the best interests of their districts and requesting funds for legitimate projects which create jobs and make their districts a better place to live. More power to them. But please, don’t do that and turn around and start posturing about government spending and how the President is an addict to it while thumping your chest about being a small government Tea Party type. At least, don’t do that and expect it to go unnoticed. It’s funny to watch the Tea Party hacks spin it, though I wouldn’t really count Mark Meckler as a legitimate spokesman for TeaPublicans in general: “Obviously there is going to be infrastructure spending, and one of the jobs of a Representative is to represent their district,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. “I would say that we should be paying close attention to this process of petitioning federal agencies [for money] … But I don’t think anybody is saying that when the federal government is spending money, that no congressman should try to fund projects his district needs. I think what they are saying is we don’t want egregious, crazy, pork barrel spending. ” What is egregious, crazy, pork barrel spending, exactly? Where I live, the Recovery Act funds are being used to widen the 101 freeway, something that’s been desperately needed for years. Farther south, the 405 freeway (a black traffic hole if ever one existed) is being widened and bridges retrofitted for earthquakes. Is that egregious, crazy, pork barrel spending? Or is it only egregious when it funds a project in a Democrat’s district? Here’s what is undeniable. Whether they like it or not, TeaPublicans are, through their actions, endorsing what many of us already know: Government can do good things.
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