Tag: power

“Our cause is just” — leader of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fighting pipeline construction

8 Comments

❝ High on a hill overlooking the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers, Dave Archambault II knelt and touched a stone that bears a handprint worn into it by thousands of his ancestors who have done the same for centuries.

There, the leader of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said a prayer for peace.

❝ Below, Archambault can see Native Americans from across North America gathered at an encampment a half-mile away, joining his tribe’s growing protest against a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline that will cross the Missouri River nearby. It’s a project they fear will disturb sacred sites and impact drinking water for thousands of tribal members on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and millions further downstream.

“Our cause is just,” the laconic, soft-spoken 45-year-old said. “What we do today will make a difference for future generations.”

❝ His contemporaries say he’s the right person at the right time to lead the fight, which has led to the arrests of about 30 people, Archambault included, for interfering with construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

❝ Since becoming the leader of about 9,000 people in 2013, Archambault has sought to improve housing, health care, employment, education and other grim realities that his 2.3 million-acre reservation that straddles the North and South Dakota border and reservations nationwide face.

Now, he’s dealing with added pressure of the pipeline, which he has called yet another “historic wrong“ involving tribal sovereignty and land rights.

RTFA. Decide which part of history deserves your support: short term profits including construction jobs for a couple of years – or long-term civil rights and sovereignty for a Native American nation simply trying to live in peace.

Pic of the day

1 Comment


Click to enlarge — AP

This 2013 file photo shows an 80-foot thick coal seam at Cloud Peak Energy’s Spring Creek strip mine near Decker, Montana. As far as US energy barons like the Koch Bros. are concerned it may as well be gold.

Income inequality prompts Republicans to change their lies — but not their policies

1 Comment

With the Iowa caucuses less than three months away, the Republican presidential candidates have suddenly begun discussing income inequality a whole lot more.

During the first two debates, GOP candidates used words like “inequality,” “disparity,” “rich,” “poor,” and “middle class” just 0.06 percent of the time, according to an analysis by the communications and consulting firm Logos Consulting Group. That rate tripled in the Oct. 28 debate, the first one after the Democratic debate that featured more discussion of inequality. It rose again to 0.20 percent in Tuesday night’s GOP debate.

But Republicans have resisted policy shifts to match the change in rhetoric, and remain committed to lower taxes and fewer regulations, which took hold under Ronald Reagan – [after the Carter administration] when taxes were higher and the wealth gap narrower.

“The only possible reason Republicans ever talk about inequality is if their polling is telling them they are vulnerable on that issue,” said Bruce Bartlett, a former senior policy analyst for Reagan who has since grown highly critical of the GOP. He argued that Republicans generally don’t fret about inequality. “Concern for inequality leads to redistribution, which all Republicans believe is evil.”…

The tax plans of major Republicans feature large tax breaks that would provide disproportionate gains to the affluent, according to the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. Bush’s proposal would raise after-tax incomes for the highest earners by 16.4 percent; more than any other group. Senator Marco Rubio’s plan would give the top 1 percent a 27.9 percent break, higher than an average 17.8 percent cut for all taxpayers. Senator Ted Cruz’s 10 percent individual flat tax would give the top 1 percent a 34.2 percent tax cut, compared to an average 21.3 percent across all groups.

Although Republican front-runner Donald Trump has raised hackles in calling for closing the “carried interest” tax loophole that benefits private equity and hedge fund managers, the billionaire’s overall tax plan also disproportionately benefits the top 1 percent…

Along with Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Bush, Rubio, and Cruz also oppose Democratic-backed proposals to combat inequality such as lifting the federal minimum wage. Republicans unanimously want to repeal Obamacare, the 2010 law that has slowed the rise of inequality by extending health-care coverage to nearly 17 million middle- and low-income Americans, funded in large part by taxes on the affluent. Many Republican candidates are also campaigning on cutting Social Security, which has dramatically reduced poverty among seniors.

Though economic conditions have changed such that ordinary Americans are taking home fewer real wages for higher productivity, the fundamental tenets of Republican economic orthodoxy have not changed — taxes on upper earners should be cut, rules on business activity should be lifted, and national economic growth trumps targeted efforts at assisting those getting left behind.

Just in case you’re silly enough to believe Republican declarations on behalf of economic policies which have been failing the broad ranks of American wage-earners for a century.

The lies may change from generation to generation. The narrow class interests served by the Republican Party only squeeze the rest of us tighter and tighter.

Commercial directors making today’s coolest adverts

Leave a comment

The whole commercial makes no mention of brand or models excepting the tiny-print identifiers appearing for a second or two. If you’re in the market for something like this – you already know what you’re looking at!

This is from the Portland, Oregon, crew at Wieden+Kennedy

Wayne McClammy, Hungry Man

McClammy credits meeting Emilio Estevez with kick-starting his career (“If Emilio can direct, I can direct,” he thought), and soon he was making viral comedy hits, many for Jimmy Kimmel. (His short “I’m Fucking Matt Damon,” with Sarah Silverman, notably won an Emmy.) His star-studded reel showcases this broader gift for comedy. Case in point: a growing list of credits for Geico and The Martin Agency that includes the instant goofy-camel classic “Hump Day.”

“Hump Day” alone makes him a star in my skies.

Click here for nine more insane in the membrane-directors leading the world of commercial advertising.

40% of “resisting arrest” cases in NYC come from just 5% of the force

1 Comment


Photo courtesy of the Garner family

In the wake of Eric Garner’s death, the head of the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a police interest group, blamed Garner: “You cannot resist arrest, that’s a crime.” But it’s not a crime that most police officers often file reports about.

The New York Police Department is made up of 35,000 officers, and just a minority of them have sent people into court for “resisting arrest.”

But the ones who do, according to a new report from WNYC, charge a lot of people — and that can be a “red flag” for other issues.

WNYC looked at over 51,000 cases where someone was charged with “resisting arrest” since 2009. They found that 40 percent of those cases — over 20,000 — were committed by just 5 percent of all the police officers on the force. And 15 percent of officers accounted for a majority of all “resisting arrest” charges…

And that stinks on ice!

“There’s a widespread pattern in American policing where resisting arrest charges are used to sort of cover – and that phrase is used – the officer’s use of force,” said Sam Walker, the accountability expert from the University of Nebraska. “Why did the officer use force? Well, the person was resisting arrest.”

That pattern held up in the case of Donald Sadowy, a Brooklyn police officer who’s the subject of the WNYC article. Sadowy has more than 20 resisting arrest cases since 2009 — putting him in the 98th percentile, or higher, among all police. Meanwhile, over the last two years, Sadowy’s been sued 10 times for excessive force.

I know some honest cops. I have had friends over the years who were honest cops. I’ve had family members who were honest cops – in New York City as a matter of fact.

When the topic of professional policing comes up I also always recall a young guy I worked with in a metropolitan hospital who left to join the local police department. Since he had a skilled and licensed trade, I asked him why he was making the switch. After all, it would take him several years to get back up to what he was earning at the hospital.

His answer was simple. “I get drugs for free for the rest of my life.” You can substitute whatever you wish to change out from “drugs”. Hookers, a regular tax-free income on the side for being on the take. Or maybe you just enjoy being a sociopath with power.

Autoblog’s Technology of the Year is the BMW i8

4 Comments

No one’s pretending this is a car for everyone – even if you can afford one. But, it’s proof of concept that a production vehicle can have dynamic levels of performance in combination with better than average fuel consumption.

i8 small
Click to enlarge

The winner of Autoblog’s 2014 Technology of the Year award was given this year for not just one technology, but for how a suite of technologies worked together to make one impressive vehicle.

The BMW i8 was named the winner Wednesday night at the Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles, just outside the Los Angeles Auto Show. Autoblog’s editorial staff agreed that the i8, which drew crowds of attention during our testing days, represents a future of driving that we can’t wait to see happen…

Ultimately, we picked the car that excited us the most. The BMW i8 has a throaty exhaust note when accelerating. It’s got carbon fiber, and a plug-in hybrid system that uses a small 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine and an electric motor. It has through-the-road all-wheel drive, and in Europe it’ll come with laser beams for headlights.

All that, and it’s a massive eye catcher. People stop and stare when they see this car, for good reason. It’s simply gorgeous. For a more in-depth look at the Car and Driver test, click here.

An engine governor holds top speed down to 155mph. 0-60 times are under 4 seconds. Yet, through the C&D testing cycle and track testing they averaged 24mpg. With an electric-only range of 22 miles, this critter can match the mileage of a Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid IMHO.

Of course, the Ford ain’t $136K.

Turbo-boosted engines becoming the norm at Ford and VW

1 Comment


Click to enlarge — 2014 Ford Fiesta Turbo ST

Despite the hiccups associated with any technology, the U.S. automaker Ford says it can see a day when all vehicles are either hybrids, electrics or powered by turbocharged engines.

Ford produced its 2 millionth EcoBoost engine Tuesday and said it plans to add to its lineup of five turbocharged powerplants, ranging from a 3.5 liter V6 to a tiny 1 liter three-cylinder engine, and may include a smaller EcoBoost V6 for the next F-150 pickup…

“Five is not the end of the road,” said Ford Vice President of Powertrain Engineering Joe Bakaj. He said EcoBoost technology would help the automaker meet the federal mileage requirement of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

It was a “big risk for us as a company to go from a big V8 to a V6. We knew on paper it would be great, but until you launch and see consumers vote, you don’t know if the strategy will work,” he said Monday at the Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich.

About 20 percent of all new Fords have direct fuel injection EcoBoost engines, which generate the power of a larger conventional internal combustion engine via turbocharging and software while delivering improved fuel economy.

Although an EcoBoost engine is more expensive than a conventional gasoline engine it recoups the additional cost in fuel savings four times faster than a diesel engine…

Continue reading →

FISA judge admits Snowden’s NSA disclosures triggered debate

1 Comment


The only thing Republicans find wrong with this – is that it’s Obama not John McCain

The court that oversees US surveillance has ordered the government to review for declassification a set of secret rulings about the National Security Agency’s bulk trawls of Americans’ phone records, acknowledging that disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden had triggered an important public debate.

The Fisa court ordered the Justice Department to identify the court’s own rulings after May 2011 that concern a section of the Patriot Act used by the NSA to justify its mass database of American phone data. The ruling was a significant step towards their publication.

It is the second time in a week that a US court has ordered the disclosure of secret intelligence rulings. On Tuesday, a federal court in New York compelled the government to declassify numerous documents that revealed substantial tension between federal authorities and the surveillance court over the years.

On Thursday, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, conceded that the NSA is likely to lose at least some of its broad powers to collect data on Americans.

He acknowledged that Snowden’s disclosures had prompted a necessary debate: “As loath as I am to give any credit to what’s happened here, I think it’s clear that some of the conversations this has generated, some of the debate, actually needed to happen.

“If there’s a good side to this, maybe that’s it…”

Someone mail me a penny postcard when Obama and the defenders of NSA spying on the people of America admit to overvaluing their decision to diminish our constitutional liberty.

Further publication of the court’s rulings “would contribute to an informed debate,” Judge Dennis Saylor said. “Publication would also assure citizens of the integrity of this court’s proceedings…”

A procedural hurdle meant that he could not order the declassification of many of the documents, since the ACLU earlier sought their release under the Freedom of Information Act through a different court, in a case that is continuing…Should the ACLU lose that case, in the southern district of New York, Saylor ruled that it can return to the Fisa court to seek declassification of those surveillance documents…

The ACLU hailed Saylor’s ruling as a victory. “The opinion recognizes the importance of transparency to the debate about NSA spying,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director…

Saylor’s opinion follows several legislative maneuvers scheduled for this fall in both the House and Senate to compel greater disclosure of the government’s interpretations of the Patriot Act justifying the bulk phone records collection.

RTFA for details about this and other recent decisions backing up our freedom to know how our government has “legalized” spying on the population of this nation and literally every person on the face of this Earth in the name of Homeland Security and National Defense.

It ain’t their simple paranoia, folks. It is a government apparatus run amuck with the self-assigned power of rule over our lives. There are simple, essential differences between providing leadership and assuming you have a mandate to rule. The precepts of democracy as understood by people like Ben Franklin or Thomas Paine are clear about that.

Pontifical Catholic University of Peru battles with the Vatican over the right to call itself Catholic

4 Comments

The Vatican is locked in a bitter dispute with one of South America’s top universities in a row that has resurrected ideological differences within the Catholic church long thought to have been consigned to cold war history.

At stake is the seemingly obscure issue of whether the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima can any longer describe itself as either Catholic or pontifical – ie, papal. The dispute has highlighted lingering antipathy between Roman Catholic conservatives and proponents of liberation theology, which in the 1970s and 1980s created a bridge in Latin America between radical priests and leftwing militants.

This summer, Pope Benedict XVI’s most senior official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, issued a decree stripping the university of the right to use either word in its title. The decree said the stance of the university, known as La Católica or La Pook (after its Spanish initials, PUCP), was no longer “compatible with the discipline and morals of the church”.

Students and faculty have refused to accept the decision – and some claim there is more to the affair than misgivings over their university’s liberalism…

Luis Bacigalupo, a philosophy professor at the PUCP, believes the Vatican’s backing for Cipriani could be inspired by other concerns. The university’s campus and other real estate in Lima is worth about $300 million, he said, noting the Vatican faces an economic crisis exacerbated by “multimillion-dollar payouts” in sex abuse lawsuits. He added: “There are certain conservative sectors in the Vatican who are very worried about the financial future of the church…”

The rector of the PUCP, Marcial Rubio said: “We think of the university as a group of people, not the property of anyone.

“We’re defending freedom of conscience, a plural education and freedom of speech. I think our archbishop thinks we shouldn’t be that free.”

The revolving door of gold and power that flows through the Catholic Church and the Vatican has always depended upon obedience – not freedom or justice – to maintain and continue as a political ecosystem. With power crumbling in every direction, the Vatican fights a brutal retreat, retrenchment, into the dim past – including methods which haven’t worked for over a half-century.

Access to the morning-after pill in high schools makes sense

2 Comments

New York City parents who are raising questions about the city’s plan to expand its pilot program of dispensing contraception, including the morning-after pill, to high school students are doing what parents should do. They’re asking questions.

If they seek information from credible sources, they will learn that when taken within five days of intercourse, the morning-after pill Plan B, which contains one of the hormones found in regular pills, is safe and effective.

They also will learn that other forms of contraception have been available in many New York City public high schools for years. This new plan, open to all, is actually designed for girls who have been hardest to reach.

These young women, from poor and working-poor families, are much more likely than others to get pregnant by accident. Then, one of two things happens: A girl gets an abortion, or she has a baby she cannot support. Neither New York City’s school authorities, nor Mayor Michael Bloomberg, finds those options desirable; both are quite rightly supporting the expansion.

According to Joanna Kuebler of the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care, about 40% of school-based health centers in the United States are allowed by their school districts to dispense contraception. Sixty percent of centers are prohibited from doing so. Requirements for parental consent vary. New York’s effort to reduce teen pregnancies appears to be among the largest and most comprehensive.

Obviously, the majority of parents in the United States would rather be part of the problem – rather than part of a solution.

What hangs some people up is the school administration’s decision, during the recent pilot phase of the project, to allow parents to opt their children out of it. Parents received letters in the mail describing the program and telling them that their child would be in the program unless a parent disallowed it in writing. Only 1% to 2% of parents denied permission. It’s a good bet many parents didn’t read the letters, or if they did, thought their daughter wasn’t having sex, or weren’t sure how they felt — so they didn’t do anything.

Again, why accept parental ignorance or indecision as a decision-breaker? And use those options to walk away from offering aid to their children?

We live in one of the richest, most well-educated countries in the world, yet we have the highest teen birth rate of comparable countries. That is simply not right. Yes, parents are children’s first teachers and moral guides, but they need assistance, which is what the New York City system is attempting to provide.

No reliable scientific evidence shows that the availability of birth control encourages young people to start having sex earlier. And there is good evidence that the increased availability of birth control, as well as improved sex education, has lowered the teen pregnancy rate dramatically.

A lower teen pregnancy rate means a lower abortion rate. Among the 7,000 girls ages 15 to17 who got pregnant last year in New York City, nine out of 10 pregnancies were unplanned, and almost two out of three resulted in abortions. For that reason alone, we should embrace New York’s efforts to make all forms of contraception accessible, as well as affordable and safe.

Agreed. Overdue. Life in a nation which can afford the best educational system in the world – with healthcare to match – leads to a great deal of frustration when the ignorant and the corrupt combine to inhibit any progressive change.

I can be a bit understanding – a little bit – of parents who haven’t had the education opportunities their kids now may have. Although, my generation was aided enormously by first-generation American parents who wanted their kids to achieve more than they might have – and accepted knowledge, education as key to that.

The corrupt portion of that equation lies at the feet of churches and politicians who combine opportunism in a last-ditch defense of social and political power that should have vanished with centuries of past greed, self-serving ideology.