Woo! So glad to have football back.
More soberly: A win is a win, but I do think it doesn’t necessarily bode that well when 7 out of your 13 points are scored by your defense. Ultimately, that kind of turnover thing is fluky and highly luck-dependent. To win you need an offense that can score touchdowns and it’s not clear that we have one.
The Great Deluge in Pakistan passed almost unnoticed in the United States despite President Obama’s repeated assertions that the country is central to American security. Now, with new evacuations and flooding afflicting Sindh Province and the long-term crisis only beginning in Pakistan, it has washed almost completely off American television and out of popular consciousness….
The likely tie-in of these floods (of a sort no one in Pakistan had ever experienced) with global warming was seldom mentioned. Unlike, say, BBC Radio, corporate television did not tell the small stories — of, for instance, the female sharecropper who typically has no rights to the now-flooded land on which she grew now-ruined crops thanks to a loan from an estate-owner, and who is now penniless, deeply in debt, and perhaps permanently excluded from the land. That one of the biggest stories of the past decade could have been mostly blown off by television news and studiously ignored by the American public is a further demonstration that there is something profoundly wrong with corporate news-for-profit. (The print press was better at covering the crisis, as was publically-supported radio, including the BBC and National Public Radio.)
The great Pakistani deluge did not exist, it seems, because it was not on television, would not have delivered audiences to products, and was not all about us. As we saw on September 11, 2001, and again in March 2003, however, the failure of our electronic media to inform the public about centrally important global developments is itself a security threat to the republic.
That is U. Michigan history professor Juan Cole in a piece for TomDispatch.com, “The Great Pakistani Deluge Never Happened: Don’t Tune In, It’s Not Important.”
As news that Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove Outreach Center planned to publicly burn a Qur’an — an operation which appears to have been called off, for now — raced around the world, many in the Muslim world reacted with angry protests, feeling that Jones’ actions were indicative of an America that was indifferent to the sensitivities of the Islamic faith.
Yet on Saturday, the day that Jones had dubbed “International Burn a Qur’an Day,” one American stepped forward to fight back against the rising tide of Islamophobia among the far-right.
In Amarillo, Texas, David Grisham, director of Repent Amarillo, “which aims to deter promiscuity, homosexuality and non-Christian worship practices through confrontation and prayer,” planned to burn the Islamic holy text at a public gathering. But before he could set the book ablaze, a 23 year-old skateboarder named Jacob Isom swooped in and grabbed it:
A planned Quran burning Saturday in Amarillo was thwarted by a 23-year-old carrying a skateboard and wearing a T-shirt with “I’m in Repent Amarillo No Joke” scrawled by hand on the back.
Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham’s Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book. “You’re just trying to start Holy Wars,” Isom said of Grisham after he gave the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo.
Local news station News Channel 10 covered the event and interviewed Isom. Isom told News Channel 10 that “he heard something about burning the Qur’an. Then I snuck up behind [Grisham] and told him, ‘Dude, you have no Qur’an,’ and took off.” Watch it:
As Amarillo Citizens Against Repent Amarillo’s Facebook page shows, Isom made sure the book made it into the safe hands of a smiling local Muslim leader.
Why on earth would that name be pronounced like “cobb” in “cobb salad.”
When I did my September 7 post noting that New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz thinks Muslims are indifferent to human life and therefore unworthy of first amendment protection, I didn’t expect anything to come of it. For years it’s bothered me that a well-respected DC publication that employs a number of skilled journalists has a bigot at the top of its masthead. But my experience has been that pointing this out has done far more to prompt journalists to get annoyed at me than to get annoyed at Peretz or his employees. Basically it’s considered rude to draw attention to the guy, or to the noxious sentiments that appear to drive his views on a variety of international issues.
But rather than being ignored, the Peretz remarks in question have prompted a prominent mention in a very good Nick Kristof column and also a smart followup from James Fallows.
It’s worth noting that this is hardly the only instance of such problematic commentary. The Peretz Dossier blog does a good job of illustrating that Peretz is deeply immersed in broad expressions of hostility to Arabs and Muslims as well as deeply committed to denying the legitimacy of Palestinian claims to nationhood.
Interesting Sunday human interest piece from J. Freedom du Lac in the Post:
The old Holleywood tavern at Ninth and U streets NW, one of just eight bars in Washington listed as open to blacks in 1949, is now the indie-rock bar, DC9. Where the Brass Rail restaurant once served blacks who were excluded from most downtown eateries, there is now a day-care center for toddlers and infants. Green’s, a beauty parlor on 18th, south of U, is now a Peruvian restaurant.
Half a century after the edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book with those D.C. listings was published, playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey stumbled upon the book, which was once a kind of Fodor’s Black America – a travel guide for African Americans road-tripping in an era of racial segregation.
The whole piece is interesting and worth reading, but it made me think primarily of the upcoming mayor’s race. DC was a Jim Crow city until quite recently and even after the Civil Rights Act passed the continuation of congressional control over the city was seen in that light—white people denying black people the right to govern themselves. The reality is that the new group of elites that took over in the mid-seventies didn’t do a very good job of running the city. But in the eyes of many, the efforts of the Williams and especially Fenty administrations to challenge that new elite’s privileges looks like an effort to reimpose white control over a city that was governed along white supremacist lines in the recent past.
I think this interpretation of events is basically nonsense but now that it’s taken hold I think no matter who wins the city’s going to be in for a tough ride going forward. We’re going to be hovering around the approximately fifty percent black level for a while in terms of the city’s demographics, which is just the right range for lots of people to start opportunistically casting whatever they’re upset about as a racial question.
Back in April Mexican President Felipe Calderón pleaded to a joint session of U.S. Congress for more help in limiting the flow of weapons to Mexico. “Believe me, many of these guns are not going to honest American hands,” said Calderón. Earlier this week, a report released based on Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) data and prepared by the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns justified Calderón’s cry for help, revealing that three out of four recovered guns used in crimes in Mexico can be traced to gun stores in the U.S.
Today Calderón told Univision Al Punto anchor Maria Elena Salinas that U.S. lawmakers are not only failing to address immigration or the drug trade, they also aren’t doing enough to stop the flow of weapons across the border:
CALDERON: The principle thing we have in common with Colombia is that we suffer from the consumption of drugs of the United States — we’re both victims of the enormous consumption of drugs by America and now the the sale of arms by the American industry.
SALINAS: What is being done to avoid this situation?
CALDERON: The Mexican government is confiscating the guns, the American authorities — you’d have to ask them. I haven’t seen much in terms of stopping the flow of guns. [...] The truth is if it weren’t for the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexican criminals and other parts of the world, we wouldn’t be seeing the levels of violence that we’re witnessing. [...]
The Americans, rather than regulating or establishing an adequate drug or immigration or arms legislation have allowed organized crime to regulate those markets. And the massacre of San Fernando shows the consequences of not addressing issues that need to be regulated such as immigration, drugs, or weapons.
Watch it:
Calderón once again pointed to the expiration of the assault weapons ban in the U.S. as part of the problem, stating, “[t]his problem [drug war] is also a problem of the United States, caused by the consumption of drugs in the United States and now exacerbated by the irresponsable sale of guns in the United States.” The Washington Post reported this past week that “the National Rifle Association…is pushing for legislation that threatens to gut the ATF’s already limited ability to keep illegal guns off the streets.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized the role the U.S. plays in Mexico woes. “It’s not only guns; it’s weapons, it’s arsenals of all kinds that come south,” Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations. “So I feel a real sense of responsibility to do everything we can. And again, we’re working hard to come up with approaches that will actually deliver.”
Meanwhile, Calderón’s militarization of the drug war has also come under heavy criticism. During the interview, Calderon also touched on immigration policy, without, as the Wonk Room explains, mentioning Mexico’s own complicity in the issue.
Good piece by Sewell Chan on the many vacancies for important economic policy jobs:
For example, the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, which is considering additional steps to prop up the flagging recovery, has just four of its full complement of seven members. The Senate has yet to confirm three candidates Mr. Obama nominated in April to fill the vacancies. [...]
Other jobs already exist but have not been permanently filled.
They include director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and will be pivotal in shaping the future of homeownership policy, and comptroller of the currency, a position that dates to the Civil War and that supervises nationally chartered banks, including Bank of America and Citigroup.
As Chan points out, the Dodd-Frank bill is creating a bunch of new positions that will also need to be filled, now under an even more politically difficult climate. There’s blame to go around on this. Republicans have been shamefully uncooperative, Senate Democrats have been a bit lazy about breaking their uncooperation, and the White House at times has seemed to not see the urgency of nominating people quickly and drawing some attention to the importance of filling these slots.
Back in April Mexican President Felipe Calderón pleaded to a joint session of U.S. Congress for more help in limiting the flow of weapons to Mexico. “Believe me, many of these guns are not going to honest American hands,” said Calderón. Earlier this week, a report released based on Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) data and prepared by the advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns justified Calderón’s cry for help, revealing that three out of four recovered guns used in crimes in Mexico can be traced to gun stores in the U.S.
Today Calderón told Univision Al Punto anchor Maria Elena Salinas that U.S. lawmakers are not only failing to address immigration or the drug trade, they also aren’t doing enough to stop the flow of weapons across the border:
CALDERON: The principle thing we have in common with Colombia is that we suffer from the consumption of drugs of the United States — we’re both victims of the enormous consumption of drugs by America and now the the sale of arms by the American industry.
SALINAS: What is being done to avoid this situation?
CALDERON: The Mexican government is confiscating the guns, the American authorities — you’d have to ask them. I haven’t seen much in terms of stopping the flow of guns. [...] The truth is if it weren’t for the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexican criminals and other parts of the world, we wouldn’t be seeing the levels of violence that we’re witnessing. [...]
The Americans, rather than regulating or establishing an adequate drug or immigration or arms legislation have allowed organized crime to regulate those markets. And the massacre of San Fernando shows the consequences of not addressing issues that need to be regulated such as immigration, drugs, or weapons.
Watch it:
Calderón once again pointed to the expiration of the assault weapons ban in the U.S. as part of the problem, stating, “[t]his problem [drug war] is also a problem of the United States, caused by the consumption of drugs in the United States and now exacerbated by the irresponsable sale of guns in the United States.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported this past week that “the National Rifle Association…is pushing for legislation that threatens to gut the ATF’s already limited ability to keep illegal guns off the streets.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized the role the U.S. plays in Mexico woes. “It’s not only guns; it’s weapons, it’s arsenals of all kinds that come south,” Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations. “So I feel a real sense of responsibility to do everything we can. And again, we’re working hard to come up with approaches that will actually deliver.”
On immigration, Calderón also insisted that Mexico has the moral authority to criticize U.S. policy, despite the bloody massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants that took place in Mexico a few weeks ago. Nonetheless, though he noted that Mexico has decriminalized illegal immigration, Calderón did not mention Mexico’s own complicity. Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law still requires law enforcement to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country and, as a result, most migrant abuse goes unreported.
Meanwhile, Calderón’s militarization of the drug war has also come under heavy criticism.
One of the right’s newest crusades has been to claim that public employees are overpaid and have too much job security. As Jonathan Cohn writes, it is almost as if “public employees are the new welfare queens.”
The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund was the latest to push this crusade this morning on Fox & Friends. During a discussion about public employees’ pay and the New Jersey budget, Fund complained that public employees have “far more job security than private employees” and that their “benefits and pay packages are bigger than the average private sector salary.” He even went as far as to say that “public servants are in danger of becoming the public masters.” As evidence, he told the Fox host that “very few teachers have been laid off in New Jersey or elsewhere”:
FUND: The public employees basically have job security. Very few teachers have been laid off in New Jersey or elsewhere. We used to have a bargain, the public employees have job security but they didn’t quite get the kind of salary that private employees did. Now, they not only have far more job security than private employees but their benefits and pay packages are bigger than the average private sector salary. The public servants are in danger of becoming the public masters.
Watch it:
While the phrase “very few” is relative and it’s hard to know how many teachers would have to be laid off to qualify for being more than “very few” in Fund’s mind, it would be difficult to imagine that the thousands of teachers that have been laid off during the recession across the country as states face budget constraints would agree with his assessment. Here’s a short but not comprehensive list of some of the layoffs teachers have faced just in the past few months:
- As many as 8,000 teachers are expected to be laid off in Georgia over the coming school year. Budget constraints in the state are expected to force more than 30,000 public employees to lose their jobs over the next year. Federal assistance legislated last month may help blunt the layoffs. [7/18/10]
- Two weeks before school started in Kansas City, 175 teachers were notified that they would be laid off. The budget woes the state is facing also forced the closing of 24 schools in that same district alone. [8/12/10]
- 66 teachers were laid off for the coming school year in the Glendale Unified district in Glendale, California. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said the district’s Chief Financial Officer, fearing further layoffs in the future due to the recession. [6/23/10]
- Last spring, Cleveland was forced to lay off 545 teachers, unable to get the funding to keep them on. The layoffs also included a total of 800 public employees. [4/22/10]
- 19 teachers just found out they will be laid off in the small town of Methuen, Massachussetts. Administrators say stimulus funds helped keep them on until now. [8/24/10]
- Hundreds of Miami-Dade teachers were laid off over the summer. The district hopes that federal legislation will allow it to rehire at least some of them. [8/11/10]
While important federal legislation has kept many teachers from being laid off and may help rehire many of those who were let go, it is clear that teachers — and the children and communities that depend on them — have suffered greatly during the recession. With thousands of teachers having been laid off across the country, it is difficult to argue that “very few” have been faced with losing their jobs.
It is also worth noting that there is little merit to the notion that public workers are wildly overpaid versus their private sector counterparts. As a study by the National Institute for Retirement Security shows, once you factor in comparable education, “employees of state & local government earn an average of 11% and 12% less, respectively, than comparable private sector employees.”
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