- .glad to share some: here's part of a response . . ."in the ritual there are vows that are said from the parents and the congregation. the parents pledge to raise the child in the ways of christ. the congregation vows to assist the family in the raising of the child in the christian way. baptism is a one time event and if promises are made that cannot be kept it can appear to be void of meaning. i urge you to find a church where you live to have your child baptized where you will see to it that he grows in the understanding of christ. i know my belief is not a popular one -- but for me it is a point of integrity. i pray you will find the right place for your family."
Donna Hart since i believe once you've taken a stand, drawn a line in the sand, thrown down the gauntlet so to speak, NEVER back down, a retraction of the minister's position would be hypocritical. good position for church dogma; nothing wrong w/it. reminds me when an uncle wanted to get married in his "evangelical" church but the minister couldn't because the to be wife was divorced; even though al was a firm supporter financially and served on many committees dogma refused. absolutely OK; rules exist, strong beliefs are laudable. i question if a baby or child died, would a funeral be impossible especially for a unbaptized child? would this minister have refused doing aunt jo's, mother's and dad's funerals? should i w/my purchased through the mail minister credentials take on similar tasks -- all inclusive having several meanings? schisms are stared with less important issues than this one
public education: the new big "undercapitalized" sector of the economy
"by combining corporate financial resources w/privatization-oriented school reform think tanks, (like the bill and melinda gates foundation) legitimacy was lent to policies designed to boost the bottom lines of education-technology companies under the guise of magnanimous attempts to improve education through enhanced use of technology. as a result, there has been a rush of investors for a piece of the k through 12 ed market energized by estimates of a 43% increase in the online learning industry between 2010 and 2015 and revenues reaching 24.4 billion.
investment banker michael moe, veteran of lehman brothers and merrill lynch, now leads an investment group that specializes in raising money for businesses looking to tap into the $1 trillion in taxpayer money annually spent on primary ed. as he sees it, rapid changes in ed could open 'immense potential for entrepreneurs. this ed issue. . .there's not a bigger opportunity in my estimation.' sponsors of moe's ed summit ranged from assorted ed reform groups funded by hedge fund managers to private equity firms with a stake in ed-tech companies." (the nation 12/5/11)
according to the nation the gov of indiana mitch daniels "was the governor pushing hardest in 2011 to expand so-called school of choice programs by enacting a law removing the cap on the number of charter schools in the state, authorizing all universities to register charters, and expanding an existing voucher program in the state for students to attend private and charter schools (in some cases managed by for-profit companies)."
SB 179 under consideration in indiana "requires that students entering grade 9 in 2012 complete at least 1 virtual instruction class prior to graduation. its sponsor, state senator jim banks is a member of ALEC (american legislative exchange council, in which legislators and corporate lobbyists craft model bills furthering the interests, financial and ideological, of their corporate sponsors).
the long and winding road to school privatization: describes New Markets Tax Credit which gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, including charter schools. investors who put up the money to build the charter schools get to basically virtually double their money in 7 years through a 39% tax credit from the fed government. in addition, this is a tax credit on money that they're lending, so they're collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the 39% tax credit.. they piggy back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits. the result is, you can put in 10 million and in 7 years double your money. ...the charter schools end up dpaying in rents the debt service on these loans...dr eiler claimed the definition of irony is that only in america can the teachers of the public school system who take all comers, ready or not, challenged or otherwise be characterized as greedy by the very folks who intend to pay into their own pockets a huge amount of the public ed budget.
Heartland Institute = libertarian think tank whose project to undermine science lessons for schoolchildren faces new scrutiny of its finances including donors and tax status. an unauthorized release of internal documents indicated heartland had received over 14 million over several years from a single anonymous donor as well as tobacco and liquor companies and corporations pledged to social responsibility including the general motors foundation (30,000) and microsoft (59,908)
magie read
The Bush White House tried to destroy every copy of the memo, written by then-State Department counselor Philip Zelikow. Zelikow examined tactics like waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and concluded that there was no way they were legal, domestically or internationally.
“We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here," Zelikow wrote. The memo has been obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive and Wired's Spencer Ackerman.
On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama formally disavowed torture, banning the types of techniques Zelikow had objected to so strongly in his memo.
But while Democrats are using the memo as evidence of a new post-torture era under Obama, human rights activists, civil libertarians and opponents of excessive secrecy say they see many ways in which the country's moral compass is still askew -- and in some ways even more so than before.
"If your baseline is the Bush years, it's night and day," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "If your baselines are a set of first principles, as the ACLU calls for, or as us openness advocates call for, then your situation is: Is the glass half full or the glass half empty?"
Obama has refused to pursue legal action against those who may have engaged in law-breaking under his predecessor's watch -- saying he prefers to "look forward instead of looking backward." To some, this indicates there is little assurance that the U.S. won't torture again in the future.
"The administration has clearly disavowed torture, and that is an important and welcome thing," said Jameel Jaffer, a national security expert at the American Civil Liberties Union.
"But they're steadily building a framework for impunity."
When it comes to issues like warrantless surveillance, "continuity is the rule and not the exception and in fact in some very important areas this administration has gone even farther than the Bush Administration did," Jaffer said.
Most alarming, says Jafeer, is the issue of the targeted killing of American citizens who are terrorism suspects.
Jaffer said the idea that the government can mark an American for death without any judicial oversight is something the framers of the Constitution "would have found totally foreign to the project they were engaged in."
"I think there are many Democrats out there who are quiet because they trust President Obama," Jaffer said. But, he added, "there's no doubt that the power we're giving President Obama will be available to a future president."
Jaffer noted that another way things may be worse today than during the Bush era is that at least back then, many people thought things would change dramatically once Bush left office, and that his actions wouldn't establish legal precedents.
"We didn't worry so much about that because the Bush Administration was seen as an outlier and an aberration, and the Bush precedent wouldn't have been seen as weighty," Jaffer said. By contrast, "It's not at all difficult to imagine [future presidents] citing President Obama in their defense of carrying out more targeted killings of American citizens."
"Now we're making many of these emergency powers permanent ... and bipartisan. We're enshrining these things into our permanent law."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, sees some good and some bad in terms of where the government stands on national security issues today. "The Obama Administration has made significant and substantial changes to counterterrorism policy as it relates to human rights and civil liberties -- for example, in their detention policies and their recognition of the limits of military power and the importance of following traditional laws of war in an armed conflict," she said.
And yet, she said: "The administration has done much less to fix the problems of too much surveillance, without enough good reasons, of too many people."
Transparency about what the administration is doing and why "is mixed," she said, with both "important disclosures and inexplicable withholdings."
Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said he doesn't think it is all Obama's fault. He blames congressional Republicans for blocking Obama's attempts to close the Guantanamo prison, for instance, and the intelligence agencies for much of the rest.
"The intelligence agencies are at the front of the resistance," Blanton said. "They're resisting accountability for what they themselves did."
Ten months into Obama's presidency, White House Counsel Greg Craig resigned, a move some saw as a purge and grim sign for any hope that the president would keep fighting on these issues. Craig is known to have advocated strongly for Obama to hold fast to the principles that he has espoused in regards to dealing with torture suspects -- regardless of the immediate political consequences.
Where does that leave us? "I wouldn't call us an outlaw nation," Blanton said, "but I don't think we've come to terms with our gang period."
Also on HuffPost:
This Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Retirement is holding a hearing on Senate Bill 1040 -- and we need your help to make sure the voice of school employees and retirees are heard!
SB 1040 is the most sweeping attack on school employee retirement benefits in history. It breaks promises made to both current and active retirees. At the same time, it discourages the best and the brightest from entering the profession.
SB 1040 greatly increases the out-of-pocket costs to current employees, doubles the retiree contribution toward health care and completely eliminates health care coverage for future employees. This latest assault on retirement security is on top of the 3% retirement health care tax imposed on school employees in 2009 AND the taxation of pensions recently enacted by this same legislature.
Ozzie Guillen, Free Speech and the Case of Loretta Capeheart
Ozzie Guillen just became the latest person from the world of sports to find out that free speech isn’t necessarily free. The Miami Marlins manager gave the offhand political opinion to Time magazine that he “respects” Fidel Castro for staying alive the last sixty years. He then found himself swamped in the attendant right-wing hysteria and was suspended for five games without pay; his job is still hanging in the balance. I know that people will say the First Amendment is solely about the government’s not restricting the rights to speech, but the idea that we don’t have the basic freedom to voice ideas that might offend our employers is both chilling and all too familiar in the world of sports. Guillen joins athletes like Craig Hodges, Mahmoud Abdul Rauf, Rashard Mendenhall, Toni Smith and many others as high-profile cultural object lesson for everyone in the country: shut your mouth and don’t rock the boat.
Both the irony and urgency should be obvious. The space where we can reasonably be heard is becoming constricted exactly at the moment when people are beginning to break out of their shells. We have seen both the Occupy movement and the national struggle to win justice for Trayvon Martin present a new willingness to fight. Attacks on speech are efforts to strangle that impulse in its crib. That’s what makes the legal case of Northeastern Illinois University Professor Loretta Capeheart so critical for anyone who cares about freedom of speech and the ability for us to actually be able to shape our surroundings without fear.
Capeheart is a tenured professor at NEIU, perhaps the state of Illinois’s most affordable and diverse institution of higher learning. She is also a vocal union and anti-war activist of many years standing. Understandably, anti-war students sought her out as a group-adviser during President Bush’s war on Iraq. When two students were arrested for peacefully protesting a CIA recruitment station, the weight fell on Capeheart. School President Sharon Hahs denied Capeheart merit raises and department chair positions and attacked her in public meetings. Hahs also threatened students and other faculty, saying that everyone better be ready to “accept the consequences” for their actions.
Capeheart, despite the absence of any financial banking, went deeply into debt and took her case to court. After a four-year legal battle, a federal judge just ruled that he agreed with NEIU’s lawyers. He said professors have no right to free speech under the Supreme Court’s hideous 2006 decision Garcetti v. Ceballos, a case that denied public employees the right to criticize their superiors. But as awful as the Garcetti decision was, the High Court made clear in a footnote that their decision shouldn’t apply to academic settings. The judge in Capeheart’s case disagreed and gave not just Sharon Hahs and NEIU but every school license to crack down.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said that the judge’s ruling “is chilling and clear: university administrators need not tolerate outspoken faculty dissent on matters of broad public concern or on the university’s institutional response to those concerns.”
Now Loretta Capeheart, despite being $100,000 in debt, has made the difficult decision to appeal the ruling and if necessary take her case to the US Supreme Court. We should join Center for Constitutional Rights director Michael Ratner and professor Noam Chomsky and support these efforts. It’s not just the principle of solidarity or the idea that “an injury to one is an injury to all” that should compel us to stand alongside her. It’s the reality that the defeat of Professor Capeheart will, as sure as night follows day, be used to destroy whistleblowers and truth-tellers on campuses across the country. It will isolate students attempting to organize for change and create atmospheres of fear and mistrust, making a mockery of the notion of universities as citadels of free debate and expression. Given the occupy movement’s challenge to the status quo and the casual tear gassing of students at UC Davis last fall, the need to feel fearless has never been more critical. The defeat of Loretta Capeheart is about the institutionalization of fear.
Professor Capeheart in a recent speech, gave the issue context. She said,
Now imagine a world where Penn State professors would be fired for speaking out on the Sandusky case. Or consider an adjunct denied tenure for raising questions about the way sexual assault victims are treated at Notre Dame. The stakes are high. If it’s true that change will only come from below, we should recognize that the powers that be at NEIU want to take the ground out from under our feet. It’s time to stand with Loretta Capeheart because silence is not something any of us can afford.
For more information about how you can help, visit http://justice4loretta.com/
Both the irony and urgency should be obvious. The space where we can reasonably be heard is becoming constricted exactly at the moment when people are beginning to break out of their shells. We have seen both the Occupy movement and the national struggle to win justice for Trayvon Martin present a new willingness to fight. Attacks on speech are efforts to strangle that impulse in its crib. That’s what makes the legal case of Northeastern Illinois University Professor Loretta Capeheart so critical for anyone who cares about freedom of speech and the ability for us to actually be able to shape our surroundings without fear.
Capeheart is a tenured professor at NEIU, perhaps the state of Illinois’s most affordable and diverse institution of higher learning. She is also a vocal union and anti-war activist of many years standing. Understandably, anti-war students sought her out as a group-adviser during President Bush’s war on Iraq. When two students were arrested for peacefully protesting a CIA recruitment station, the weight fell on Capeheart. School President Sharon Hahs denied Capeheart merit raises and department chair positions and attacked her in public meetings. Hahs also threatened students and other faculty, saying that everyone better be ready to “accept the consequences” for their actions.
Capeheart, despite the absence of any financial banking, went deeply into debt and took her case to court. After a four-year legal battle, a federal judge just ruled that he agreed with NEIU’s lawyers. He said professors have no right to free speech under the Supreme Court’s hideous 2006 decision Garcetti v. Ceballos, a case that denied public employees the right to criticize their superiors. But as awful as the Garcetti decision was, the High Court made clear in a footnote that their decision shouldn’t apply to academic settings. The judge in Capeheart’s case disagreed and gave not just Sharon Hahs and NEIU but every school license to crack down.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said that the judge’s ruling “is chilling and clear: university administrators need not tolerate outspoken faculty dissent on matters of broad public concern or on the university’s institutional response to those concerns.”
Now Loretta Capeheart, despite being $100,000 in debt, has made the difficult decision to appeal the ruling and if necessary take her case to the US Supreme Court. We should join Center for Constitutional Rights director Michael Ratner and professor Noam Chomsky and support these efforts. It’s not just the principle of solidarity or the idea that “an injury to one is an injury to all” that should compel us to stand alongside her. It’s the reality that the defeat of Professor Capeheart will, as sure as night follows day, be used to destroy whistleblowers and truth-tellers on campuses across the country. It will isolate students attempting to organize for change and create atmospheres of fear and mistrust, making a mockery of the notion of universities as citadels of free debate and expression. Given the occupy movement’s challenge to the status quo and the casual tear gassing of students at UC Davis last fall, the need to feel fearless has never been more critical. The defeat of Loretta Capeheart is about the institutionalization of fear.
Professor Capeheart in a recent speech, gave the issue context. She said,
A recent news report exposed that two former vice presidents at NEIU are “double dipping” by taking six-figure retirement incomes at the same time that they continue to work at NEIU, earning six figures here as well. Will faculty be allowed to speak against this perceived abuse of the retirement system, student resources and state dollars? Or will the university claim that such speech is…punishable? The university is spending untold dollars to assure that they can impose the latter. Don’t question, don’t engage, just agree. We must fight these abuses and take back our rights to speak.Sports, of course, have not been strangers to scandal on college campuses. Consider the serial cover-ups by officials at Penn State over accused child predator Jerry Sandusky. Or think about University of Notre Dame where a recent investigation revealed that female students who accused players on the football team of sexual assault received horrible treatment at the hands of school officials, which may have been an aggravating factor in a 19-year-old’s suicide.
Now imagine a world where Penn State professors would be fired for speaking out on the Sandusky case. Or consider an adjunct denied tenure for raising questions about the way sexual assault victims are treated at Notre Dame. The stakes are high. If it’s true that change will only come from below, we should recognize that the powers that be at NEIU want to take the ground out from under our feet. It’s time to stand with Loretta Capeheart because silence is not something any of us can afford.
For more information about how you can help, visit http://justice4loretta.com/
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Top Contributors to Super PACs
(Through Feb. 29, 2012)| Contributor | Contributed |
|---|
| HAROLD SIMMONS OWNER, CONTRAN CORPORATION | $11,400,000 |
| American Crossroads | $10,000,000 |
| Winning Our Future | $1,100,000 |
| Restore Our Future | $200,000 |
| Restoring Prosperity Fund | $100,000 |
| DR. MIRIAM ADELSON Physician, Adelson Clinic | $7,500,000 |
| Winning Our Future | $7,500,000 |
| SHELDON ADELSON CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp. | $7,500,000 |
| Winning Our Future | $7,500,000 |
| BOB PERRY CEO/Owner, Perry Homes | $6,500,000 |
| Restore Our Future | $4,000,000 |
| American Crossroads | $2,500,000 |
| CONTRAN CORPORATION | $3,000,000 |
| American Crossroads | $2,000,000 |
| Make Us Great Again | $1,000,000 |
| PETER THIEL Investor, Clarium Capital Management, LLC | $2,600,000 |
| Endorse Liberty | $2,600,000 |
| JON HUNTSMAN, SR Executive Chairman, Huntsman Corporation | $2,222,040 |
| Our Destiny PAC | $2,222,040 |
| JEFFREY KATZENBERG CEO, Dreamworks Animation | $2,000,000 |
| Priorities USA Action | $2,000,000 |
| JERRY PERENCHIO LIVING TRUST | $2,000,000 |
| American Crossroads | $2,000,000 |
| FOSTER FRIESS Investor, Self | $1,750,000 |
| Red White and Blue Fund | $1,600,000 |
| FreedomWorks for America PAC | $100,000 |
| Leaders for Families Super PAC | $50,000 |
| FREEDOMWORKS | $1,534,871 |
| FreedomWorks for America PAC | $1,534,871 |
| WILLIAM DORE President, Dore Energy Corporation | $1,500,000 |
|
The average CEO pay in Michigan is $6,068,328.
I suggested there are three values that Christians should try to serve in public life, and maybe especially during an election year:
FDA's Bisphenol A Decision Has Doctors FrowningOne of the world's largest medical societies is casting doubt on the FDA's refusal to ban BPA.
By Emily Main
Taking a rare critical stance of government policy, one of the nation's largest medical and research societies is criticizing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its recent decision not to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from food packaging.
FDA: We Won't Ban BPA (For Now) In a statement released last Thursday, the Endocrine Society, a group that represents 15,000 researchers and endocrinologists, expressed "disappointment" in the FDA for ignoring a wealth of research that's come out in the past three years demonstrating how truly harmful the chemical is to people's heart, metabolic, and reproductive health. BPA is an endocrine disruptor (also commonly called a hormone disruptor), which means it interferes with your body's system that's entirely responsible for secreting hormones. Endocrinologists have been among the most active researchers looking into the chemical's effects on the body, and in a 2009 scientific review of the literature on BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, came out in support of better government regulation. Proof at Last: Avoiding Plastic Lowers Your BPA Levels The FDA made its ruling on a three-year-old petition filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) after NRDC sued FDA for dragging its feet far beyond the 180 days it had to respond to the initial filing. Noting that the NRDC had not provided strong enough scientific evidence to support a total BPA ban, FDA said that its decision was not a reflection on the safety of BPA, just a decision on the petition. "The Society supports the FDA's continuing efforts to evaluate the safety of BPA, but it remains concerned that policy on BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals is ignoring the entirety of available scientific data," Janet E. Hall, MD, president of The Endocrine Society, said in the statement. "What was very disappointing was that, in the last three years, the amount of research on BPA has really increased exponentially," says Andrea Gore, PhD, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin and a researcher involved with the Endocrine Society's evaluation of the science on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She adds that, rather than look at the whole body of scientific evidence on BPA, the FDA looked only at the three-year-old science presented in NRDC's petition. "There have been very strong, very convincing studies since then determining that BPA exposure at doses lower than what are considered safe really have the potential to have detrimental outcomes." BPA Linked to Male Infertility "Everybody from the Endocrine Society was concerned that that research had not been taken into consideration," she adds, particularly because more evidence is showing that it's not just children and babies who suffer reproductive and neurological impairment after being exposed to BPA, or even older adults, in whom BPA has been found to cause higher rates of heart disease, who should be concerned. "We're particularly concerned about pregnant women, or even couples planning to have children," she says. "What's in their diets and in their environments will affect quality of their sperm and eggs, and that can impact the quality of their embryo." Gore adds that she's concerned the FDA's, what she called "soft," stance on BPA would lead to greater confusion among the public as to how bad BPA really is. But just know that a better-safe-than-sorry approach will never steer you wrong, particularly when it comes to chemicals in our food supply. Here are the 3 easiest ways to avoid the biggest daily exposures to BPA: • Avoid canned food. BPA is used in the epoxy resins used to line cans. • Never microwave food in plastics, as some can leach BPA into your food when heated. • Decline receipts. They are coated with BPA to help with printing and ink transfer quelobject.com gmail.com no smartphone for womans day? use womansday.com/interactive doctoroz.com for health info home remedies for hands: use olive oil, eye cream, collagen facial mask id theft article p 100 womans day may 2012--fraud alert at 1 credit bureau/get credit report copies and check/notify banks, utilities, creditors/ call 877-idtheft or visit ftc.gov/file police report (ours wouldn't give 1 once when requested smart phones = don't get apps from just anywhere/if battery keeps going down you may have a sniffer app be aware that public wireless put you at risk-easily hacked-avoid all wireless that don't require a passwordcan subscribe to a virtual private network VPN like hotspotvpn for 8.88/month from washington spectator.org: april 1 2012 = when researchers from the sunlight foundation, a non profit group that promoted transparency in gov, analyzed ultrasound legislation moving through state legislature, they found that 13 bills shared language found in legislation drafted by the religious-right group Americans United for Life. it was also aul that published a report on planned parenthood in july 2011 which served as the rationale for florida republican congressman cliff stearn's investigation of planned parenthood, which in turn served as the rationale for the komen foundation's disastrous attempt to defund the organization. p3 all about eve by liliana hart -- to read? april 30 to may 6 = turn off tv esp for children colored eggs = use foods such as carrots, spinach, pomegranate juice to boil eggs w/white vinegar your eco footprints = tomuir;.com/59ksp3 allium cepa for dripping nose euphrasia for allergy around nose, eyes urtica dioica stinging nettles for hay fever or quercitin 1/4 cup baking soda for laundry softener washer older than 10 yrs might use more energy and be cost drain pvc free shower curtain ban antibacterial products chemical air fresheners have high concentrations of vocs than anyu other household cleaning product replace windshield wiper fluid (poisonous) w/ 7 cups distilled water, 1/2 cup isopropyl alcohol and 1/2 tsp eco dishwashing liquid twitter.com/greenmatters or greenmatters.com national train day = May 12 parenting.com for contests/onecharmingparty.com for party ideas/karaspartyideas.com for more party ideas doug's list mdp website alec exposed new movie = the heist America's 400 wealthiest taxpayers pay an average rate of 18.1%.  Michigan women working full-time, year round earn about 74 cents for every dollar earned by men in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey.Michigan women working full time, year round earn about 74 cents for every dollar earned by men. Nationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to Census data analyzed by the National Partnership for Women & Families and the National Women’s Law Center. The gap has narrowed less than a half a cent per year since the Equal Pay Act was of 1963, when women earned 59 cents for each dollar earned by men. The women’s groups shared the wage information in recognition of national Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, which represents how far into 2012 women must work to earn what men made in 2011. The median yearly salary for women in Michigan was $36,413 in 2010, while men made $48,953, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. The median wages are for full-time, year-round workers. African American women were paid 68 cents for every dollar paid to all men in Michigan, while Latina women were paid 57 cents on the dollar, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. “That loss in turn, could actually go far in the average family to cover food costs and mortgage and utilities and rent,” said Sarah Crawford, the partnership’s director of workplace fairness. Michigan's gap of 26 cents per dollar is the 10th highest in the nation. Vermont has the smallest difference at 16 cents, while Wyoming has the largest gap at 36 cents. Federal and state legislation has been introduced to address the differences. Crawford’s group has been promoting the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would protect against retaliation for discussing pay with co-workers and require employers to provide job-related reasons for any pay disparities. In Michigan, a coalition of about two dozen organizations is hosting a rally in the Capitol rotunda at noon on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to pass Senate Bills 340-343 and House Bills 4611-4614, which requires employers to provide equal pay for equal work. “We see this as an opportunity to advocate for fair pay legislation for all of Michigan’s working women,” said Zack Pohl, executive director of Progress Michigan. Occupational differences are likely the largest factors that impact the wage gap, said Donald Grimes, senior research specialist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy. Especially in Michigan, male-dominated unionized industries like manufacturing and construction tend to pay more than elsewhere in the country, Grimes said. Years of experience also play a role, he said. “Women tend to have fewer years of experience in the workforce because a lot of them have taken off for child raising years,” he said. But Crawford contends that a significant percentage of the pay gap still remains unexplained even after considering factors like education and occupation. “That suggests that there’s some level of unexplained pay loss for women, meaning that discrimination could be seeping into decisions about compensation,” she said. “That’s certainly what concerns us.” A U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that women with a high school degree or less earned about 86 cents for every dollar that their male peers earned in 2010, after adjusting for factors that might affect pay. That’s up from 81 cents in 2000, according to the report. A different report from Reach Advisors shows that the median income for childless women in their 20s living in cities is actually about 8 percent higher than their male counterparts. The analysis was conducted this year by James Chun, president of the New York-based strategy and research firm. It was based on the U.S. Census Department's American Community Survey’s rolling data from 2008-2010.
News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding
transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents,
dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians,
or editorializing in favor of open government.
But now many of the country’s biggest media companies, which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations, are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending. As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but not easy to get because it is kept only in paper files at each station. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post online the details of political ad purchases, including the identity of the buyer and the price. (ProPublica has been inviting readers and other journalists to send in the files to be posted as part of our Free the Files project.) Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered-down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC will vote on the issue April 27.) Among them are:
In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working “against transparency and against journalism.” The industry’s opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of “’Soviet-style standardization” of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format. In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the “logistics and burden” of putting the political ad information online. That month, executives from Disney, NBC and News Corp. argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad data would allow “competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data.” Television stations must by law offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that making this information available online — and not just at stations — would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers. Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. Advocates have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations. Allbritton, NBC and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman’s charge that they have positioned themselves “against transparency and against journalism.” News Corp. declined to comment. Some media companies have also pushed a watered-down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of a central FCC website. Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule — Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media and Schurz Communications — lobbied FCC officials in February, March and again this week. The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week. "What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what's being bought at what price, maybe there's a simpler way to do it," Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. "Transparency is giving people information that is useful." But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations’ own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data. Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27.
according to michigan farm news april 15 2012 pink slime is totally
safe---ammonium hydroxide almost entirely evaporates so it's not a food
additive. it has to be added since "the temperature of the meat is
raised above refrigeration temps in the process and there is potential
for microbial pathogens" media's fault and "money is the evil many
wealthy. conspiracy-minded anti-meat campaigners consistently use to
defame agriculture."
from schools matter: why the us is destroying. . .
“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a
Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in
which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a
major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so
degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated
teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of
self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of
autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the
power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to
pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United
States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both
financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with
22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They
are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”
 Question: It seems there are many annuals for full sun. What are some shade annuals?Answer: Although the choices in annuals for shade are much more limited that annuals for sun, there are annuals that will grow in part shade (four to six hours of sun) or shade (less than four hours of sun). Annual flowers for part shade include: Flowering begonias (shown) Twinspur (Diascia) Salvia Pansy (Viola) Baby blue eyes (Nemophila) Flowering tobacco (Nicotiana) Snapdragons Annuals for part to full shade include: Silver bells or bush violet (Browallia) Fuchsia Impatiens Lobelia Wishbone (Torenia) The choices of shade annuals increase when you consider plants grown for their foliage instead of their flowers. Foliage annuals for part shade or shade include: Coleus Polka-dot plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya) Elephant ears (Caladium bicolor) Rex begonia Joseph’s coat (Alternanthera ficoidea) from june 2012 issue garden gate: use confetti/spice container w/plastic holed cover for small flowers--------idea to put windowbox on handles of wheelbarrow, screwed on, for holding your supplies. might work unless plastic breaks easily page 16-17 super list of tough plants for clay: trees: arborvitae, bald cypress*, honeylocust, serviceberry. sycamore*, shrubs: bottlebrush buckeye, deutzia, forsythia*, spirea, sinterberry, summersweet*, perennials: amsonia, bee balm*, black eyed susan, coneflower, coral bells, daylily, heliopsis, hosta, joe pye weed*, prairie dropseed, rough stemmed goldenrod, switchgrass, threadleaf coreopsis* ANNUALS: CHINA PINKS, FRENCH MARIGOLD, LANTANA, MEALYCUP SAGE* BULBS: camassia*, canna*, crocus, summer snowflake* see pinterest.com/ogmag ben and i dug around the huge rock north of the house in the field. must be 5 ft long and about 2 deep, 3 across. flat on top. we decided it could be our altar or church corner stone; build our church there? get a tax break? maybe the heartstone church or crossroads. my response to drew's article about petition being thrown out in Mi because the font was wrong: unions are being destroyed intentionally in the name of fiscal alignment--teachers first. bargaining rights mostly gone in MI and elsewhere. "right to work" ie you get benefits from unions but don't have to pay dues is a way to cut union power. right to work sounds good doesn't it? so the voter thinks it is good. the "informed" voters continue to favor these cuts believing they will be better off--it will soon be too late when everything is privatized and corporations totally rule. not far off. destroy any power the citizen thinks he/she possesses and soon there will be only mute acceptance for all the new rules because survival on a daily basis is more important in any long term vision for democracy. dying democracy. control the media. done. surveillance -- jailing on just suspicion -- torture ok -- track internet talk -- get rid of the intelligent portion of the population -- maintain a strong military-- destroy hope. all accomplished. hear the knock on the door? they are coming for you soon and you have no recourse except maybe praying to your institutional god who says the meek shall inherit the earth someday, maybe, well maybe not prwatch.org banksterUSA.org sourcewatch.org
from email fine gardening
Improving Clay SoilsDump on the organic matter, work it in over time, then leave well enough alone
Most of us are not blessed with a choice of soil. We're stuck
with what we've got. And it seems like wherever I move, I get stuck with
clay. By comparison to the clay in my old garden, the soil at my home
now seems almost ideal. But it's clay nonetheless, and I've had to work
diligently to upgrade the soil.
Not that the soil isn't perfect (to be ecologically correct) for its intended use. My part of the county isn't called the Big Woods without reason, and the clay soil in my back yard will grow some awesome oak, maple, poplar, and hickory, without special treatment of any kind. But try to kick a spade into the ground, and you're asking for a sprained knee. If you face a similar problem, don't fret. Whether your soil has more or less clay than mine, so long as you understand what you're working with and keep at it over the years, adding organic matter and treating the soil structure right, you can get the better of clay soils and enjoy a productive kitchen garden. Testing for TextureA hand-texturing test is one method for determining the texture of your soil. 1. Add water to a small amount of dry soil, and form it into a ball if you can.
Photo/Illustration: Steve Aitken 2. Knead the soil between your fingers to form a flat ribbon.
Photo/Illustration: Steve Aitken
How long is your ribbon?To determine the texture of your soil, measure the ribbon.
If your ribbon measures less than 1 inch long before breaking, you have loam or silt. If your ribbon measures 1 to 2 inches long before breaking, you have clay loam. If your ribbon measures more than two inches long before breaking, you have clay. Clay is more promising than it's cracked up to beBefore you try to manage the clay soil in your home garden, it helps to have a bit of background in soil mineralogy. The mineral fraction of a given soil consists of sand, silt, and clay particles. Clay particles are the smallest of the three, silt are intermediate in size, and sand, the largest. Clay particles, bound end to end and side to side in extensive planes, are stacked in a sandwichlike matrix and held together by electrochemical forces. This platelike stacking of horizontally arranged clay particles results in a large surface area.Because individual clay particles are negatively charged, they have the capacity to attract and hold onto, or adsorb, positively charged elements (called cations) such as ammonium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and other trace elements. Clay soils are relatively fertile because of this capacity to adsorb these important plant nutrients. Conversely, the single, uncharged sand particles in sandy soils lack the capacity to adsorb cations and thus they contribute very little to soil fertility.
Soil texture is an inherent property that you cannot change. Instead, direct your efforts toward improving soil structure.
Soil texture—The textural designation of a soil
is determined by its relative portions of sand, silt, and clay
particles, and indicates which of the three most influence the soil's
properties. Sand, silt, and clay soil properties are obviously dominated
by those respective fractions. For example, clay soils (generally more
than 40 percent clay) are often poorly drained. On the other hand,
well-drained loam soils are mixtures of sand, silt, and clay in roughly
equal proportions, and are well drained. A sandy loam, however, has much
more sand and much less clay than does a clay loam.
Soil structure—Soil texture is an inherent soil property that you as a gardener cannot change (except through extreme interventions). Instead, you should direct your efforts toward improving soil structure. Soil structure is defined by the manner in which soil particles are assembled as aggregates. In clay soils, clay particles are typically arranged along a horizontal plane in a platelike structure. When these horizontal aggregations are stacked high and consolidated over time, they can be quite tight and sticky. Your aim in improving soil structure is to achieve a looser, more crumbly or granular structural aggregation. A soil with the latter structure has a friable consistency and good tilth. Tilth—Tilth is the physical condition of the soil as it relates to ease of tillage, seedbed quality, ease of seedling emergence, and deep root penetration. A soil that drains well (yet has water-holding capacity), does not crust, takes in water rapidly, facilitates aeration, and does not make clods is said to have good tilth. And with the right management strategy, good tilth is achievable in a clay soil. Clay demands short-term and long-range strategiesMy initial management strategy centered on adding as much organic matter as deeply as I could, because, generally, the application of organic matter to soil improves both structure and tilth, and contributes to improvements in overall soil health.My long-range management strategy attempts to build available organic carbon and humus and to promote nutrient cycling through regular applications of compost, manure, and other organic matter, the incorporation of cover crops as green manures, rotations that include grasses and legumes, and reduced tillage. Organic matter builds soil tilth in a couple of ways. First, the organic matter coats soil particles, physically separating clay particles and aggregates from each other. Second, and more important, microorganisms that degrade organic matter produce byproducts called glomalin that bind individual clay particles together into aggregates. Particle aggregation in the topsoil reduces crusting, increases the rate of water infiltration, and reduces erosion and runoff. Though my ultimate goal continues to be to increase soil organic matter content in the garden, I was less concerned initially with the numbers than I was with achieving the benefits described above. I understood that in southeastern soils, it would be very difficult to increase the percentage of organic matter in the soil very quickly. For one thing, even large amounts of organic matter initially incorporated in the soil will rapidly break down. The organic matter fraction remaining may resist further degradation for years or even decades, but stable increases in this fraction, called the humic fraction or humus, occur very slowly. Thus, any increase in stable organic matter is necessarily a long-term goal. Compost plays a key roleComposts are integral to my clay soil management plan. Because of the humified nature of compost and its low concentrations of oxidizable carbon and available nitrogen, compost is relatively resistant to further decomposition, and additions of compost to the soil over time can increase the soil's organic carbon and humic matter content. I add compost not so much to provide nutrients as to provide stabilized organic matter that will improve the physical properties of the soil.
I'm fortunate to have a commercial compost supplier close by my
home, so I can take advantage of very reasonable bulk pricing, along
with a guaranteed chemical analysis that allows me to apply the compost
at appropriate rates. There is absolutely no way I could have built a
garden in my clay soil without the 16-cubic-yard tandem truckloads of
compost that rolled onto my property. Moving that compost one
wheelbarrow load at a time to my vegetable and flower beds is a weekend
ritual. The incorporation of the compost into the soil has been more
problematic.
During the initial, pre-garden phase of my soil improvement plan, I managed to break up 10 inches of hard-packed clay with endless swings of my trusty mattock. I spread compost over the surface of the beds an inch at a time and rototilled it in. I was careful not to work the clay when it was too wet, because clay worked wet can result in some tenacious clods, very reluctant in their willingness to ever come apart again. I tried to work the compost deep into the soil, and along with it, I added lime and phosphorus, the clay soil in my garden needing both. When surface-applied, neither of these materials moves down through the soil, so incorporation to ample depth is very important to permit roots to grow into the subsoil. After 3 to 4 inches of compost, I had the "raised bed" I wanted. I called it quits (for the time being) and planted my garden. In the years since, I have been back through most of the beds several times with the mattock and more compost, trying to get organic matter and lime incorporated deeply to break up the "seal" that forms between amended and unamended soil, and to get my beds raised back up. It's readily apparent that organic matter decomposes very quickly in the vegetable beds. In spite of all the amendments, the beds no longer seem "raised," and there's not much visible evidence of all the compost I've added. However, I can tell by the color, now a dark brown instead of red, and by the aggregation of the soil particles into a crumbly structure (of a kin with coffee grounds) that humus is accumulating. Reworking a bed is always a fall practice when my rotation calls for fall-planted garlic or when potatoes or root crops will be planted early the following spring. I just can't count on the beds being dry enough in spring to work the clay deeply without messing up the structure I've worked so hard to build. Cover crops keep on givingAlong with adding compost, a second strategy for adding organic matter to my clay soil is cover cropping. I plant cover crops any time the beds in my garden would otherwise be unplanted or fallow. Fallow periods provide little additional organic biomass while allowing the decomposition of organic matter in the soil to continue. Cover crops provide me with a variety of services. They contribute to the improvements in soil structure that I described earlier. They reduce erosion and increase infiltration. And they can smother weeds and even suppress weed seed germination. Many cover crops will also suppress pathogenic nematodes, for example root knot nematode.
I take a machete and scalp the cover crop at the surface, killing it but leaving the biomass in place.
Leguminous cover crops can fix significant amounts of nitrogen
for use by subsequent crops. Through symbiotic associations with
legumes, Rhizobia bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into an organic
form that legumes use for growth. How much fixation depends on the
length of the growing season, the local climate, and soil conditions.
Nonleguminous cover crops, principally grasses or small grains, do not
fix atmospheric nitrogen, but can be effective in recycling residual
soil nitrogen remaining in the root zone at season's end, reducing
leaching losses from the soil during the winter months. I often plant
mixtures of grasses and legumes in the fall to reap the benefits of
both. This past fall I planted hairy vetch and cereal rye, a proven
mixture here. Crimson clover and rye or oats also do well in my area.
In mid-May, I become a terminator, literally putting these annual plants down to prepare the beds for summer vegetables. By then, the winter cover crops have provided my annual organic matter addition, as well as enough nitrogen fertilizer to grow my summer crops. The less you disturb amended clay the betterBecause of the many benefits that accrue to soil quality, it is clearly in your short-term interest to incorporate organic matter regularly and deeply, at least when beginning the process of whipping a clay soil into shape. Soil particle aggregation and aggregate stability, water holding capacity, drainage, nutrient retention, and plant root growth are all increased when organic matter is incorporated.However, major losses in soil organic matter content can take place when the soil is inverted or mixed annually by tillage. Extensive tillage stimulates microbial activity (gives the little guys an appetite, so to speak), and the consumption of mass quantities of organic matter ensues. After your clay soil becomes more friable and you have provided a deep root zone for your garden plants, you should consider reducing tillage. Switching to a minimum-till system increases soil organic matter, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, and soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen content, especially at the surface and in the top 2 to 4 inches. Because the soil remains undisturbed, fertilizers and other soil amendments do not become homogenized in the tillage layer. Plant feeder roots, therefore, tend to proliferate in the top 2 inches of fertile topsoil. For a number of years now, I have been experimenting with no-till vegetable planting in the spring. I take a big knife (i.e., a machete), make sure there are bandages available nearby, and scalp the cover crop at the surface, killing it but leaving the biomass in place. I pull the residue apart just enough to dig a small hole with a trowel, drop in my tomato, pepper, or melon transplant, and pull the mulch back around the stem. I plant large seeds the same way, except that I leave a mulch-free window for sunshine to strike the seedling when it emerges. For small-seeded vegetables, I generally stir the soil a bit more and leave a strip of mulch-free surface above the seed. Fruiting is delayed a bit because the soil is cooler for a time, but overall production is not sacrificed. The mulch reduces weed growth and prevents soil that may carry overwintering disease pathogens from splashing up on foliage. Infiltration of irrigation water and rainfall improves, as does soil moisture retention. The residue decomposes much more slowly than if I tilled it in. Slower decomposition can result in more favorable timing of the release of nitrogen from the legume cover crop. A few sticky situationsThere are a few circumstances involving clay soils that merit special consideration. In the western states, some clay soils contain excessive sodium (these are known as sodic soils). The adsorption of sodium by clay particles can cause aggregated clay particles to "disperse," or come apart, destroying friability and tilth. Typically, the remedy to this problem is the incorporation of gypsum (calcium sulfate) to provide soluble calcium that can replace the adsorbed sodium.Unless gypsum is called for in a soil test report, however, it is rarely recommended as an amendment in clay soils. Most garden soils that have a proper pH (greater than 6.0) already contain adequate calcium. Another special condition exists in those clay soils that shrink when dry and swell when wet. It is critically important that any tillage of these "expanding clay" soils (and other clay soils, too) occur only when soil moisture conditions are those that Baby Bear would like: "just right." To determine "rightness," roll some soil between your palms into a ball about an inch in diameter. The moisture is right for tillage when a pinch between thumb and finger causes the ball of soil to fracture, break, or crumble into pieces. Organic matter incorporated deeply by tillage is especially helpful in improving the soil structure of expanding clays. A note of caution to gardeners who would attempt to improve clay soils by amending them with sand: This is a very risky business unless the sand (often incorporated as much as 50:50 by volume) is a very sharp sand. Otherwise, additions of sand to clay soil can create a cementlike creature that resists root growth and impedes the flow of air and water.
From Kitchen Gardener 26
, pp. 22-24
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