Don's Review: Law, Politics, Science, Philosophy

Oct. 24, 2009

“You have no right to whine about something,

Unless you’re actually trying to do something to resolve the problem” – Don Homan

The most common reason societies fail falls under the heading of so-called “rational” behavior,” arising  from clashes of interest between two or more peoples. Some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful ot other people. It is “rational” because it has “correct”—though reprehensible—reasoning. The perpetrators feel safe because they are concentrated and highly motivated by the prospect of big and certain profits, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals. That gives the losers little motivation to go to the hassle of fighting back, because each loser loses only a little and would only receive small, distant profits.

Sound familiar? Does the financial bailout of 2008 and ongoing seem the same? It is. Millions of Americans are furious at their tax dollars bailing out Wall Street idiots and leaving the same idiots in place to “pull the same stunt” (--Don Homan) again. No average guy wants to risk storming Wall Street because he or she would likely go to jail. And he or she can withstand a little deprivation for a while, even though it may not be “little” and may last a LONG time. It’s a gamble by the elites and the peons.

It works the same way with climate change. If it means giving up our sports car and high-defintion, widescreen TV sets for a possible, tiny and unpredictable reward in the distant future, we won’t do it.

The reasoning above comes from the must-read book by Jared Diamond, “Collapse.” He then writes, finally, even after society has anticipated, perceived, or  tried to solve a problem, it may still fail because the problem now may be beyond present capabilities to solve, a solution may exist but be prohibitively expensive, or our efforts may be too little and too late.”

Does THIS sound familiar? Unfortunately, yes.

But Americans, now raised on uncountable hours of TV and movies, still believe that the good guys—us, of course, the city on the hill, the guys in white hats—will ride to the rescue.

What happened on Oct. 24 was noble. But likely too little too late. That’s my opinion, not Mr. Diamond’s or my dad’s.

Scientists have said that the maximum amount of planet-warming carbon pollution the earth can handle is 350 parts per million. The problem? We're already at 387 ppm and rising, which is why the ice-caps are melting, the polar bears are drowning and California, Australia and other places are literally on fire.

So renowned author and environmentalist Bill McKibben started a campaign to drill the number 350 into everyone's brain and convince world leaders to cut pollution to sustainable levels.

To help get the word out, McKibben's team, 350.org, helped plan more than 1,500 events in more than 300 countries this October 24, Saturday. There were rallies, marches and underwater cabinet meetings - all to draw attention to the number 350 and the need for real action to stop global warming. And as photos of all the different actions and events from around the world pour in, 350.org will broadcast them live on a giant screen in Times Square.

But, although the world always has had people walking its streets with signs saying “The end is near!” and doom-and-gloom sour grapes “losers” predicting that nuclear war would end life as we know it or since the late 1960s that pollution in Los Angeles would choke off the city. Yet here we are. We’re still standing.

But it’s hard to argue when the predictions indicate 12 factors could displace and/or kill up to a billion people out of six billion within 10 to 50 years—the lifetimes of our kids.

It’s hard to blame anyone really. I mean, who could have predicted that the much-lauded Industrial Revolution that brought mass production and quality products for more people, including the horseless carriage that made travel across country possible for the average person, would end up potentially killing a billion people? The hints were there, such as the smog in L.A., but still no scientist in 1970 was predicting climate change that would create disasters greater than any in history.

It’s hard to feel hopeful about the future, unless you are a member of the elite in the First World countries. The elite should be able to move away from the rising tides, hurricanes, and dust storms or deserts caused by month after month of 100-degree weather.

In “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (also titled “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive”), a 2005 book by Jared M. Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles, deals with "societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses" Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history. He does recount a few times in history, mainly the Netherlands, where people heeded warnings and saved their country. So far, except for the quite likely too-late Oct. 24 350.org actions, President Obama and the United States’ corporate state seem to be following tendencies that destroyed several other societies in the last 3,000 years.

In the prologue, Diamond summarizes Collapse in one paragraph, as follows.

Diamond lists eight factors which have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

1. Deforestation and habitat destruction

2. Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)

3. Water management problems

4. Overhunting

5. Overfishing

6. Effects of introduced species on native species

7. Overpopulation

8. Increased per-capita impact of people

Further, he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

1. Human-caused climate change

2. Buildup of toxins in the environment

3. Energy shortages

4. Full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity

Diamond also writes about cultural factors, such as the apparent reluctance of the Greenland Norse to eat fish.

The root problem in all but one of Diamond's factors leading to collapse is overpopulation relative to the practicable (as opposed to the ideal theoretical) carrying capacity of the environment. The one factor not related to overpopulation is the harmful effect of accidentally or intentionally introducing nonnative species to a region.

Diamond also states that "it would be absurd to claim that environmental damage must be a major factor in all collapses: the collapse of the Soviet Union is a modern counter-example, and the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 BC is an ancient one. It's obviously true that military or economic factors alone may suffice."

Diamond says Easter Island provides the best historical example of a societal collapse in isolation

Collapse includes several key parts.

describes past societies that have collapsed. Diamond uses a "framework" when considering the collapse of a society, consisting of five "sets of factors" that may affect what happens to a society: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and the society's own responses to its environmental problems. The societies Diamond describes are:

The Greenland Norse (climate change, environmental damage, loss of trading partners, irrational reluctance to eat fish, hostile neighbors and most unwillingness to adapt in the face of social collapse)

Easter Island (a society that collapsed entirely due to environmental damage)

The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island (environmental damage and loss of trading partners)

The Anasazi of southwestern North America (environmental damage and climate change)

The Maya of Central America (environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbours)

The final part covers such subjects as business and globalization. Specific attention is given to the polder model as a way Dutch society has addressed its challenges and the "top-down" and most importantly "bottom-up" approaches that we must take now that "our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course" in order to avoid the "12 problems of non-sustainability" that he expounds throughout the book, and reviews in the final chapter. The results of this survey are perhaps why Diamond sees "signs of hope" nevertheless and arrives at a position of "cautious optimism" for all our futures.

University of British Columbia professor of ecological planning William Rees wrote that Collapse's most important lesson is that societies most able to avoid collapse are the ones that are most agile; they are able to adopt practices favorable to their own survival and avoid unfavorable ones. Moreoever, Rees wrote that Collapse is "a necessary antidote" to followers of Julian Simon, such as Bjørn Lomborg who authored The Skeptical Environmentalist. Rees explained this assertion as follows:^[3]

Human behaviour towards the ecosphere has become dysfunctional and now arguably threatens our own long-term security. The real problem is that the modern world remains in the sway of a dangerously illusory cultural myth. Like Lomborg, most governments and international agencies seem to believe that the human enterprise is somehow 'decoupling' from the environment, and so is poised for unlimited expansion. Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse, confronts this contradiction head-on.

In his review in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell highlights the way in which Diamond's approach differs from traditional historians by focusing on environmental issues rather than cultural questions.

Diamond’s distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two, or assume that biological survival is contingent on the strength of our civilizational values... The fact is, though, that we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal.

While Diamond doesn't reject the approach of traditional historians, his book, according to Gladwell, vividly illustrates the limitations of that approach. Gladwell demonstrates this with his own example of a recent ballot initiative in Oregon, where questions of property rights and other freedoms were subject to a free and healthy debate, but serious ecological questions were given scant attention.

Diamond ascribes more weight to conscious minimization of environmental factors. In either case it describes the impasse as a cognitive problem, societies which excel in problem solving having mental fixations that prevent their later problems from being recognized.

In the book, Diamond states:

“Even if the human populations of the Third World did not exist, it would be impossible for the First World alone to maintain its present course because it is not in a steady stat but is depleting its own resources as well as those imported from the Third World. At present it is untenable politically for First World leaders to propose to their own citizens that they lower their living standard as measured by lower resource consmption and waste production rates.

“What will happen when it finally dawns on all those people in the Third World that current First World standards are unreachable for them and that First World refuses to abandon those standards for itself? That’ thecruelest trade-off that we shall have to resolve: encouraging and helping all people to achieve a higher standr of livng without thereby undermining that standard through overstressing global resources.

“Our world society is on a nonsustainable course. The problems of nonsustainablity are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years. For example, destruction of accessible lowland tropical rainforest outside national parks is already virtually complete in Peninsular Malaysia.

“Any of a dozen problems if unsolved would do us grave harm and, because they all interact with each other, if we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12^th, we would still be in trouble. We have to solve them all.

“Withing the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today, the problems WILL get resolved, the only question is whether they willl be come resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such was warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies.”

The recent collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the United States’ pursuit of the “honor” system, essentially, in which each country is responsible on its own to lower carbon-based emissions, with only a non-penalizing international observation body weakly watching the silliness, indicates that a Green Revolution on the size of the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb in a few short years during World War II, is not coming, despite worldwide consensus that it is necessary.

It is easy to see that President Obama is NOT the progressive, lifesaver that people expected. He is not a fighter—infighter like FDR or LBJ—but a coalition builder or corporate hack. No one knows which. He does have the bully pulpit and the soaring rhetoric needed to create a revolution. Martin Luther King Jr. and FDR had those, and used them. Obama is not. No one talks about his speeches or Web talks at the water cooler the next day. No one realizes the horror that undoubtedly will come about in 10 to 20 years. That is easily visible when talking to people on the street, who stare dumbfoundedly when you mention that climate change could kill a billion people—they’ve never hear that before, or when watching TV commercials where happy-faced idiot actors smile their way through yet another commercial comparing the new Cadillac to a bullet shot through the mouth of a champagne glass. Or a commercial in which GE or GM have the gall to claim their piddling “green” projects are a reason for you to spend $40,000 on a gas-burner that gets a “wonderful” 31 mpg. Does anyone remember when a dozen or more small cars got 35-45 mpg after the 1973 oil crisis? Now 31 mpg seems big.

At the water cooler, or at a meeting of GOP, self-righteous, so-called reborn Christians, the climate crisis is dimissed with several simplistic one-liners:

“The environment has to be balanced against the economy.” Diamond says this portrays environmental concerns as a luxury and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved  to be a money-saving device. This gets the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums  of money in the short and long runs.

“Technology will solve our problems.” Diamond counters that this is based on a supposed track record of technology having solved more problems than it created in the recent past. This is an expression of faith with the assumption that, from tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to SOLVE existing problems and will cease to create new problems. But many technologies fail, while only a few succeed and those take decades to develop and phase in widely: think of gas heating, electric lighting, cars and airplanes, TV, computers. Technology regularly creates unanticipated new problems. From thousands of examples of unforeseen harmful side effects, two suffice, he writes: CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and motor vehicles. Old-time coolant gases formerly used in refrigeration and ACs were toxic ones and could prove fatal if leaked during the night. Thus it was hailed as a great advance when CFCs (alias freons) were developed. But in 1974, it was discovered that in the stratosphere they are broken down by UV radiation to create chlorine atoms that destroy the ozone layer protecting us from lethal UV effects.

Diamond does his best to be optimistic, near the end of his book, but can’t hide his pessimism. He writes that one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and other past societies (as well as the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society’s steep decline may begin only a decade or two  after the society reaches its peak numbers.

“Look at how many times in the past the gloom-and-doom predictions of fearmongering environmentalists have proved wrong.” It is misleading to look only at the predictionsthat proved wrong and not at the ones that proved right.

He says, “It boils down to a complaint about false alarms. We accept a percentage of false alarms because we understand that fire risks are uncertain. But no sensible person would dream of abolishing the town fire department, just because a few years went by without a big fire. It’s true that our air quality in L.A. is not as bad as some predictions of 50 years ago. However, that’s entirely beause L.A. and California were aroused to adopt many countermeasures (such as vehicle emission standards and lead-free gas).

[Here is a one-liner that many religious organizations, such as the Mormons, propound:] “The world can accommodate human population growth indefinitely. The more people the better, because more people means more inventions and ultimately more wealth.” At our current rate of growth, this would mean 10 people per square yard in the year 2779, Diamond writes.

Two other one-liners: “There are big differences between modern socieities and past societies of Easter Islanders and the Maya who collapsed, so we can’t extrapolate straightforward from the past.” And “What can I, as an individual do, when the world is being shaped by unstoppable powerful juggernauts of governments and big businesses?”

Yes, Diamond writes, there are big differences, the most obvious difference being far more people alive today, packing far more potent technology. Today we have over 6 billlion people equipped with heavy machinery and nuclear power.

Today, lists of the most economically stressed countries in the world and of the worst trouble spots for wars are the same. “The connection is transparent: it’s the problems of the ancient Maya playing out in the modern world. When people are desperate, undernourished, and without hope, they blame their governments. They try to emigrate at any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They figure they have nothing to lose so they become terrorists.”

“That question is settled because such collapses have actually been happening recently and others appear imminent.”

Chris Hedges, on Oct. 19 in TruthDig.com, seems to concur with Diamond’s more than 300 pages of pessimism and about 50 pages of strained optimism. In “A Reality Check From the Brink of Extinction,” “we can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.“

“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” Hedges quotes author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”

The once-lauded oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants that improved the First World’s standard of living so much in just the past 150 years, will not willingly accept their own extinction. Hedges says they are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response.

The recent climate negotiations in Bangkok, designed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen in December, have scuttled even the tepid response of Kyoto. Kyoto is dead. The EU, like the United States, will no longer abide by binding targets for emission reductions. Countries will unilaterally decide how much to cut. They will submit their plans to international monitoring. And while Kyoto put the burden of responsibility on the industrialized nations that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. It is a huge step backward.

“All of the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given,” Hedges quoted Jensen. “The natural world is supposed to conform to industrial capitalism. This is insane. It is out of touch with physical reality. What’s real is real. Any social system—it does not matter if we are talking about industrial capitalism or an indigenous Tolowa people—their way of life, is dependent upon a real, physical world. Without a real, physical world you don’t have anything. When you separate yourself from the real world you start to hallucinate. You believe the machines are more real than real life. How many machines are within 10 feet of you and how many wild animals are within a hundred yards? How many machines do you have a daily relationship with? We have forgotten what is real.”

That sounds a lot like what Diamond wrote.

The rising sea levels, which in the next 10-50 years, will swallow countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and turn cities like New Orleans into a new Atlantis, and will combine with severe droughts, horrific storms and flooding to eventually dislocate over a billion people. The effects will be suffering, disease and death on a scale unseen in human history.

The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations.

“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”

Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels.

Hence, the still-constant preposterous, silly TV commercials with idiots smiling, and the still-preponderance of ignorant middle-age men driving their brand-new red Thunderbird convertibles around NYC without a care in the world. They’re having their testosterone moment, thinking that a 20-year-old blonde woman will say “Hi” to them at the next traffic light.

 The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun. And as temperatures continue to rise, huge parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. James Hansen has  determined that the world must stop burning coal by 2030—and the industrialized world well before that—if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number. Coal supplies half of our electricity in the United States.

Jensen said. “We need to shut down the oil infrastructure. I don’t care, and the trees don’t care, if we do this through lawsuits, mass boycotts or sabotage. I asked Dahr Jamail how long a bridge would last in Iraq that was not defended. He said probably six to 12 hours. We need to make the economic system, which is the engine for so much destruction, unmanageable. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been able to reduce Nigerian oil output by 20 percent. We need to stop the oil economy,” Hedges quotes Jensen.

The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.

Jensen’s website for “Deep Green Resistance” says it is “a perspective emerging from the current environmental movement that views mainstream environmental activism as being largely ineffective. The Deep Green movement believes that civilization, and especially industrial civilization, is fundamentally unsustainable and must be actively dismantled in order to secure a livable future for all species on the planet.”

“This perspective argues that the dominant culture will not undergo a voluntary transformation to a sustainable way of living. Deep Green believes that industrial civilization must be forced into collapse in order to maintain as much of the living world as possible, noting that carrying capacity is further diminished as civilization continues. It supports an active movement with the objective of accelerating the collapse of industrial civilization.”

“Within Deep Green theory, lifestyle or personal changes are not considered effective methods of creating meaningful change. The mainstream environmental movement is seen as being distracted by its emphasis on lifestyle changes and technological solutions instead of confronting systems of power and holding individuals, industries, and institutions accountable.”

“Deep Green views technological solutions, no matter how well intentioned, as inadequate, and possibly leading to accelerated ecological destruction and pollution. Deep Green movement looks to pre-industrial and pre-civilization, land-based cultures as models for sustainable ways of living.”

Going back to FDR: Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler. And LBJ: Or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Jensen writes on the Internet:

“Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming.

“But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

“Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans.

“So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option.

“If we choose the ‘alternative’ option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses.”

“Another option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.”

Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

“The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.”

“The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.”

Sept. 5, 2009

Judgements about moral issues eventually find their way into politics and into law, which is always changing , even if at a snail’s pace. "The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience," Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in his classic commentary "The Common Law." Law has to take technological change into account, including the rise of industries that saw cheap labor in children. It took more than 20 years after Holmes’s famous dissent in the 1918 case "Hammer v. Dagenhart" for the courts to outlaw child labor.

Now, a new book called "The Stem Cell Dilemma: Beacons of Hope or Harbingers of Doom?" by Leo Furcht and William Hoffman (Arcade Publishing, 2009), shows how the world of science, including biomedical science, is racing ahead of the world of law.

It also is racing ahead of good-old economics. However, the man or woman on the street has no idea of this ongoing and accelerating "arms race." The connection of research to economic growth is not as well appreciated as its connection to public health and national defense.

Science involving deadly pathogens, stem cells, and cloning have disturbed deeply embedded core beliefs. The "culture of life" championed by religious conservatives can be a formidable barrier to research. But the U.S.’s prudishness may not last long as it loses money. England not only permits but also promotes embryonic stem cell research and research cloning.

To put this in perspective, the global market for just ONE drug that makes more red blood cells from blood-forming stem cells—erythropoietin—is approximately $4 billion annually. Imagine the value of a drug that could regenerate heart muscle for people who have had heart atttacks?

The era of bioterrorism also leaves no room for apathy or ignorance, the authors write.

Bacteria rule the earth and have since their debut several billion years ago. Without natural immunity, humans would become feedstock for the millions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microorganisms that reside in or on us. Aftert all, microorganisms make up half of the earth’s biomass.

How will law in the future deal with human embryos created outside the body? Will these embryos have no protection in law, allowing their use with donor consent for research and the development of therapies for treating deadly diseases, including the tortuous Lou Gehrig’s Disease. After all, many thousands of human embryos have been legally discarded since the beginning of in vitro fertilization, their right being solely the donors’ right to decide their fate.

Or will these embryos be accorded full protection in law like any citizen, preventing their use for research and inviting the government into the sanctum where decisions about human reproduction are made? Or will the law be built around what some consider the embryos’ "intermediate moral status" as not just cells, yet not citizens with fulll rights? Looking ahead, the brave new world of constitutionl disputes over issues like reproductive cloning and the genetic enhancement of children will raise "novel and surprising questions about how to interpret our constitutional rights to privacy, equality, and free experssion," says authority Jeffrey Rosen.

Researchers Stephen R. Munzer and Russell Korobkin see a number of issues with which the law will have to grapple: the morality of human embryonic stem cell research and whether the government ought to fund it; the policy issues raised by therapeutic cloning and congressional attempts to ban it; the conflict between private property and the public good raised by stem cell patents, especially patents arising from fedrally funded researach; autonomy and informed consent rules concerning medical experimentation with human subjects; and the donation of biological materials whether they be embryos, eggs, tissues, or organs, and whether donors should be paid.

In the future, companies will collect, preserve, store, treat, and manipulate the stem cells used for treatment, Korobkin writes. What liability burdens should be placed on them if something goes wrong? What if rather than curing Fanconi anemia, the cord blood stem cells infused into the body cause a fatal cancer?

Looking into the future, who will be liable if the skin cells you had reprogrammed into stem cells turn out to be ineffective or, worse, detrimental to you when you need them most?

What about patents and embryo rights? Recently athe University of Missouri licensed the patent to Biotransplant, a leader in moving organs from one species to another—from pigs to humans, for example. Critics seized on the patent and made it an issue because the application does not exclude humans and specifically does mention human eggs. The patent does state that "cloned prodcuts" are covered. Critics say that that could mean embryos, fetuses, and children, though the university asserted it would not grant permission to use the patented process to clone a child.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has long said it will not issue a patent on a "human being." To do so, some argue, would violate the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery. But the patent office has not addressed the issue of exactly when a developing embryo or fetus becomes a human being and whether its policy reaches back before birth.

Ahhh, the vaunted American exceptionalism. The city on a hill. Everyone looks to us. We are special. But can America reinvent itself once again as the value and power of knowledge gravitates to the "brave new world" of biology, genomics, and stem cell research? Can America recognize that the world of biology cannot be neatly separated from what "Financial Times" columnist Martin Wolf called the "brave new capitalist world?"

No field of human scientific inquiry displays the global diversity of ethical, cultural and religious heritage and taboos, Furcht and Hoffman write, as much as stem cell research. At the same time, for no other research area have companies and states raced to seize the advantage as much as with this issue. California passed in 2004 a $3 billion Proposition 71 to fund stem cell research. Other states, including Massachusetts and Wisconsin, are battling to align policy for what they see as a future source of health and wealth. This is also happening at an international level, where the U.K. already has an advanced regulatory environment and government money to fund research and set up stem cell banks. So do Sweden, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and India.

The fate of all societies in the face of bioterrorism and epidemic onslaughts will hinge on the health of the human immune system. Advances in stem cell technology, as well as biotechnology and nanotechnology have revealed both the strengths and the vulnerabilities of this system.

The human immune system is perhaps the greatest marvel of biological complexity ranking far ahead of our other physiology. Its workings have been described as "cognitive"—that is, having an ability to perceive, reason, decide, learn and remember.

Stem cell biology has accelerated our ability not only to follow the development of the immune system, but also to create a replica of the system in a three-dimensional matrix, such as a portable cell growth cassette or "laptop" system.

Stem cells wield undeniable potential in two fateful arenas: emerging microbial threats and biowarfare. That knowledge is putting humanity in an unprecendented position . Whoever possesses that knowledge possesses the power to destroy that is potentially more pervasive and more sinister than its 20^th-century thermonuclear counterpart.

The concept of defense has pushed immuniology into the forefront of today’s basic research and applied techonology. Among the government agencies that fund applied research in immunology is the one that brought us the Internet, Stealth technology, and satellite-enabled global postioning systems. It’s the Department of Defense research arm know as DARPA. DARPA along with many, many centers around the world are eyeing stem cells for use in bioprotection through the construction of an artificial, yet interactive and functional, human immune system in the laboratory from "a common stem cell source" using tissue engineering technologies. A main first usage would be to test new vaccines.

For these attempts and this genomics research to succeed, strange as it may seem, commercial inkjet printers have become a staple. They actually print LIVING cells. The printers can deposit cells in precise positions in a 3-D matrix of highly specialized bioactive materials that would convert the 3-D space into a bioreactor. A bioreactor can serve as an artifical organ that mimics what occurs in the body.

Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University have printed a "bio-ink" of stem cells and growth factors that direct their differentiation into specialized cells.

All of this means that the behavior of these powerful tissue-forming cells is increasingly something that can be CONTROLLED for the first time in a 3-D artificial environment. The next step is to attempt to re-create the stem cell microenvironment, the wellspring of regenerative medicine, in bioreactors.

DARPA and academic collaborators have formed a consortium that is borrowing from the architectural genius of bees to build an artificial environment to foster the growth of cells and development of tissue. They used nanotechnology to create a honeycomb scaffold similar to the internal structure of bone marrow that supports stem cells. The scientists found the scaffold stimulated stem cell interactions and that they were able to control stem cell specialization into the different cells that make up the immune system.

The fate of all societies is very close at hand. The person on main street must shed his or her ignorance.

[Editor's Note: Please see companion piece in Don's Review by Scott F. Gilbert]

Sept. 3, 2009

Pressure is mounting on President Barack Obama, just as it is on people like me who have been laid off for seven months and face potential employers who say there will be no jobs for the foreseeable future, or—if lucky--minimum wage jobs, just to feed my son and wife and keep a roof over their heads—and mine. Good News! After trying everything but selling my body to science, I MAY have a 40-hour-a-week job as a security guard at $9 per hour. That’s $1 per hour less than unemployment pays me. But, you see, unemployment will run out.

Oh! Did I mention that I’m seriously considering dropping the COBRA health insurance that my union affords me since my January layoff at $374 a month. That just covers me. Not my son or wife. I also have "prediabetes" and a heart condition in which the bottom chambers receive no nerve signal from the main "branch bundle" of nerves.

There are others. A group has been started on LinkedIn. It’s at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2248131

My ad there reads: "Laid off 7 mos. COBRA is $374 a month. Just for me, not 8-y-o son or wife. Protest? Join me? Not pay for Sep or Oct? Get media story?" The group is "Health Insurance for the Unemployed/COBRA Protest."

And there are others. A group is now touring this nation of corporate divisions—not states. The U.S. is one big corporation, with divisions. The group is called "Mad as Hell Doctors." They’re on FaceBook. I’ve invited them to join the new LinkedIn site. Their website: http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

Their home page says:

This is not a campaign. In campaigns, there are spectators. This is a movement.

Everybody plays.

The Plan: Mad Doctors Hit the Road

On September 8, 2009 a group of dedicated Oregon physicians will take the message of Universal Health Care "on the road" in a wrapped and branded Motor Home headed for Washington D.C. Our cross-country mission: to stop in big cities and whistle stops alike, conducting pre-booked, local and national media appearances for a curious press. Every move we make along the way will be recorded on camera and then edited and uploaded to the internet that same day. This will allow our Mad As Hell Doctors Tour to leverage the edited video segments on social networking web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, et al. In this way, our effort becomes an unprecedented hybrid of reality television and political activism that offers people the opportunity to follow us, in real time, as our story unfolds. The message will be unmistakable: caravan with us to Washington and help make a public demonstration of support for Single Payer Health Care that will be heard around the world.

Imagine...

Thousands of cars pulling into the nation's capital for a protest on the White House lawn. The sidewalks are filled with supporters carrying signs in support of the Mad As Hell Doctors who have captured the imagination and the ignited the passion of their fellow citizens. We wave and honk at the camera crews, as do the endless line of cars behind us, as we wend our way toward the White House. On every antenna, on the backside of every car, and flapping like flags from sidewalk supporters, is the symbol of this new movement: the White Ribbon.

When we arrive, we go directly to the White House Lawn and begin passing out ribbons to the multitude of people waiting for the protest to begin. Politicians, celebrities, entertainers and hand selected citizens stand at the microphone one after the other, offering testimonials and expressing outrage at a corrupted health care system that puts profit before people. Our message to the President and Congress is clear:

Single Payer is the Solution. We Demand it Now.

We know it's going to take a miracle to make this happen, but we're leaving on September 8, 2009, no matter what - even if we have to skateboard into D.C.! And it is in that same spirit we are asking for your support. It's going to take boldness, courage, commitment, a busload of faith and a lot of resources to rally the American people to the cause of Single Payer. But with hundreds of thousands of voices, all singing in unison, in the same place, at the same, we will not be denied.

Please help us make this movement a reality. It's now or never for Single Payer. We need you to help us construct a miracle.

Ahhh! But the corporations, the bailed-out corporations have it rough too—but their employees still have health insurance—the best in the country—and huge homes in the Westchester suburbs and food to feed their five kids.

Citigroup, also, has gone through its own kind of "hell" since the meltdown of 2008 and still is. One of its tax managers involved with the melee of saving the bank and making sense of the input of common folk’s tax dollars from the U.S. government, since the subprime mortgage housing bubble burst last summer, says: "Everyone has had it hard here. I work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and weekends!"

Now, facing the "Audacity of Dopes," the dopes who got laid off and have no health insurance—because that’s what they are in our capitalist nation aren’t they? Dopes? If they got laid off, they must have deserved it. Didn’t plan for it. Were too stupid to get $50,000 starting accountants’ pay WITH a $35,000 bonus at Citi. Let them eat cake! Someone said. More likely a cake of sod at the tent cities to come in D.C.

FINALLY, with the Greats of Wrath prepping to visit his house in D.C., Mr. Obama, wrote the Associated Press (Fawning Corporate Media, FCM) this week, saying he will deliver a major prime-time health care address to Congress next week, opening a push to gain control of the debate that has been slipping from his grasp under withering Republican-led attacks. The Republicans. The ones who lost the White House and Congress by making torture acceptable—unless it was their son or daughter. The ones with the laughable Sarah Palin as a current leader. Obama, the speech better be wonderful. But even movie action heroes know they have to throw a punch after their monologue.

The speech's timing also suggests that top Democrats have all but given up hope for a bipartisan breakthrough by Senate Finance Committee negotiators. The White House had given those six lawmakers until Sept. 15 to draft a plan, but next week's speech comes well ahead of that deadline. It follows an August recess in which critics of Obama's health proposals dominated many public forums. Approval ratings for Obama, and for his health care proposals, dropped during the month.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told the FCM that listeners to Obama's speech will have "a clear sense of what he proposes and what health care reform is not." Axelrod said earlier that all the key ideas for revising health care are "on the table," suggesting that Obama will not offer major new proposals. This means NO single-payor (government-payor). Hear that Mad as Hell Doctors?

Mr. Obama those doctors coming to your town are already MAD AS HELL. This might get them a bit more riled—as riled as a coma patient waking up with half-inch oozing bedsores on his buttocks, ankles and head. Your bedside manner--an eloquent, beautiful speech delivered with supreme confidence followed by a weak-kneed compromise to the United Stupids of America, the Republicans, won’t cut it. Or rather it will be like lying in a hospital bed at 3 a.m. suffocating on your own mucous and saliva because you have no call bell to summon a nurse to suction your trach tube and allow you to breath.

But the FCM say he may talk more specifically about his top priorities, and perhaps add details to pending plans, to save a "high-profile initiative" whose defeat would deliver a huge blow to his young presidency. Many advocates of sweeping health care changes — which would include health coverage for virtually every American, greater competition among insurers and incentives to increase the quality of care instead of the number of medical procedures performed — welcomed the president's more direct role, says the AP (FCM). Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, said, "It's really clear they understand they have to provide more presidential leadership, more presidential direction." Kirsch said Obama doesn't have to provide legislative language, but he must detail "the contours of the reform he needs."

It's far from clear that Obama's speech will satisfy grumbling liberals. For instance, he consistently has refused to insist on a government-run program to compete with private health insurers, a top goal of liberals, even though he says he prefers such an option. Axelrod called the public option important, but stopped short of saying it was essential to a final bill.

Several lawmakers say Obama must convincingly show that he can reduce the cost of pending health care plans. Nonpartisan budget officials have said Obama's proposals could increase the federal deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. So WHAT!? Maybe we could stop maiming innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq and letting our own women and children die in our so-called nation, if we took $1 trillion from the defense budget, which is 20 times the rest of the world’s put together.

In one measure of the intense opposition Obama and his allies faced this summer, opponents—the United Stupids outspent supporters on television commercials in August for the first time this year, according to a firm that monitors political advertising. Foes of the Democratic drive spent $12.1 million last month, compared with $9.1 million for backers of the effort, according to Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group in Arlington, Va. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several conservative groups were the biggest advertisers against the health care overhaul.

Did I mention that "I MAY have a 40-hour-a-week job as a security guard at $9 per hour. That’s $1 per hour less than unemployment pays me. But, you see, unemployment will run out. And, did I mention that I’m seriously considering dropping the wonderful COBRA health insurance that my slippery union affords me since my January layoff at $374 a month (unemployment is $405 a week). That’s just for me. Not my son or wife." But, you’re right. I made mistakes at my last job. "A long list of gaffes" as one of my annual reviews read during my nine years there. Why did they keep me there for nine years? You’re right. I don’t have the smarts to get $85,000 a year my first year at the Citi tax department, fixing a blowout caused by others paid millions more in the years going back to Mr. Reagan.

On Saturday, Aug. 22, in CommonDreams.org Mary Bottari writes "Bank Looting Bonuses Reported--Will the SEC Awake from Its Slumber?" Bank looting. Noooo. The tax manager at Citi said the bonuses are necessary to keep the talent that helped create the need for a $45 billion bailout with my tax money of Citigroup since fall 2008. Citi’s base pay has not increased, the manager says. They can only offer $50,000. So bonus money is needed to get the smart people. Not the dopes, like me.

In commondreams.org (not FCM), it says: A short time ago, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a report focusing on the bank bonuses paid out by the biggest banks in 2008, the same year they were bailed out by federal taxpayers. The report notes that in many instances the bank bonuses exceeded bank profits, the implication being that taxpayer dollars were being used to subsidize the salaries of the ace banking executives who created the financial crisis in the first place.

Highlights from the report No Rhyme or Reason: The Heads I Win, Tails You Lose Bank Bonus Culture include:

Two firms, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, suffered massive losses of more than $27 billion at each firm. Nevertheless, Citigroup paid out $5.33 billion in bonuses, and Merrill paid $3.6 billion in bonuses. Together, they lost $54 billion, paid out nearly $9 billion in bonuses and then received TARP bailouts totaling $55 billion.

For three other firms—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase—2008 bonus payments were substantially greater than the banks' net income. Goldman earned $2.3 billion, paid out $4.8 billion in bonuses, and received $10 billion in TARP funding. Morgan Stanley earned $1.7 billion, paid $4.475 billion in bonuses, and received $10 billion in TARP funding. JPMorgan Chase earned $5.6 billion, paid $8.69 billion in bonuses, and received $25 billion in TARP funding. Combined, these three firms earned $9.6 billion, paid bonuses of nearly $18 billion, and received TARP taxpayer funds worth $45 billion.

In sum, Mr. Cuomo wrote:

Thus, when the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well. And when the banks did very poorly, they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were still paid well.

Why hasn’t anyone been prosecuted for looting the American taxpayer? Indeed, the number of prosecutions involving banking boondoggle is—dare I say it? Criminally small.

One "bonus bailout" did end up in court. You remember the brouhaha when it became known that Merrill Lynch (headed by John Thain of the million dollar bathroom remodel) paid out a $3.6 billion dollar bonus package to executives shortly after it had lost $27 billion and shortly before it was acquired by Bank of America (BoA)? Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) woke up from its decade-long snooze and decided to investigate the bonus bonanza. Eventually, it fined the company for not telling its shareholders about the package. All well and good, except it fined the company $33 million, which is less than 1% of the $3.6 billion looted from taxpayers.

Fortunately, a federal judge, Jed Rakoff, who was required to review the settlement, flatly refused to approve it. Judge Rakoff said that BoA and Merrill had "lied to their shareholders." He said that the $3.6 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill, as the ailing brokerage giant was taken over by the bank, was from "effectively from Uncle Sam." At least this judge is demanding more accountability. The next hearing on the issue will be on August 24th.

So, will SEC chair Mary Shapiro be handed a spine and a double expresso? Will Merrill’s John Thain and BoA’s Kenneth Lewis be cuffed?

Don’t bet on it. Unless you’re a risk-taker, like those first-year Citi accountants making $85,000 per year—not like those dopes like me making $9 an hour on the midnight to 8 a.m. shift and then trying to be a father to our sons.

On Aug. 10, Josh Fineman of Bloomberg’s news service, wrote that Citigroup Inc.’s Primerica Financial
Services Inc. unit is giving agents trips to Hawaii and Las Vegas after canceling similar offers in February, when the U.S. government pressed recipients of bailout money to cut perks. About 400 couples will win sales-incentive trips to the Grand Wailea resort in Maui and 1,100 will stay at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in February, Primerica spokesman Mark Supic said today in an interview. Co-Chief Executive Officer John
Addison announced the contests today "Back in January and February the economic news was terrible, and while we clearly have a way to go, you are seeing now the light at the end of the tunnel," Supic said. All Primerica incentive trips are budgeted and paid for from the profits of Primerica, Supic said. Citigroup CEO Vikram
Pandit put Primerica into the bank’s Citi Holdings unit, the division that houses businesses being sold or wound down. Agents compete for the trip in categories including life insurance, mutual funds, variable annuities and loan sales. "Primerica reps are hardworking independent contractors, and the sales-incentive contests are a critical component of the successful and profitable Primerica business model," Supic said.

A regional representative of Primerica, who called himself "independent" of Primerica, not an employee, said Primerica wasn’t even involved in any subprime mortgages, which are a major cause of the 2008 meltdown. "Why should a company and people who NEVER sold a subprime mortgage be penalized for something someone else did?" he asked.

Well, this is the Army, mister. Guilt by association. You were selling Citi products were you not? Yes you were.

Did ANYONE at Citi get laid off? Or lose his or her health insurance? YES, says the manager. "Now, when people quit, we can’t hire a replacement." So he and his other fully insured people have to work from "9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on weekends." Tough to get up to that Westchester house before the kids go to bed. True enough.

The only Citi layoffs I could find in my research came from early January, when, in a memorandum to Citigroup employees, company chief executive officer Vikram Pandit and chairman Win Bischoff outlined some of the steps the company is taking to cut costs.

"Citigroup will lay off 52,000 workers worldwide after it incurred losses due to bad loans and bad investments for the fourth straight quarter." Pandit then said Citigroup expects major challenges to continue into 2009. It also restricted exit pay and exclusion of five senior executives whose compensation are on Citigroup's proxy statement from receiving severance pay. Pandit identified in an email the five as himself, Bischoff, chief financial officer Gary Crittenden and vice chairmen Lewis Kaden and Stephen Volk. Also in the memorandum, Pandit and Bischoff said the firm will limit executive pay and officers will forego their 2008 bonuses following the receipt of a $45 billion bailout and loss of three-quarters of its market value.

Citigroup and other Wall Street firms have accumulated over $1 trillion in losses in their global operations since 2007, leading bank executives to give up their bonuses, which usually make up two-thirds of the compensation package of finance firm executives.

Aside from Pandit and Bischoff, Citigroup adviser Robert Rubin also gave up his bonus for the second consecutive year. Pandit added executive pay will be tied up with performance. "We are fully committed to paying for high-performance people at all levels of the organization and at competitive rates, in the context of the company's overall financial results," Pandit said.

Vikram Pandit was born in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India, to an affluent Maharashtrian family. His mother tongue is Marathi. His father, S B Pandit, was an executive director at Sarabhai Chemicals in Baroda.

Did I mention that many of those 52,000 layoffs are of workers in India. NOT of those working in New York or responsible for the egregious miscues over the past 10-20 years. Citigroup's 52,000 layoffs mostly will impact IT.

"Expect Citigroup to reach head count reductions by selling off and outsourcing IT operations where it can," one analyst said. On November 17, 2008 this post was made to an industry blog: "Anonymous says: As a former contracter for Citi, I can tell you there is a HUGE amount of FAT to be trimmed... Given Citigroup's stated plans, a massive head count reduction announced today is sure to include a fair share of IT jobs."

Another source says about half of the overall reduction will come from Citigroup's divestiture of non-strategic businesses, and the rest came from layoffs that either already had been announced or were being planned. Citigroup said. "We entered 2008 with more people, more businesses and more assets than fit our strategy," Pandit said in the presentation. "We expect near-term head count to be down 20% in order to run the company in the right way."

The goal now is to pare down the workforce from its current level of 352,000 to about 300,000 employees worldwide, Citgroup CEO Vikram Pandit said. That target number is nearly 75,000 lower than the workforce of 375,000 employees at Citigroup as recently as the fourth quarter of 2007.

TowerGroup analyst Guillermo Kopp said a fair share of the layoffs involve IT functions.

Citigroup has previously disclosed its plans to derive some major cost reductions from its multibillion dollar 25,000 person IT organization. Last year, before Pandit became CEO, Citigroup announced that it would be overhauling its IT functions via a series of data center consolidations, better use of existing technologies, optimization of global voice and data networks, standardization of its application development processes and vendor consolidation.

That IT cost-reduction focus appears to have sharpened under Pandit. Marty Lippert, a former technology executive at the Royal Bank of Canada who in July was appointed CIO at Citicorp, is leading the transformational efforts at Citigroup's new centralized global technology and operations division. TowerGroup's Kopp said to also expect to see Citigroup seek head count reductions by selling off and outsourcing IT operations where it can. He pointed to Citigroup's sale in October of its Citigroup Global Services arm in India to Tata Consultancy Services for $505 million as an example. As part of the deal, Tata will provide process outsourcing services to Citigroup under a nine-year contract valued at $2.5 billion.

Other media say the cuts were global, affecting many regions and business lines, including the retail and investment banks, a person close to the matter said. About one-half will come from layoffs and attrition, and the rest from the sale of units, such as the German retail banking business.

In 2005, Pandit was fired from Morgan Stanley and started a hedge fund with other Morgan Stanley refugees named Old Lane Partners. Citigroup subsequently purchased the poorly performing fund in 2007 for $800 million. Pandit received approximately $165.2 million for this transaction. Many analysts believe that this hefty price was paid for a hedge fund with only $4.5 billion under management to get Pandit onto Citigroup. He received an additional $2.7 million in the roughly six months he served as head of Citigroup's investment bank and alternative investments group. In January 2008, Pandit was given a sign-on grant of stock and performance-based options worth more than $48 million, though the options currently have no cash value.

On December 11, 2007, Pandit was named the new CEO of Citigroup, replacing interim-CEO Sir Winfried Bischoff, who became chairman of the board as well as remaining CEO of Citigroup Europe. Interim chairman Robert Rubin strongly supported Pandit, who is the effective successor to Chuck Prince. Prince resigned in November 2007 due to unexpectedly poor 3rd-quarter performance, mainly due to CDO- and MBS-related losses.

While CEO of Citigroup in 2007, Vikram S. Pandit earned an annualized compensation of $3,164,320, which included a base salary of $250,000, stocks granted of $2,914,320, and options granted of $0. In 2008, he earned a total compensation of $38,237,437, which included a base salary of $958,333, stocks granted of $28,830,000, and options granted of $8,432,911.

On February 11, 2009, Pandit testified to Congress that he had declared to his board of directors, "my salary should be $1 per year with no bonus until we return to profitability," having received $10.82 million in 2008. He also struck an apologetic tone for letting the bank consider completing the purchase of a private jet plane after receiving some $45 billion in bailout money. The bank ultimately scrapped the plan under pressure from U.S. PresidentBarack Obama.

Vikram Pandit lives in an $18 million apartment on the Upper West Side. Pandit is a Hindu. He is married to Swati, who is a native of Pune.

Whatever the case, media on Sept. 2 reported that "Up, down or sideways, shares of Citigroup are the flavor of the month on Wall Street."

Trading in Citigroup shares has skyrocketed since the beginning of August as market participants look for intraday hedging opportunities among a small group of beaten-down financial services stocks. Volume in its shares has been particularly strong in the past two weeks when Citi has regularly accounted for nearly one-fifth of NYSE Composite volume.

Part of the increased volume has to do with bets that Citigroup can come out of the credit crisis without further damage. A bigger driver, though, is that Citi’s recent higher share price - the stock gained 54% in August, and has quadrupled since March - has made it easier to short.

In the wake of a 40% pick-up in U.S. stocks since early March, traders are playing for what they expect is an inevitable pullback, according to the heads of several Wall Street trading desks. In that scenario, especially when buying shares in a shaky financial company, it’s important to mitigate risk by finding something else to short.

If, for instance, a trader is going to hold an intraday position in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bet they are worth more than current market value, he limits his downside by shorting Citi."This is a mechanical trade, not a fundamental one," says Kevin Kruszenski, director of equity trading for KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Hedge funds, some day traders and several other market participants are using this barbell approach to stay neutral on the banking sector with a little bias intraday toward a specific stock.

Bank of America is seeing a similar, albeit much smaller, volume increase. The bank may be easy to short, but since it’s at about $16 a share, speculative buyers see more upside with Citi, which is around $4.50.

Other banks, such as J.P. Morgan Chase, just don’t work as a hedge, as they won’t necessarily trade in tandem with a beaten down bank. Citigroup, on the other hand, has the volume, share price, and weakened stature to be the perfect hedge.

In the past, some traders may have shied away from the highly volatile shares of companies as distressed as Fannie, Freddie and American International Group. But by hedging with positions in Citigroup, market participants have leapt into all three as they’ve been able to mitigate some of the downside risk inherent in the highly speculative companies.

The strategy also works because each of these stocks are so liquid that traders can work under the assumption they won’t have to hold any part of the trade overnight, taking a page from the playbook of high frequency funds.

Last year, Citigroup usually accounted for around 3% of NYSE Composite volume. On Monday and Tuesday this week, it accounted for 20%. Short volume, or the number of shares sold short over the course of a day, made up about 50% of overall volume in Citigroup shares Tuesday, compared with less than 35% in early August.

High frequency funds, which often account for more than half of stock market trading, are helping facilitate the new trading strategies, and profiting in the process thanks to rebates.

Rebates involve fees that exchanges pay certain market participants for taking one side of a trade. High frequency funds have grasped onto the rebates system as a certain money maker, sometimes even willing to take a loss on a trade in hopes the rebate will keep them in the green.

For the first decade of its life, the company came under repeated fire from shareholders for lackluster results. Then came the housing bust. Citigroup had been an aggressive player in the securitized mortgage market, and those chickens came home to roost in tens of billions of losses. After a change in chief executives and two federal bailouts, Citigroup announced on Jan. 16, 2009, that it would split, for management purposes, into two entities, Citicorp and Citi Holdings (Primerica). A third bailout in February brought the federal government's investment to $45 billion, making taxpayers the bank's largest single shareholder. By March, the bank's management discerned signs of hope and in April, the bank posted modest first-quarter gains, although a substantial share of the profits were the result of an accounting adjustment.

The chain of events was a giant comedown from corporation creater Mr. Weill's hopes. To create Citigroup, he had led the lobbying effort to repeal the Depression-era Glass-Steagall laws separating commercial and investment banks, had pushed out Citicorp's head, John Reed, after an awkward period in which they were co-chairmen and installed his longtime lawyer, Charles O. Prince, as his successor.

Under Mr. Prince, Citigroup charged aggressively into the trading of mortgage-backed securities that were the hot product on Wall Street at the time. As late as the summer of 2007, as evidence mounted of a collapse in the housing market, Mr. Prince declared that the bank was "still dancing."

Not much later, the music ended, and Mr. Prince was out in November of that year as the bank posted a $5.9 billion loss.

That turned out to be the first of many. On Jan. 16, 2009, Citigroup announced an $8.29 billion fourth-quarter loss, bringing its total losses for 2008 to $27.7 billion, among the largest in corporate history. The bank also said that its head count had been reduced by approximately 29,000 since the third quarter and approximately 52,000 for all of 2008.

Citigroup's first cash infusion from the government came in October 2008 in a $25 billion capital injection from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. The bank's breakup plan came after a stern regulatory warning it received in late November 2008, when its rapidly deteriorating share price prompted the government to give it a second cash infusion, of $20 billion. Federal regulators also leaned on Citigroup to shake up its board and on Jan. 21, Richard D. Parsons, the former Time Warner chairman, was named its new chairman.

A new strategy, put into place by its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, focused its executives' attention on its stronger remaining businesses while winding down its money-losing operations.

By segmenting Citigroup into Citicorp and Citi Holdings, run by separate managers, Mr. Pandit seemed to be setting the stage for a spinoff of Citigroup's stronger operations, or an eventual merger. Meanwhile, reporting the two sets of businesses separately should burnish its quarterly results by making it easier for investors to focus on its healthier operations.

On Feb. 27, Citigroup and Treasury officials reached an agreement that vastly increased government ownership of Citigroup, to 36 percent. Under the deal, the Treasury Department agreed to convert up to $25 billion of its preferred stock investment in Citigroup into common stock, giving taxpayers more risk, but more potential for profit if the company recovers. The government will not put in any additional money for now, but some analysts believe Citigroup may require more down the road.

But in an internal memo on March 9, 2009, Citigroup said it operated at a profit during the first two months of the year.

And on April 17, Citigroup squeezed out a first-quarter net profit with help from an accounting adjustment (Ahhh, those accounting adjustments!) that allowed the bank to post a one-off gain of $2.5 billion on its derivative positions. The bank reported a first-quarter net income of $1.6 billion, driven by stronger trading results and improvement in its write-downs. Overall revenue was $24.8 billion, up 99 percent. It announced a loss, however, of 18 cents a share, because of changes in its stock structure.

Analysts remained skeptical about how easily the bank would manage to weather the still gloomy economic outlook. They speculated that Citigroup would continue to struggle under the mounting weight of exposure to consumer-related loan defaults that are likely to increase as the recession continued and more Americans lost their jobs.

Under pressure from federal regulators, the bank reorganized its management team repeatedly, naming three new chief financial officers in four months and swapping out or pushing aside other high-level executives. In July 2009, after the third shake-up in less than a year, some questioned how long Mr. Pandit would be able to hang on to his post as chief.

Sept. 27, 2009

It inspires conviction, faithfulness, right-thinking and devotion to duty - as well as bigotry, self-righteousness, fanaticism and mulishness. It nourished the atrocities of the Inquisition and directed the persecution of Galileo. It propels persons to hoard religious hatred toward others who are mutually hateful. It seduces heroes and martyrs onto the shadowy altars of glory, serving eternal principles that are quickly forgotten. It motivated the execution of innocent persons as witches and it continues to condemn innocent defendants and to liberate guilty miscreants. It incites nations to squander their resources, dissipating their prospects on crusades, blood feuds, and holy wars. And it sustains revered institutions that degrade and threaten humanity, even to foreshadowing the extinction of the species.

"Autistic Certainty" Donald E. Watson, 1993

Radio personality Jack Rice leapt into the news this weekend by asking if Republicans were autistic. The metaphor is crude, and largely undeserved, but merits further exploration.

The word autism was first used in 1911 to describe human behaviors so self-centered as to suggest failure to process the realities of the outside world in language, and an inability to relate to other humans. In the 1940s symptoms were defined further as social withdrawal, difficulty in communicating, extreme self-absorption, and repetitive or stereotyped behaviors.

Now called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it is generally agreed that people with ASD have few linguistic, social, cultural or logical constraints to manage their lives. A current definition adds " ...people with ASD have difficulty seeing things from another person's perspective. Most 5-year-olds understand that other people have different information, feelings, and goals than they have. A person with ASD may lack such understanding. This inability leaves them unable to predict or understand other people's actions."

Historically, severely afflicted individuals have been burnt as witches, honored as shamans, hanged or incarcerated for crimes, or celebrated as geniuses. Adolph Hitler, Thomas Jefferson, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Darwin, Wolfgang Mozart, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Charles Richter, and Ludwig Wittgenstein have all been labeled autistic by one or another critic.

Last winter the Kent community was rocked by the terrible tragedy of an 18-year-old autistic youth named Sky Walker beating to death his mother, Trudi Steuernagel, a distinguished professor at Kent State University.

Apparently Trudi did things right - loved Sky unconditionally, got the best professional help available, offered extraordinary opportunities for Sky to be in situations he could handle and among people he could function with.

The horror is that Trudi survived for a week after the attack, probably aware that she was suffering and dying at the hands of the child she had tried to do right by. She had protected him from the consequences of his actions for 18 years, unable to control his behavior. Reality intervened.

The understanding and compassion shown by people in the Kent community, the actions of law enforcement personnel and others in protecting Sky in the succeeding months is admirable. It is the way mature humans should treat the afflicted. Sky has been judged incompetent to stand trial and sent to permanent custodial care.

Most full grown reasonably healthy adults are physically capable of inflicting fatal injuries on another person. And every one of us is, to some degree, autistic - somewhere on the spectrum between full physical, intellectual, emotional and social functioning, and total self-absorption and disconnection from the realities others live in.

We are also, as a society, autistic to some degree. Politically, in the last 8 years we displayed some of the autistic certainties Donald E. Watson refers to: allowing our government to invade a country that had committed no aggression toward us, tolerating the use of torture and indefinite detention of suspects without charge. We now seem to be on the verge of letting a new administration escalate the war that isn't working in Afghanistan.

But what should frighten us is that collectively, patriotically, too many of us are self-centered, disconnected from reality, not communicating effectively but believing myths and mantras that do enormous damage: absolute certainties like "support our troops", "universal healthcare is socialism", "guns don't kill people", "raising the minimum wage creates unemployment", "Bush lied, people died", "the power to tax is the power to destroy".

Interestingly, early this century French economist Bernard Guerrien and his Sorbonne students started a movement called Post-Autistic Economics (PAE) based on the idea that neo-conservative economics and politics have been driven by autistic patterns of thought. They make the case that free market economics is essentially autistic, based on "abnormal subjectivity, acceptance of fantasy rather than reality." (see also James K Galbraith: "Can we please move on? A note on the Guerrien debate" September 2002)

That shoe fits rather too well: the autistic child of neo-conservative economics, generally unresponsive to the real world, to other humans or human language, reasoning and values, has badly beaten our economy, and almost grown strong enough to kill the democracy that nourished it.

The times we live in are threatening. Most of us are not autistic, but are poorly equipped to deal with the uncertainties of today's complex and contested realities. We are easily tempted by the simplistic certainties of fiction and ideologies, and the contrived realities of radio, TV and the blogosphere.

We need to be concerned with the elemental violence of individuals who are not sufficiently socialized to control their own actions. We need to recognize that most violent acts are driven by physical and/or sensory overload, frustration, anger, or the inability to cope with perceived reality. Autistic persons have fewer linguistic, social, cultural or logical constraints to manage their actions, but they almost never act violently out of malice or for ideology.

We also need to be concerned with the entrenched ideological violence of war, torture and YOYO economics. It doesn't help to label one another autistic, fascist, socialist, or racist, but we should be ashamed that we spend our wealth and resources on wars to kill or control one another, and that we reward people who do selfishness better than the rest of us and punish the poor.

Are Republicans autistic? Not more - or less - than the rest of us. Somehow we have to learn better ways to live with the uncertainties of life on a fragile planet with billions of imperfect humans with fallible social and political tools.

And we must learn to be very suspicious of certainties - ideological or autistic - that sustain beliefs that degrade and threaten humanity and foreshadow the extinction of the species.

Before joining Senator John Glenn's Washington staff in 1985, Caroline Arnold (csarnold@neo.rr.com) was a teacher, founded and ran a successful small business, and served three terms on the Kent (OH) Board of Education. In retirement she keeps a garden, is principal cellist of the Stow Symphony, and serves on the Kent Sustainability Commission and on the boards of Kent Social Services and Family & Community Services in Portage County.

Oct. 1, 2009

U.S. ignorance about the risks and reality of global warming could sink hopes of a new global deal to control greenhouse gas emissions at December's climate talks in Copenhagen, an advisor to the German government has said, according to David Adam of The Guardian/UK.

Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said the US was "climate illiterate" and that the rest of the world may be forced to agree a new deal without it.

"Nobody should dream of the possibility that numbers and targets for countries will be sealed in Copenhagen," said Schellnhuber, one of the world's foremost climate scientists. "If the US doesn't move then nothing will happen."

He added: "The US in a sense is climate illiterate. It is a deeper problem in the US, if you look at global polls about what the public knows about climate change. Even in Brazil and China, you have more people who know the problem, who think that deep cuts in emissions are needed."

What say we try to change this as fast as we can? Let’s use “Don’s Review” that thing called email and/or gossip.

The United States of Stupids, the 300 million pieces of lint on the overstuffed chair of American consumerism, are not getting it from their Fawning Corporate Media on ABC, NBC, and, especially, Fox TV.

The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras - gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them, says Frank Rich of the New York Times.

And we're not just talking about disasters in the distant future, either. The really big rise in global temperature probably won't take place until the second half of this century, but there will be plenty of damage long before then.

For example, one 2007 paper in the journal Science is titled "Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America" - yes, "imminent" - and reports "a broad consensus among climate models" that a permanent drought, bringing Dust Bowl-type conditions, "will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades."

So if you live in, say, Los Angeles, and liked those pictures of red skies and choking dust in Sydney, Australia, last week, no need to travel. They'll be coming your way in the not-too-distant future.

In a rational world, then, the looming climate disaster would be our dominant political and policy concern. But it manifestly isn't. Why not?

Part of the answer is that it's hard to keep peoples' attention focused, the Times says. Weather fluctuates - New Yorkers may recall the heat wave that pushed the thermometer above 90 in April - and even at a global level, this is enough to cause substantial year-to-year wobbles in average temperature. As a result, any year with record heat is normally followed by a number of cooler years: According to Britain's Met Office, 1998 was the hottest year so far, although NASA - which arguably has better data - says it was 2005. And it's all too easy to reach the false conclusion that the danger is past.

But the larger reason we're ignoring climate change is that Al Gore was right: This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don't.

Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It's also a matter of vested ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem exists. This is a common theme in the collapse of empires and nations, according to Jared Diamond in his book, “Collapse.”

From the preeminent organization, 350.org (350 being the limit of carbon dioxide parts per million that the air can hold while maintaining life as we know it) in warning the public, before the accumulated carbon pollution triggers self-perpetuating—and unstoppable—calamities of North and South pole ice melts, glacier melts, and rising oceans—even the U.N. may have water lapping at its steps within 10-40 years.

• Why October 24?

The timing here is crucial—there is a narrow window when we can have the most influence in international climate politics. Too early and we're irrelevant, too late and we've missed our chance to have a real impact. Though the final climate meeting in Copenhagen doesn't take place until December, governments will be finalizing positions before the meeting takes place. Late October may well be our best chance we have before countries set everyone that negotiates for the United Nations climate talks will get their final orders.

Also, October 24 is United Nations Day. We are very pleased about this connection, because through our work, we hope to honor the work of the United Nations as an institution—it is truly the only global institution suitable to the task of a global climate agreement. We are actively working with the UN for the 24th.

With creative actions happening all over the globe, and photographs of those events appearing online, in the media, and on politicians' desks, we will change what these negotiators think they can achieve right before they make the important decisions of the UN treaty. Right now most of them know the science of 350ppm, but they don't think it is politically possible. On October 24, we are going to show them that not only is 350 possible, but it is what everyone all over the world is demanding they do.

350.org has collected some ideas for your, yes, your Oct. 24 action—which SHOULD BE more than changing positions in your lazy-boy or changing channels on TV.

Whatever you choose to do just remember to plan a time for taking an action photo that visibly displays the number 350. If possible, choose an iconic or meaningful location for your action -- a place you wish to protect from climate change or which represents what matters to you and your community.

Walk, March, or Rally: Visibly walking through your community shows movement and solidarity with the cause. Ending at an iconic site (a monument, mountain, hill, river, temple, park -- you know what's best for your place) with speakers and musicians is a great way to spread the word while having a good time.

Show the Tide Line: In coastal areas, rising sea levels caused my melting sea ice may flood many iconic and meaningful places. Standing on or marking potential tide lines could be a powerful image and educational experience for your community.

Teach-In: October 24 will be an excellent teaching opportunity! Do some online research about global warming and invite your participants to learn more about the issue and discuss why 350 is such a critical benchmark for international action on this issue.

Faith Celebrations: Connections between the world's diverse religions and the issue of global warming are numerous and strike a strong moral chord. This is a great way to gather people together who already have a community in which they discuss the big questions -- now is the chance to add global warming to the list.

Invite Government Officials: October 24 will be a great day to directly engage government officials and call for real action on climate change. Who in your country has influence on climate policy? Consider inviting your mayor, environment minister, representatives, or perhaps even prime minister or president. Whoever you try to invite, just be sure to give them plenty of advanced notice, be polite, call back if you are not hearing from them, and maybe even visit their office to demonstrate how much you care about their participation.

Biking Action: Biking, like a march or walk, is a great way to get out and be visible in your community. It can also demonstrate the need for improved infrastructure for our alternative modes of transportation.

Campus Action: College campuses have a huge role to play in any social movement. Push the creativity and tech-savvy contributions that youth can provide, and give a strong base of energy for our elders.

Trash Clean Up: Sadly, some of our iconic places aren’t as pristine as we’d like. Why not leave the place better than you found it?

Service Actions: Spend part of your day actively creating a more just, sustainable world by helping weatherize buildings in your community, constructing new pedestrian or cycle paths, or running whatever sorts of service projects you can come up with to work towards getting CO2 back below 350 ppm.

Art Installation: Provide art supplies and invite your participants to create art—maybe something that speaks of the importance of your iconic place.

Support Better Foods: Have a feast, potluck, or carbon-free picnic in your best local spot. This is an easy way to get everyone participating and highlight local and/or organic foods.

Sports: Bring a football or a frisbee, and invite everyone to play a game outside!

Music: Perhaps you know some local musicians who might want to join the effort. Or, you could invite participants to bring instruments themselves and create music.

Letter writing: Encourage your participants to sign and/or write letters to government officials to formally adopt the 350 ppm CO2 target.

Or, write to your federal senators and representatives and state representatives, and local media, and bulletin boards and light poles in your neighborhood as follows:

Dear World—

This is an invitation to build a movement—to take one day and use it to stop the climate crisis.

We are a group of people from around the planet—young and old, scientists and writers and activists—who have one thing in common. We know the most important number on earth: 350. And we know how to use that number to finally get global action on the worst crisis humans have ever faced. But we can only do it if you help.

A year ago, our greatest climatologist—NASA’s James Hansen—and his team produced a landmark series of studies. They showed that if we let the amount of carbon in the atmosphere top 350 parts per million, we can’t have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.”

The bad news is we’re already past that number—we’re at 390 parts per million, which is why the Arctic is melting, why drought is spreading across the planet, why people are already dying from diseases like dengue fever and malaria occurring in places where they’ve never been seen before.

The good news: that number gives us a target to aim for. When the world’s leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to reach agreement on a new climate treaty, we need them to go farther than they’ve planned to go: we need to make sure they’ll pay attention to the latest science and put forward a plan that gets us back to safety.

So here’s the plan. On October 24, we need you to organize an action in the place where you live, something that will make that most important number visible to everyone. People in more than 1000 communities around the globe have already announced plans—they’ll be school children planting 350 trees in Bangledesh, scientists hanging banners saying 350 on the statues on Easter Island, 350 scuba divers diving underwater at the Great Barrier Reef, and a thousand more creative actions like these. At each event, people will gather for a big group photo that somehow depicts 350--and upload that photo to the web 350.org. As actions take place around the world, we'll link all the pictures together electronically via the web--by the end of the day, we'll have a powerful visual petition linking together the entire planet that we can deliver to the media and world leaders.

So far more than 100 nations are taking part—it's shaping up to be to be the biggest day of grassroots action on global warming ever. But we need it to be much larger—we need you, in your village or town or city, to take part. It’s not hard—we can help you with materials and ideas. But you need to take the first step, by registering an action and starting to let your friends and neighbors know about it.

Involve groups that you’re in—everything from your church, mosque or synagogue to your local bicycle group. People want to help, especially if they see the chance for something that might actually matter. This is even more important than changing your lightbulb—this is your chance to help change the way the whole world operates. October 24 comes six weeks before those crucial UN meetings in Copenhagen. It’s a great chance to take a stand—maybe the last great chance, given what the scientists tell us about the momentum of global warming.

But it can only happen with the help of a global movement—and it's starting to bubble up everywhere. Farmers in Cameroon, students in China, even World Cup skiers have already helped spread the word about 350. Churches have rung their bells 350 times; Buddhist monks have formed a huge 350 with their bodies against the backdrop of Himalayas. 350 translates across every boundary of language and culture. It's clear and direct, cutting through the static and laying down a firm scientific line.

This is like a final exam for human beings. Can we muster the courage, the commitment, and the creativity to set this earth on a steady course before it's too late? October 24 will be the joyful, powerful day when we prove it's possible.

Please join us and register your local action today at 350.org.

What is this so-called “Day of Action?”

350.org says it’s calling on people around the world to organize an action on October 24 incorporating the number 350 at an iconic place in their community, and then upload a photo of their event to 350.org website.

“We'll collect these images from around the world and, with your help, deliver them to the media and world leaders. Together, we can show our world and it's decision-makers just how big, beautiful, and unified the climate movement really is.

To help you take part in October 24's international day of climate action, we are:

• Lifting public awareness on the need for an international climate treaty to reach 350
• Assembling a coalition of hundreds of organizations committed to this vision of a more sustainable world
• Connecting you with others in your community and across the planet who are building this movement
• Providing on-line resources and tools that make pulling together an event easy
• Linking your October 24 event with hundreds of other actions at iconic places around the world
• Leveraging the day of action for meaningful political change

The 9-Step Organizing Plan

Whether you are a seasoned activist or a first-time organizer, here is a simple guide to get you started. Go through the steps one by one, and you'll be on your way to planning a creative, engaging, and powerful action in your community for October 24th.

1) Choose an Action and Location, and Register!

Part of the beauty of October 24th will be the variety and creativity of actions organized across the world. Some common action ideas include organizing a walk or march through your town or city, a rally with speakers and music in your central plaza, a hike, a potluck, a community discussion, or a service project. Some actions' uniqueness will simply be their locations - is there a place to hold your rally that is particularly important to your community, or symbolic of the threat of or solutions to climate change? Examples include coastlines, mountaintops, levees, clean energy plants, or even underwater. Whatever your action, be sure to think about the best photo opportunity to capture your action and everyone who attends - photos are the primary way we link up actions worldwide and tell our story. Don't forget to register your action at 350.org, where you can login to post announcements, and others can sign up to attend your event.

2) Gather With Friends and Neighbors

Invite your friends, neighbors, and local organizations to assist in sponsoring and organizing the action. Think outside the box about who to reach out to - maybe the local church, mosque, synagogue, labor union, sports team, university, or arts cooperative would be interested in getting involved in the issue. This is when it gets fun!

3) Work Out the Details

Take care of logistical details as soon as you can (this is why you want friends to help you out). Important things to consider include the timing of the action, directions, transportation, bathrooms, sound system, permits for use of public spaces, sponsorships, etc.

4) Invite Government Officials

If we want October 24th to have as big an impact as possible, it's essential that we reach out to our local, regional, and national leaders. Invite your local mayor, governor, climate change negotiator, or environment minister. You never know who might be willing to show up and be a climate champion!

5) Spread the Word

Send out emails, write editorials for local newspapers, get on the local radio station, ask organizations to include the action information in newsletters and bulletins, and put up posters all over town. There are downloadable posters available in our Resources section.

Sample Email to Forward to Your Friends:

-------------------------------------

Hey everyone,

Most of you know that I'm committed to solving the climate crisis. If you're like me, you're convinced about the urgency of this problem, but don't know what you can do that will make a real difference. That's why I'm writing you today.

I just watched a really cool video from the crew at www.350.org. It's about new global campaign focused on making sure the world takes the kind of big, bold, fast action that we need to solve this crisis--check it out: http://www.350.org/video

I think you'll agree that it's beautiful--I've included the link so you can pass it on to your friends!

------------------

350.org is an international grassroots campaign that aims to mobilize a global climate movement united by a common call to action. By spreading an understanding of the science and a shared vision for a fair policy, we will ensure that the world creates bold and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. 350.org is an independent and not-for-profit project.

6) Make a Banner

Each action on October 24th will have a banner, or some way to communicate their support for 350 ppm. Some communities will hold big 350 banners, others will spell out 350 with their participants, others still may make a mural together that says 350. We’re asking that everyone make their own banner – it will be great for each action to have its own home-made, local flavor, and yet to all have a common, unifying message. Just be sure to make it large and legible.

7) Tell the Media

It's important to contact local, state, and national media to make sure they report on 350 actions in your area. Think about what print, radio, television, and blogs you'd want to have cover your event, and start getting in touch! Soon there will be sample media advisories and press releases available in the Resources section of the 350.org website.

8) Take Action

The details of your action are up to you, but at some point be sure to take a picture with everyone present with your 350 banner displayed front and center. Have a fun and meaningful day, knowing that you're forming a very important part of a giant global movement to stop climate change!

9) Report Back

This part is very important: as soon as your action is over, be sure to select your best photo and upload it to the 350 website. You might want to designate a volunteer to help with this. This is so important because we need your picture to be able to deliver the strongest possible message to the media, and to the world's decision-makers as they prepare for the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen just a month later. Video footage and written stories from your action are great too, but photos are the top priority. Thanks for being a part of this important movement for change!

Here are some responses to common questions about organizing an action for October 24:

* If there is no action registered in my area, what should I do?

Start your own! Truly, anyone can be an action organizer. If time constraints absolutely don't allow it, perhaps try asking some friends or neighbors to take the lead with the promise of your support. We hope to see actions in as many places as possible, big and small.

• What kind of background experience do I need to organize a 350 action in my community?

None! Everyone and anyone can be an 350 organizer.

If you're totally new to all climate change and/or organizing, first take some time to review all the information and materials here on the 350.org website. After you have a bit more of an understanding of the science of 350 and what kind of actions are possible (and it's really quite open-ended), talk to a friend or two or perhaps talk to a local organization that might be interested, and have a discussion of what you might do together. That's what organizing is—talking to your friends and neighbors and then deciding to act.

After that, be sure to register a local group online by clicking here and follow the 9-Step Plan to make sure you cover all the necessary steps. We'll provide your with all the materials you need, and we'll be available to help along the way.

• How do I get the number 350 into my action photo?

The truth is that a banner is often the simplest, surest way to get a big 350 into your image. Click here to check out a good banner-making guide. But not every action needs a banner, and even banners can involve more creativity than just a big number. Here is a good place for a creative friend or volunteer to lend a hand.

Think about banners that say "Beirut for 350!" (in Arabic) or "Vamos 350!" (in Buenos Aires). Or think about forming a huge 350 out of the people attending the action, or for bicycle actions consider forming a 350 out of bicycles, or for trash clean-ups maybe form a 350 out of the trash collected from your site.

Be creative and have fun with it—and be sure to plan in advance and designate a friend or photographer to make sure you get the digital photo image you need to submit to 350.org afterwards.

• How many people need to be at my action?

The short answer is, as many as possible.

Numbers count—a thousand is better than a hundred is better than a dozen in terms of sheer impact. But there are exceptions—maybe you are hoisting a 350 banner in a hard-to-get-to place: on top of Mount Everest, say. In that case, a few is as good as a crowd. Or maybe you're in a small town, or you're organizing your gathering at a small mosque, temple, or church.

For the most part, if you exhaust your email lists and the email lists of your friends, if you make sure to involve as many local organizations and community members as possible, and you work to build local publicity in advance, you'll have plenty of people to make a statement.

• How do I get media attention for my action?

Getting media to cover your action is one of the best ways to reach a larger audience, both before and after October 24. In reality, the two most essential steps for getting media attention are to:

1. Plan an interesting, exciting, and new kind of action (the number 350 itself should be of interest to them)
2. Call TV channel, radio, and newspaper offices and let them know what you are doing.

Look out for more information about how to get media attention as we get closer to October.

This has been Don’s Review meager attempt. I have to end now. But I strongly suggest you read “Field Notes from a Catastrophe,” by Elizabeth Kolbert (Bloomsbury, 2006).

Sept. 27, 2009

It is particularly cruel in this Great Recession of 2008-? that middle-age men and women face the trauma of a layoff—usually unnecessarily—at the hands of the corporate masters of the universe.

When the looks of middle-age people begin to fade—and they are no longer wanted by anyone younger than themselves—they realize they are no longer wanted by society itself—unless they are exceptionally well-connected, monied, sexually endowed, or mentally acute.

Corporations especially don’t want them, despite a decade or two of blood, sweat and tears and faux loyalty on both sides. They are at the top of their pay scale and are given hints—a sort of corporate "kindness"--"You know, we don’t plan to promote you" or "Aren’t you bored here?" a few years before the shiny axe severs their heads on the formicaed snackroom table and their blood drains into a funnel and then a transfusion bag for the CEO and chairperson’s drinking pleasure, ala "Bruce" the animated shark in "Finding Nemo."

As their mortality finally squeaks past their delusions and faces them, or an ache in a joint or blurry eyes flash yellow warning lights through the fantasy of their having an unending climb to CEO of this company or another, the hints begin to make their blood run cold. The shark viciously slices through the water and cuts all people at the top of the pay scale--now, merely expensive dead weight. "There must be a 25- to 30-year-old Harvard grad out there who can do DeGreeff’s job for $20 to $30,000 less—and cheaper benefits—and with a hipper personality."

Sometimes it hits you even harder, as when my mother 15 years ago overheard two teens behind her at the checkout counter say, " I WILL move as soon as this old lady gets outta the way!" She was shocked, despite being in her 70s. Your mind—somehow always thinks of you as 25 and a real catch for any hot prospect or corporation.

It hit me similarly when I still took the express bus to work. At six-feet-tall, I resented it when a 25-year-old unfolded her seat back as far as it would go—nearly into my lap. I kindly asked her to raise it, since I was six-feet tall and needed space for my legs. "I don’t care, old man" was the retort. "But—I’m 25 inside this skull—I still lust after you—ya bitch—I’m not really that old—am I?"

Then, after the corporate sharks have sniffed in your blood through one nostril—just like "Bruce"—"I’m gonna have fish TONIGHT!!!"—and give you 30 minutes to get out, and, with the Feds, have taken 42 percent of the severance pay that was supposed to last you three months (plenty long enough to find another job!)—you hear your dad’s common-sense words waft into your head—the same words the 8^th-grade graduate said at his 50^th wedding anniversary just six years before: "Where have the years gone?" That’s a tender, heart-breaking way of summing it up, as only a nonlawyer, uneducated, simple farm-country man can.

A rougher way was one-month later when I applied to sell residential real estate at a new real estate company in Manhattan—one in which everyone was 25 to 30 years old and the receptionist, each of the three days I was there, wore a dangerously low-cut blouse or dress.

One 30-year-old manager had recruited me from a Wall Street "Pink Slip" Party, put on to get potential employers and recently laid-off workers together, and, after a long interview, decided he wanted me on his team. "Can you start Monday?" "Sure." "We just have to introduce you to the owner up one flight."

We take the elevator, walk past another free-spirited lady receptionist. "Alistair, this is our new hire, Garland DeGreeff." "Nice to meet you." "Same here." The forty-something owner looked at me for five, maybe 10 seconds. No words were exchanged. No resume scanned. "We’ll call you in a couple of hours."

They never did.

Like Bette Davis, the 1940s movie actress, used to say, "Growin’ old ain’t for sissies."

I agree with her. So does Jean Amery, who was born as Hanns Meyer in Austria. When Germany took over Austria, he fled into Belgium to join the resistance during the beginning of World War II. The Nazis captured him and his pals, taking them, heads in black cloth hoods, through the woods to a secluded mansion. Hitler’s cronies then pushed him down several flights of stairs into the basement—so no one outside or inside the mansion could hear the coming screams—and, after a while, tied his hands behind his back and raised him off his feet via a chain slung through his arms. He was hanging from the ceiling pully by his arms—behind his back. Slowly, as he refused to answer their questions about other resistors, they beat him, all the while his arms bit by bit coming out of their sockets. When they did come out, he said he felt indescribable pain. It tore his soul out of him.:

Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world. The shame of destruction cannot be erased. Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained. That one’s fellow man was experienced as the antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror. It blocks the view into a world in which the principle of hope rules. One who was martyred is a defenseless prisoner of fear. It is fear that henceforth reigns over him.

—Jean Amery, "At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities."

He later wrote several books, including "On Suicide," "At the Mind’s Limits," and "On Aging." He killed himself at age 67.

He had this to say about aging: "Numerous adjectives, all beginning with the syllable ‘un’ are attributed to aging beings: they are unable to perform much physical work, uncoordinated, unfit for this and that, unteachable, unhealthy. The an-nihilation of the aging human being steadily imprints the sign of nothingness on his brow, a nothingness whose graphic harbinger is physical decline. The undeniable aversion, converted into respect, of young people toward the old turns the respect for these elders into a mere convention. As he takes a stroll through Paris, he is rejected by the crowd that ignores him. The look of others, which goes right through him as if he were a transparent substance, shatters him. In the long run, his inconspicuousness becomes insufferable. It is in the nature of human beings to aspire to exist for others."

The middle-aged and the elderly "are not so stupid that they wouldn’t know exactly that others are only letting them do as they like, that they are burdens and useless eaters."

"They become aware of turning a corner beyond which their existence based on having cannot be called back: they they are aging persons. The doors will not be opened any more. Whoever directs a question to society gets an answer: keep on with what you were doing yesterday and the day before—or do nothing. Wanted: experienced banker to take over our branch office, maximum age: 40; business person well-versed in textiles with knowledge of English capable of reorganizing our business, no older than 45."

Amery says that the lucky persons are those who had no ambitions as youths, so, when aged, are in agreement with their own modest ambitions. Society already had passed judgment on them when they were very young in years. To be socially ageless or even old from early on, that doesn’t matter now; right up to their end they takes things as they come."

But for those of us, myself included, with lofty goals from at least age 15 onward, according to Tom Jacobs posted on Miller-McCune.com on July 1, studies show that the current economic climate "may be eroding months or even years from the lives of those on the bleeding edge of insecurity."

When you lose your job, with no prospect of finding another one quickly, you give up a lot more than income. You are deprived of a sense of security, a source of self-esteem, a certain status in the community. And, according to recent research, you also lose something even more precious: a year or more of your life.

That's the conclusion of two prominent economists, Daniel Sullivan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University. Matching death records with employment and earnings data of Pennsylvania workers from the 1970s and '80s, they found mortality rates for high-seniority male workers spike sharply in the year following an involuntary job loss, and they remain surprisingly high two decades later.

If this higher death rate persists into old age, it implies "a loss in life expectancy of 1 to 1.5 years for a worker displaced at age 40," the researchers report. Or as von Wachter puts it more informally: "We were convincingly able to show that if you lose your job, you die earlier."

But the risk of premature death isn't limited to those who have actually been let go. A growing body of research suggests a nagging, persistent fear of losing one's job is also detrimental to one's health. University of Michigan sociologist Sarah Burgard, who has extensively studied the relationship between job loss, job insecurity and health, calls this "the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop problem." Given the current state of the economy, many people are anxiously awaiting the thud of that falling footwear.

In recent months, official Washington has been consumed by two issues: jobs and the economy, and the cost and availability of health care. But there has been surprisingly little discussion regarding the ways in which they intersect. A series of recent studies not only provide evidence these public-policy problems are interrelated: They also suggest that if, as many fear, long-term job security is largely a thing of the past, the public health consequences could be enormous.

Let us start with the latest research on job loss and health, published just last month in the journal Demography. Kate Strully, a sociologist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, found herself struggling with a question often raised by economists (including von Wachter). The correlation between ill health and job loss has long been established, but how can we know which is the cause and which is the effect? Surely some sick people are laid off because they're physically unable to meet the demands of the job. Does this skew the numbers and cause researchers to come to false conclusions?

To find an answer, Strully examined data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative longitudinal study of American families that includes detailed information on the participants' health and employment. The surveys reported not only if the person had lost a job, but under what circumstances.

This allowed Strully to focus her attention on what she calls "no-fault" job losses -- that is, people who became unemployed when their entire workplace shut down. Examples included factory closings and companies that went out of business. In these cases, literally everyone was let go, making it highly unlikely poor health was a factor in any worker's dismissal.

The workers were interviewed approximately a year and a half following the layoffs. Of those who were still unemployed, close to 9 percent reported developing a new stress-related health condition such as diabetes or hypertension since parting ways with their former employer. This compares to a 5 percent rate among people who reported their job condition was stable. Those who found new employment also had above-average rates of new health problems, although not as high as the long-term unemployed.

Given these figures, "I'm convinced that a large shock to one's socioeconomic status, such as job loss, negatively impacts health," she says.

Burgard, who has done her own research along these lines, agrees. "Job instability is OK for some people, but not for others," she says. "If you're an IT guy and you have a high educational degree, part of being successful is jumping from firm to firm. That's how you increase your income.

"But the type of workers we tend to see here in Michigan, who aren't necessarily highly educated, are facing a really tough road. I think people have been focused on the economic payoff (of a more flexible economy where jobs appear and disappear), but are less aware of the potential costs in terms of worker health."

Economists tend to argue that the flexibility to hire and fire workers as needed ultimately makes the economy more productive, and increases overall wealth. If that's actually true, it would have public health benefits. As healthcare economist Jason Shafrin argued in 2007, the concept of "creative destruction" -- that is, a dynamic economy where innovation leads new companies to rise and old ones to adapt or die -- "has decreased average mortality for individuals all over the world due to rising living standards."

In their latest paper, published in the American Economic Review in May, Sullivan and von Wachter present evidence that cuts both ways. They report the association between income and mortality is far stronger than was thought earlier. If the ever-churning economy produces more higher-paying jobs, those able to land one of them likely will see a positive impact on their health.

But the economists also found workers who lose their jobs -- and cannot find another quickly -- tend to suffer large earnings losses and go through a period of income instability. This is a big concern, since "higher variability of earnings is associated with increased mortality."

"You're looking at two people, both with the same long-term earnings," says von Wachter. "The one with the more volatile earnings dies earlier. Certainly, this is interesting evidence."

Like many economists, von Wachter isn't certain that the public perception that jobs and incomes are less stable than they once were is accurate. But he has no doubt that "sweeping restructuring" is going on in a number of industries, and workers in those sectors are experiencing health-sapping stress.

"This we can say: The large number of people being laid off in this recession will be subject to higher earnings volatility, and that will likely affect their mortality."

This is still more bad news for the former employees of General Motors and Chrysler, but what about workers at, say, Ford? Their company hasn't gone bankrupt, but they're fully aware that the industry is on shaky ground, and there are no guarantees their jobs will exist in a year. Using data from two nationally representative samples -- the Americans' Changing Lives and Midlife in the United States studies -- Burgard and two colleagues looked at people in that precarious situation for a July 2008 Population Studies Center research report.

Their study (to be published later this year in the journal Social Science and Medicine) concluded that "among people who are currently employed, those who have been persistently worried about losing their jobs have significantly worse self-rated overall health than those who haven't been consistently worried." Strikingly, these worried workers "are worse off than people who have had a job loss in the past few years, but are currently re-employed."

That makes perfect sense to psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University, one of the nation's leading researchers on the relationship between stress and disease.

"There is a fair amount of evidence that expecting a major stressor is often worse than the actual occurrence of the stressor," he says. "My understanding is people who lose their jobs and get new ones pretty quickly don't show many of these effects. That's consistent with what we know about stress in general. Generally, the longer the stressor lasts, the greater the risk you are under for various diseases."

Cohen reports there are "two general pathways linking stress to disease-related outcomes. One is the behavioral pathway. We know that under stress, people smoke more, drink more. They don't sleep as well. They don't exercise. They have poorer diets. All of these things can put people at greater risk of disease.

"The other is the physiological pathway. There is considerable evidence that under chronic stress, the immune system does not work the way it should. There's evidence for underresponsivity, where the immune system does not respond adequately to challenges and also for overresponsivitity."

What's the problem with an overly vigilant immune system? In many cases, the body's response to a perceived threat is what causes the symptoms we associate with a disease. "In cold studies, we find people who are under chronic stress, when we expose them to a virus, they're more likely to get sick," Cohen says. "They're producing much more pro-inflammatory cytokine, which is what produces the symptoms of colds."

So expect to hear a lot of sneezing in coming months. But Cohen counters that thought with some good news: The fact job anxiety is so widespread could actually dampen its destructive impact.

"A lot of the experience of stress has to do with challenges to your self-esteem -- that feeling you're not accomplishing what you should be able to accomplish," he says. "Being out of work is a stressful event, irrespective of the reason, but it is buffered a bit by the idea that it's the economy that's at fault -- not the fact I'm incompetent."

Cohen doubts there are any simple public-policy solutions to this particular health facet of the current financial crisis. "There are interventions that can influence aspects of stress in people's lives," he says. "But I'm not sure how effective they're going to be for people who are unemployed. The major stressors that put people at risk are the chronic, enduring problems that are engrained in their lives, and they're the ones least susceptible to interventions."

One obvious response is being considered as part of current the health-care debate in Congress: Finding a way to ensure laid-off workers continue to have health insurance. Under the current system, where most people receive health benefits from their employer, laid-off workers are losing coverage precisely at a time when they are at increased risk of disease.

On the other hand, Strully notes, "Making sure people have health insurance won't negate or undo the health consequences of job loss. In my analysis, it doesn't reduce the effect of job loss that much.

"If people are developing health problems as a result of job loss, being able to continue their health care will certainly impact how well they can manage. So it's definitely a good idea (to find a way to make sure the unemployed are covered). But any intervention is going to have to be more broad and holistic."

Meaning what? "Some combination of income protection and helping people cope with stress in a reasonably healthy way is probably the most practical intervention," she says. "There's a lot of research showing social support -- access to supportive, healthy relationships — is really important in how people cope with stressful events.

"I was exchanging e-mails with a union organizer. He was asking me what that kind of organization could do. I suggested a support group that offers really practical advice, like how to maintain a healthy diet on a budget, could be really helpful. Having a group in which people share and develop ties with people who have gone through similar experiences has the potential to be beneficial."

"All the research suggests the mental health costs are reduced substantially when people return to work," adds Burgard. "You want (as a society) to give people help in finding another job, perhaps retraining, health coverage in the interim. Those are all things our current system doesn't necessarily supply. So from a policy angle, there's a lot we can do.

"Will it be expensive? Probably. Will it be more expensive to pay for medical care when they get sick down the road? That's an open question. We need to think about preventive maintenance. Just telling people to sleep more and buy COBRA won't do it."

I know that for sure. I’ve been laid off eight months now and my COBRA health insurance cost is nearly $400 per month JUST for me, not including my wife or nine-year-old son. My income? Only the unemployment checks.

Oct. 11, 2009

There is no middle class in New York City, especially Manhattan, even as Mayor Mike Bloomberg pats himself on the back for focusing on the middle class in advertisements paid for by himself, the 8^th wealthiest man in the U.S. You may remember how out of touch the elite class is from the 2008 presidential race, when news anchor Charlie Gibson said the average person makes $200,000 per year.

For years, I’ve been telling people both here and back in Minnesota, where I grew up, that NYC is pushing the average person out of its borders, as though it no longer wants average people. My wife and I have had to move from 200^th Street north to within blocks of the Bronx’s outtermost border.

 I’ve been married nearly 12 years and I can remember clearly when my wife and I WERE middle class. It was from about 1998, when we got married, to about 2002, after our son’s second birthday and after George W. had increased the rate of the U.S. economic implosion by a kazillion times.

She and I used to go out for breakfast every Saturday and pay about $10 total for a huge meal. Our rent, in 1998, for a two bedroom, two full-bath, sunken-living-room and full-dining-room apartment was about $1,050, still within the Manhattan boundaries, in Inwood, around Dyckman (200^th Street).

Granted, we had our son in late 2000, which was a great added expense, but we still went out to breakfast with him and replaced things like furniture and clothes when they wore out. We flew to Minnesota to visit relatives once or twice a year.

Just as we brought our son home in late 2000, we were notified that we had to buy our apartment or move out. We already had moved once since marriage—northward—to the Inwood Hills area near 215^th .

Our bid of $95,000 was rejected and we moved northward to Fairfield Avenue in Riverdale. Our rent for a two-bedroom apartment was about $1,300. In 2005, we were told we had to buy our apartment or move out. Again, our bid was rejected. We moved nearly outside the Bronx boundaries into Yonkers. Our rent, for a three-bedroom, one full bath and a half bath, was $1,600. In 2007, the landlord could have charged us $2,100, but he liked us. So he raised it only to $1,680. God bless his heart.

We had continued our Saturday morning breakfast at a diner, until sometime in 2006, when the one egg and bacon special rose from roughly $3.75 to $6. No matter how we tried to cut the bill, it always came out as $20. This time for a meager meal. Our prized sofa-bed in the living room collapsed and wasn’t replaced. The drawer bottoms in the clothing chest in the bedroom also fell through. Not replaced.

Meanwhile, the price of a Big Mac meal in Midtown reached $7.50 and a monthly subway card went from $81 to $89. Our savings, nonexistent since our son’s birth, changed into credit card debt. The legs on our loveseat sofa in the living room fell off. Not replaced. All trips to Minnesota were canceled.

This was BEFORE the Great Recession began with the financial meltdown in September 2008 and I was laid off after the parent company admitted big losses in “toxic” investments.

But Mike Bloomberg is running for a third term, at least partially based on his help for the middle class since 2001. It says so in full-page newspaper ads: “Mike Bloomberg: Getting Results for the Middle Class” in the Riverdale Review.

And on his website, www.mikebloomberg.com: “Mike Bloomberg’s ‘Gateway to the Middle Class’ will move more New Yorkers into the middle class through stronger community colleges while creating accountability and producing real results.”

Again from the Review’s ad: “he knows you get results through independence, by standing up to the special interests and putting progress ahead of politics.” It has subheads with a bit of text that read:

• “Prescription Drug Plan: A new discount card to help New Yorkers save money on the high cost of prescription drugs.
• Financial Aid for Students: Making it easier for middle-class students to afford community colleges.
• Fixing the MTA: Taking on the bureaucracy at the MTA to make our subways and buses faster, safer, cleaner and more affordable [at $5.50 for an express bus, up from $2.50 in 2003?].
• Creating Jobs: Creating or saving 400,000 jobs by cutting taxes for small businesses and investing in new technologies.”

 And, once more, from the website:

President Obama recently set a national goal of graduating five million Americans from community colleges by 2020. Heeding this challenge, New York City will set its own ambitious goal: we will graduate 120,000 New Yorkers from our community colleges by 2020. As we have on so many fronts – from service to greening our buildings – New York City will once again take the lead on a national priority. The strength of the middle class is integral to the strength of all New York City. [I don’t know of one of my former coworkers who lived within Manhattan. That area is for the elite. Peons like us have one-hour to two-hour, each way, commutes.] Mike Bloomberg’s Gateway to the Middle Class will move more New Yorkers into the middle class through community college education and training.

Mike Bloomberg’s Gateway to the Middle Class will: invest an additional $50 million over the next four years to improve the system’s quality, accessibility, affordability, and accountability.

Since when has anyone defined the middle class by whether they graduated from community colleges. I define the middle class as people similar to my parents in the 1960s: owning a home and one car, having the money to raise four kids, taking one-week modest vacations annually, and having only ONE parent working.

Income for the so-called middle class has remained level since 1970, the year my mother took a part-time job to help pay expenses for their four kids. I recently was rejected for a modest editing job in the Village that would have paid $40,000 per year. I was making $40,000 per year as a copy editor in 1990.

The site continues with more rosy images:

Community colleges are an economic delivery system. They train and retrain workers to

improve their skills and they work with local businesses to increase their capacity. While

community colleges serve everyone, they are frontline institutions for working women,

middle class workers in need of retraining, and our city’s hard-working immigrants. A

community college degree or training is their ticket to climbing into New York City’s

middle class.

Community colleges are critical to our vision of how the city gets through this economic

crisis and stands ready for the next chapter in our city’s economy. Going forward,

community colleges will be an integral part of our economic development strategy. We

will create an accountable system that is more accessible and affordable to all New

Yorkers. We are investing in strengthening the gateway to New York’s middle class.

As we have on so many fronts – from service to greening our buildings – New York City

will take the lead on a national priority. On July 14, President Obama set a national goal

of graduating five million Americans from community colleges by 2020.

Heeding this challenge, New York City will set its own ambitious goal: we will graduate

120,000 New Yorkers from our community colleges by 2020.

There are three major goals that comprise Gateway:

Goal 1: Move more New Yorkers into the middle class

through community college education and training

• Move more New Yorkers into high-demand jobs in health care and green

technology through creation of specialized training programs

Through this unprecedented investment, our community colleges will train the next

generation of nurses who are so desperately needed, and develop the “energy auditing”

workforce equipped to fulfill the City’s bold energy efficiency goals.

According to the NYS Center for Health Workforce Studies, in New York City there are

over 400,000 health care jobs representing 11% of all jobs. Registered Nurses (RNs) are the largest single occupation in the health sector - comprising 15% of all jobs in the

health care industry – with a median salary of $57,280 in 2006. Nationwide, RN

positions are expected to grow by 587,000 by 2016, a 23% increase. And in New York

City alone, RN positions are projected to grow by roughly 14% over the same period.

This new initiative will provide funds to increase capacity to enroll nursing students, to

provide financial support to nursing students covering tuition and related educational

expenses such as lab kits and uniforms, and to expand access to simulation technology, an integral part of nursing education. A total of 600 New Yorkers will now be able to enroll as nursing students, and 1,000 will receive stipends to cover their education

expenses. Through this new effort, we will have trained a large, culturally diverse pool of

qualified nurses who have the most up-to-date clinical training and who are dedicated to

providing quality health care services to all New Yorkers.

Green jobs are the future. Our initiative, known as the Greener Greater Buildings Plan, to

conduct energy audits and retrofits of publicly owned buildings and to require energy

audits in all privately owned buildings in the city will greatly increase the demand for

trained workers to conduct audits. Through Gateway, CUNY will not only prepare the

next generation of “energy auditors” but also use its own buildings as the ideal laboratory

on which to train and offer paid internships to students, resulting in critical hands-on

experience and more efficient campuses. Over 1,200 students will be hired as interns and

trained, and up to one-third will be placed directly into jobs in which they will be

conducting energy audits in either multi-family residential buildings or commercial

buildings.

Total Gateway spending: $10 million

• Open a new community college that will prepare New Yorkers to attain jobs in

emerging fields, add new capacity to our system, and be a national model of

successful education

The City’s new community college, which will offer high-quality education and training

for jobs in emerging fields in the city’s economy, will be a model for the nation in

improving graduation rates and aligning student training to the needs of the workforce.

This project, which grew out of the Accelerated Study in Associate Program (ASAP)

begun by the City’s Center for Economic Opportunity, will move thousands of New

Yorkers into the middle class through world-class liberal arts education, cutting-edge job

training designed in partnership with actual employers, and academic advisement and

support to help students achieve. Envisioned as a 5,000-student campus in Manhattan,

this will be New York City’s first new two-year institution of higher education in 37

years.

Total Gateway spending: $2 million

• Help New Yorkers starting their own local businesses with training in planning,

marketing and financial management, and connect internships with successful small

enterprises

Small business is the backbone of New York City’s economy. We need to do everything

we can to provide our entrepreneurs with the skills they need to turn their good ideas into

successful enterprises that create jobs and strengthen our neighborhoods. Through

Gateway, each of the six community colleges will offer a 70-hour course in small

business development to over 1,200 entrepreneurs who have started their own companies

or are planning to do so in the near future. The course will cover a number of key aspects

of entrepreneurship – business planning, product/service development, financial planning

and management, marketing, access to capital, and small business resources and

incentives. Unpaid shadowing and internship opportunities with existing successful small

businesses will also be offered to participants.

Total Gateway spending: $2 million

• Bring together the City’s economic development teams and community college

presidents to make sure that education and training are integral components of our

economic development strategies

Community colleges are an economic development delivery system. They are critical to

meeting the needs of current and prospective employers. But too often, throughout the

country, community colleges preparing the future workforce and economic development

officials working to recruit employers simply don’t talk to each other. New York City

will change this trend. The Task Force on Community Colleges and the Economy will

bring together college presidents and the City’s economic development team to talk about

worker training and emerging industries, how we can best use the colleges to train and

retrain workers and to assist local business in keeping their doors open, and how to

enhance teacher quality and pool of full-time faculty.

• Bolster our capacity for on-campus advisement, matching hard-working community

college students with the advisors who can help direct their efforts towards a

productive career or further education

Academic advisement can mean all the difference to hard-working students who need

guidance in figuring out how to use their time in community college to achieve their

goals. We will bolster the capacity for on-campus advising by 2013, with a particular

emphasis on advising students who require developmental math education. In a time in

which we need more New Yorkers pursuing careers in science, technology and

engineering, we must help as many students as possible to acquire the requisite math

skills required to pursue advanced study.

Total Gateway spending: $1 million

Goal 2: Increase access

• Fight to lift the State and federal restrictions that prevent middle-class New Yorkers

from taking full advantage of financial aid

New Yorkers trying hard to get their community college education shouldn’t be penalized

by outdated or inequitable State and federal financial aid regulations. For example: filers’

status as head-of-household isn’t considered when family income is evaluated to make

aid decisions, students “time out” of aid because of semesters spent on developmental

education, and rules around part-time study discourage degree completion. We will fight

to eliminate these barriers that prevent New Yorkers from pursuing the education and

training that will launch them into New York City’s middle class.

• Double the capacity of each community college to offer on-campus child care by

2013, so that these hard-working New Yorkers can pursue their education and take

care of their families

Community colleges students are often balancing work and family obligations while

attaining the education and training that can prepare them for new work and

career/promotion options. This is especially true since two-thirds of the New Yorkers

attending the community colleges are women. In order to attend classes, study, and meet

with college personnel, these students need on-campus child care support. Research

indicates that students that use campus child care for their children have a higher

retention and graduation rate. All CUNY campuses provide students with campus child

care centers that offer early care and education programs to three-to-five year-olds, but

most have extensive waiting lists and turn students and their children away each term.

Through Gateway, we will double the capacity of the community colleges to serve more

children by adding staff and equipment, expanding hours of service to include evenings

and weekends, and expanding services to other age groups including children below age

3 and school-age children.

Total Gateway spending: $6 million

• Save students thousands of dollars by making textbooks more affordable through an

innovative CUNY collaboration that will promote on-line books, bulk purchasing,

and used book exchanges

A recent State comptroller report estimates that undergraduate students can be expected

to pay $400 - $800 per semester on textbooks. For students working hard and taking care

of their families, this is a big expense. Gateway’s Community College Textbooks

Initiative will pursue several strategies, including: entering into vendor agreements that

will assist students in purchasing books online (it is estimated that by doing so CUNY

students can save up to 40% on textbooks); increasing utilization of used textbooks

through student co-ops; offering greater discounts at college bookstores; and creating a

philanthropic matching program to attract and direct private donations to students who

need textbook support. All told, students can save as much as $2,000 over a four-year

period on textbooks under this new program.

Total Gateway spending: $2 million

• Expand the Accelerated Study in Associate Program (ASAP) that helps high-risk

students complete community college within three years and become productive

members of the workforce.

The ASAP program takes highly motivated students and gives them the tools to succeed.

Launched as an initiative out of the Center on Economic Opportunity, ASAP is critical to

our efforts to address poverty because it helps more New Yorkers attain their associate

degree as fast as possible. Bucking the national average of 20%, ASAP aims to graduate

50% of their participants within three years. So far, it’s an overwhelming success. ASAP

students are outperforming a comparison group of similar students, taking and earning

more credits and achieving higher GPAs. They re-enroll in greater numbers for a third

semester and a significant number are on track to graduate after only two years in the

program. As of March 2009, 350 ASAP students or 30% of the original cohort are on

track to graduate by September 2009, after two years in the program, versus 12.5% for

comparison group students. The ASAP program not only changes lives – it changes our

expectations for community colleges and offers valuable lessons about what works.

That’s why, through Gateway, we will support 2,000 students participating in the ASAP

program over the next four years, and continue to spread the lessons learned through the

program to the entire community college system.

Total Gateway spending: $27 million

• Help New Yorkers save for school through $aveNYC, a consumer-friendly savings

account that will, for the first time, offer students matching funds if they maintain

their initial deposit for one year and use the dollars for tuition and expenses

New Yorkers will need to go back to school to acquire new skills. While ultimately it is

up to each individual to make this decision, the City will do all that it can to help make

community college accessible. One way to do this is to help New Yorkers – especially

those who have not found the right safe, mainstream banking product – save for

community college tuition and expenses. Through its $aveNYC, the Department of

Consumer Affair’s Office of Financial Empowerment has created a safe and

straightforward savings product and enlisted major financial institutions to offer it to any

qualifying New Yorker. If participants don’t touch their savings for one year, their

money is matched 50 cents on the dollar by private funds raised with the help of the

Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, up to $250 in match funds per person. In a

special pilot of Gateway, we will launch $aveforSchool NYC, through which New

Yorkers will be encouraged to put their savings towards community college tuition and

expenses. In exchange for successful savings for one year and a demonstrated intention

to use those dollars for community college tuition, participants will receive a match of 75

cents on the dollar.

Total Gateway spending: $0 million (match dollars raised privately)

Goal 3: Improve quality and expand capacity

• Hold CUNY accountable to high standards

Across our nation, too few of the students who enter community colleges actually

graduate. Unfortunately, the situation is true in New York City as well. While we have

6

proven that we can improve graduation rates through programs like ASAP, the entire

system must do better. We will hold the community colleges accountable for improving

the performance of the New Yorkers who attend and for preparing them to attain higher

education and/or jobs in growing fields in our economy.

• Make capital investments to expand the capacity of our community college system,

recognizing that more and more New Yorkers will turn to the colleges to attain the

training and retraining necessary to succeed

To succeed, our community colleges require a 21st century infrastructure. That’s why

we’ve invested over the last eight years in projects from ensuring full funding for

Fiterman Hall at BMCC, damaged after the tragedy of September 11th, to helping build

the new library at Bronx Community College. And we will be supporting the City's new

community college. New York City will also aggressively pursue funding recently

announced from the Obama Administration to upgrade the infrastructure of our

community colleges, too long neglected by the federal government.

• Honor outstanding community college professors, graduates, and students for their

achievements and send the message that quality matters in the CUNY community

college system.

Our colleges are nothing without dedicated and skilled faculty and students. That’s why

we will honor community college professors, graduates, and students each year at a

Gracie Mansion ceremony. To create the nation’s best community college system, we

need all hands on deck. We will send the message that the contributions of our students,

who sacrifice so much in pursuit of their education, and our faculty who are successfully

educating students and helping them to graduate, are valued

Mr.Bloomberg has the guts and money to say all of this even as other news stories on the Internet on Oct. 8, 2009 reported fewer people able to rent in Manhattan unless landlords sweetened the deal—which, believe me, is like seeing Charlie Gibson and his family at the local Pizza Hut:

Manhattan apartment leasing down 59% in year

With demand for units shrinking, rents slip nearly 8%—and that's not even including landlord concessions such as months of free rent and help with security deposits.

Rising unemployment and an increase in purchases by first-time home buyers have combined to diminish the number of new apartment leases signed in the third quarter to levels 58.9% below those of a year earlier, according to the latest Manhattan rental market report, released Thursday.

During the quarter, there were 2,549 rentals, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel Inc., which conducted the report.

“We saw a significant decline in rental activity from last year,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel.

Meanwhile, the median rental price in the third quarter slipped to $2,950, down 7.7% from year-earlier levels. The drop is likely even deeper than the numbers show because more and more landlords now offer sweeteners like months of free rent and help on the security deposit, concessions that are not reflected in the rent numbers.

In a separate third-quarter report issued earlier this week by CitiHabitat, the city's largest rental brokerage, the firm noted average rents may be down by five to seven percentage points more after factoring in those concessions. The brokerage underscored that the level of concessions varies hugely from neighborhood to neighborhood.

“We knew rental prices had to come down given the economy,” said Gary Malin, CitiHabitat's president.

Overall apartment vacancy rates in Manhattan notched up to 1.8% in September from 1.4% the same time last year, according to CitiHabitat. But Mr. Malin noted that the vacancy rate is not as high as many had feared it would be after last year's collapse of Lehman Brothers and the chaos in the financial markets.

The inventory of unrented apartments expanded 5.4% to 6,527 apartments in the quarter, according to the Douglas Elliman/Miller Samuel report. That number is expected to grow as unemployment continues to rise, Mr. Miller said. New York City's unemployment rate recently hit 10.3%, currently above the national rate of 9.8%.

These days, it is also taking longer to find rental tenants. Rental apartments are on the market for 77 days compared to 50 days this time last year, according to the report.

“We are looking at a weak rental market over the next year,” Mr. Miller said. “There will also be issues with condo units that weren't intended to be rental that now are.” Those units will further add to the rental stock.

An aside: Do you remember after 9/11 in 2001, a lot of New Yorkers wanted the laws changed so our “hero” of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, could stay in office that November and have a third term. How is it that Bloomberg, eight years later, gets to run for a third term?

Since the meltdown, progressives and respected people have been calling for a “virtual Marshall Plan of federal resources” to solve the country’s climate and financial problems, including making it easier for average, middle-class people to reach jobs in Manhattan. An example, rather than simply rebuilding the road system by emphasizing “shovel ready” projects, a “fair recovery” approach would include massive investments in public transport to address the fact that African Americans (and my over-educated white body) live farther away than any other group from where the jobs are.

No where does Bloomberg mention this.

Nor does he mention the U.S. debt bomb. As Glenn Greenwald says in commondreams.org, “One need only look at today’s record-setting price of gold, in a period of deflation, to know that a lot of people are worried that our next dollar of debt—unbalanced by spending cuts or tax revenues—will trigger a nonlinear move out of the  dollar and torpedo the U.S. currency.

Sept. 15, 2009

It is very difficult to sidestep stigma. Evolution took centuries to make humans as they appear in 2009 after their first mutation off the chimpanizee chain about 5–7 million years ago

However, in a mere 140 years since the Industrial Revolution—in which mass-produced machines via carbon-based fuel were lauded as miracles—we have taken over this planet and probably brought it past the tipping point towards the end of life as we know it. It hasn’t just been physiological mutations. Cultural evolution has become equally important—but sometimes, extremely slow. For example, in an affluent section of the Bronx young African-American kids are still called names by their counterpart white kids, as in: "But I said, ‘I’m sorry to the blackie.’" I know those words were very popular in America in the 1930s and into the 1960s, but thought they had finally faded away. Especially with a black president now, Barack Obama. But no.

Another friend of mine suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. He wants to meet me for lunch. Someone advised that I not do so. That I "phase him out" of my circle of friends because he could be dangerous. "And people like him should do what then—be killed? Or kill themselves?" I asked. "I’d rather have lunch with someone like him who has fought mental illness all his life than with some so-called normal capitalist pig on Wall Street who was bailed out with my taxes."

I had another friend, Zeb, who was neglected by his dominant mother when he was born and during the first four or so years growing up. She only touched him when cutting his toenails. His diffident father took the easy way out, by not fighting with her and being effectively absent from the boy’s life. The boy got the wrong rulebook for how men and women relate, especially if they want sex and children. Sex and intersexual relations are not instinctual; they are formed 99 percent from parent models.

The friend went through 20 years of therapy for his sexual inhibitions and ended up playing by the only rules etched in his brain by his parents’ dysfunction via the constant tension, lack of affection or touching, and outright verbal abuse of his dad--that men should fear women and jump when they call and that women should treat men like doormats. Despite his years of therapy and thousands of dollars in costs, the women he ended up dating and living with were just like his mother and he was in danger of becoming just like his father.

Previously, most of Zeb’s girlfriends, when they found out he had potency problems, promptly dumped him. When I last knew him, his current one did not. She and Zeb were re-creating Zeb’s parents’ marriage. Because she also was abused as a young child, she mistrusted Zeb and therapists, she did nearly nothing to help their relationship become sexual. Zeb couldn’t focus in a sexual situation and had to masturbate to erection. She wouldn’t put up with that.

Zeb, during his 20 years of therapy DID come very close to being sexually active. When he finally got totally erect at age 36 after FOUR years of surrogate therapy, he realized that he’d lost over 20 years of sexual experience and enjoyment and that other boys had had full intercourse at age 18 or 20 and had masturbated at age 12 or before.

Zeb and his girl friend are victims of sexual abuse and child abuse. They should be sympathetic to each other. Instead, neither trusts each other or any therapists. Zeb pays. The wife pays. People they come into contact with pay.

One therapist told me that if a client enters treatment for sex dysfunction of any sort, he asks about childhood sexual abuse and keeps alert for signs of abuse in his history. Whatever form it takes, he is convinced the source of dysfunction lies in a childhood sexual trauma. The childhood destruction of trust in adults, which is all a child has to cling to, turns adult sex into an encounter fraught with anxiety. To release himself, he has to realize he (or she) is NOT dealing with an issue of sex attraction or orientation: The issue is abuse. He or she didn’t bring it on themselves. It got confused with sex because the abuse wasn’t limited to physical violence or emotional exploitation. It also had a sexual component. But the real issues are trust, intimacy and self-esteem.

More R&D is needed on male-female relations and sexual relations. People like Zeb shouldn’t go through 20 years of therapy only to possibly pass on the lousy cultural "memes" of his parents to any children he may have, all the while suffering more abuse from his wife as she pouts and glowers around the house.

One cutting-edge attempt to reach people like Zeb is sexual surrogate therapy. It started as small, hidden businesses in the mid-1990s, but has been refined to the point where most experts say it is the only way to reach many men and allow them to express their sexuality. However, it remains hidden and stigmatized. Just as Zeb is stigmatized by his girl friend and was hurt by previous girl friends. As mentioned above, some cultural evolution is slow.

After 10 years of trying to cure himself or using hypnosis or regular "talk" therapy, Zeb tried sexual surrogates. His first nonsexual therapist, Sue, once said that "recovery comes by building a more positive self image, most effectively by building TRUST in others." But her program,both at the beginning of Zeb’s nine-year involvement with her had built-in booby-traps for any hard-earned trust. Zeb loved his first surrogate, Sondra, and his 10^th, Suzette, and his most productive one, Margo, with whom he had intercourse without injections, just with masturbation, about 8-10 times, often for 10 minutes or more. But Sondra, Suzette, and Margo all left Sue’s program suddenly, without warning or excuse, thus setting Zeb back tremendously.

Sex surrogates are therapists who will actually have physical intimacy up to and including sexual intercourse with their clients. Real sex surrogates have gone through extensive training and are not at all the same as prostitutes. Unfortunately, sex surrogate treatment is expensive (typically totaling at least $2,000 to $3,000) and only available in a few select cities. A quality sex surrogate therapy will incorporate an additional therapist who oversees the treatment.

Sex surrogates commonly treat adult virginal males and should help significantly with the phobic aspects related to physical intimacy. For many patients, it’s the only way to break a vicious circle: They have problems that need to be solved in a relationship, but can’t get into a relationship until they’ve solved the problems. Premature ejaculation and erection difficulties are common, but so are dating and communication skills, fear of intimacy, shame and anxiety, oral sex techniques (the lack thereof), low-level desire, and plain old inexperience.

Patients are predominantly men and surrogates women, but male surrogates report great success with female patients too.

Sex surrogates use sensate focus. Surrogate and sensate focus therapies were first developed and supported by sex researchers Masters and Johnson. "Sensate focus" usually is associated with a set of specific sexual exercises for couples or for individuals. The term was aimed at increasing personal and interpersonal awareness of self and the other's needs. Each participant is encouraged to focus on their own varied senseexperience, rather than to see orgasm as the sole goal of sex. Further stages include the gradual introduction of genitals and then full intercourse. Orgasm is never the focus. This is also used as a treatment for impotence in males, and arousal difficulties especially where anxiety is involved. Because of performance anxiety in men, the obsessional focus on the penis can result in impotence. The therapist will encourage the man to forget about his penis, and forget about his partner's genitals, and instead concentrate on the sensual possibilities available in the feel of his own and his partner's skin, hair, mouth, body, (breasts), etc.

Zeb’s sex therapist, was named Sue; she guided the timing and technique of the sensate focusing with a different woman, the surrogate. The theory of this experimental therapy was that experiences and torment he had had with his own mother and sister, would be replaced by nurturing, sexual experiences with his surrogates, at 45-minute sessions once or twice a week.

These were sessions in which both he and the surrogate became totally nude. At first they would talk a bit. Then they would undress and massage each other. Then the massaging would get more and more sexual, usually with the objective being intercourse (with a condom), if possible.

Since Zeb’s problem was impotence, his first sessions were just to see what would happen.

His first surrogate’s "stage name" was Sondra. She was gorgeous and let him kiss her on the mouth, with tongue. Within two or three sessions, he had ejaculated while kissing her and with her handling his penis.

Sue was ecstatic. She thought it was a real breakthrough. In fact, it was only a chip off the iceberg. Things were, in fact, looking good for Zeb. For four straight sessions, he ejaculated with Sondra. However, Sondra had been under instructions from Sue not to attempt intercourse.

Then Sondra quit. This is a huge problem with surrogate therapy. A surrogate can feel too much pressure and leave. So poor Zeb’s lifesaver, without warning, was gone.

But Sue brought in another surrogate, about 38, and less attractive, but very gentle and with an hourglass figure. She too was able to bring Zeb to climax, and one day, against Sue’s instructions, got on top of Zeb. He came inside her. Sue, despite the breach, was ecstatic. But then that surrogate too had to leave. No reason given. Probably, because she had a social disease or was taking money as a prostitute on the side.

Now, poor Zeb—one of the most sensitive people in the world—got no discount from Sue, for her workers’ quick exits, and no sympathy. All he got was another surrogate, named Ellie. She was tall, blonde, and thin, not his type at that time. And she didn’t like to kiss, for fear of germs. Zeb didn’t get too far with her. However, he did make great progress using her as a fantasy woman when he masturbated at home. For the first time in his life, at age 36, he totally erect when he masturbated.

However, soon Ellie had to "leave" and Sue brought in a beautiful blonde. But she couldn’t understand why Zeb didn’t get erect, so she left. Then Sue brought in an older woman, who could take the failure—supposedly—and be gentle with Zeb’s fragile ego. But Sue was wrong. This surrogate, named "Debbie," soon said, "bullshit," when he didn’t get erect during the 45-minute time span. Sue, however, was proud that Zeb decided to stay with Debbie, despite those setbacks. In Sue’s eyes, this proved that he was beginning to empathize with women and not be so self-absorbed.

However, about seven months had now passed since he had had successful intercourse with the second surrogate. The costs were mounting and the progress had slipped backwards, except for his masturbation, which continued to be excellent.

But bankruptcy loomed. He pressured Sue for some progress, gently reminding her of his success during the first month of therapy, which now was about a year ago. Sue was a tough woman in a tough business. She was willing to experiment with her client’s money and physical well-being, so she suggested another form of therapy that was to delay, if not permanently damage, Zeb’s ability to have joyous sex. She suggested injections, into the penis, of a papaverine solution that would "pull" blood into the penis. The trick, of course, was to not inject too much or inject into the wrong area of the penis.

But Sue seemed oblivious to those dangers, pooh-poohing them, whenever Zeb mentioned them. In his mind, the proper therapy would have been to allow him to try for intercourse with a surrogate by masturbation. The surrogate would have had to lay there for 15 minutes and be ready for sex when he grew perfectly hard. That way he could have experienced how full intercourse felt, felt good about himself, and not have had to endanger a perfectly healthy penis. It undoubtedly would have broken down barriers that were still there. They included:

* No woman would ever let me do that to her;

* Women don’t enjoy sex;

* My penis is too small;

* I’m never going to be able to do this;

* Something is going to go wrong. I’ll get hit by a truck if I have good or perfect intercourse and finally consider myself cured; I’ll die the next day by some means, or I’ll be disfigured or handicapped for the rest of my life.

But this would have endangered Sue’s business. It would have meant loaning Zeb about $1,000 so he could stay with a surrogate until he had perfect intercourse with her. Since he was nearing bankruptcy, he couldn’t find that kind of money. And even if he did, what if he lost? What if the pressure to have perfect intercourse, pushed back success, until the $1,000 was spent. Then he would be totally bankrupt, and out of hope for success with the increasing number of women that he was gaining skill in bringing to bed (His outside therapy—real-life therapy, which Sue also monitored, was going quite well. His communication akills had greatly improved.)

Despite the high success rate--never mind Zeb’s problems--the therapy remains "cutting edge" in that no sexual surrogate office is advertized on TV or can be seen on a Manhattan or L.A. streets or in bold ads. Years after Masters and Johnson suggested that engaging patients physically rather than verbally would have greater therapeutic benefits, sex surrogacy remains a murky field both ethically and legally. Health insurance plans never cover the sexual part of the session and usually only cover half the cost of the pure discussion between psychologist and patient. Therapists are obligated by medical ethics not to have sex with their patients, but "surrogate partners" are supposed to — and that simple but loaded dichotomy goes to the heart of the legal and ethical issues.

Sex surrogacy still elicits reactions ranging from vague titillation to moral condemnation. Surrogates are reluctant to speak on the record, giving reasons such as getting burned by moralizing journalists in the past, or fear of jeopardizing the reputations of referring therapists. Other surrogates prefer to remain under the radar rather than risk running afoul of various state prostitution laws, which prohibit the exchange of money for sexual activities.

A potential patient needs to be careful. No respectable surrogate will take on a patient without the active and ongoing participation of the patient’s therapist, who provides the clinical information necessary for the surrogate to work effectively, and can offer better therapy by learning from the surrogate in return. The therapist can also provide a reality check if the patient and/or surrogate get too emotionally attached. This triad arrangement is essential for successful treatment.

The International Professional Surrogates Association provides referrals to surrogates, but about 90 percent of known surrogates work in California, mostly the San Francisco or L.A. areas, or in Manhattan. To keep the profession honest, since surrogates are not licensed or regulated by any government body, IPSA also provides training for surrogates and publishes a code of ethics. Surrogates are responsible for birth control, and usually will require from you — and provide — proof of a negative HIV test. Not surprisingly, AIDS seems to have cast a shadow of fear over the profession, but the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, reportedly says it gets a lot of calls from people seeking surrogate partners, especially from parts of the country where their services aren’t available; they have to travel to New York or California.

However, since child abuse involves loss of control over your own body, many patients like Zeb MUST be completely in charge of when, how and by whom they are touched. This may have been where Sue failed with Zeb. She used her position of power to accuse him of "avoiding" intercourse; so, he gave in and used the injections.

The same is true of abused girls. Because touch was sexualized, even casual touching can feel threatening. In surrogate therapy, having the freedom to decide helps provide an atmosphere of safety. Under no circumstances, should a surrogate engage in a physical exchange that robs that patient of control over his or her body (such as tickling, bear hugs, pinning you down or hugging you from behind. The greater the degree of communication the more helpful the therapy is. Learning to communicate (not being afraid to use every word this author can imagine) in relationships contradicts isolation and leads to insight.

Chances are that Zeb would have succeeded, especially with the three or four surrogates out of the 20 or more that he met, who really understood his problem. Some surrogates literally forced his penis inside their vaginas, because they instinctively knew how important this was to him. Other surrogates, their minds more on themselves, would not force it in on the theory that they would somehow hurt themselves. How? Sue sided with her surrogates at all times.

The tipping point for Zeb was when he learned to get a perfect erection and hold it indefinitely. He was ready to be cured. If he would have had a surrogate and about five to 10 experiences with perfect intercourse, he would have been cured. Instead, he repeatedly--via bad luck (a good surrogate quitting), bad surrogates (the self-absorbed ones), bad finances (his being unable to finance a solid two weeks of therapy or willing to gamble his entire savings on that), and misguided tough-business tactics by Sue—failed when the time was right.

This crushed him. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He faced bankruptcy without being cured. He was approaching 40 without children, and so the possible loss of descendents. He was putting a needle into what had been a healthy penis and breaking out in hives every time he did it. Still he wasn’t cured.

He also had to decide whether to quit Sue. Another impossible choice. She had gotten him some intercourse, showed him that a lot of women liked sex (unlike his mother and sister), and had gotten him his first full erection via masturbation. It HAD been progress, albeit slow, expensive, and dangerous. So he stuck with her until he broke mentally during one session. Then he went it alone, figuring he would be creative therapeutically instead of financially, which he had been up to that point.

The session in which he broke took place with about his 40^th surrogate. She was a Russian immigrant, after the fall of communism. She was nice, but didn’t understand his need for intercourse, and would yawn while waiting for him to get erect.

Sex surrogacy isn’t for everyone, but it seems that trying to resolve serious sexual dysfunctions just by talking about them is like learning to drive a car by reading about the history of automobiles. You have to practice.

Oct. 31, 2009 

In one of today’s myriad Internet sites, of which Don’s Review is but a piece of lint on the overstuffed chair of American consumerism, there is a post featuring the Grayson/Clay/Miller amendment to the current Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposal before Congress.

The idea is that the agency would be required to do a periodic, statistical analysis to identify those financial products that were most implicated in causing bankruptcies and foreclosures in each state. The CFPA would then have to announce what these products are and who sold them, and could then take corrective action to restrict those products.

This sounds like what Andrew Lo said in earlier congressional testimony back. Lo recommended creating a Capital Markets Safety Board modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board:

“[T]he financial industry can take a lesson from other technology-based professions. In the medical, chemical engineering, and semiconductor industries, for example, failures are routinely documented, catalogued, analyzed, internalized, and used to develop new and improved processes and controls. Each failure is viewed as a valuable lesson, to be studied and reviewed until all the wisdom has been gleaned from it, which is understandable given the typical cost of each lesson.

“One successful model for conducting such reviews is the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent government agency whose primary mission is to investigate accidents, provide careful and conclusive forensic analysis, and make recommendations for avoiding such accidents in the future. In the event of an airplane crash, the NTSB assembles a team of engineers and flight-safety experts who are immediately dispatched to the crash site to conduct a thorough investigation, including interviewing witnesses, poring over historical flight logs and maintenance records, and sifting through the wreckage to recover the flight recorder or ‘black box’ and, if necessary, reassembling the aircraft from its parts so as to determine the ultimate cause of the crash. Once its work is completed, the NTSB publishes a report summarizing the team’s investigation, concluding with specific recommendations for avoiding future occurrences of this type of accident. The report is entered into a searchable database that is available to the general public (see http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp) and this has been one of the major factors underlying the remarkable safety record of commercial air travel.”

Lo was talking more about financial crises than about individual bankruptcies, but the analogy still holds. If a regulator notices that a lot of people are dying in a particular kind of accident in a particular kind of car, it will investigate to find out what is going on.

Now, the statistics could actually be a bit tricky. It’s entirely possible that the most toxic products on the market will not be the ones that are involved in the most bankruptcies and foreclosures. Most bankruptcies are (I believe) caused by illness, job loss, or divorce, which strike people independently of whatever mortgage they happen to have. If we just count up the mortgages of people who go bankrupt, we might find that more had 30-year fixed mortgages than had option ARMs, simply because more people in general have 30-year fixed mortgages than option ARMs.

But for now I will make a bold assertion that these statistical problems could be addressed — it doesn’t seem like the world’s most complicated model to estimate.

The Grayson/Clay/Miller amendment attempts to sidestep the banking industry’s main contention, which is that the CFPA will have a “chilling” effect on financial innovation. It also plays a kind of ”free safety,” to use a football metaphor, in that it can catch products that do not on their face seem all that bad, but turn out to be homewreckers later.

The common-sense argument for it is that no one could reasonably oppose a provision that simply asks the CFPA to investigate existing problems and clean up after them. Still, the industry will no doubt come up with arguments against it.

President Obama on May 20 signed legislation aimed at curbing financial fraud in the mortgage and other industries, including a provision that created an independent panel to investigate the root causes of the nation’s economic downturn.Congressional lawmakers from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to prominent Democratic senators, with significant Republican support, had called for creation of a commission modeled after the Sept. 11 panel and a Depression-era set of financial hearings called the (Ferdinand) Pecora commission. This one would have subpoena power; Democratic congressional leaders would choose six members and Republican leaders four commissioners, but its work would be independent of Congress.

But after signing the bill, the White House issued what is called a signing statement by Obama, which includes this advisory to agencies about the financial panel’s potential reach:

“Section 5(d) of the Act requires every department, agency, bureau, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the United States to furnish to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a legislative entity, any information related to any Commission inquiry. As my administration communicated to the Congress during the legislative process, the executive branch will construe this subsection of the bill not to abrogate any constitutional privilege.”

In other words, the president is reserving the right to claim executive privilege if the commission seeks information or documents that the White House considers to be beyond the bounds of public information and/or privileged communications and negotiations within the executive branch. The Obama administration hasn’t been shy in using signing statements for recent pieces of legislation like the omnibus public lands bill. In that case, however, the president directly challenged a portion of the law.

Signing statements have been used by other presidents, but the practice became highly controversial under former President George W. Bush, who advanced disputed theories of executive power through their issuance and challenged more provisions than his predecessors had.

As far as the financial commission’s mission, lawmakers have described their hopes for it to delve into nearly every facet of the economic recession. After the bill signing, Representative John Larson, the chairman of the Democratic caucus from Connecticut, issued this statement:

“The American people are demanding answers about the collapse of our financial system. As we work to reform and rebuild the financial sector we also need to look back and learn from the mistakes of the past. In the past twenty years, our economy has suffered through the bursting of three major financial bubbles. We can’t afford to let that happen again.”

With the House joining the Senate in seeking an ambitious inquiry into the financial underpinnings that caused the nation’s economic downturn, the name Ferdinand Pecora may well become as familiar as it was during the 1930s.

Maybe not just yet.

But various lawmakers and researchers have been invoking his work as the investigative counsel to a Senate committee that examined the actions of major banks in the stock market crash of 1929. And the inquiry led to significant reforms on Wall Street, many of which exist to this day.

Historical accounts of the Pecora hearings provide a reading experience that is as page-turning as a suspense novel. Mr. Pecora, a former New York prosecutor, took a rather moribund inquiry and ran away with it. With Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to the presidency, Pecora was given a green light in 1933 to make abundant use of a committee’s subpoena power. He summoned the nation’s most respected bankers before the panel and shredded their reputations in public.

Replete with his blistering cross-examinations of the titans of Wall Street, the hearings did indeed capture huge headlines in the early 1930s – including those of The New York Times — and perhaps were among the first of congressional inquiries broadcast in newsreels to the nation.

One wonders if today’s Fawning Corporate Media would serve the same function for an aspiring Pecora.

“The Pecora commission created villains essentially,” said Donald Ritchie, associate historian for the Senate. “This riveted the public because it was daily headlines for months and what otherwise would be seen as fairly arcane practices, Pecora was able to dramatize it very much.”

Pecora unmasked hidden bonuses and exorbitant salaries banking leaders had received; uncovered unpaid taxes and wrongdoing. (It was noted in some accounts that Time magazine coined the phrase “bankster” back then.)

Modern-day proponents of an independent commission have been quick to say their intent is not to create an antagonistic, adversarial atmosphere, especially now that banks and other Wall Street firms have begun resisting further government intervention.But, just as Mr. Ritchie described a national mood that was despairing and frightened during the Depression, some members of Congress these days express worry that Americans remain confused and uncertain about the economic downturn that has rocked across the mortgage industry and securities markets in recent months.

I know that I still cheer FDR and Pecora now that my unemployed status has reached its ninth month. Without FDR’s unemployment insurance, my 55-year-old body that has six scars from surgery, my wife, and our nine-year-old son would be sleeping in Madison Square Park.

Representative John Larson, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus who is from Connecticut, has been among those advocating an independent commission that would conduct a long look-back and make recommendations across the spectrum of markets and financial institutions. (The House approved an independent panel, included in a broader legislative proposal, by a vote of 367 to 59.)

Mr. Larson suggested that not only the public, but members of Congress, still need to have the complex factors that caused the financial collapse “demystified.” “I really believe the most important thing is that we level with the American people, that we have a narrative that’s explained to them,” Mr. Larson said. An independent panel, armed with subpoena power, would, he added in paraphrasing Pecora, “shed a fierce light of public scrutiny on the dark markets, on the schemes, on the negligence and the unintended consequences that have been perpetrated on our financial systems.”

(One historical reference quotes Pecora this way: “Had there been full disclosure of what was being done in furtherance of these schemes, they could not long have survived the fierce light of publicity and criticism. Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker’s stoutest allies. [Let’s see. Where have I heard those words used recently. Oh yes. With Paulson’s bailout of the elites like AIG, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, and, previously, throughout the eight-year reign of the Bush-Cheney two-headed kingdom.]”)

Mr. Ritchie recalled the origins of the Depression-era panel and the near happenstance way in which Pecora grabbed the reins.The investigative arm of the Senate committee had been established by Republicans when Herbert Hoover was still president, because he was convinced that Democratic financiers were short-selling securities, Mr. Ritchie said. “About the only thing they proved was that Democrats weren’t responsible for the financial collapse,” he added.

As the Democrats and FDR were coming into power, Mr. Pecora was hired to write a final report. Instead, “he asked if he could have one more month and they gave him a couple of subpoenas,” Mr. Ritchie said. In another book, “From the Crash to the Blitz,” Cabell Phillips, (no relation) a reporter for The New York Times for decades who is now deceased, described Pecora’s grasp of subpoena authority, saying that he dispatched fellow staff and investigators and “sent them coursing through Wall Street and its outposts like a pack of bloodhounds.”Their digging spawned hearings that became a spectacle dreaded by Wall Street and consumed voraciously by the public.

When Pecora assumed the lead role at hearings resumed in February 1933, the first witness called was Charles E. Mitchell, head of the National City Bank, who, as Mr. Phillips wrote, “survived the crash but not Pecora.”

Various accounts credit Pecora for becoming well-versed in details, which he used to his advantage in those cross-examinations. Mr. Mitchell’s misdeeds included not only not paying income tax, but also selling to his wife and repurchasing shares of stock without any money changing hands so that he could claim losses. (He was indicted but ultimately eluded conviction, according to reports, and paid back taxes.)

The story most retold from that era, and one drawing public ridicule far and wide, was the treatment afforded J.P. Morgan Jr., the son of the mighty Wall Street titan. In an Op-Ed article titled “Where Is Our Ferdinand Pecora?” Ron Chernow, the historian and author of “The House of Morgan,” described a scene that lives on in pictorial infamy to this day:Such was the furor over the Morgan testimony that Senator Carter Glass of Virginia shook his head and sighed, “We are having a circus, and the only things lacking now are peanuts and colored lemonade.” Seizing on the comment, a press agent for the Ringling Brothers Circus took advantage of a pause in the hearings to pop Lya Graf, a midget in a blue satin dress, on the lap of the portly and surprised J. P. Morgan Jr. The committee chairman, Senator Duncan Fletcher of Florida, pleaded with newspapers not to print the pictures, which only made them rush to do so.

The photo of Morgan with a circus dwarf planted on his lap became the signature shot of the hearings, emblematic of Wall Street’s fallen state. An embittered J. P. Morgan Jr. said Pecora had “the manners of a prosecuting attorney who is trying to convict a horse thief.”An article from that period in which The Times profiled Mr. Pecora, an Italian immigrant, was titled: “The Man Who Will Question Morgan.”

Mr. Ritchie ranked the Pecora committee as one of the most effective among congressional inquiries, second perhaps to the Watergate hearings “in terms of its impact on the nation.”

The Pecora committee led to widespread regulatory and legislative changes as the nation’s leaders worked to rescue the economy and prevent another Depression. Hallmark legislation included major provisions in the Glass-Steagall Act, which imposed a wall between the investment and commercial banking industries, as well as the Securities Exchange Act. Tax authorities also credit Pecora’s investigation for major reforms.

As for Mr. Pecora, Mr. Richie noted that FDR (who had labeled the Wall Street villains ”unscrupulous money changers” in his inaugural address) decided to name Joseph P. Kennedy as the first S.E.C. chairman, partly to “mute some of Wall Street’s fear and anger” in the wake of the Senate hearings. Mr. Pecora also was named a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but left after a brief period to become a state Supreme Court justice in New York.

The proposals now before Congress would create a 10-member commission, independent of lawmakers but one that would report back its findings and offer recommendations. The prevailing plans would give commission members subpoena powers. (Some House Republicans balked today at a proposed makeup that would leave their party with one fewer member than the Democrats, but the final makeup has yet to be reconciled with the Senate.) The House vote, with 367 approving passage of an overall measure, included 117 Republicans. (Once again on what could be considered a populist provision, Representative Eric Cantor, the minority whip, voted for approval, splitting from Minority Leader John Boehner, who opposed it.) Mr. Larson said that he hoped that the $5 million budget proposed for a new panel, allowing for the hiring of staff and experts, would make it “much better armed than Pecora was, but perhaps with as much zeal.”

Beyond that, Mr. Larson and others say they recognize times are different, with the global ramifications of the downturn evident. The congressional proposals, including one sponsored by Senators Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, and Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, are also fashioned after the more recent Sept. 11 Commission. Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, noted how roles have been reversed since the 9/11 panel was established.

Now, Democrats hold the majorities and some Republicans seem eager for an independent review of the factors leading to the downturn. Mr. Issa has been a leading proponent of a commission for months. In an interview, he said such a panel could act as a “slowdown” against legislative proposals that may be rushed into enactment in the wake of the economic collapse. Even if, as Mr. Larson suggested, a commission would “augment not supplant,” legislation being pursued by lawmakers like Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Mr. Issa and others hope a commission would entertain alternative viewpoints. “The commission is the best reason to force a slowdown of those things which are not emergency measures,” Mr. Issa argued.

The Congressional proposals have shifted toward a panel that would exclude lawmakers, in part because so many members have been instrumental in drafting or undoing legislation related to the financial world. (For example, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in the late 1990s, leading some to wonder whether its absence contributed to the recent calamities.)

Experts also draw on the experiences of past commissions, describing those that were divorced from partisan pressures as being the most effective.Paul C. Light, a New York University professor and scholar of government, has been studying the most effective commissions created since World War II as a project with the university and the Governance Institute. “The ones that have emerged from our analysis as having the most significant impact on public opinion, legislative and government operations are the ones with truly a mandate, a very visible leader with impeccable credentials, a very thorough, pragmatic, almost intense perseverance to get to every last angle on the problem,” Mr. Light said.

He cited the Social Security Commission, led by Alan Greenspan in the early 1980s, as being among the most successful in seeing congressional reforms enacted. In terms of a panel to investigate the financial collapse, Mr. Light agreed that any such inquiry should be removed from officialdom. “Everybody is wearing a bullseye on Capitol Hill,” he said. “I think you’ve just got to move it away from Congress and you’ve got to move it away from the president as well.” Otherwise, he laughed, “the commission can become a recurring late-night joke.”

As for a more recent model, Mr. Light said, “What made the 9/11 commission so effective was that it was a very clear crisis that created it, and it had a very clear and compelling agenda.”Who would sit on an independent panel? How members are appointed by the leaders and or committees would still have to be worked out with the Senate. Mr. Issa frequently mentions former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, or Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Mr. Larson also mentioned Elizabeth Warren, but she’s fairly busy overseeing TARP (the Troubled Assets Relief Program) and the banks.Bar none, going outside will lend Congress considerable expertise, Mr. Larson emphasized. Citing the vast experiences of those employed from K Street to Wall Street, Mr. Larson said of Congress, “My gut tells me we are dwarfed in terms of capability.” While President Obama and administration officials have tamped down calls for a commission to delve into the interrogation methods of the Bush administration, it’s unclear whether a financial inquiry would evoke the same refrain of a desire to move on rather than look back.

The legendary Pecora wrote a book called, “Wall Street Under Oath,” ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York and recorded an oral history of the events that runs 1,570 pages in a transcript now residing at Columbia University. From an interview with a nephew who served on the investigative staff, Mr. Ritchie learned that Mr. Pecora “even on his deathbed in the hospital, he was telling the nurse how he got J.P. Morgan to testify.”

To review: The Pecora Investigation was an inquiry begun on March 4, 1932 by the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The name refers to the fourth and final chief counsel for the investigation, Ferdinand Pecora.The investigation was launched by a majority-Republican Senate, under the Banking Committee's chairman, Senator Peter Norbeck. Hearings began on April 11, 1932, but were criticized by Democratic Party members and their supporters as being little more than an attempt by the Republicans to appease the growing demands of an angry American public suffering through the Great Depression. Two chief counsels were fired for ineffectiveness, and a third resigned after the committee refused to give him broad subpoena power. In January 1933, Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant district attorney for New York County was hired to write the final report. Discovering that the investigation was incomplete, Pecora requested permission to hold an additional month of hearings. His exposé of the National City Bank (now Citibank) made banner headlines and caused the bank's president to resign. Democrats had won the majority in the Senate, and the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged the new Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, to let Pecora continue the probe.

So actively did Pecora pursue the investigation that his name became publicly identified with it, rather than the committee's chairman.Following the Wall Street Crash, the U.S. economy had gone into a depression, and a large number of banks failed. The Pecora Investigation sought to uncover the causes of the financial collapse.

As chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora personally examined many high-profile witnesses, who included some of the nation's most influential bankers and stockbrokers. Among these witnesses were Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange, investment bankers Otto H. Kahn, Charles E. Mitchell, Thomas W. Lamont, and Albert H. Wiggin, plus celebrated commodity market speculators such as Arthur W. Cutten.

Given wide media coverage, the testimony of the powerful banker J.P. Morgan, Jr. caused a public outcry after he admitted under examination that he and many of his partners had not paid any income taxes in 1931 and 1932.As reiterated by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt during his 1995 testimony before the United States House of Representatives, the Pecora Investigation uncovered a wide range of abusive practices on the part of banks and bank affiliates. These included a variety of conflicts of interest such as the underwriting of unsound securities in order to pay off bad bank loans as well as "pool operations" to support the price of bank stocks. The hearings galvanized broad public support for new banking and securities laws. As a result of the Pecora Commission's findings, the United States Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933 to separate commercial and investment banking, the Securities Act of 1933 to set penalties for filing false information about stock offerings, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which formed the SEC, to regulate the stock exchanges.