New Zealand is about to enter the space race with a private venture which aims to cash in on the market for scientific research.

A Kiwi company has not only built its own rocket, but designed the fuel to blast it 120km straight up.

In a bunker in Parnell, Auckland, ATEA-1 is preparing to rise to the occasion.

The six-metre rocket will see New Zealand become the 13th member of the space club and acknowledged as a leader in technology.

From an island off the Coromandel Peninsula next week, the ATEA-1 will be launched with a small, 2kg payload of scientific equipment.

Space begins at 100km up, and ATEA-1 should reach 120km, stay there for three minutes and then parachute down into the sea for payload recovery, a total flight time of 45 minutes.

“In the northern hemisphere there has been a tremendous amount of research done with these sorts of rockets,” says project engineer Peter Beck.

TVNZ adds:

Three Auckland men will create history by being the first Kiwis to send something into space from New Zealand.

Company Rocket Lab is planning the first ever launch into space from New Zealand soil on November 30 from the Corromandel.

Rocket Lab director Peter Beck says the event changes the status of the country.

“Once we successfully reach space, at that point New Zealand is essentially a space nation, which it currently is not.”

Beck, 32, is the originial rocket man. He built a rocket bike when he was a teenager and has spent the last 15 years making things that shoot into space.

The nose of this rocket will reach 900 degrees celcius as it travels to an altitude of 120 kilometres into the atmosphere and falls back to the Pacific Ocean. The rocket, Manu Karere or bird messenger, will spend about half an hour in space.

Rocket Lab is a business venture to get people to pay to send things into space.

Stuff.co.nz gives details on the rocket:

Called Manu Korere – which translates as bird messenger – the rocket was designed by private company Rocket Lab, headed by former crown research scientist Peter Beck, 32.

At six metres long and 150mm in diameter the rocket is designed for scientific sub-orbital ’sounding’ missions.

It will travel to an altitude of 120 kilometres – space starts at 100 kilometres – then return to earth in a sub-orbital ballistic curve, to be recovered from a splashdown at sea.

It can carry a payload of just two kilograms, but that is more than enough for modern miniaturised scientific instruments, says Mr Beck.

Rocket Lab hopes to grab a slice of the lucrative space market, selling access to its rocket to send science equipment into space, testing things like climate change.

The rocket – officially an Atea-1 model – is almost entirely constructed from lightweight carbon fibre composites. Components such as the rocket nozzle and combustion chamber are all manufactured from Rocket Lab- developed composite materials which are a fraction of the weight of traditional metal components.

The rocket generates the equivalent of 3200 horsepower from a rocket engine weighing just 13kg.

Space…the final frontier…is getting more populated and used in ways that won’t only benefit science, but business here on earth..

OF RELATED INTEREST:
Timeline of first orbital launches by country
The Country with the Most Successful Space Rocket Launch
Which Country Has Launched the Most Rockets Into Space?

With high official unemployment and unofficial under-employment and uncounted unemployed rates of 10.2% and 18% respectively, we have to create many new jobs – and fast. Tax cuts only help those individuals, households and businesses that have taxable income. Prior history indicates they will not have the desired multiplier effect on the economy when most will be funneled towards paying down massive private debts or into new savings due to overall low consumer confidence and an economy that is still mired in a protracted jobless weak recovery.

OTHER OPTIONS IN ADDITION TO A NIP

The one sector that can use money the fastest and most effectively is small business. Companies under $10 million in gross annual revenues and with fewer than 100 employees historically account for nearly half of our nation’s economic and job growth. They will continue to be the primary engines for our country’s future growth and global competitiveness. Large corporations and public bureaucracies have proven to be some of the slowest and lest effective entities in using public stimulus money. This nation must concentrate on creating new and expanding existing smaller enterprises to get us out of this deep recession.

SBA guaranteed loans are at a standstill because banks across the nation have tightened their lending standards so as to render the minimal SBA loan program to smaller companies essentially non-existent. This dire situation will not ameliorate until the Federal Government directly channels money for grants and loans to small businesses through local SBA development corporations and its many local assistance offices. It must also get retired executives in SCORE to play a greater role in assessing grant and loan applications, and mentoring the recipient small businesses. This possible nationwide program will be discussed in further detail in another of my future TMV postings.

Proposed tax credits to employers to hire more people is an idea just waiting to be abused and buried in massive and confusing paperwork. Counting jobs created or saved by the original March 2009 Stimulus bill has become a silly effort in fantasy accounting. The same would occur with tax credits which are expensive and circuitous means of accomplishing what targeted direct federal spending can do much faster and more efficiently. We need a simple, fast, transparent, and fiscally honest way of generating new jobs.

HOW WOULD NIP WORK

Many unemployed and underemployed people can only develop new skills in different industries by working on the job or by going back to school. Most of them also still need to support families and pay normal living expenses at the same time. The only way we can accomplish this nationwide workforce retraining for the future is through a National Internship Program (NIP) funded directly by the Federal Government. Here’s how it would work.

A public-private national Internet jobs bank would be created for individuals to connect with internships in public entities and private companies locally and across the country. A simple nationwide job form would be used plus all applicants would also be able to attach their resumes. All individuals who sign up for the NIP would have to appear in person to a state employment assistance office to verify their right to work in the U.S. No intern could be judged upon their credit history, age, sex, race, or other impermissible factors. However, current school status and dependent children would have to be factors with respect to their available hours. Criminal backgrounds would only be factors with respect to limiting those interns to certain fields.

On the same Internet NIP clearinghouse, governmental entities and private companies would list all their open internship positions with reasonable prerequisites. They could also scan all submitted applications and resumes of individuals to fill their Internship openings. Every intern would still have to compete for all open positions through personal interviews and their public applications. However the temporary internships would turn more upon their overall backgrounds, personal presentations, and future potential. Internships could be terminated at will by any employer but because all direct financial considerations would be eliminated, employers would tend to avoid terminations based upon economic factors.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

Since there are only 1.4 million people in the Federal civilian workforce, most of the new internship positions would be created at the State, city or local level, or in private industry. The hiring public and private entities would determine what the NIP would pay their interns, ranging from $9 to $14 per hour. The hourly rate would depend upon the required skills, education, and experience for the opening, the particular talents and attributes of the intern, and finally the cost of living and unemployment compensation rate in their states and communities. Employers could also request up to $2,500 from the NIP to assist any intern to relocate to a new city in order to best match individual potential with appropriate internship opportunities. Interns could also be supplied with public transit passes to get to and from employment.

The NIP would provide cost-free workers to all public and private employers who decided they needed the extra help or those that determined they will need additional personnel in the future but currently cannot afford to train them. An intern would work for at least 30 days but not more than 2 years at any location. Interns would work from 20 to 40 hours a week, the work schedule being flexible with the intern’s school and family commitments. Any intern could be hired permanently on a full-time basis at any time by any employer with whom they were placed.

Some interns could work 2 part-time positions, and be assigned to several different public entities and private companies over a 2-year period. Interns would make important networking connections by working instead of receiving unemployment checks and food stamps. Their direct job experiences would greatly enhance their chances of obtaining future meaningful employment after the economy fully recovers. Some other interns might work part-time and start a small business simultaneously that would become their principle livelihood after the nation fully exits this deep recession. Paid interns would have all their student loan payments deferred without incurring interest charges until they were permanently hired.

TOTAL PUBLIC COST

If one million interns were paid between $9 and $14 per hour working full time, the total cost to the Federal Budget would run around $30 billion annually. If 10 million interns were employed under this proposed NIP, the total cost over 2 years would run around $600 billion. Compared to the 2009 Stimulus Bill, the Wall Street Banking Bailouts, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Proposed Healthcare Reforms, this would be a modest federal expenditure to directly help 10 million people and their families. Furthermore it would directly create new economic activity across the country much faster than any other job or economic stimulus proposals.

Private companies would not be able obtain interns in excess of 10% of their total workforce. Enterprises under $1 million in annual gross revenues could get up to 4 Interns at public expense, possibly with some minimum total payroll being required. All interns would not be able to work at any company or for any of its affiliates if they were employed there anytime during the prior 2 years, nor could they be assigned to most start-up ventures. The principle paperwork for managing this program would be that a supervisor or human resource director at each public and private entity would have to verify the hours worked by each Intern to authorize the weekly payments by NIP.

QUICK, MEASURABLE AND PERMANENT NATIONWIDE BENEFITS

This proposed National Internship Program would be the most effective, efficient, and sensible approach to comprehensively address the serious systemic workforce problems facing this nation. As designed, the private sector would play a major role in determining where many of the interns would be assigned.

The simplicity, efficiency, directness, transparency, and nationwide public-private benefits of a NIP might result in prompt Congressional approval, particularly with the 2010 Midterm elections less than a year away. It could become the largest publicly-funded program that would rapidly reduce unemployment by directly assisting the private sector. It would also precede and compliment many other needed long-term stimulus and infrastructure projects.

Marc Pascal

Her story represents the stories that I dread will become absolutely the norm and her story represents the stories that other women who are unhappy with the new guideline recommendations about breast cancer screening dread.  That, under the new recommendations, a 30 year old woman will either not perform self-breast examinations which otherwise would give her something with which she could go to a doctor and ask for more screening, or that if she does ignore the new guidelines (which argue against self-examination: “[the task force] discouraged doctors from teaching breast self-examination” – yes, you read that right) and go ahead and do self exams, that when they then go to their doctors and ask for the screening, the doctor will require some ridiculous threshold before he or she will approve or recommend the screening. And that even then, the woman’s insurance won’t cover it since the guidelines say that it’s imperfect and not recommended for women under 50.

That passivity will be approved and routine.  That women will not trust themselves to know their body, that they will not bother because the system does not want to bother – because the system is so concerned about the harm of anxiety and over-biopsying.

I’ve read the guidelines, the reports and the very carefully worded explanations written by people I trust and admire.

But I am trusting my instinct on this and I am telling you – disapproving of self breast-examination and suggesting that women will have to walk in with such a threshold of concern for what they’re feeling about their body absolutely makes me irate at the thought of what a set back this is for women – for humans, for patients – to be in control of their health.

And the utter disregard for the human toll these illnesses take on everyone around the one diagnosed with the breast cancer.

Anxiety sucks. I’ve been there done that for years with shadows on films and MRIs that required additional testing.  And while I have a “family history” we don’t have the gene – and a very small percentage of women do have the gene mutations currently known to be responsible for a very small percentage of breast cancer.  My Gale score isn’t high enough to get me into most clinical trials.

From the New York Times:

While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

Over all, the report says, the modest benefit of mammograms — reducing the breast cancer death rate by 15 percent — must be weighed against the harms.

Screening in the 40-49 decade results in a 15% reduction in fatalities? I’ll take that over reducing the harm of anxiety and overbiopsying anyday.

SOME NEW NON-DISCRIMINATION PROVISIONS

Some of the least controversial measures in both bills concern new limitations on discrimination by private health insurers towards those individuals with “pre-existing” conditions. Both bills require insurance companies to cover everyone no matter how sick, and in some cases they also prohibit discrimination based upon age, race and sex. The whole brouhaha over abortion coverage versus Viagra/Cialis coverage exposes some political and social inconsistencies. If readers determine that the proposals permit some other forms of discrimination, I would appreciate being informed of those situations as well.

Most annual and lifetime dollar limits would also be prohibited. But I do not know of all the other consumer protections and anti-discrimination provisions in both bills, many of them long overdue and quite laudable. They have been ignored by much of the senselessly disingenuous, false, vitriolic, angry, partisan and ideological debates we have conducted for most of this year. However, all provisions with respect to setting premiums will determine many important matters, particularly the public cost of providing subsidies to those who cannot afford health insurance.

The private health insurance industry has not vociferously opposed healthcare reform as they did in the past. Even with these new requirements of non-discrimination, every U.S. citizen and legal resident will be required by law to purchase private health insurance through their employers or directly with public subsidies based upon income. This mandatory requirement is fully constitutional but wholly unrelated to the states requiring drivers to carry automobile liability insurance. This will provide tens of millions of new policyholders to insurance companies paying whatever new premiums they are still essentially free to set.

Both bills will provide that public subsidies will pay for part or all of private health insurance premiums for individuals and families that cannot afford the rates that the private companies will determine themselves. Without a national standard for minimal health insurance coverage at a specified monthly cost, this might well become a financial boon for insurance companies at the public’s expense.

AUTO INSURANCE DISCRIMINATION MAY COME TO HEALTH INSURANCE

First, let’s turn to automobile insurance and how that is legally priced across the country with minor state deviations. The premiums for individual drivers are not just based upon a person’s driving history, but also upon several other factors. Most private auto insurance companies factor in a person’s credit history, their residential zip code, and sometimes income levels and unlucky involvement in accidents caused by other drivers. There are discounts for those who own their own homes (regardless of whether their mortgages are upside down or not) and renters do not receive such preferences.

Effectively automobile insurance rates are inversely related to a person’s income. The poor and unlucky among us generally pay far more for the same coverage as do wealthier and luckier individuals. To make such auto coverage affordable, the poor and unlucky opt for far less comprehensive coverage and much higher deductibles – all unaffordable in real life situations when an accident does occur.

While there are few published studies clearly linking how a person who has had a foreclosure is also a greater risk for causing an auto accident, insurance companies constantly discriminate on that basis and charge more for the same policy as a person’s credit rating decreases. Zip codes sometimes reflect overall income levels and crime statistics, so those living in poorer areas also pay more for the same auto policy coverage than those residing in more favorably-viewed zip codes, even though the factual linkage to poor drivers or auto theft is generally missing.

If a person is involved in any auto accident, even if he or she is completely not at fault, insurance companies in many states assess an “unlucky” surcharge. That connection is about as relevant as claiming a person who likes to eat bananas will more likely slip on a peal and injure himself than one who prefers apples. We may really need a national class-action lawsuit by consumers against auto insurance companies to rectify these massive coverage distortions.

POTENTIAL OVERCHARGING FOR POLICIES COVERED BY PUBLIC SUBSIDIES

Will future private health insurance premiums reflect discrimination against covered individuals based upon their credit ratings, zip codes and other unlucky factors? These are not clearly prohibited in current health reform legislation. If they are not prohibited, one can rest assured that insurance companies will use these differences to price policies accordingly. Since many poor people cannot afford health insurance already on the basis of current premiums, after healthcare reform is enacted, will those premiums be raised on such factors and will the public subsidies also be unnecessarily increased to cover such insurance discrimination?

Let’s compare two families, both with 2 working adults and 2 grade-school age children. The individuals are all about the same ages and both have 2 comparable cars, one is paid and the other is still being financed.

Family A has great credit as there have never been any job losses. They live in a wealthy zip code, and they have no history of any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents. There is one pre-existing condition in their background, a child with a congenital condition requiring more annual care than most other children but no frequent hospitalizations – only expensive treatments and medications. All the members of Family A are considered obese but that is irrelevant since they are covered under a Cadillac health policy sponsored by the most generous of their two employers. This type of coverage is highly favored by our tax code, essentially providing Family A with an indirect public subsidy for their relative good fortune in life so far.

Family B has lousy credit due to one spouse’s job loss last year and non-employment to date, resulting in the foreclosure of their home mortgage, and many other unpaid bills. A few months ago, while taking one child to see the doctor, they were hit by an uninsured driver and everyone required medical treatment that was paid by their auto insurance policy’s uninsured motorist coverage. A few months earlier, a neighbor’s dog bit the other child and fortunately the neighbor’s homeowner’s policy covered the medical and hospital bills. Family B has no pre-existing conditions and is in much better overall health than Family A. They have recently moved to a rental unit in a poorer zip code as a result of the foreclosure. The remaining spouse who continues to work does not get any healthcare coverage through employment. They also have not had any DUI convictions or at-fault auto accidents during the past five years.

Under a future healthcare reform, Family B shops around for health insurance but the cheapest they can find costs more than the Cadillac plan for Family A, even with far less coverage and higher deductibles and co-pays. The insurance companies all rated them higher risks than Family A because of their credit history, current residence, low household income, and those two unlucky occurrences. Family B’s auto and home-owners policies also increased their premiums as a result of their unlucky accidents, bad credit and new zip code residence. Fortunately, their needlessly high health insurance premiums for Family B will be fully covered by subsidies from the federal government.

The public financial subsidy for Family B would have been much lower, and the overall cost to the Federal budget for many more Family B’s would consequently be much lower, if health insurance companies were prohibited from discriminating against these poorer families across the country on the bases described above.

I strongly favor the public helping those who cannot afford health insurance. Every U.S. citizen and legal resident should have adequate health coverage – and illegal aliens and foreigners should be able to buy into coverage without subsidies. However, I am against insurance companies raping public coffers because they are not sufficiently regulated to prevent them from engaging in such surreptitious alternative forms of discrimination.

Whereas the annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs between Family A and Family B might be the same, or Family B might even be lower, the premiums collected may be artificially higher for Family B solely to increase insurance company profits – particularly since the public subsidies are based upon the ability to pay and not on the reasonableness of the underlying premiums.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s bad enough that our current national healthcare system is principally a bloated disease mismanagement operation that essentially caters to wealthy hypochondriacs. We really need an integrated healthcare system that fosters healthier lifestyles for all people and eliminates many unnecessary treatments, tests, paperwork and fraudulent excessive billings to our public Medicare system and private insurance companies. More than likely, we will have to reform our reforms a few more times in the future before we get our nation’s out-of-control healthcare system under some semblance of rationality or sanity.

I hope my concerns are unfounded but most of what I have read does not discuss or dispute these warnings on premium calculations. Left unchecked, they could easily gut all alleged healthcare savings under any final reform bill. Without some strict controls over how health insurance companies set premiums, the public will shell out far more money in subsidies to cover excessive private insurance premiums. This will further limit our society’s future flexibility to spend public money where we deem appropriate. Enriching private health insurance companies at public expense is probably not the wisest form of national economic or job stimulus.

Posted 11/19/09 by Marc Pascal who happily rants in Phoenix, AZ. Please note that I will discuss new job stimulus proposals in one of my future posts as I promised at the end of my last TMV posting.

The Telegraph headlines its story, date-rape drink spiking ‘an urban legend’:

Among young people, drink spiking stories have attractive features that could “help explain” their disproportionate loss of control after drinking alcohol, the study found.

Dr Burgess said: “Our findings suggest guarding against drink spiking has also become a way for women to negotiate how to watch out for each other in an environment where they might well lose control from alcohol consumption.”

Co-researcher Dr Sarah Moore said: “We would be very interested in finding out whether the urban myth of spiking is also the result of parents feeling unable to discuss with their adult daughters how to manage drinking and sex and representing their anxieties about this through discussion of drink spiking risks.”

Via Bruce Schneir, “Basically, the hypothesis is that perpetuating the fear of drug-rape allows parents and friends to warn young women off excessive drinking without criticizing their personal choices. The fake bogeyman lets people avoid talking about the real issues.”

On my trips abroad, I have rarely found an Indian restaurant that would satisfy my native taste buds. In the West, there has been a “curry” revolution and its impact has been the most in Britain. However, there is a growing realization that Indian cooking is not just meant to set your tongue on fire or titillate the palate, it actually mixes common sense with the ancient science of Ayurveda, gaining popularity as alternative medicine.

“Ever since the first British curry house opened its doors (the country now has an estimated 9,000 Indian restaurants) Indian food has become synonymous, in many minds, with the macho pursuit of tongue-bothering spice and fattening takeaway blowouts washed down with gallons of beer,” reports The Independent.

“Of course, there is another side to Indian food, and in recent years a small but determined group of cooks have sought to break through the stereotype.

“Monisha Bharadwaj is one of Britain’s top Indian cooks and an award-winning writer. Her latest book, Healthy Indian in Minutes, is mouth-watering collection of dishes… ‘The majority of British takeaways do not offer the best example of good Indian cooking,’ Bharadwaj says. ‘But you have to think about what they are. When they first opened, curry houses were catering to people who were used to eating heavy food with all its gravy, cream and stodginess. Takeaways offered something similar but with added spice.’

“But Bharadwaj says there is a growing demand for something different. I meet her in Hounslow, where she moved from her native Mumbai 22 years ago. As well as writing she now runs a cookery school in her kitchen. ‘More and more people want to cook home-cooked Indian food that’s fresh and healthy,’ she says. ‘They know that it is something different but they don’t know what it is because you can’t get it in restaurants.’

“Bharadwaj’s courses are proving a hit with everyone from housewives and husbands short of inspiration to top chefs looking to expand their repertoires.

“Bharadwaj is particular in the kitchen but that’s just how she learned to cook. Indian home cooking is governed by rules, some of them common sense but others more complex and founded on the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda. First recorded more than 5,000 years ago, the world’s oldest known system of medicine casts the kitchen as an apothecary in which herbs have healing powers.” More here…

Amazon website has this to say about Bharadwaj’s book: “People often see Indian food as greasy, fatty and labour-intensive, but everyday Indian home cooking is neither unhealthy nor difficult to prepare. Monisha Bharadwaj will prove that it is in fact a highly nutritious, gentle cuisine that has always included natural and whole foods such as whole wheat flour, raw cane sugar, lots of vegetables, beans, lentils and any number of healing spices.

“Indian eating is based on the ancient science of Ayurveda, a system of holistic living that is the oldest form of medicine known to man. Broken down into straightforward chapters – curries, dry dishes, light one-pot meals, salads and raitas, chutneys and relishes, drinks and sweets – ‘Healthy Indian in Minutes’ will give readers the tips and strategies they need to cook healthy home-style food in a matter of minutes.” More here…

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Details on the mission can be found at the NASA web site.

By Daryl Cagle

I’m holding my breath. I’m now into my third month of waiting for Apple to approve my iPhone app. Yesterday I heard from Apple that they need more time to think about it.

My app is pretty cool; it is called “MSNBC.com Cartoons” and it features a real time news feed of political cartoons by top cartoonists from around the world. My app will be supported and promoted by MSNBC.com along with their other iPhone apps … that is, if Apple approves it.

It seems I have plenty to worry about. Apps for the iPhone have been multiplying at an exponential rate, with over 100,000 now approved. Developers are looking to strike it rich with the next “iFart,” but as the sheer numbers of apps explodes, the chance of an app being a hit becomes more remote and frustration with Apple’s app approval process grows. Developers have to invest in creating a finished app before submitting it to Apple, which can arbitrarily trash the investments and hopes of aspiring developers – as happened to a friend of mine this week.

My buddy Tom Richmond, the brilliant Mad Magazine artist, just finished drawing 544 caricatures of members of congress for an app called “Bobble Rep.” The app works as a directory of every congressman, displaying their contact information by zip code or by the GPS location of the iPhone user. Shake the iPhone and the rep’s head “bobbles.” It is a cute app, and the caricatures are not unflattering. Apple rejected “Bobble Rep.”

A letter from Apple explained the rejection:

“… We’ve reviewed Bobble Rep – 111th Congress Edition and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

A screenshot of this issue has been attached for your reference.”

Ray Griggs, the producer of the “Bobble Rep” app, suffered a blow as he saw his investment in programming and in 544 Tom Richmond cartoons arbitrarily flushed away. Griggs writes, “I wonder if they saw my website (www.iwantyourmoney.net) that promotes the iPhone app and rejected the app because I am making a Republican Documentary. Are they trying to shut me down? (Just speculation. However, it is uncanny that the “offensive” page image they sent me is of the California reps.) Is there anything on this page that could possibly be found offensive?”

My cartoonist buddy Tom Richmond writes, “Clearly this app does not ‘ridicule public figures’ and is violating nothing, but Apple has decided the world must be protected from the insidious subversiveness this would force upon the public and the brutal, heinous ridicule that my cruel, cruel caricatures would subject these politicians to.

Hard to believe that anybody could be this blind. Maybe they just have a monkey doing the approval of their apps, and he throws a dart at a dartboard with “approved” and “rejected” targets on it and whatever it hits is the fate of that app. That would explain how they could approve an app with a cartoon baby picture and when you shake the phone hard enough the baby dies. Yes, that one got through only to be yanked after some outraged people complained, but no way are a bunch of flame-throwing caricatures going to get through!!!

Unbelievable.”

Prolific iPhone app developer Brian Stormont has this advice for hopeful app applicants:

“Don’t make any jokes about political figures, past or present, in either your app or the description in iTunes. Apple will most-likely reject your app.”

Apple would seem to be a bi-partisan offendee. App developer Brandyn Brosemer reports that his “iBush” app was rejected for the same reason. The app was a collection of actual George W. Bush quotes that the reader could scroll through.

Another Apple political app rejection is “MyShoe” which allowed users to throw shoes at President Bush.

Studies show that people use the iPhone differently than other mobile devices – they read news content on the iPhone and tend not to do so on other phones. The iPhone’s market share for news and opinion is dominant, while all other phones have an insignificant market share. Although any publisher can decide what content he wants in his own publication, Apple’s phone-news monopoly brings with it a public trust and responsibility in controlling content for a whole category of media.

And with my own political cartoons app review dragging on, I’m still holding my breath.

Turning blue now.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com; he is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons as well as 50 other cartoonists, at www.caglecartoons.com are syndicated to more than 850 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. Daryl’s books “The BIG Book of Campaign 2008 Political Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2010 Edition” are available in bookstores now. His column is copyrighted and licensed to run on full on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Apple cited this image as “objectionable” in a rejection letter to “Bobble Rep” developer Ray Griggs.


And here are screenshots from the “Bobble Rep” app, ©RG Entertainment, Ltd., Artwork by Mad Magazine’s Tom Richmond.

We’re seeing a lot fewer mad scientists in major Hollywood films today, and a lot more scientist heroes. In 2012, the hero is Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is–and this cracked me up–a “deputy geologist” at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Well, at least they got the office name right, though geologists have their own agency. Later, Helmsley becomes the top science adviser to the president. And for good reason: He is the guy who makes the US government wake up and see the catastrophe that is coming; he is the guy who runs the models to try to figure out just when it will arrive and how bad it will be–even though these models aren’t perfect and often have to be revised, always in the it’s-even-worse direction (an interesting analogy with climate change models). Helmsley’s virtue–a uniquely scientific one–lies in the fact that he fully and honestly admits as much. In one moment that anybody who cares about science in policy will love, Helmsley explains one of these recalculations to POTUS (Danny Glover) in the Oval Office, and admits, “I was wrong.” The president replies (these are not his exact words) “That’s the first time anybody has ever said that in this office.” Yup, that’s the virtue of having scientists in government.

I’m seeing the movie later tonight. The WaPo gives it 4 stars, calling it a perfect disaster, “enormously satisfying, astonishingly accomplished, reprehensible-yet-irresistible ‘2012,’ the crowning achievement in Emmerich’s long, profitable career as a destroyer of worlds.”

As it happens, I had lunch in LA today. Wired says that I will thoroughly enjoy seeing it destroyed:

Much of this film is animated, but it’s virtually impossible to tell. In particular, the destruction of Los Angeles is a visual feast. It is an accomplishment in action filmmaking. This scene highlights Emmerich’s childlike glee as a filmmaker: It’s impossible for a car to fly as the ground crumbles underneath, but it happens in this world. Truth be told, it’s a cinematic representation of Nintendo’s Mario running across collapsing bridges. Above all, it’s funny.

The Seattle PI is less enamored, saying it’s only slightly more big and fun than dumb. The NYTimes’ Manohla Dargis had no fun. She found the film’s formulaic destruction a tired retread:

[Emmerich] cracks the planet like a nut, splitting its crust, toppling its mountains and cities, and laying its every creeping thing to inevitable tedious waste. Maybe he’s angry. (His last movie, “10,000 B.C.,” was widely panned.) To judge from the similarity with which he stages the multiple disaster sequences in “2012” — a limo, a camper, a plane, a bigger plane and some really big boats, by turns, race ahead of the impending doom — he seems exhausted.

So far the folks at Rotten Tomatoes agree. At a lowly 37%, it gets no tomato!

Meanwhile, Newsbusters is busting-a-nut over their assertion that 2012 star John Cusack may (or may not) have dropped an f-bomb on The Morning Show. I’m in the not camp, “Some mornings yeah, uh I can feel…”

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry. The Economist pays a tribute: “Before Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences of the ‘primitive’ tribes of mankind…

“As he faded, he mourned the vanishing of the tribes. ‘Primitive’ man was not nobler or purer than he was, but they were, in the deepest sense, connected: for universal laws linked his thinking, in all its book-lined complexity, to that of the Indian clad only in tree-bark, trailing a deer along a forest path…

“Mr Lévi-Strauss, throwing down the gauntlet in ‘La Pensée Sauvage’ in 1962, saw nothing primitive about the tribes he studied. Totemism, for example, was a system as complex as the Linnaean classification…”

More here…

Levi-Strauss drew comparisons between American Indian myths and the story of Cinderella; demonstrated how some Amazonian tribes divided their villages into rival halves that synthesize through marriage; and tracked diverse folk tales through Latin America to show how they were related in form, says Bloomberg.

“Intellectuals such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida cited Levi-Strauss’s methods in their social analyses. Seminal French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre engaged him in debate over the issue of personal freedom, while feminist Simone de Beauvoir agreed with his human-kinship theories, which focused on the social exchange of females in non-Western societies.” More here…

Levi-Strauss left France as a result of the anti-Jewish laws of the collaborationist Vichy regime and during World War II joined the Free French Forces, reports Associated Press.

“Levi-Strauss also won worldwide acclaim and was awarded honorary doctorates at universities, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, as well as universities in Sweden, Mexico and Canada.

“A skilled handyman who believed in the virtues of manual labor and outdoor life, Levi-Strauss was also an ardent music-lover who once said he would have liked to have been a composer had he not become an ethnologist.

“He was married three times and had two sons, Matthieu and Laurent.” More here…

While in New York, Lévi-Strauss immersed himself in the great body of anthropological accounts of North and South Amerindians that early US anthropologists and linguists had been accumulating for more than a century, says The Guardian obituary. “The data collected from the Amerindians and its complexity delighted him, and made him react permanently against reductionist explanations of culture, which implicitly denied the intellectual achievement that indigenous mythology and social thought represented.

“The basis of the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss is the idea that the human brain systematically processes organised, that is to say structured, units of information that combine and recombine to create models that sometimes explain the world we live in, sometimes suggest imaginary alternatives, and sometimes give tools with which to operate in it.

“The task of the anthropologist, for Lévi-Strauss, is not to account for why a culture takes a particular form, but to understand and illustrate the principles of organisation that underlie the onward process of transformation that occurs as carriers of the culture solve problems that are either practical or purely intellectual.

“For him anthropology was scientific and naturalistic, that is scientific in the way that structural linguistics had become scientific. By looking at the transformations of language that occur as new utterances are generated, by using the tools that a particular language makes available, structural linguistics was able, so Lévi-Strauss believed, to understand not only the irreducible specificities of a particular language, but also the principles that made their production possible.

“In this way, linguistics, as he understood it, was a branch of the humanities and a natural science that is able to connect directly with psychology and neurology.” More here…

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd batted spiritedly during his recent India visit and delivered a googly to bypass ticklish issues and move on to substantive bilateral economic and strategic issues that would help strengthen ties between India and Australia.

Rudd squarely faced the contentious issues of racial violence against Indian students in Australia, as also the continuing ban on the supply of uranium because India has not signed the non-proliferation treaty.

“Kevin Rudd says he takes responsibility for law and order but can’t guarantee there will be no more attacks against Indian students studying in Australia,” reports ABC. “Despite the controversy, India and Australia’s relationship appears to be on firm ground as Rudd makes his first prime ministerial visit to the Indian capital.

While Manmohan Singh said the two countries have decided to “upgrade our relations to the level of a strategic partnership”, Kevin Rudd announced Australian Federal Government will be sending at least an extra 14 Australian diplomats to India “representing the largest single expansion of Australia’s diplomatic and consular representation in India ever.”

More here…

Australia has long ignored its economic and strategic relationship with India and Mr Rudd’s visit should be focused on that, says Rory Medcalf, a security expert at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Canberra has neglected the subcontinent but the feeling has been mutual…India has tended to see Australia through a couple of very outdated lenses. It has seen Australia as eventually an appendage of the United States or it has seen Australia as some sort of afterthought in Asia.

“I think for a long time India has just simply not understood and has not appreciated how much Australia has to offer.”

But, Mr Medcalf says, Australia has one big drawcard for India. “Uranium exports to India for civil purposes from Australia really would be a magic bullet to change the relationship, especially symbolically. India would finally think Australia was serious about a strategic partnership.

“If Rudd can’t deliver on uranium, and I’m fairly sure he can’t, at least a set of substitute gestures has to be found in the short-term… I think he has to find something that signals that we recognise that India matters.

“I think India is on the radar… I think several senior ministers in the Government have essentially said so. And I think there is a public opinion element of this. In the past 18 months we’ve seen this rocky relationship with China developing over issues essentially to do with different values and security interests.

“We haven’t had that challenge with India. I don’t think we’re going to have anywhere near that sort of a problem with India in the decades to come.

“So I think Australia is beginning to look more to India as a key player in the constellation of powers in Asia – that we will need as a security partner, an economic partner and indeed as part of the social fabric of Australian society in the future.”

More here…

In the wake of attacks on Indian students, several Australian ministers have visited India to assure the government and Indian parents that the safety of the Indian students is a top concern of the Australian government.

In September, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as also Prof Pal Ahluwalia (pro-Vice Chancellor of University of South Australia) visited India. (Please click here to read my earlier post…)

While Prime Minister Rudd was concluding his secret visit to Afghanistan for Remembrance Day before arriving in Delhi, his wife Therese Rein visited India’s largest slum in Mumbai, home to more than 1 million people (wonderfully captured in Oscar Award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire). Read about her visit here…

Prime Minister Rudd delighted the audience at the India business lunch (where I was also invited), by his reference to cricket. “India shares many passions with Australia, one of them being our collective celebration of cricket. We share a passion for the game.

” But in my case, there has never been a correlation between passion on the one hand and ability on the other. You will be surprised to learn however that I have played against India before.

“At least as a member of the Australian embassy team in Peking against the Indian embassy team. My highest score was 11 not out.

“We Australians always feared the Indian quicks and we feared that the reason India regularly beat us at the Temple of Heaven Ground was out belief that on the eve of each of the games, Indian MEA would fly in its best talent from Delhi.

“At least that’s my excuse for failure on the field – 11 not out….

“Of course there is more to life than cricket. Another of our shared passions is exploring new opportunities for business collaboration.

“Looking out to this diverse audience – business leaders, senior officials and commentators from all corners of the private and public sectors – I am struck by the extent of common Australian and Indian commercial interests.

“I am also reminded of the central role business will play in elevating our countries’ bilateral partnership….That’s why I’m delighted that our Trade and Commerce Ministers have agreed to establish a CEO forum to bring together the business elites of our two countries to discuss opportunities and impediments to greater economic cooperation.

“And I look forward to reading their recommendations in 2010 on what governments can do. After all, enhancing commercial cooperation between our two countries is a central pillar of the Australia-India strategic partnership and an opportunity to bring our countries closer together.

“This is an opportunity we just can’t pass up.”

It remains to be seen how China, a close business partner of Australia, reacts to this cosying up between India and Australia.

THE DISMAL NUMBERS

The past decade was remarkable for its miserable job growth and generally stagnant wages, even though the total U.S. population increased by over 20 million. Total 2009 workforce numbers for the private-sector economy and for all levels of government service are almost the same as they were in 1999. We can’t afford to have another stagnant decade that could be worse than the last. We are starting this new decade with high unemployment, mounting personal and business bankruptcies, massive residential and commercial real estate turmoil with steadily growing foreclosures, our public finances at the Federal and State levels completely unbalanced, and strong global competition from nations with far fewer domestic problems.

We have a steadily rising official unemployment rate of 10.2% and the unofficial under-employment and unemployment rate is at least 18%. We have more than 25 million people out of work, working reduced hours, part-time, as temporary independent contractors, or they have involuntarily gone back to school or are now staying at home taking care of kids and endlessly cruising job boards. This period of large unemployment resembles the 1930’s in sheer numbers but the origins are rather different. It has hit those over 45 particularly hard even though they have many skills and job experience. Simultaneously it has decimated the job prospects of many between 18 and 30 who might have college educations but limited prior job experience.

If arguably the March 2009 Stimulus Package has saved or created about 1.5 million jobs, at best it might save or create around 3 million more by the time it runs out of authorized funds at the end of 2011. Taking those numbers positively, they are still woefully inadequate in light of the need, and viewed suspiciously, they are almost irrelevant.

Much of the Stimulus money went to the States to cover massive budget shortfalls, so that is where we likely can find the “saved” jobs calculations. Another large chunk of Stimulus money went for income preservation in extending middle-class tax cuts, unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid coverage. Infrastructure spending is just coming on line and will continue through 2011 but we can endlessly debate “shovel-ready” projects and our long-term infrastructure needs that have yet to be fully addressed.

This country needs to create at least 100,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. Economists in government, academia and the private sector anticipate we will be shedding more jobs for the next year or two. Massive government programs won’t solve this huge dilemma but several targeted public-private partnerships might hold more promise.

HISTORY OF THE CCC

There is a growing chorus calling for large-scale direct Federal programs for job creation, such as bringing back the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC). Unfortunately they won’t work as they did back in the 1930’s because our entire economy has changed drastically since then. However, a small, targeted forestry and land management internship program could be a worthwhile part of a much larger effort that works directly with the private sector to create more jobs for the future.

PBS stations recently broadcast a very informative documentary about the original CCC. This was a national effort to employ millions of men in every state, principally working in public parks, forests, federal protected areas, wetlands, and other rural areas planting trees, building paths, dams, and accommodations in National Parks, and performing other related conservation and environmental activities. The pay was very low (about $25 a week per person) and the living conditions were minimalist as they were housed in Military-style barracks and tents. The U.S. was so desperately poor in the 1930’s that millions of young men flocked to this program. It was disbanded in 1942 at the start of World War II.

The PBS documentary showed battalions of universally thinner men than today working happily outdoors with shovels, pitchforks, wheelbarrows, and some modest mechanized construction equipment. They built thousands of small bridges, dams, new hiking trains, camp shelters, and new tourist lodges with stone, wood and other natural materials in our Nation’s parks and forests. The work was labor intensive and those who worked for the CCC had very limited educations or job skills. The CCC also provided literacy classes and basic job training during the evenings.

The men of the CCC were generally single, young and childless – and did I mention much thinner? If they had children, they were cared for by a stay-at-home spouse while they were shipped to far-off camps on a vast national network of inexpensive passenger trains that no longer exists. CCC men sent most of their earnings back to parents so they could survive before the days of unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare.

The men of the CCC were being prepared for the private sector jobs available at that time. They had to develop physically and mentally to do work in heavy manufacturing, construction and warehousing. The CCC was also a perfect training ground for the Military that eventually swallowed up most of them in 1942 for the War Effort. When they returned from the War, the 1950’s and 60‘s offered plenty of manufacturing, construction and warehousing jobs, plus the GI Bill to go to college to qualify for emerging jobs in the sciences and technology, and for new management positions.

CHANGED AMERICA

Why won’t a huge CCC work today? We can all acknowledge that our national parks and federal forests, plus many other state-owned and local city parks have been neglected for many years. We need to make some serious financial commitments to them but they won’t need millions of people digging with shovels to fix them. The most labor-intensive activity is the hand-planting of tree seedlings – which is not even the largest priority in our national park system today. In addition, our Federal and State Governments are much larger today so it takes much longer to get things organized with expansive bureaucracies.

Over the past 2 decades, our economy shifted the majority of our manufacturing facilities and labor-intensive work overseas to low-wage and low-cost countries, or to the dustbin of history through mechanization, computerization, and the use of robots. We will not need millions of young men to liberate half the world in a massive Military endeavor. Our country is financially strapped to maintain even its current military size, foreign bases, and large combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of today’s job openings are in healthcare, renewable energy, basic accounting, computer network administration, public education, and other positions that deal with people and are located in offices.

It is rather unlikely we can get a large number of unemployed people to move to the wilderness or to live in camps outside our cities – unless things get far worse in our economy. We would likely have to house them in local motels at 2 to a room rather than building portable military-style camps. Much of the physical work performed during the 1930’s has long since been mechanized. Heavy physical labor and daily exercise might be good for many obese Americans but realistically speaking, there are few manufacturing or construction jobs left or in the future with the private sector. Many of today’s younger unemployed have families and they are often the sole parent or provider – so what are we going to do with their children?

TARGETED INTERNSHIPS IN FORESTRY AND LAND MANAGEMENT

A new Targeted Internship Program (TIP) could help from 1 to 2 million people develop new skills in forestry, land management, energy conservation, urban parks, and general environmental planning. However the program should be designed for the total number of private sector and government jobs that will be needed in these areas over the next decade.

The Federal Government, contracting through several regional private-sector management and job placement companies, would directly finance the employment of between 1 and 2 million people who enjoy working outdoors, who are interested in various land management issues, and who want to use the program as a low-paid internship. Many interns might not be assigned to work outdoors in National Parks but rather they would be placed in various Federal and State bureaucracies or with private sector companies for 1 or 2 years until the could be permanently employed outside the program.

If the interns are paid the same as Army Privates (around $17,000 a year) the total program would likely run about $40 to $80 billion over a 2 to 4 year period. It would take about 6 months to ramp up this multi-faceted program provided the private sector were given the principal task of actually allocating interns to governmental entities and private sector employers.

OTHER IDEAS FOR JOB CREATION

Unfortunately this TIP in forestry and land management would help less than 10% of the total unemployed in the U.S. so we must promptly pursue other job-creation ideas to fully address our larger national needs. Our efforts should focus on small business creation and its expansion as this sector has been, is, and will be the bedrock of the U.S. free enterprise system.

This post is not designed to denigrate all types of direct governmental job creation, or public sector employment. But most governmental spending, and the type that has the largest multiplier effect on the entire economy, is through contracts with private sector companies that actually perform the assigned tasks and build the needed infrastructure.

Many of those longer-term infrastructure projects are certainly worth supporting. However they are separate from the urgent need to restart our nation’s stagnant private sector economy, overall consumer confidence, and promptly reduce systemic unemployment in the U.S. Unfortunately, our dysfunctional financial and banking sector will not be of much help to the rest of the economy for many years to come.

Smaller private enterprises are far more capable of quickly responding to public stimulus money than are large corporations and governmental bureaucracies. Jobs will be created as the private sector expands but only if we creatively and forcefully target small business expansion. These other proposals will be addressed in my next TMV post.

Marc Pascal

Conservatives may be more correct than Progressives on this limited debate. Pregnancies and abortions are intrinsic parts of any healthcare debate since they impact the health of a woman. It is also a covered medical procedure for a majority of private health policies provided by employers across the country. However, many women do not make claims for reimbursement or present their insurance cards at the time of an abortion because they do not wish to inform their employers they have elected for such a procedure that generally costs between $300 and $600.

Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision, U.S. law permits an abortion for any reason during the first trimester. After the first 3 months, then states can limit it for certain public policy reasons or prohibit certain procedures altogether. There are not that many physicians and medical facilities that provide these services and overall availability varies greatly between different cities and states. The nation is evenly divided on this issue with a slight majority supporting the procedure anytime the mother’s life is at risk or the pregnancy was the result of rape of incest. The Supreme Court has cited these reasons to permit some later-term abortions. Certain abortion foes do not even sanction those exceptions, nor do they support the sale and distribution of RU-486, the morning-after pill since it causes an immediate menstrual period even though a recently-fertilized egg may or may not be present.

Employer-sponsored healthcare exists in the U.S. because of favorable tax treatment by the Federal Government. The benefits of medical insurance are not considered taxable income to the employee yet the employer may deduct those expenses against gross revenues to arrive at taxable net income. This preferential tax treatment has also been subject to considerable debate during the past 10 months. Therefore Conservatives can reasonably argue that federal funds and tax policy impermissibly support and pay for abortions covered under private employer-sponsored health plans.

If Democrats want to pass any healthcare before the 2010 Midterm elections, they will have to compromise with Democrats and some Republicans who support such broad limitations on public funding for abortion. In fact, those opponents of this elective pregnancy-terminating procedure could logically demand that all abortions not be covered in any public or private health insurance policies and that morning-after pills should also be excluded.

This national policy would not limit a woman’s choice, but merely eliminate public funds from paying for those particular legal private choices, without disrupting the need for federal subsidies so lower-income families can afford private health insurance. The left would argue that poor woman cannot afford these procedures without public assistance, but that misses the entire point. The choice is always there but the lack of money to pay for an elective and legal procedure has never been an adequate challenge against restrictions on how public tax funds are allocated.

It is highly probable that the Senate Bill and the later joint conference committee’s final Bill merging the Senate and House versions will have to deal with these issues. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other abortion foes will likely widen their demands in light of their recent successful amendment to the House Bill. If they are successful at banning all public and private insurance policies from covering abortions and morning-after pills, Democrats might be able to insert an exception if a physician determines and signs a written certification that the life of the mother is at stake, to make it a covered procedure for all public and private insurance. To expand access to on-demand elective abortions for poor women, proponents may have to depend upon private charitable fundraising for such specific financial support.

As a counterbalance to sweeping prohibitions of any insurance coverage for all abortions, both liberals and conservatives should demand greater public and private insurance coverage for comprehensive pregnancy care, childbirth, extensive infant and maternity care during the first 6 months after birth, and full coverage for surgical remedies of various congenital birth defects.

In addition, progressives could advocate more public funds for comprehensive sex education in all public, charter and private schools starting in the 4th or 5th grade, being this is a healthcare education issue. Those schools that refuse to provide such sex instruction could lose all their federal and state public funds.

All condoms and other pregnancy-prevention medicines and devices for both men and women could be fully covered by public and private health insurance plans. A compromise should be sought to greatly reduce the need for any abortions because there would be far fewer unwanted pregnancies. For those pregnancies that proceed to birth, the mother and new child must become societal priorities so we significantly reduce our inexcusably high infant mortality rate. Any “continuum of life” should include adequate healthcare though every stage of life.

Whereas we can all believe different things with respect to when life begins and death occurs in humans, we need to establish firm, secular lines in a pluralistic society with respect to what is legally protected and what the public will support financially. This compromise would maintain a workable separation of church and state within the healthcare reform debate. These provisions might provide an opportunity for the Democratic Party to bring into its fold a number of pro-life Independents, Democrats and Republicans.

Meaningful healthcare and health insurance reform should move forward this year, even if it does not include everything many people desire. Life in general – and specifically politics in Washington – is an endless compromise. The choice of doing nothing will cost taxpayers far more under the current system in excessive payments under Medicare and permitting tens of thousands of people to die or go bankrupt due to a lack of adequate health insurance.

The public option, whether with an opt-out or triggering provision, or immediately effective for a small number of uninsured, may not survive into the final bill sent to the President. He probably has understood this inevitability since January that politics in Washington would not permit its survival. Some of my prior healthcare posts suggested the same or that a public option was not needed for comprehensive healthcare reform. On this policy initiative, these past 10 months of extreme vitriol, hyperbole, anger, debate and horse-trading were probably all for naught.

I would strongly advocate that the final healthcare legislation permits any state to try its own public option or complete single-payer plan free of any legal challenges. There are probably a half-dozen interested states that should be given the opportunity to be national incubators of these ideas. To oppose even this option for experimentation by individual states would be contrary to the very notion of federalism and our protection of individual freedom and liberty to choose all legal options that have been and still are intrinsic to our very system of government.

The many common, non-partisan, and non-debated proposed reforms in both the House and Senate bills should be enacted even if a major compromise must be made with those that oppose abortion since many of them also support expanded coverage to the uninsured and stricter regulations on private healthcare. We must realistically anticipate that we will be monitoring and modifying our national health system over the next decade. Neither the extreme right nor left is justified in complaining about most of these modest and incremental healthcare reforms.

After the passage of healthcare reform by the end of 2009, we will have to promptly turn towards addressing unemployment and all the other massive challenges facing this country.

Marc Pascal

Americans can still purchase shares in the other 3 national railroad companies (NS, CSX & UP) and the 2 up in Canada (CN & CP) that also indirectly operate in the U.S. through subsidiaries. Furthermore, other excellent investment choices are the multinational companies such as Siemens, Alstom, and Bombardier, that build railways, roads, bridges, dams, energy plants and distribution grids, provide infrastructure and railroad rolling stock equipment, plus many other publicly-traded businesses that engaged in transportation consulting or provide rolling stock and rail maintenance services around the world.

Almost every state in the Union and most advanced and developing countries around the globe are putting together massive new railroad spending projects. Only complete ideological imbeciles such as Governor Jindal of Louisiana vetoed pursuing federal funds for new trains that his state legislature, transportation department and overall electorate wanted.

Mr. Buffet always prefers to put his money into companies that have simple business models, own valuable tangible assets and captive customers, generate tons of cash, and consistently show a net profit year after year. Mutual funds that invest in various multinational infrastructure construction and transportation service companies should do quite well for many years to come.

U.S. Freight railroads will do well in this new environment because they move big commodities such as grains and coal, plus many consumer goods in containers. The more energy efficient and customer-sensitive they become, will permit them to challenge trucks to move more time-sensitive business products door to door using captive trucking companies to do the first and last few miles of any journey. However, they will also reap the benefits of new commuter and intercity passenger trains they abandoned back in 1971.

The new bi-partisan emphasis in Washington to expand mass transit, Amtrak, and conventional passenger rail service will all benefit these existing railroads who own over 90% of the tracks and rights-of-way that must be improved through public funds. In order to make passenger train travel more competitive, they simply have to go faster as they do in Europe and Asia. Too many Amtrak trains average only 40 to 60 mph on most of its routes because of tracks built decades ago which were never upgraded to modern travel needs.

In most corridors between our major cities and within large metropolitan areas, this policy will mean improving and adding to existing tracks, installing advanced PTC signaling, and removing all road/rail grade crossings to permit 90 to 120 mph passenger service and concurrently freight train travel between 70 and 80 mph. The U.S. freight railroads will benefit directly from these policies because they will always own the tracks.

After large sums of public money are invested in these private sector owned and controlled infrastructures, commuter and intercity train operators will pay annual rental fees for the right to operate their trains over these improved rail lines to cover maintenance expenses and built-in profits for the owner railroads. Most of these user fees will continue to be paid from the public sector through operating subsidies.

This huge input of public funds into any private company’s major real estate assets, coupled with permanently higher rental charges from new tenants and users, would significantly improve the bottom line significantly. Even if the public purchases and owns these rights-of-way, the private freight railroads would reap huge profits from these asset sales, and they would still be able to profitably serve their freight customers by eliminating the heavy fixed costs associated with maintaining these massive infrastructures. No matter what, these infrastructure assets and the jobs operating passenger and freight trains cannot be outsourced. Talk about a win-win-win-win situation no matter what happens. As I said initially, Mr. Buffet is nobody’s fool.

After decades of complete neglect, the initial amounts allocated to mass transit and intercity passenger rail expansions and new rail starts is a modest $13 billion over the next 5 years. Considering the state of the current U.S. economy, and the strong interest of our wealthy investor class for a solid, long-term, profitable, publicly-subsidized cash cow, many more billions of dollars will be pushed into this sector within the next 5 to 10 years. This is an inevitability that any investor can bet on, and I’m sure Goldman Sachs and other major financial players are securing their positions in these areas as I write this post.

Local and State Governments will be issuing many tax-free bonds to leverage federal funds to make even greater infrastructure investments. Who do you think is going to market these bonds worldwide? Do I hear “Goldman Sachs” in the back of the room? They are not really doing “God’s Work” but simply working for our nation’s oligarchy and demigods – which is far more profitable. Right now, this new investment locomotive is just idling in the station but just wait a few years when it starts to barrel down the tracks at higher and higher speeds.

Congress will find the tens of billions of dollars needed through (1) the upcoming reauthorization of multi-year transportation legislation, (2) establishment of a National Infrastructure Bank, and (3) additional stimulus legislation as unemployment pushes higher and higher over the next 2 years. When it comes to helping Wall Street, the money is always found – even if – dammit – it also helps the American public. These rail lines run through the vast majority of congressional districts and are far more ubiquitous than our Military Bases or other Federal spending projects. Politicians love ribbon-cuttings and there are tons of opportunities here.

The pending environmental legislation may likely eliminate proposed cap and trade plans and collapse in favor of a few simple new regulations, laws, tax credits and incentives, plus fees and excise taxes to encourage conservation and developing renewable energy sources.

Energy and transportation legislation during the next few years will probably include raising oil import fees and the federal gasoline tax over several years from 18.3 cents per gallon to around 40 cents per gallon. All U.S. states and commonwealths will also increase their gasoline taxes over the next few years to maintain transportation spending. Every penny in the federal gas tax generates from $800 million to $1 billion annually for transportation projects. These taxes would provide more money into the federal highway and mass transit trust funds which have been depleted. It would also improve the likelihood that Americans actually change their car purchasing and driving habits permanently. Those changes would improve the American auto industry and create new jobs.

Unfortunately these rail projects will take anywhere from 2 to 10 years to complete, so they are not immediate solutions to current unemployment. However they are needed long-term investments that once the funding is in place, they will be impossible to change as are most military and public spending programs. Besides, when our country’s oligarchy wants something, they always get it from a very accommodating political class.

These infrastructure investments are fully defensible and meritorious because public funding on our transportation, energy and educational infrastructures benefits private business, investors and most every American. Additionally strong bi-partisan Congressional and Administration support merely reflects wide public support across all demographic and geographic areas. Those simpletons who decry such spending are in the distinct minority and will be ignored for the long-term benefit of the country.

This Wall Street Investor Class policy will have several major ancillary nationwide benefits for the vast majority of Americans.
(1) It will provide new jobs in construction, and ongoing maintenance and operations for millions of Americans.
(2) It will reduce our nation’s carbon footprint and reduce air pollution.
(3) Over the next 2 decades, it will stop suburban sprawl in favor of infilling the unused urban lands within our central cities.
(4) It will permit our airlines to concentrate on more profitable long-distance and international routes and encourage joint interchange with medium-distance rail lines to operate more efficiently.
(5) The increase in overall urban density will improve opportunities for small, local businesses that require a critical mass of people close by to succeed.
(6) It will noticeably reduce highway congestion nationwide by removing trucks and cars in favor of transporting more people and goods by rail.
(7) It will provide a large new and sustainable investment option that will not be another bubble but instead match the rail investments being made by all our global economic competitors.

So let’s all board this new investment train now waiting in the station. Mr. Buffet is already waving to us from inside a first class business compartment. When Wall Street and Main Street can both profit from an industry’s long-term success, individuals should be wise to re-align their personal investments accordingly.

Marc Pascal in Phoenix, AZ

Tomorrow is Veterans Day.

During the past few days I have been writing about the sacrifices made by and heroism exhibited by our veterans—both living and departed.

We often forget, however, that many of the sacrifices made, heroism and patriotism displayed and just plain honorable service to our country is by men and women who at one time were not even permitted to legally serve, and who today can serve their country as long as they “don’t tell.”

I am talking about the more than 12,000 veterans who have been discharged since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was implemented, because they are gay or lesbian.

I am talking about the close to 125,000 veterans who have been discharged since World War II, simply because they are gay or lesbian.

I am talking about the estimated one million veterans in the United States who are gay or lesbian.

I am talking about men and women who have received every military award and decoration from the Purple Heart to the Air Medal for Heroism.

I am talking about Marine Sgt. Eric Alva, who stepped on a landmine the first day of Operation Iraqi Freedom and lost his right leg, broke his left leg and permanently damaged his right arm.

As the Iraq war’s first casualty, he received the Purple Heart along with personal visits from President and Mrs. Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld. Alva happens to be gay.

I am talking about Purple Heart recipient John McNeill, a World War II veteran who served in combat in the Third Army under General Patton, was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and spent six months as a Prisoner of War. McNeill happens to be gay.

I am talking about Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, an 18-year Air Force veteran who flew a total of 88 combat missions over Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq as an F-15 fighter pilot and who received eight Air Medals, one for heroism. Fehrenbach happens to be gay.

I am talking about our Veteran Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen who happen to be gay.

The following is for them on this Veterans Day:

The men and women in our armed forces unselfishly sacrifice for our freedom, our rights and our way of life.

President Obama made a similar campaign promise. At a recent human rights event, he renewed his pledge. It is now time, because of American realities, to “uncompromise.”

Fourteen were killed at Fort Hood, not thirteen as reported all week long. Which official is correcting the death toll? I am. On the authority of being a mother who is multi-paragravida, meaning one who has given birth more than once, and on the authority of being a grandmother of five souls, I can, I think, count straight about this particular tragedy.

Francheska Velez was a 21-year-old woman, shot to death by Major Nidal Hssan at Fort Hood Army Base. Thirteen others were slain also.

Nine weeks into her pregnancy, Army Private Velez had just called her cousin in Chicago on Thursday to say how excited she was about the child growing inside her. By night, she and her child were both dead, bringing the death toll at Fort Hood to 14 total. Not 13.

It cannot be that media reportage follows a legalistic mean wherein a fetus is not considered a real person … as per damages in a trial, say of manslaughter, wherein a tiny dead child represents no lost income, or other actionable losses, for instance. Except for its very life.

It cannot be, can it, that such cruel death to mother and child are not reported accurately because someone fears calling a child a child, would lead to… what? Laws that hold life of a tiny child as real real life. That hold the life of a mother endangered in any way, as a real real life too?

All I know is that Cheka as her friends called Francheska, was– despite the ubiquitous ’stern’ look in her formal military photo– a darling, smiling woman who like many of our young, took her work in the military seriously and had done a tour in Afghanistan, and was retuning home to Chicago to have her child.

Her large family was excited about the new little life growing in their daughter, cousin, niece, granddaughter, and friend, for Cheka was a nurturing woman who loved nature, wrote poetry and did all the things all our young do, including making love. And thus, came the tiny child, a boy child, a son, a soon to be first-born precious child.

And then the death man came for the oh so young Cheka and her oh so young son. And they counted Cheka among the dead, but no one counted her tiny son among the dead.

Except for those of us who do, remembering the darkening of the bright gifts this child was bringing.

We could make a sign in soft ground for this tiny child and all the tiny children who tried to come but could not make it, that in the least, the very least of what is humane, that all the tiny children be counted in full honesty and reverence.

CODA
This is a picture of a tiny nine-week old child like Cheka’s son who also was nine weeks old and with all toes and fingers, nose and eyes, legs and arms, heart beating.

…Picking up where Kathy left off this morning, The Guardian questions this Murdoch quote from that Sky News Australia interview:

“We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story – but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form.”

The 78-year-old mogul’s assertion, however, is not actually correct: users who click through to screened WSJ.com articles from Google searches are usually offered the full text of the story without any subscription block. It is only users who find their way to the story through the Wall Street Journal’s website who are told they must subscribe before they can read further.

The man can be forgiven, I suppose, for misspeaking, but the twitter chatter has it that he just doesn’t understand how the WSJ handles Google News. For it, and the cockamamie cluelessness of his plan, he’s being widely ridiculed on the internets.

But, then, Murdoch must be used to that by now. From Michael Wolff — he literally wrote the book on Murdoch, you’ll remember — in this month’s Vanity Fair:

It is difficult not to sound catty when discussing News Corporation’s adventures with the Internet. But the litany of its failures—even more extreme than those of most other media companies that have struggled unsuccessfully online—is, I think, relevant to understanding exactly what Murdoch might really be trying to do.

From the failure of Delphi, one of the first public-access Internet providers, in 1993, to iGuide, the precursor to Yahoo and Google, which closed within months of its launch, to his son James’s aborted Internet-investing spree in the late 90s, to the great promise of MySpace, which was shortly flattened by Facebook, to the second launch of Pagesix.com, which Murdoch closed this year, after four months of operation, Murdoch’s Internet starts and stops have engendered at News Corp., in the description of Peter Bale, who once ran the Web site of The Times of London and now runs MSN in the U.K., a relative “fear or abhorrence of technology.”

Wolff goes on to recount the story of the time the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, visited Murdoch and his wife, Wendi, at their ranch in Carmel, California.

“You know, Rupert,” Wendi said, “he’s always asking questions.”

“But what,” I prodded, “did he exactly ask?”

“He asked,” she said, hesitating only a beat before cracking herself up, “‘Why don’t you read newspapers?’”

For its part, Google has clarified (again) that it will not index publishers against their wishes. ReadWriteWeb has a more nuanced take on the Sky News interview, calling it “deeply fascinating.” Think Progress headlines, Murdoch: Glenn Beck Was ‘Right’ To Say Obama Is ‘A Racist’ With ‘A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People,’ for this exchange:

SPEERS: The Glenn Beck, who you mentioned, has called Barack Obama a racist and he helped organize a protest against him. Others on Fox have likened him to Stalin. Is that defensible?

MURDOCH: No, no, no, not Stalin, I don’t think. I don’t know who that, not one of our people. On the racist thing, that caused a grilling. But he did make a very racist comment. Ahhh…about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And um, that was something which perhaps shouldn’t have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right.

Poor Rupert. He’s a real 20th century fellow. Meanwhile, his NYPost — which never made him any money anyway — has suffered circulation losses of nearly 30% in the past 2.5 years. And the announcement of a New York bureau for the WSJ has some at the Post on edge.

The U.S. Constitution is a remarkably short document that essentially established a power-sharing arrangement and it specified the formal process of how to pass laws. It protected some basic human freedoms, but its flexibility and strengths over the past two centuries are a result of simple yet open language that left most all policy choices to future generations of Americans. It was more interested in the process of governing, not dictating the final results.

California, by far the largest U.S. state in population and in global economic and cultural power, is now at an important juncture in its history. Because it also is a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the nation, everyone in the U.S. and many other countries are concerned about its current and future decisions.

Over the past 2 decades, California has degenerated into a completely dysfunctional state unable to organize its governmental structure at all levels. It cannot properly administer and balance multiple state programs and taxes; adequately encourage private investment or educate its resident population; public finances are not corresponding with public policy needs and desires; and angry, vitriolic, and extremely narcissistic self-interest groups dominate its political life at all levels. Furthermore, its huge economy is quickly losing its global competitiveness, resulting in massive unemployment, and few if any good ideas on how to turn itself around economically or politically. The Dream has degenerated into a surreal nightmare with both political parties having arrived and stopped at their extreme ideological apotheoses.

There now is a laughable proposal to appoint 435 Delegates to modify the existing or write a new State Constitution. The current document is already one of longest, most convoluted and unworkable governing messes on the face of the earth. Today, any distinct minority can control the entire political and budget process in Sacramento. The State’s Constitution can be changed and new laws passed by mere majority consent of the electorate that bothers to vote in any particular state-wide election. Currently raising any particular tax requires a super majority vote in both houses of the State Legislature yet only a simple majority of actual voters can lower taxes or worse yet require specific spending policies that become unfunded mandates.

The first massive problem comes with having 435 Delegates convening in a perpetual 24/7 Media circus. The 1787 Convention in Philadelphia was a strictly private affair attended by probably some of the greatest living minds in North America at the time. The California assemblage might possess many great minds but there are simply too many delegates to produce any worthwhile document within any reasonable time period. Are there really 435 distinct groups in the State that each must get a representative?

The U.S. Constitution was principally drafted by a handful of influential delegates out of the total of 55 wealthy educated white men. Despite all the advanced technological gadgets available today for communicating and producing legal documents, the California convention will naturally degenerate into complete chaos within a few weeks. Perhaps the drafting process could be outsourced to Indian lawyers who already live under the world’s longest constitution.

After the first 6 months of endless debate, arguing and bickering over seating arrangements, hotel rooms, and text-messaging limitations, additional weeks will be lost debating whether Veganism, Zoroastrianism, and Scientology should be considered principle state religions. Even the god-damn daily luncheon choices would be hotly debated. By 2020, Californians will still be waiting for something to be produced upon which the electorate can vote. In addition, are these delegates going to be paid with state IOU’s or by their various special interest employers?

At this juncture, California does not need a plethora of representatives from all the public employee unions, San Francisco bicycle commuters, Los Angeles community organizers, bi-racial and bi-sexual Mormons and Catholics, and a small army of other narrow-minded people and organizations that 435 job openings would create. Some white suburban men might have to be removed to make room for Latina gang members to ensure a more inclusive convention.

The state does not have the luxury of time to listen to endless and trivial testimony from thousands of “concerned citizens” and engage in endless internal debates over rules of procedure with respect to the adoption of punctuation mark in all initial drafts. Knowing California, there could be multiple lawsuits filed and years of litigation surrounding the final appointed and elected choices of the 435 delegates, and additional demands the total group be expanded to a more representative 5,225 delegates though some illegal immigrants would have to be appointed as alternate delegates pending the results of the 2010 Census.

There might have to be a constitutional option for total succession from the U.S. and merger with Baja California in Mexico. That might require a further mandated expansion of and funding increase to the High Speed Rail Authority for its perpetual planning. The California Constitutional Convention would amplify ten-fold all the current problems the state faces and would sadly result in nothing being accomplished.

A small group of no more than three dozen people should assemble together in a secluded, secret conclave to write a new California Constitution within 6 months. There are enough top minds in academia, private business, and a few non-profit organizations to assemble an outstanding group of people to write a new State Constitution for voter approval. The potential delegates could start by emailing each other privately and come up with their final working group by the end of 2009. Considering the alternative, a wholly self-organized group would be far superior to any proposed large group of appointed and elected representatives.

A minority of the delegates should be law professors from various California Universities and the rest be top minds from others in academia and the private sector known for their intellects, creativity, independence, and long-term outlooks despite any partisan leanings. Most elected politicians and appointed bureaucrats should not be included as delegates as they are part of the status-quo that is significantly responsible for this massive mess. For those large egos left out of the convention, they should be able to privately email or mail via USPS (but not twitter) their ideas to a designated administrative secretary for the Convention. This small group should go about its work in privacy and present a fait accompli for public scrutiny by May 2010.

What California needs is a short, concise, flexible, and rational organizational structure and workable, efficient and clear public process to pass all types of laws and policies for the 21st Century. It must specify a formal hierarchy for “who makes the final decision” and decide whether binding state-wide legal consent is achieved by simple or super majorities. All public officials with broad legal and administrative powers should be subject to periodic voter approval.

The final document does not need to address every current financial, cultural, social, or microeconomic issue conceivable or try to divine all future problems for correction today. It should not designate preferred economic or environmental policies for all perpetuity. It should use various existing technologies to enhance democracy by an informed electorate, and permit new ones to be incorporated into the democratic process. However, it should establish a few important and fixed demarcations between individual liberties and governmental power.

The new Constitutional structure should permit all existing governmental programs and policies, along with the entire California Legal Code and its accompanying administrative rules and regulations to be fully reviewed, updated or replaced by new policies and procedures, if approved by the same stipulated majorities required for all future legal changes. It can no longer permit minorities or special interests to hold the entire state hostage to any rigid ideological or intransigent financial demands. The state cannot afford to grandfather and pay forward most of its public employee salary, pension, and benefit contracts in perpetuity.

The Constitution should not specify any inflexible spending programs or limitations on any types of taxes. However the political process should permit those results only by super majorities of both the elected State Government and general public. It should not try to delineate all types of individual and group rights, many of which are also best left to the political process. Every public or private outrage or implied insult should not constitute a legally-defined hate crime.

In the event that the 30 or so delegates are at irreconcilable odds on specific points of political and constitutional philosophy, they should draft two alternative sections with regards to those specific impasses. Then those alternatives would be additional sub-choices for the California electorate within the approval process of the overall document.

The new State Constitution should initially be approved, and any future changes to it, by a super-majority vote of 60% of all registered voters. If a proposed new State Constitution and the future of all Californians do not elicit a sufficient voter interest and total turnout, then nothing should be accomplished and the state should be permitted to continue its slide into a man-made perpetual purgatory. For all of its current governmental, economic and social problems, all registered California voters must share in the ultimate responsibility for their collective future.

Submitted by Marc Pascal. I have lived in Phoenix, AZ for the past three and an half years, after having spent most of my life in Ohio and Illinois, and living abroad several times in Europe. I have visited California many times from 1990 to the present day on business or for vacations. I am deeply concerned about that state’s future and the future of the entire United States. We do not have the luxury of endless debate and partisanship completely removed from reality, when global events are leaving us all far behind. Given a few months of time and a reasonable financial stipend, I could draft a sane, concise, forward-looking, and non-partisan document all by myself. I can be reached by email at avenir99pm@yahoo.com.