“We will not play by two sets of rules,” say his managers, announcing a superPAC to offset Republican money to defeat the President, despite his denunciation of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that unleashed tons of hard-to-identify funds for negative ads.

As Mitt (“Corporations are people”) Romney edges closer to the GOP nomination, an Obama official explains the reversal: “We’ve been watching…the Republican primary process, the most recent filing deadline and the Koch brothers conference and what’s been coming out of that: a half billion dollars to defeat the president.”

If corporations are indeed people, they are the most greedy, selfish and ruthless in the society. During years of sitting on boards of directors, I was always astonished by what happened to individuals (including myself) when they sat around a corporate table.

Institutional roles acted simultaneously as a narcotic that suppressed conscience and a stimulant to bring out every bit of low cunning to profit the organization. I have seen religious leaders, academics and business statesmen propose solutions to problems that would make a carnival pitchman blush.

If corporations bear any resemblance to individual human beings, they are people who have been lobotomized of all social instincts except their need to protect themselves, profit and grow.

MORE.

The Nazi legacy is an understandably heavy burden for Germany, even today. This leaves Germans emotionally vulnerable to comparisons to their 20th century forebears. And with the country exercising ever-more influence over its European Union allies, cutting remarks that include such comparisons are blossoming like mushrooms after a spring rain. So how to deal with it? For Germany’s Die Zeit, Bernd Ulrich writes that in order to operate as the ‘U.S. of Europe,’ Germans will have to grit their teeth until this particular phase of European history passes.

For Germany’s Die Zeit, Bernd Ulrich writes in small part:

It doesn’t take much to figure out why so many Nazi comparisons are being made right now: For the first time since 1945, Germany is stepping up with all its power, not because it wants to, but because the European debt crisis has made the economically-strongest economy into the most politically powerful. Germany is now profoundly intervening in the domestic affairs of others.

The country is gradually taking on the role in Europe that the U.S. has long played on the global level: As the country that used and occasionally abused its power, was to blame for everything, was supposed to save everyone, and had to endure insults for how it went about doing it. What evil hasn’t been imputed to the Americans? The CIA was behind every evil, and Americans were constantly being accused of imperialism.

But there was one thing the Americans could never be accused of: sending six million Jews to their deaths and plunging half the world into war. In the case of Germany, ranting against the leading power that is at once quite understandable, human and often justified, very often takes on an entirely different pallor, which serves to put an end to any discussion or serious exchange.

For quite a while, Germany’s new role will continue to result in a proliferation of Nazi comparisons. Like it or not, we will have to bear it and wait until it passes. However, in such stoicism there is also a serious problem. That has to do with the German historical paradox, which may be described as follows: The only way Germans can prevent their past from repeating itself is by never being absolutely sure that it won’t.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Wireless devices today are more sophisticated than ever before. And because of that, the costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased and is reflected in our new upgrade fee. This fee isn’t unique to AT&T and this is the first time we’re changing it in nearly 10 years.

What, exactly, does AT&T have to do when a customer upgrades her phone? I don’t know, because I’ve never gone through AT&T to get an upgrade. When I “upgraded” from a Blackjack to an Apple iPhone 3GS, I did so at the Apple Store. Ditto when I upgraded to an iPhone4. And I’ll get my iPhone5 at an Apple Store, too.

But AT&T is our provider. Does that mean that I have to pay this $36 even though Apple is doing the work, whatever work is entailed — work that I could have done myself had I had Apple send the phone to my house.

It’s bad enough that we are tied into a two-year agreement for service, an agreement that ostensibly subsidizes the cost of phone but that does not drop in price after the two-year “subsidy” is over. Nor is there a lower contract price for a phone that has been paid for — you know, if you buy a used one or share a used one with a friend.

I suppose current customers are being asked to cough up more dough to pay for AT&T’s disastrous $6.2 billion bill associated with its ill-advised attempt to buy T-Mobile as well as pension accounting (ie, paper loss). Verizon also posted “a $2 billion loss due to a change in its pension accounting.”

AT&T revenue for the fourth quarter, of course, was up 4 percent: from $31.4 billion last year to $32.5 billion this year.

cNet analysis of AT&T’s fourth quarter earnings explains why AT&T wants more money when customers upgrade. For both AT&T and Verizon:

… the iPhone made up more than half of the carriers’ smartphone activations. Without the device, they would have faced a continued slowdown in its postpaid subscriber growth.

There is nothing from mainstream media — print or electronic — about this story as of this writing.

“The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1983 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public in acts of mass murder. Between 1986 and 1997, more than forty people were gunned down by spree killers in at least twenty incidents of workplace rage.”

Now the phrase has gone beyond referring to postal workers. Kids who murder their teachers and fellow students? Going postal. On a recent radio talk show aired on XM a caller referred to Josh Powell’s unspeakable evil act of blowing up his house, killing himself and his two young sons (who he chopped with hatchets after saying “I have a surprise for you” as they entered the door and a social worker was locked out) as “going postal.”

But it does refer to the 80s when murder seemed to undergo a shift: yes, there been assassinations, murders, mass murderers and serial killers from time to time, and state sanctioned mass murder in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union — but this seemed to be the beginning of the lash-out workplace mass murders. Each murder got tons of publicity and — to use the accurate cliche — gave other rage-filled or unstable potential killers ideas on how they, too, could get back at their perceived enemies and the world by creating a big body count.

“Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” is a masterful documentary examining not just the string of postal mass murders starting with one of the first in Edmond, Oklahoma on August 20, 1986 when 14 employees were shot and killed at the post office by postman Patrick Sherrill, who took his own life with a shot to the forehead. It also puts it in a larger context.

Context: most of the people involved had no criminal records. Context: some of those who became killers had faced what some co-workers later insisted was bullying, targeting, harassment and abuses by management. “Murder By Proxy” at no time condones the killers, but it seeks to find the “why” underneath the “how shocking.”

Though superb use of archival and some rarely seen footage, top rate editing, and expert interviews, “Murder by Proxy” traces how these killings that seemed to inspire later mass killings in other areas of American life seemingly reflected a major shift in the relationship between individuals and society as well a between workers, management and government. These changes are political and economic: the film traces some of the shift to the Ronald Reagan era, with Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers, which many experts believe ushered in a decline in labor union power and accentuated management workplace power.

But “Murder By Proxy” is not a partisan political film.

It answers some of the questions of what led up to someone walking into a post office and tossing aside all standards of humanity and empathy would wipe out not just people the killer had clashed with but virtually anyone nearby who breathed. It’s like the workplace became one big, shooting gallery video game rage-filled employees used to vent.

“”Murder by Proxy” answers the question: what can bring a person who seems totally normal to the point of becoming a mass murderer? But, even more importantly, some interviews explore efforts to try and rectify at least part of the problem.

PERSONAL NOTE: I know the impact of this kind of tragedy a too well. On July 18, 1984, James Huberty, an unemployed security guard and survivalist, walked into a high traffic McDonald’s restaurant on San Ysidro Boulevard in the San Ysidro section of San Diego, California and opened fire. His shootings resulted in 22 deaths (including his own via police sniper). He snuffed out the lives of innocent men, women and children (including a boy outside riding his bike). Nineteen others were injured. I was interviewing the Consul General of Mexico in downtown San Diego in my job as staff reporter on the San Diego Union when I got the page (before cell phones) from the city desk.

Then San Diego Union City Editor Marsha McQuern (one of the very best journalists and editors I worked with in my career) called in everyone and their mothers to report and edit this major story (I did some reporting and was drafted to work on the desk). And here is what stays with me forever:

“Murder by Proxy” communicates the grief and tragedies such as this. These aren’t just numbers. These are lives. And when each life is obliterated, several linked lives are changed forever. It was wrenching enough covering “The San Ysidro Massacre.” But it was not much better a year later when the paper assigned yours truly and other reporters to go back and talk to victim’s relatives and see how they were doing. The answer? Not well at all. Part of their lives were brutally murdered as well the same day Huberty butchered the men, women and children in the McDonald’s (which McDonald’s Corporation quickly tore down, donated the land and rebuilt up the street — fearing a copy cat massacre one day).

In the case of Huberty, books have been written to try and find out the why (unemployed, couldn’t get an appointment at a mental health center) he did what he did.

“Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” provides a good explanation of why some things that happened provided a trigger for tragic postal massacres that happened — and what legislators can do about it. But politics nixes needed solutions.

Writer-Director Emil Chiaberi’s “Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal” is required viewing as a vital history of the chain of massacres that inspired other massacres in non-postal areas of American life, a chronicle of the conditions that fostered some of the workplace conditions that seemingly set off employees, and a film that explores ways to try and change some of conditions that could contribute to workplace massacres.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

“Murder By Proxy: How America Went Postal” will be opening in select cities around the United States — but you can also buy a DVD copy of it by going to this website. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Earlier this week, a live online video chat featured President Obama and Jennifer Weddel, the wife of an unemployed engineer whose husband has been out of a job for three years. Weddel asked the president: “Why does the government continue to extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my [engineer] husband with no job?”

Caught off guard, Obama tried to deflect Weddel’s argument by inquiring what type of engineer her husband is. When Weddel replied “semiconductor,” Obama resorted to elusive double talk before promising to review his case further. To add to Obama’s embarrassment, Wedell is unemployed in Texas, a tech industry hub.

The problem that the president unexpectedly faced is that semiconductor engineers are in one of the categories which IT industry executives have been telling Congress can’t be found in the United States. And the White House, apparently without bothering to check the facts, has acted on industry misinformation. From the El Paso border this summer to the United States Capitol in January where he gave the State of the Union address and at every stop in between, Obama has aggressively called for increasing the 65,000 H-1B visas issued annually.

The Weddel-Obama dust up set off a flurry of Internet postings and analysis among organizations that have insisted for years that no shortage of American engineers or any other classification of worker exists. After all, when there are so many million unemployed Americans, how can there be shortages?

Indeed, the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-partisan Washington, D.C.-based research organization that favors less immigration, found that 1.8 million Americans under age 66 have engineering degrees but not an engineering job.

The study, “Is President Obama Right about Engineers?” is based on data collected by the Census Bureau from the American Community Survey. Dr. Steven Camarota, its author, found the following: 1) 101,000 U.S. engineers looking for a job can’t find any type of work at all; 2) 244,000 engineers are unemployed and have stopped looking for work and 3) 1.5 million engineers have jobs but don’t work as engineers.

In his numerous supportive speeches about lifting the visa cap, Obama has repeatedly referred to the foreign-born workers he wants to bring to the United States as “highly skilled.” But Dr. Camarota’s research revealed that in 2010 there were 25,000 unemployed Americans with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or Ph.D. degree and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working but not as engineers.

Another important consideration: in the two decades since its inception, is that the H-1B visa has been used for non-engineering fields like teaching, pharmacy and even football coaching as happened a few years ago at Tennessee’s Austin Peay University. No job is safe.

Today’s lesson is that every story has two sides. The administration has listened closely to the business elites who want more visas. Now, the hour has come for the White House to pay equal attention to unemployed Americans’ pleas.

Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. His columns about immigration and other social issues have been syndicated since 1986. Contact him at joeguzzardi@capsweb.org. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

Is it possible that American citizens, now under arrest in Cairo, were involved with a plot to partition Egypt into four smaller states? According to columnist Muhammad Dunia of Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram, maps that were discovered during a raid on the Cairo offices of the U.S.-based International Republican Institute prove that at least some of the foreign NGOs operating in Egypt are actively involved with the scheme, which Dunia calls a long-term ‘American-Zionist’ project.

For Al-Ahram, columnist Muhammad Dunia starts off this way:

Over the past few days, some Western media have begun to revisit the old idea of a plan to partition Egypt based on the American-Zionist project to divide the country into four states.

The first would be in the Sinai, east of the Euphrates River delta, under Jewish influence. The second, with Alexandria as its capital and extending South to Asyut, would be Christian. The third would be in the Nubia region, and the fourth would be a Berber state with Cairo as its capital.

Up to now, some thought the ravings about this suspicious plot were for domestic political consumption only. But during the investigation into illegal funding of non-governmental organizations by Egyptian justice, maps were found inside an American non-governmental organization [the International Republican Institute] laying out plans to partition the country.

The subject wasn’t really a secret, as a scheme to divide Egypt into an Islamic State in the North and a Christian one in the South was leaked on the Internet not long ago. This is particularly dangerous because some international media have exploited the protests at the Maspiro TV station [by Coptic Christians - 27 were killed]. Certain analysts and researchers of Middle East affairs sought to revive the notion by posting partition maps on the Web. This demonstrates both foreign and domestic hands behind what is happening now in Egypt.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR ARABIC AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

UPDATE:

A wave of unusually severe cold is gripping Europe. But the weather is not the only thing that is chilling over there. Under the headline “A Chilling Verdict in Spain,” the New York Times reports that “The enemies of Judge Baltasar Garzón have finally gotten their way” as Spain’s Supreme Court has found Judge Garzón guilty of misapplying the country’s wiretap law and suspended him from the courts for 11 years.

The 7-0 ruling flowed out of a 2008 corruption case in which the judge ordered wiretaps of conversations between lawyers and their clients.

According to the Times:

Judge Garzón was not alone in ordering those wiretaps, but he alone was prosecuted, even while the public prosecutor argued that there were no grounds for a criminal proceeding. Convicting a jurist over a court ruling is an appalling attack on judicial independence. Two other cases against him are pending — one involving his inquiry into mass killings during the civil war and the Franco dictatorship, and another concerning allegations of conflict of interest in a tax fraud case.

Judge Garzón is far from perfect, but the decision by the Spanish Supreme Court to remove him from the bench is enormously damaging to the prospects of fair and impartial justice. What investigating magistrate would not now hesitate before pursuing politically sensitive cases? Will the Franco-era crimes that scarred Spain for two generations remain forever uninvestigated?

Apparently, Judge Garzón cannot appeal this decision in the Spanish court system, but he could challenge it in Spain’s Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Mr. Garzón has already accepted a consulting position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Perhaps he can continue his pursuit of justice from there.

Read more here.

====

Back in March 2009, a Spanish court took the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The case was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by none other than Judge Baltasar Garzón, Europe’s best-known counter-terrorism magistrate, renowned for his determination and his abilities to bring suspects to justice, no matter how powerful or where they may be—and especially for terrorism and human rights abuses.

His targets have included the al-Qaeda 9/11 and Madrid bombings perpetrators, the infamous Chilean General Pinochet, ETA and related Basque terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organizations operating in the Maghreb region, including Spanish enclaves in Morocco, Argentine ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo who was convicted of crimes against humanity and others.

I don’t know where the case against Bush administration officials stands right now and, for the sake of letting bygones be bygones, I will not pursue that at the moment — especially since mine would be the proverbial voice in the wilderness.

However, the present government in Spain, by no means a voice in the wilderness, apparently does believe in letting bygones be bygones or, as they say in Spain “lo pasado, pasado está” as, according to the New York Times:

… Judge Garzón is now himself under legal attack for confronting Spain’s own dark history. He is on trial this week before the Spanish Supreme Court for daring to investigate crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and the nearly four-decade dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. The case against him is fueled by domestic political vendettas rather than substantive legal arguments and it could dramatically set back international efforts to hold human-rights violators accountable for their crimes.

The case stems from Judge Garzón’s edict, in October 2008, ordering the exhumation of 19 mass graves and charging Franco and his accomplices posthumously with the murder and disappearance of more than 114,000 people.

The edict, however, was challenged by Spain’s chief prosecutor, Javier Zaragoza, and ruled against by an appellate court — “and the case appeared to be resolved. But several months after the ruling, two tiny far-right groups sued Judge Garzón for ‘prevarication’ — knowingly overstepping his authority — in violating the amnesty law.”

The Times continues:

Criminally charging judges for prevarication is extremely rare in Spain, and a conviction would disbar Judge Garzón for 20 years — effectively ending his career. The Supreme Court’s zeal to try him has little legal basis; rather, it reflects Spanish elites’ widespread unease with applying international legal principles to Spain’s conflicted history and a deep-seated animosity toward Judge Garzón that is as much personal as political.

The prosecution of Judge Garzón is having a “chilling effect” on other international efforts to hold human-rights violators accountable, and a conviction would be interpreted as an even stronger warning sign, the Times says, and “[M]ore disturbingly, due to Judge Garzón’s legal woes, the case brought by Franco’s victims and their families is now languishing. (The only exception is in Argentina, where a prominent human-rights lawyer, using universal jurisdiction, recently filed suit charging Franco with crimes against humanity.)”

The Times concludes:

In his 2005 memoir, Judge Garzón wrote, “A system built on the corpses of those who are still awaiting justice so they can rest in peace is an illegitimate system and one that is condemned to eventually suffer the same fate.”

It would send a tragic and telling message to those victims — and others like them around the world — if the one person convicted for Franco’s crimes is the judge who dared to investigate them.

There are some bygones that just cannot be forgotten or swept under the rug of political expedience. Lo pasado, no siempre está pasado.

Read more of the Times’ article here

Image: Shutterstock.com

• 46 percent of American children enter kindergarten lacking the basic language skills they need to learn to read
• 61 percent of low-income children have no children’s books in their homes

The verbs convey urgency (currency is an intentional affect, as the factoids are used for fundraising, establishing organizational mandates) and imply that the data are current. But are the data points true, for any definition of “truth”?

Oh. And a reminder. When a “factoid” hits all of your emotional buttons, try to engage your mental brakes before hitting RT, Like, Share or Forward. If it seems too good or too bad to be true, chances are, it’s not.

No Children’s Books?

Check it yourself. Whether using Google (2.8 million) or Bing (10.1 million), the search string <61 percent low-income no children’s books> yields millions of results. Conclusion: it’s a widely cited figure by sites such as BooksForAmerica, BookSpring, JumpStart,  ReachOutAndRead and the Wauconda Area Library as well as news stories.

Here’s one manifestation:

61 percent of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children. Families living in poverty must use their financial resources to pay for food and shelter, not books. Reading Literacy in the United States

And another:

In fact, 61 percent of low-income families have no age-appropriate books at all in their homes for their children. Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings from the IEA Reading Literacy Study. 

Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings From The IEA Literacy Study (NCES 96-258), was published in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Education. It is based on data from (wait for it) 20+years ago. The Department of Education report focuses on the U.S. data.

I searched for key words:

• 61 percent : AWOL
• Low-income: AWOL
• Books: AWOL

So what do you think? How could the “fact” that jerked my chain have been pulled from this research report?

Note: in the 2006 study (pdf, 44 MB), U.S. fourth graders dropped from #2 to #18 in reading achievement score. So yeah, we seem to have a problem, but let’s make arguments for change based on solid data, shall we?

Poorly Prepared At Age Five?

In a 2011 press release (pdf) for her iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad mobile gaming application, Footsteps2Brilliance, founder Ilene Rosenthal says:

I created this company after reading a statistic that 46 percent of U.S. children enter kindergarten at risk of failure because they lack essential oral language and literacy skills.

Hmmm. We know from the 1996 report that income and education are contributors to literacy. How many low-income, no-high-school-diploma families have an iPhone, iPodTouch or iPad for their 4 year old? Conversely, how many high-income, college graduate familes have one?

But I digress. Rosenthal provides no source for her factoid (either in the press release or in the webinar that sent me down this rabbit hole).

Here’s what I found:

In a Missouri school district study, 46 percent of 191 kindergarten teachers said that half or more kids in their class had trouble following directions. (MyOptimumHealth – no source)

In a 1995 survey of 3,500 kindergarten teachers from across the country, many reported that large proportions of their students lacked important school readiness skills. For example, 46 percent of the kindergarten teachers reported that at least half the students in their classes had difficulty following directions, 36 percent reported that at least half of their class lacked academic skills they needed, and 34 percent reported that at least half of their class had difficulty working independently. (National Institute for Early Education, pdf, cited Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Pianta, R. C., & Cox, M. J. (2000). Teachers’ judgments of problems in the transition to kindergarten. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15 (2), 147–166.)

Here’s a little more from that referenced study (emphasis added):

Teachers [perceived] that 16% of children had difficult entries into kindergarten… Rates of perceived problems were related to school minority composition; district poverty level; and, for certain behaviors, school metropolitan status… Teachers’ ethnicity showed a significant relation to their rates of reported problems.

Hitting a digital brick wall, I changed my search query from <46 percent kindergarten lacking skills> to <enter kindergarten lacking skills>.

Hit number one, and back we go to Jumpstart’s report. Note, Jumpstart exists to solve the “early education crisis” so we know that they are biased towards presenting a problem (emphasis added):

According to a national longitudinal analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), economically disadvantaged children may know only one or two letters of the alphabet when entering kindergarten, while children in the middle class will know all 26. Only half of the children from low-income families can write their own name, while more than 75 percent of children from higher income families can do so. Researchers also estimate that before ever entering kindergarten, cognitive scores for children of low-income families are likely to average 60 percent lower than those in the highest socioeconomic groups, something that remains true through high school. (Jumpstart, pdf, cited Lee, V. E. & Burkam, D. T. (2002). Inequality at the starting gate: Social background differences in achievement as children begin school. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.)

The factoid that Rosenthal uses does not seem to exist, but Jumpstart makes an argument that an unknown number of “economically disadvantaged” children are entering the educational system “behind” more affluent peers. Let me point you to the U.S. Department of Education report (longer analysis at WiredPen) which reminds us that household economics may be a proxy for household educational level.

And let me remind you, gentle reader, that correlation is not causation.

I did find references to one-in-three children entering kindergarten (as well as “nearly half”) lacking necessary early reading skills, but alas, no sources given. One presentation credits (pdf) the 1-in-3 datapoint to unnamed research from 1985. One 1998 report (pdf) quotes then-Gov. Zell Miller (R-GA).

A report from UCLA (pdf) asserts (emphasis added) that “[u]p to one-third of American children enter kindergarten lacking at least some of the skills needed for a successful learning experience.” Their source, a 1998 book: Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

I’m going to walk out on a limb and suggest that this 1998 book (or maybe the 2007 report) is the initial source for the cannot-be-verified <one-in-three kids enter kindergarten lack reading skills> meme (3.3 million returns on Google).

What we do know is that parental education is correlated with childhood literacy (emphasis added):

Irrespective of whether we are looking at father’s or mother’s education, students whose parents have not graduated from high school have reading comprehension scores well below the U.S. average. Students whose parents have completed college have reading scores above the national average. (Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings From The IEA Literacy Study (NCES 96-258, p 45)

Verdict: 2-for-2 False

I can hear you thinking (laughing):

OMG! Someone is wrong on the Internet!

That’s not my point. It’s not being wrong on “the Internet” that sets my teeth on edge.

It is the use of sloppy/inaccurate/misleading data to craft persuasive messages.

It’s wrong. It leads to bad policy decisions (and maybe inappropriate foundation grant awardees).

And if done with intent, it’s unethical, too.

:: A longer version of this article (more analysis) appears at WiredPen
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I am assuming this is real and not a staged prank. Assuming it’s real, I am sympathetic with Mr. Jordan.

Unlike some, I am not fazed at the use of a gun. Not only am I one of those who believes the right to keep and bear arms is sacred, but it would have been more disturbing had he used a hammer or run over the laptop with a car. The gun is a distraction at most, although I certainly hope Mr. Jordan has taught his children proper use and respect for that fine firearm of his.

Nevertheless, however justified Mr. Jordan’s anger may be, if he’s wise he will take down this video and apologize–yes, apologize–to his daughter.

I suppose he may get angry at that suggestion, and I’m sure some of you reading this will also be angry. Certainly a lot of people, including some teenagers, are cheering this whole thing. But when tempers cool, here are some things to contemplate:

1) This teaches your child that destruction of valuable property is an appropriate way to express anger.

2) It also teaches your child that if you’re angry, you should retaliate–and retaliate not just in a moment of unthinking anger, but in a cold, calculating, planned manner.

3) The level of public attention this has received now vastly exceeds the level of the offense. Mr. Jordan almost certainly did not intend that, but that has been the result, raising this from teenage misbehavior to International Incident. (I know that was not the intent, but it’s what happened. Whoops.)

4) Teenagers can be selfish and lazy and bratty, but Mr. Jordan may wish to contemplate that there are millions of rebellious teens who do things like get pregnant, use drugs, get involved in crime, run away from home, even wind up in jail or commit suicide. None of those are funny, all of them are real, and they happen to parents of every race, religion, income level, and every part of the country (and world).

Mister Jordan spends much time berating his daughter for how good she has it. In this, he is right. But he may also want to thank God that his problems with his daughter amount to no more than whining about chores, some foul language, and complaining about what awful parents she has. Your girl could be strung out on drugs, pregnant, or in jail Mr. Jordan–maybe all three. Or just dead. And if you think I’m joking, give me a call and I’ll introduce you to some people I know who have had those very things happen to them. You and that girl’s mom need to get some perspective here, because you could have things a lot worse too, and I doubt you’d trade a whole warehouse full of laptops for that little girl.

Now here’s the funny thing: I might have done something very similar to this. I don’t think publicly embarrassing a teenager who’s done something like this is beyond the pale. But as a parent you need to be a little more creative. If my teenager had done something like this, and I was going to post a YouTube video like this, here’s what I would do:

1) Everything you said about how hard you had to work when you were a kid? Good. I’d say that. I left home at 15 and had my first job before that myself. Go ahead and say those things. But you don’t call the kid names or call her lazy. You just make the point of how easy she has it by comparison, and how hurtful it is to have her take that for granted.

2) All that stuff about the “cleaning lady?” I’d say every word of that the same, but I’d also add some extra: she gets to spend the next few weekends at the “cleaning lady’s” house helping her fix up her house. Try doing some cooking and cleaning and even some yard work for that “cleaning lady” and maybe she’ll learn a little more respect for people who are having hard times, and that you don’t treat that with contempt.

3) The laptop? I’d show myself on camera carefully putting it in a box, taking it to the post office, and mailing it to these people, or some other charity. Then I’d tell her if she wants another laptop, she can have it when she buys it for herself.

That would have been funny, it would have embarrassed her without frightening or humiliating her, and it would have illustrated the difference between a temper tantrum and reasonable consequences for bad behavior.

Seriously Mr. Jordan: I would go to your daughter, hug her, explain to her that what she did was wrong but that what you did was not the right way to respond to it. You should not be afraid to tell your child when you’re in the wrong. Then, I would work on a better relationship. Most definitely, I would keep in mind that kids may be selfish and unappreciative, but that’s a pretty normal thing: just about every parent of a teenager puts up with that. But you probably want to be more creative and thoughtful in your responses to it in the future.

(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)

Once, many years ago, in a land far away between two oceans, with fruited plains, amber waves of grain, and potholes on its highways, there lived a young man named Sam.

Now, Sam was a bright young man who wanted to work and save money so he could go to school and become an electrician. But the only job open in his small community was at the gas station. So, for two years, Sam pumped gas, washed windshields, checked dipsticks and tire pressure, smiled and chatted with all the customers, gave them free drinking glasses when they ordered a fill-up, and was soon known as the best service station attendant in town.

But then the Grand Caliphs of Oil said that Megamania Oil Empire, of which they all had partial ownership, caused them to raise the price of gas.
“We’re paying 39 cents a gallon now,” they cried, “how can you justify tripling our costs?” they demanded.

“That’s business,” said the Chief Grand Caliph flippantly. But, to calm the customer fury, he had a plan. “We will allow you the privilege of pumping your own gas, washing your own windows, checking your car’s dipsticks and tire pressure, and chatting amiably with yourselves,” said the Caliph. “If you do that, we will hold the price to only a buck or two a gallon.”

And the people were happy. All except Sam, of course, who was unemployed.
But, times were good, and Sam went to the local supermarket, which was advertising for a minimum wage checkout clerk. For three years, he worked hard, scanning all groceries and chatting amiably with the customers. And then one day his manager called him into the office.

“Sam,” said the boss, “we’re very pleased with your work. You’re fired.” From corporate headquarters had come a decision by the chain’s chief bean counter that there weren’t enough beans for their executives to go to Europe to search for more beans.

“But,” asked Sam, “Who will scan the groceries?”

“The customers will,” said the boss. “We’ll even have a no-hassle machine that will take their money and maybe even give change.”

“But won’t they object to buying the groceries, scanning them, bagging them, and shoving their money into a faceless machine?”

“Not if we tell them that by doing all the work, the cost will be less,” said the manager.

“But it won’t,” said Sam.

The manager thought a moment, and then brightly pointed out, “We’ll just say that the cost of groceries won’t go up significantly if labor costs were less. Besides, we even programmed Canmella the Circuit-enhanced Clerk to tell customers to have a nice day.”

Now, others may have sworn, cried, or punched out their supervisor, but this is a G-rated fairy tale, and it wouldn’t be right to leave Sam to flounder among the food. By cutting back on luxuries, like food and clothes, Sam saved a few dollars from his unemployment checks, and finally had enough to go to a community college to learn to become an electrician. After graduating at the top of his class, an emaciated and homeless Sam got a job at Acme Industries.

For nine years, he was a great electrician, often making suggestions that led to his company becoming one of the largest electrical supplies manufacturers in the country. And then one day one of the company’s 18 assistant vice-presidents called Sam into a small dingy office, which the company used for such a day. “You’re the best worker we have,” the AVP joyfully told Sam, “but all that repetitive stress has cut your efficiency and increased our medical costs. In the interest of maximizing profits, we have to replace you.”

“But who can do my job?” asked Sam.

“Not who,” said the manager, “but what. We’re bringing in robots. They’re faster and don’t need breaks, vacations, or sick days. Better yet, they don’t have union contracts.”

“So you are firing me,” said Sam.

“Not at all. We had to let a few dozen other workers go so there would be room for the robots, and we won’t be hiring any new workers, but because of your hard work, we’re reassigning you to oil the robots. At least until we design robots that can oil the other robots.”

For three years, Sam oiled, polished, and cleaned up after the robots. Sometimes, he even had to rewire them. And then the deputy assistant senior director of Human Resources called him into her office.

“No one can oil and polish as well as you can,” she said, but the robots are getting very expensive and we still have several hundred workers who are taking lobster and truffles from the mouths of our corporate executives, “so we’re sending all of our work to somewhere in Asia. Or maybe it’s Mexico. Whatever. The workers there will gladly design and assemble our products for less than a tenth what we have to pay our citizens.”

“You mean I’m fired?!” said a rather incredulous Sam.

“Not fired. That’s so pre-NAFTA. You’ve been downsized.”

“Downsized?!”

“If you want, we can also say you’ve been outsourced. How about right-sized. That’s a nicer word. Would you prefer to be right-sized?”

By now, Sam was no longer meek. He no longer was willing to accept whatever he was told.

“The work will be shoddier,” said Sam. “There will be problems.”

“Of course there will be,” said the lady from HR. “That’s why we hired three Pakistani goat herders to solve customer complaints.”

“Our citizens won’t stand for this,” said a defiant Sam.

“As long as the product is cheaper, our people will gladly go to large non-union stores and buy whatever it is that we tell them to buy.”

And she was right.

[Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and former university professor. His latest book is the social issues mystery novel, Before the First Snow, available at amazon and other book dealers.]

As compared with the Brits, few Americans have made India their home. Among those Americans who became well-known, I wrote about the legendary Samuel Evans Stokes Jr who fought along with Mahatma Gandhi to free the country from the colonial rule, and also brought horticulture revolution in the hills. The other well-known figure is an Indian actor of American origin – Tom Alter – who is now a household name.

Born to an American Christian missionary couple, Tom Alter acted in several Bollywood and Hollywood films and also made a name for himself in theatre and TV serials. His elder sister Martha has a PhD in Sanskrit and his brother John is a poet and a teacher.

He has worked for noted filmmakers like Satyajit Ray in Shatranj Ke Khiladi and is remembered for his role as a British officer in Kranti. In Sardar, the 1993 film biography of Indian leader Sardar Patel, which focused on the events surrounding the partition and independence of India, Tom portrayed Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Tom has also played Indian characters in Indian TV series, such as the long-running Junoon, in which he was the sadistic mob lord Keshav Kalsi. He also acted in Hollywood movie One Night with the King with Peter O’Toole. More here…

Tom was given a civilian award Padma Shri by the Indian government for his distinguished contribution in the field of art.

Now Tom Alter has turned his attention to writing about cricket, a game that makes Indians go crazy. In his first article “In the name of cricket, we market grief, violence and greed”, Tom hits out at those who have turned this “gentleman’s game” into a pure profit-making activity.

“Does no one realize anymore the beauty of bat on ball, the simple and so, so difficult art of spin and speed? … We have marketing everything – everything—now we market grief, and violence, and greed..

“Would it not be wonderful to see our players representing the country with only India written on their shirts; on their hearts? To have a sponsor who had no wish to have his name even bigger than India’s on the beloved jersey? To have a player say that he will play for India for free, and wear a jersey, of his own choice, with only India written on it, in royal blue?”

More here…

(The YouTube video above shows Tom Alter interviewing India’s cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar when the latter was very young.)

For a global business community still experiencing economic pain, Facebook’s humongous $100 billion Initial Public Offering has been an emotional shot in the arm. For French business newspaper Les Echos, columnist Philippe Escande praises the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as being at the heart of what still makes the American business sector the greatest in the world.

For Les Echos, Philippe Escande starts out this way:

It is an improbable story – one that could happen only in the United States. That of a twenty-year-old kid who in 2004 founded his own business just to prove he can, and eight years later finds himself the leader of a business valued at $100 billion. One hundred billion dollars is as much as McDonald’s and two and a half times that of General Motors. All this for a sophomoric prank that today employs no more than 3,000 people.

That is the magic of the U.S. financial sector, which is now being so widely criticized. To all those who think that the stock market serves only to accommodate rapacious speculators who enrich themselves while asleep, getting richer whether the market rises or falls, the Facebook story is a reminder of the two basics of investing: the long-term and risk. The long-term, because the value attributed to Facebook, the profits of which are minimal but the cost of doing business for which is still modest, is an anticipation of future performance. It is the idea that this company, which has quadrupled its revenues in two years, can in a single decade become a giant worth tens of billion of dollars. Which is precisely the gamble Amazon’s stockholders have made over the last ten years, and who are concerned about its weak returns but fascinated by the explosion in sales. For Facebook, as for Amazon and Google, growth potential seems unlimited.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Should you not recall, this was a deficit reduction plan that would given even more tax breaks to the rich while phasing out Medicare and replacing it with a subsidized private insurance system for newly eligible seniors, as well as rip a few more holes elsewhere in the safety net. The cherry atop this confection would be to remove all regulations on Wall Street.

The backlash was fugly, tipping the scales to an unknown Democrat in a special election in an historically Republican district in upstart New York as well as causing agita in a host of congressfolk who had to explain at town meetings why they wanted to take away Grandpa’s walker.

“We’re not backing off any of our ideas, any of our solutions,” Republican budget chairman told Fox News.

Ryan’s plan died a quick death in its crib, which makes it all the more perplexing whe the House GOP would want to resuscitate it after a year of serial brinkmanship and dirty ball playing that is a major reason why the party is well on its way to squandering a chance to take back the White House and Senate.

There are two possible explanations:

* The party’s overweaning hubris, which frequently blinds it to electoral realities.

* The party’s ultra-conservative base, which demands reducing the taxes of the 1 percenters while rolling back popular federal social programs.

While the revised Ryan plan takes a baby step or two from the right to the left, Medicare benefit guarantees would be handed over to a fickle private market and that will not impress voters who think that Grandpa should keep his walker.

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Speaking to CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien after his victory in the Florida Republican primary, Romney blurted out, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

Taken in context, the remark wasn’t quite what it seemed to be because the candidate, in another of his breathtaking flip-flops, said in the course of the interview that he was confident that the government safety net would take care of the poor and could be repaired if it doesn’t, which was a sharp reversal from his previous position and one at odds with conservative Republicans who carp endlessly about how undeserving the poor are of any government help.

Predictably and correctly, the news media, Democrats and many Republicans are painting Romney as out of touch (he made a similar remark in October), but they miss a larger point: The real outrage is not that he doesn’t want to do more for the poor; it’s that he thinks they are well taken care of and worse yet, that the welfare state is working just fine, thank you.

The facts are these:

The nation’s poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent (46.2 million) in 2010, up from 14.3 percent (43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. A large percentage of those millions are children, and people with annual incomes under $25,000 — some 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance.

The government’s definition of poverty is based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2011 was set at $22,350 (total yearly income) for a family of four. Most Americans (58.5 percent) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.

There certainly are welfare queens and others among these many millions who are too lazy to work, as well as people who receive government aid and spend assistance money not on food but drugs and other vices. But the vast majority are poor not by choice, and the government safety net is full of holes despite a welter of programs, including Medicaid, LIHEAP, Food Stamps, unemployment payments and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, all programs that many Republicans want to cut back or eliminate altogether.

On January 22, which is light years in the past considering Romney’s serial vacillations, he asserted that safety-net programs have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

Romney’s own tax plan probably would have a devastating impact on the safety net.

Under the plan, the Bush tax cuts and taxes on corporations, the wealthy, and upper-middle class investors would be sharply cut while tax breaks that help the poor would expire. The result, according to the Tax Policy Center, would be a $69 tax cut for the average individual in the bottom 20 percent and a $164,000 tax cut for the average individual in the top one percent to be paid for through unspecified cuts to domestic programs which mostly go to the poor and the elderly.

So we’ll take it on faith that Romney is not concerned about the poor but seems to be awfully concerned about the rich, no?

Are young people in America less stridently nationalistic than their predecessors? Columnist Fyodor Lukyanov of Russia’s Gazeta, citing recent Pew Research Center polling data, asserts in this detailed evaluation of U.S. public attitudes, that there is a declining tendency on the part of the U.S. population to believe in American exceptionalism, and concludes that U.S. foreign policy will be increasingly focused inward and toward the “near abroad” of Mexico and Latin America.

For Gazeta, Fyodor Lukyanov writes in part:

The age breakdown of answers to the question of American exceptionalism – measuring the assertion that the United States is the greatest country in the world – is interesting. The largest number of those who share this belief (64 percent) is among the oldest, the “Silent Generation,” (which reaches a height of 72 percent in the 76-83 age range). Baby-Boomers are split precisely in half, and among Generation X, only 48 percent are proponents of American exceptionalism, with the youngest – the Millennial Children, being the most skeptical – 32 percent. A similar pattern can be seen when it comes to the question of patriotism: Seventy percent of Millennium Children answer positively to the question of whether they consider themselves “very patriotic.” The remaining numbers range from 86 percent to 91 percent. Seventy percent is without a doubt high, but that level has fallen consistently since 2003, when 80 percent of young people felt the most patriotic.

In assessing the source of national success, the nation is united. The vast majority of Americans of all ages consider freedom to be the central source of this success, followed by hard work, natural resources, military strength, democratic governance, free markets, and religious and racial/ethnic diversity.

What is telling is the fact that the older groups tend to place more significance on military power than the younger, and the younger groups believe democracy and religion to be relatively less important.

Of course, these statistics don’t allow us to predict U.S. foreign policy for the next ten to twenty years. Especially since foreign policy is formulated by the ruling class, which even in a democracy isn’t guided by the will of the people. And yet, a trend is detectable.

Young people, who are now entering active public life and building careers, are distinguished by a greater openness, tolerance and a positive outlook. But at the same time, they have a declining tendency toward patriotic bravado and perceive the theme of American greatness more calmly and with far less pathos. Furthermore, a more positive attitude toward immigration is evidence of a sober evaluation of necessity.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR RUSSIAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

I remember quite well the empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum. And believe me, Madonna was perfect for this thing called the Superbowl, although it bears little resemblance to what I remember.

Football game, blah, blah, blah.

No, what I am talking about — divorced from a game that’s still worth watching — was the Roman/Babylonian spectacle that brought to mind not Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet (although the latter got their product placement in),  but more the spectacular sets of “Intolerance” or of “Cleopatra,” or the chariot race in the Chuckles Heston version of  Ben Hur.

Is this really what we’ve become?

Outside, thousands of protesters spent the week enraged at the stripping of collective bargaining rights in the middle of a deep recession, when so many are hurting, as the iron boot of the factory owner and the electoral martinet comes down on the throats of those who actually do the work.

No normal people are allowed into the Superbowl. If the ticket prices don’t dissuade you, without an “in” you’re pretty much out of luck. It has become the Roman orgy of the Ruling Classes, and I’ll bet there were more private jets parked at Indianapolis area airports than have been seen in a very long time.

The only “normals” inside were the obligatory contest winners, in a spectacle that has become less a super-bowl of football, but, rather, a spectacle of marketing — the only day of the year where anyone writes any serious copy about commercials outside of Advertising Age.

“The single most popular televised event in the country” the BBC announcer is squawking in my ear at this very instant.

It may be a big event, but it is also an unavoidable display of the American Id, the Collective Obnoxious, and that display tends to be unquestioningly accepted, as though it weren’t a lavish orgy for the Haves inside Lucas Oil Stadium and a non-coverage of the Have-Nots outside the stadium.

I saw nothing in the endless pre-game show, but then I might have been getting more chips and salsa when it was. Because NBC is still responsible media, and, having moved all their news, sports and entertainment divisions to Indianapolis, they couldn’t have helped but see it.

Oh, wait.

I want to check and see how many “volunteers” worked the halftime show, and helped to spruce up the party for the ruling class. Tostitos® Über Alles!

No one comments on the strange disconnect that for one of the most lucrative commercial events of the year, the presence of unpaid labor is absurd, but accepted.

I am sure, however, that Madonna’s pagan festival at halftime will be the subject of lectures from the pulpit next Sunday morn.

I kept expecting a golden calf to be carried onstage, but perhaps I missed it, heading to the head to unrent my lone, ceremonial beer.

And yet, over-the-top though it was, it was perfect.

Which is why I wonder what we’ve come to.

I watched Chevrolet trucks survive the apocalypse, cars bungee-jumping, barrel rolling, and parachuting. I watched them traverse dream dimensions to unhorse damsels, create “music videos” by slapping guitars, keyboards and drums, and I watched cheetahs chasing cage openers as a car sped away.

But, I don’t want a skydiving car, a musical car, or  a car that races cheetahs.

So I guess I just don’t get it.

Coca-Cola did their computer animated polar bears, but then, at the bumper just before the second half, the “brought to you by” included this weird endorsement, “brought to you by Coca-Cola,” by the Polar Bears who remind you to open a bottle of Happiness.

(ad language simulated, and inexact).

“A bottle of Happiness”?

Guess Coke is aiming their marketing at the Chinese market.

Or something. Coca-cola is carbonated sugar water with caffeine. It is NOT happiness. It induces a diuretic cycle that NEVER quenches thirst, and the polar bears are unindividuated cartoon characters, without name or personality, and WHO the hell “authority” is that?

It is weirdly tautological for animations created to sell a product to ENDORSE that product as celebrities created by the advertising FOR that product.

Just as it is weird that volunteers worked to help make the Plutocrats’ Bacchanalia better and more spectacular for anyone who can afford a private jet.

I pray to ghod that we are NOT Rome, but nothing I saw today dispelled that opinion.

As I said, I have watched every Superbowl ever played, and from the Amateur Hour of the first Superbowl to the “Jet Pack” at the Sugar Bowl early on, and more and more — NOT less and less — they bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nuremberg Rallies.

Babylon set for D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance”

And that is NOT the America that I know. America is an IDEA, and this is nothing like my idea of America.

But, perhaps coincidentally, we have just passed the infamous “halftime flush” that strains sewer systems across the width and breadth of this increasingly feudal land.

As the superbowel spasms for the last time before the next Superbowl.

Outside, in the streets of Indianapolis, the peasants held silent vigil.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

By now most readers know my (changed) position on the Afghanistan War.

I have expressed concern among other about rampant corruption and backstabbing at the highest levels in the Afghanistan government, incompetence of and disloyalty among its military and police and continuing human rights violations.

I have mourned our casualties and fretted about our huge financial costs.

But — perhaps insensitively so — I have not mentioned much about the suffering of the Afghan people.

A piece in the New York Times today, brought such suffering home in the most poignant way by focusing on the suffering — the dying — of the most vulnerable human beings: the children.

The article starts with the jarring intro: “KABUL, Afghanistan — The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here…”

It then goes on to list the names and ages of four of the “at least 22 [children] who have died in the past month, a time of unseasonably fierce cold and snowstorms.”

Among those 22 children:

¶ Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen ridges of the muddy floor.

¶ Abdul Hadi, son of Abdul Ghani. He was not even a year old and was already trying to stand, although his father said that during those last few days he seemed more shaky than normal.

¶ Naghma and Nazia, the twin daughters of Musa Jan. They were only 3 months old and just starting to roll over.

¶ Ismail, the son of Juma Gul. “He was never warm in his entire life,” Mr. Gul said. “Not once.”

About Ismail the Times says, “It was a short life, 30 days long.”

According to the United Nations, there are 35,000 people living — barely surviving might be a more accurate term — in Kabul refugee camps, such as Charachi Cambar and Nasaji Bagrami where the children froze to death.

“Both camps are populated largely with refugees who fled the fighting in areas like Helmand Province in the south. Some people have been in the camps for as long as seven years; others arrived in the past year,” says the Times.

Those who claim that we are making progress in Afghanistan generally point to the schools we have built and other “infrastructure projects” (Let’s not forget the $60 million prison we built at Bagram Air Base), at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

That is all good and well. However, Americans need to raise the same question the Times poses:

After 10 years of a large international presence, comprising about 2,000 aid groups, at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable — and manageable — as the cold?

If you have the fortitude, you can read the heart-rending stories of how and why these children are dying in these wretched camps here — camps where Solidarités International, a French group that has had a limited program of emergency food aid and sanitation in the camps, surveyed mortality rates in recent months and came to the harrowing conclusion that, among children under 5, the camps’ death rate is 144 per 1,000 children.

According to the Times, this rate is “stunningly high even for Afghanistan, which already has the world’s third highest infant mortality rate” and means “one out of every seven children in the Kabul camps will not survive until his or her sixth birthday.”

For those of us who believe that we should get out of Afghanistan, there is the sad conundrum:

If we stay longer in Afghanistan, will we be able to save these children?

If we leave Afghanistan now, will more children die?

Of course, this is not the only criterion, but it is a very emotive one and one we should include in any decision making process about “the future of Afghanistan.”

The reader can also view a heartbreaking set of photos about this tragedy here.

Image: shutterstock.com

Update, 5 February:
I’ve looked at two years of IRS filings for United Way, two years for Red Cross and one year for Planned Parenthood: none mention severance on their filings.

It seems hard to fathom, but in three years Susan G. Komen paid an estimated $1.9 million in severance.

Former Komen CEO Hala Moddelmog, the woman who stepped down in November 2009 when Nancy Brinker resumed the reins, received $468,255 in compensation for the 2009 fiscal year although she worked only half of the year. The IRS filing for 2009 includes her in a list of employees who received severance packages that calendar year.

Moddelmog received another $279,734 severance payment from Komen the following fiscal year. Moddelmog was CEO of Komen from 2006-2009; she is currently President, Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc., a position she assumed in May 2010. Severance estimate: $234,127 (half of the 2009 compensation) + $279,734 = $513,861.

Komen’s fiscal year runs April – March. Here are the others listed on IRS filing documents:

1. Departed September 2010: Marianne Alciati was Vice President, Research and Scientific Affairs from June 2008 – September 2010. Her compensation in fiscal 2009 was $252,465. Her fiscal 2010 compensation (six months employed) was $208,231. She is currently a health research consultant. Severance estimate: $208,231 – $126,232 (6 months estimate) = $82,089.
2. Departed January 2010: Kimberly Earle was Chief Operating Officer at Komen from April 2007 – January 2010 ($354,642 compensation for fiscal 2008; $345,357 compensation for fiscal 2009). She became Chief Executive Officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in June 2010. Last month, she was named the inaugural President of the Edith Sanford Breast Cancer Foundation. Severance: $271,781 (fiscal 2010, April 2010-March 2011) + $57,559 (February-March 2010, estimate) = $329,340.
3. Departed January 2010: Annetta Hewko was Komen’s Vice President, Global Strategies and Programs from November 2008 – January 2010. Her compensation for fiscal 2009 was $343,986. She is currently a management consultant. Severance: $134,483 (fiscal 2010) + $57,331 (February-March, estimate) = $191,814.
4. Departed October 2009: Gary Dicovitsky was named Vice President of Development at Susan G. Komen for the Cure in October 2008. From October 2008-March 2009, he was paid $95,291. In October 2009 he joined the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) as Executive Vice President of Development. His salary and severance from Komen for six months work was $435,200. His compensation at PCF for fiscal 2010 was $318,921. Severance estimate: $435,200 – $95,291 = $339,909.
5. Departed July 2009: Wendeline A Jongenburger was VP Affiliate Relations at Susan G. Komen for the Cure from July 2008 – July 2009. For the seven months of fiscal 2008, she made $111,300. She is now Director Global Health Policies and Practices at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where her salary is $155,000. Severance estimate: $185,096 (fiscal 2009) – $79,500 (seven months working) = $105,596.
6. Severance Fiscal 2008: Timothy Doke was hired as Komen’s Chief Marketing Manager in December 2007. His compensation for that fiscal year was $78,305 (3-4 months). He was named vice president for communications, marketing and public affairs at UT Southwestern in December 2008. His compensation in fiscal 2008 was $397,547. Severance estimate: $132,515.
7. Severance Fiscal 2008: Peter Williams was the Susan G. Komen VP of Human Resources; start date unknown, departure sometime in calendar 2008. In fiscal 2008, his compensation was $433,174; in fiscal 2007, his compensation was $205,660. Severance estimate: $216,587.

Total for three fiscal years: an estimated $1.9 million.

Why do companies bestow severance? From About.com guide to human resources:

Normal circumstances that can warrant severance pay include layoffs, job elimination, and mutual agreement to part ways, for whatever reason… For executives, the severance pay may even constitute up to a month’s pay for each year of service. For senior positions, severance pay may be dictated by an employment contract. In some instances, a severance package might also include extended benefits and outplacement assistance.

And from FindLaw:

In a typical severance agreement, the outgoing employee agrees not to sue the employer for wrongful termination or related legal claims, while the employer agrees to give the employee some form of additional compensation, often called a “severance package.” Such compensation (called “consideration” in legal terms) is required in order for the departing employee’s release of liability to be valid…

The amount and type of compensation in an given severance agreement will vary according to specific circumstances, but the amount of severance pay is usually based on a number of factors, including:

1. Length of the employee’s tenure with the employer;
2. Circumstances under which the employment relationship ended (i.e. company “downsizing,” employee misconduct, or layoff)
3. Employer’s financial condition (i.e. filing for bankruptcy, or experiencing economic growth)

Somebody doesn’t look very good at picking people. Or negotiating contracts.

Or else Koman is simply an intermission functioning like a gravy train. Doke, for example, had worked for one of Briken’s husband’s companies.

Very few of these individuals had extensive tenure with Komen; the longest is Moddelmog and Earle (three years). The men seem to fare far better than the women, on average, proving stereotypes can play out in an organization founded and run by women.

I don’t know if this turnover rate and severance generosity is the norm for non-profits in the U.S. in general or Texas in particular. But it sure seems excessive on both counts.

Komen Sources:

1. 2010 – IRS 990, pdf
2. 2009 – IRS 990, pdf
3. 2008 – IRS 990, pdf
4. 2007 – IRS 990, pdf

Susan G. Komen Sadness
By Doug Bursch

I have a right to be sad. . .
Pressure from the right,
Pressure from the left.
Nothing left unsaid.
Everyone vilified, marginalized, and suspect.

I suspect it will not get better,
Until we all get our pound of flesh.
Tearing the world apart,
With our grand vision of a perfect nation.

So much malignancy as we seek the cure.

Doug blogs and tweets fairlyspiritual