EFTA00857249.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/10/2015 Date: Sun, 10 May 2015 07:56:19 +0000 Attachments: 10 Proven_Health_Benefits_of_Eggs_(No._l_is_My_Favorite)_Kris_Gunnars_Authority_ Nuirition_April_10,2015.docx; 7_Reasons_Americais_Stuck_in_Never- Ending_War_William_Astore_TomDispatch_March_20„2015.docx; Executing the Insane Is Against_the_Law_of_the_Land._So_Why_Do_We_Keep_Doing_ It Stephanie Mencimer Mother Jones Mar.Apr2015.docx; _23,_ 2015.docx; WHAT_WILLJT_TAKE_TO_END_HOMELESSNESS_The_Urban_Institute_April_10,2 015.docx; Sam_&_Dave_t bio.docx; The_Piano_Guys_bio.docx; The_Hale_Center Theatre_bio.docx; U.S._Employers_Added_223,000Jobs_in_April„Unemployment_Rate_5.4%_Nelson_Sch wartz_TWP_05.08.15.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png DEAR FRIEND Why War in America is the new normal. Inline image 2 It was launched immediately after the 9/11 attacks, and almost immediately became known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Pentagon insiders called it "the long war," an open-ended, perhaps unending, conflict against nations and terror networks mainly of a radical Islamist bent. It saw the revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, buried in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, and a reinterpretation of that disaster as well. Over the years, its chief characteristic became ever clearer: a EFTA00857249 "Groundhog Day" kind of repetition. Just when you thought it was over (Iraq, Afghanistan), just after victory (of a sort) was declared, it began again. Now, as we find ourselves enmeshed in Iraq War 3.0, what better way to memorialize the post-9/11 American way of war than through repetition. As such we need to ask ourselves why after almost fourteen years the War On Terror still ongoing, with the mission eternally unaccomplished and we have serious politicians suggesting that we bomb another country who hasn't attacked us. Military specialist William Astore wrote an article in TomDispatch on the top seven reasons why never-ending war is the new normal in America. 1. The privatization of war: The US military's recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well. Unlike the citizen-soldiers of past eras, the mobilized warrior corporations of America's new mercenary moment—the Halliburton/KBRs (nearly $40 billion in contracts for the Iraq War alone), the DynCorps ($4.1 billion to train 150,00o Iraqi police), and the Blackwater/Xe/Academis ($1.3 billion in Iraq, along with boatloads of controversy)—have no incentive to demobilize. Like most corporations, their business model is based on profit through growth, and growth is most rapid when wars and preparations for more of them are the favored options in Washington. "Freedom isn't free," as a popular conservative bumper sticker puts it, and neither is war and as the saying goes, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," and today's mercenary corporations have been calling for a lot of military marches piping in $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And if you think that the privatization of war must at least reduce government waste, think again: the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for up to $6o billion of the money spent in Iraq alone. 2. The embrace of the national security state by both major parties: Jimmy Carter was the last president to attempt to exercise any kind of control over the national security state. A former Navy nuclear engineer who had served under the demanding Admiral Hyman Rickover, Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber and fought for a US foreign policy based on human rights. Widely pilloried for talking about nuclear war with his young daughter Amy, Carter was further attacked for being "weak" on defense. His defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 inaugurated 12 years of dominance by Republican presidents that opened the financial floodgates for the Department of Defense. That taught Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council a lesson when it came to the wisdom of wrapping the national security state in a welcoming embrace, which they did. This expedient turn to the right by the Democrats in the Clinton years served as a temporary booster shot when it came to charges of being "soft" on defense—until Republicans upped the ante by going "all-in" on military crusades in the aftermath of 9/11. Since his election in 2008, Barack Obama has done little to alter the course set by his predecessors. He, too, has chosen not to challenge Washington's prevailing catechism of war. Republicans have responded, however, not by muting their criticism, but by upping the ante yet again. How else to explain House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in March? That address promises to be a pep talk for the Republicans, as well as a smack down of the Obama administration and its "appeasenik" policies toward Iran and Islamic radicalism. Serious oversight, let alone opposition to the national security state by Congress or a mainstream political party, has been missing in action for years and must now, in the wake of the Senate Torture EFTA00857250 Report fiasco (from which the CIA emerged stronger, not weaker), be presumed dead. The recent midterm election triumph of Republican war hawks and the prospective lineup of candidates for president in 2016 does not bode well when it comes to reining in the national security state in any foreseeable future. 3. "Support Our Troops" as a substitute for thought. You've seen them everywhere: "Support Our Troops" stickers. In fact, the "support" in that slogan generally means acquiescence when it comes to American-style war. The truth is that we've turned the all-volunteer military into something like a foreign legion, deploying it again and again to our distant battle zones and driving it into the ground in wars that amount to strategic folly. Instead of admitting their mistakes, America's leaders have worked to obscure them by endlessly overpraising our "warriors" as so many universal heroes. This may salve our collective national conscience, but it's a form of cheap grace that saves no lives—and wins no wars. Instead, this country needs to listen more carefully to its troops, especially the war critics who have risked their lives while fighting overseas. Organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace are good places to start. 4. Fighting a redacted war: War, like the recent Senate torture report, is redacted in America. Its horrors and mistakes are suppressed, its patriotic whistleblowers punished, even as the American people are kept in a demobilized state. The act of going to war no longer represents the will of the people, as represented by formal Congressional declarations of war as the US Constitution demands. Instead, in these years, Americans were told to go to Disney World (as George W. Bush suggested in the wake of 9/11) and keep shopping. They're encouraged not to pay too much attention to war's casualties and costs, especially when those costs involve foreigners with funny-sounding names (after all, they are, as American sniper Chris Kyle so indelicately put it in his book, just "savages"). Redacted war hides the true cost of a permanent state of killing from the American people, if not from foreign observers. Ignorance and apathy reign, even as a national security state that is essentially a shadow government equates its growth with your safety. 5. Threat inflation: There's nothing new about threat inflation. We saw plenty of it during the Cold War (nonexistent missile and bomber gaps, for example). Fear sells and we've had quite a dose of it in the twenty-first century, from ISIS to Ebola. But a more important truth is that fear is a mind- killer, a debate-stifler. Back in September, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham warned that ISIS and its radical Islamic army was coming to America to kill us all. ISIS, of course, is a regional power with no ability to mount significant operations against the United States. But fear is so commonplace, so effectively stoked in this country that Americans routinely and wildly exaggerate the threat posed by al-Qaeda or ISIS or the bogeyman du jour. Astore: You'll excuse me for not shaking in my boots at the threat of ISIS coming to get me. Or of Sharia Law coming to my local town hall. With respect to such fears, America needs, as Hillary Clinton said in an admittedly different context, to "grow a pair." EFTA00857251 6. Defining the world as a global battlefield: In fortress America, all realms have by now become battle spheres. Not only much of the planet, the seas, air, and space, as well as the country's borders and its increasingly up-armored police forces, but the world of thought, the insides of our minds. Think of the 17 intertwined intelligence outfits in "the US Intelligence Community" and their ongoing "surge" for information dominance across every mode of human communication, as well as the surveillance of everything. And don't forget the national security state's leading role in making cyber-war a reality. (Indeed, Washington launched the first cyberwar in history by deploying the Stuxnet computer worm against Iran.) Think of all this as a global matrix that rests on war, empowering disaster capitalism and the corporate complexes that have formed around the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and that intelligence community. A militarized matrix doesn't blink at $1.45 trillion dollars devoted to the F-35, a single under-performing jet fighter, nor at projections of $355 billion over the next decade for "modernizing" the US nuclear arsenal, weapons that Barack Obama vowed to abolish in 2009. 7. The new "normal" in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. "War time" is their normal; peace, a fairy tale. What's truly "exceptional" in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It's the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that's the most insidious danger of them all. How do we inoculate our children against such a permanent state of war and the war state itself? I have one simple suggestion: just stop it. All of it. Stop making war a never-ending part of our lives and stop celebrating it, too. War should be the realm of the extreme, of the abnormal. It should be the death of normalcy, not the dreary norm. And as Astore says, "It's never too soon, America, to enlist in that next goodfight!" ****** Clean Air Act and Dirty Coal at the Supreme Court EFTA00857252  Inline image 8 The name of the law at issue before the Supreme Court on Wednesday is the Clean Air Act. It is not the Coal Industry Protection Act, despite what that industry's advocates seem to want the justices to believe. Congress passed the legislation in 1970 and substantially strengthened it in 1990 to safeguard human health from air pollution generated by power plants, vehicles, incinerators and other sources. One of the most toxic of these pollutants is mercury, a heavy metal that accumulates in waterways and the fish Americans eat. While mercury is particularly dangerous to the vulnerable, developing brains and nervous systems of young children and fetuses, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that improved air quality standards prevent the premature deaths of as many as 11,000 Americans each year from exposure to mercury and other toxic air pollutants. In 2012, the agency issued a rule ordering coal-fired power plants, which are far and away the single biggest source of these emissions, to adopt technology to reduce them. The coal industry sued the government for the same reason it has countless times over the decades: Cleaning up pollution costs money. Business owners and other industry backers argue that the law requires the E.P.A. to weigh those costs against any potential health benefits of a regulation. Industry supporters point to a single phrase in the law — that the agency must regulate pollutants only when "appropriate and necessary" — to mean that if a regulation would cost too much in their eyes, it's not appropriate. But the agency does consider the financial impact of its regulations later in the process, when it sets the actual emissions standards. At the beginning of the process, when it is deciding whether a substance like mercury endangers human health and thus must be regulated — which the law requires it to do — cost is not a factor. Plenty of evidence suggests this is how the law was designed to work. In line with its fundamental goal of protecting health, it never says costs to business are to be considered at the outset. And even if "appropriate" could be read in more than one way, courts as a rule defer to reasonable agency interpretations of statutory language. EFTA00857253 The coal industry, however, argues that costs must be considered at the outset because, it says, they are central to the question of whether to regulate at all. In this case, reducing mercury emissions is expected to cost almost $10 billion, but the industry says it will provide at most $4 million to $6 million in benefits. That is an absurdly low range based on a single statistic: the estimated increase in lifetime earnings for people whose I.Q.s will presumably be higher if their prenatal mercury exposure is lower. According to the E.P.A., the benefits of an overall reduction in mercury and other toxic air pollutants that the new standards would achieve should be valued at between $37 billion and $90 billion. The vast discrepancies in these various estimates show that standard cost-benefit analyses can never precisely account for environmental risks to public health. Given that reality, why should the cost of any uncertainty always fall on the American public, rather than on the industries that create the health risks to begin with? Coal industry backers, notably the Senate's majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, view every regulation, whether aimed at protecting human lives or the future of the planet, as nothing more than a "war on coal." But profits and human health are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, the technology to meet the E.P.A.'s new mercury standards is already in place at most coalfired power plants nationwide. Burning coal is a dirty business, but it can be made cleaner. The federal law balances the need for affordable electricity with reduction of significant threats to human health. The Supreme Court has upheld the E.P.A.'s authority to carry out that law's purpose with broad discretion. There is no reason to upset that deliberate balance, or unreasonably limit the agency's authority, now. The New York Times- EDITORIAL BOARD - Mirth 23.2015 GOOD NEWS U.S. Employers Add Solid 223,000 Jobs, Unemployment Rate Falls To 7-Year Low EFTA00857254  12 Inline image 1 U.S. employers added 223,000 jobs in April, a solid gain that suggests that the economy may be recovering after stumbling at the start of the year. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in March. That is the lowest rate since May 2008, six months into the Great Recession, helping to ease worries that the economy was on the brink of another extended slowdown after a bleak winter in which the overall economy stalled. Yet the report included signs of sluggishness: March's weak job gain was revised sharply down to just 85,000 from 126,000. In the past three months, employers have added 191,000 positions, a decent gain but down from last year's average of 260,000. Oil and gas drillers, which have struggled under the weight of lower energy prices, shed jobs for a fourth straight month. But in an encouraging sign, construction companies, which include many higher-paying positions, added jobs at a healthy pace in April. The job growth isn't yet boosting paychecks much. Average hourly wages rose just 3 cents in April to $24.87. Wages have risen 2.2 percent in the past 12 months, about the same modest year-over-year increase as in the past six years. Despite the jump in hiring in April, there are indications of a leastor-famine job market, with some sectors vastly outperforming others. Construction has been gaining steam, thanks to a reasonably healthy housing sector and a spring rebound in hiring after very wintry weather in many parts of the country forced some building projects to be delayed. Builders hired 45,000 workers last month. Similarly, the professional and business services category has been strong, adding 62,000 jobs in April, reflecting financial sector strength and continued demand for collegeeducated, whitecollar workers. Health care was another source of gains, adding 55,600 positions. In just the last three months, the health care sector has gained nearly 125,000 jobs. On the other hand, with oil prices way down from where they were a year ago, drillers and other oil patch employers have been shedding jobs. Energy prices have ticked higher recently, as have gasoline costs, but energy companies including drillers and employers in the Labor Department's support for oil and gas operations category continued to shed workers, cutting more than 10,000 jobs in April. EFTA00857255 Underscoring the uncertain picture, the government said in a separate report on Friday that wholesale inventories rose more slowly than expected in March. With businesses restocking shelves less aggressively, experts at Barclays and Macroeconomic Advisers revised their estimate for economic activity in the first quarter downward on Friday to show a contraction of o.6 percent, even worse than the Commerce Department's initial estimate of a tiny 0.2 increase. Still these numbers should be view favorably as the economy been growing positively for almost six years without interruption. I would call that Good News... ****** Screwed Again Greece's poor are back to where they were in 1980 Inline image I 2 While the rich international bankers in Europe and America booked billions of dollars in fees by extending loans to Greece, it appears that Greece's poor are back to where they were in 1980. In the last seven years, Greece's economic collapse has wiped out all the progress its poor had made in the 28 years before that. Now there are a lot of ways to think about how historic Greece's recession has been. Its economy has fallen about as much as the U.S.'s did during the Great Depression. Its unemployment rate peaked at 28 percent. And, as Derek Thompson points out, its cities have become filled with smog during the winters, because its people can't afford to heat their homes any other way than burning whatever they can get their hands on. But think about this last one. It probably gets us the closest to having a real idea what it's been like to live through Greece's slump. Well, other than the chart above. It shows how much money Greek people from the richest to the poorest to percent have had after accounting for taxes and inflation the past 4o years. The simple story, as you can see, is that there was a big jump for everybody after the junta was pushed out in 1974, a big stagnation from the mid-80s to the mid-905, an even bigger jump, especially for the rich, after that, and then a big crash that's erased 3o years of gains — or more. Greece's rich have done a little better than the rest, with their real disposable incomes "only" falling to 1985 levels. But its poor have fallen even further, all the way back to where they were in 1980. EFTA00857256 That's why it's no exaggeration to say that Greece really does have a humanitarian crisis on its hands. The left-wing Syriza government has made this a priority — they want food stamps for the hungry, healthcare for the sick, and electricity for people who can't afford to keep on the lights — but even with a limited victory in its first round of negotiations with Europe, it's not clear where the money's going to come from. Or if it will even have what it needs to pay back its creditors. It hasn't helped that all this political uncertainty has killed what was a nascent recovery — which in this case, was a very relative term — and sent its economy back down again. It's going to be a long, long time before Greece is back to where it was in 2008. But at some point it will, right? And the problem with this is that until then poor Greeks will have to suffer like very few citizens in industrialized countries while the bankers who pushed the loans that are the root problem today in the country blame the victims as if they had a choice. Chancellor Merkel and the bankers you are trying to protect.... Shame on you... And where is your compassion? ****** Why Baltimore Is Burning "If our society really want to solve the problem, we could." — President Barack Obama Inline image t Any people with nothing to lose will destroy anything in their way. Like anything. Any people who feel as if their lives are not valued, like they are second-class citizens at best, will not be stopped until they've made their point. And as Dr. Martin Luther King said 5o years ago, "A riot is the language of the unheard." If you came of age in one of America's poor inner cities like I did, then you know that we are good, decent people: in spite of no money, no resources, little to no services, run down schools, landlord who only came around to collect rent, and madness and mayhem everywhere, amongst each other -- from abusive police officers, and from corrupt politicians and crooked preachers -- we still made a way out of no way. We worked hard, we partied hard, we laughed hard, we barbecued hard, we drank hard, we smoked hard, and we praised God, hard. EFTA00857257 Imagine if George Zimmerman had gone vigilante on a White youth with a hoodie in that same gated Florida complex. Imagine White parents having to teach their children how to conduct themselves if ever confronted by the police. Imagine that Aiyana Stanley Jones was a little 7-year-old White girl instead of a little 7-year-old Black girl, shot by the police as she slept on a sofa with her grandmother, in a botched raid? It would be a national outrage. Baltimore is burning because America is burning with racism, with hate, with violence. Baltimore is burning because far too many of us are on the sidelines doing nothing to affect change, or have become numb as the abnormal has become normal. Baltimore is burning because very few of us are committed to real leadership, to a real agenda with consistent and real political, economic, and cultural strategies for those American communities most under siege, most vulnerable. Policing them to death is not the solution. Putting them in prison is not the solution. And, clearly, ignoring them is not the solution. Kevin Powell - Iluffington Post - April 28. 2015 ****** The Ugly Face of Homelessness in America Milne image 12 feline image 13 One of the truly ugly stories in America is that today in the U.S., more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. 35% of the homeless population are families with children, which is the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. 23% are U.S. military veterans. Homelessness in America is a "revolving-door" crisis. Many people exit homelessness quickly, but many more individuals become homeless every day. During a given year's, four or five times as many EFTA00857258 people experience homelessness as are homeless on any particular day. On any given day, at least 800,000 people are homeless in the United States, including about 200,000 children in homeless families. Calculations from different sources show that at least 3.5 million people experienced homelessness at some time during an average year. Because more families with children than unpartnered people enter and leave homelessness during a year, families represent a relatively large share of the annual population. As a result, during a typical year, between goo,thao and 1.4 million children are homeless with their families. Personal difficulties, such as mental disabilities or job loss, often increase vulnerability to homelessness, but they cannot explain the high number of people who fall into homelessness every year. And housing market trends indicate that the situation is getting worse rather than better. Current levels of housing costs, coupled with low-wage jobs and economic contraction, could push even the working poor out of their homes. Although the availability of homeless services increased significantly during the past decade, meeting the needs of people once they become homeless is not enough. A concerted national strategy is needed to prevent homelessness, and to end quickly discrete episodes of homelessness if they become inevitable. That strategy must include new housing resources as well as community-building strategies that address the societal factors contributing to homelessness. Each community must work to supply affordable housing, improve schools, and provide support services for those in need. Only strategies that address systemic problems as well as provide emergency relief can eliminate homelessness in this country. If housing were inexpensive, or people could earn enough to afford housing, very few individuals would face homelessness. But housing costs have risen steadily across the country, and they have skyrocketed in many areas. Further, the inability to afford housing is concentrated among households with incomes below the poverty level, whose members account for the vast majority of people entering homelessness. At the same time, people with little education or job training find it increasingly difficult to earn enough money to raise their incomes above the poverty level, even if they are employed full- time and work overtime. Once structural factors have created the conditions for homelessness, personal factors can increase a person's vulnerability to losing his or her home. Many factors can make a poor person more susceptible to homelessness, including limited education or skills training, mental or physical disability, lack of family to rely on (e.g., after being placed in foster care), and alcohol or drug abuse. But without the presence of structural fault lines, these personal vulnerabilities could not produce today's high level of homelessness. Public policies may moderate the effects of both structural and personal factors to prevent homelessness. Some European countries guarantee their citizens housing, and many provide supports for families (e.g., infant and child care and income subsidies) well beyond those available in the United States. Universal health insurance is also available in most European countries. These safety net programs reduce the probability of homelessness, even in places where housing costs are high and wages are low, because they ease the pressure on household budgets. EFTA00857259 In the United States, dramatic reductions in federally supported housing over the past 20 years, coupled with the current reductions in safety net programs, place individuals and families squeezed by high housing costs and with few resources at high risk of homelessness. As such a certain proportion of these people will experience at least a brief episode during which they lack a place to live. If they are struggling with substance abuse, mental illness, or both, and reside in an area where housing is increasingly beyond the reach of low-wage worker households, then homelessness is likely. On any given day, the adult population using homeless assistance programs consists mostly of men by themselves (61 percent). Another 15 percent are women by themselves, 15 percent are households with children, and 9 percent are people with another adult but not with children.2 Because families are mostly likely to qualify for public assistance programs, they are less likely than individuals to be homeless, or to be homeless for long. Unattached adults are not eligible for most safety net programs, so they are more likely to be homeless and to experience long or repeated spells of homelessness. In terms of racial and ethnic composition, little difference exists between homeless families and single adults. About equal proportions (40 to 41 percent) are African American and white, 11 to 12 percent are Hispanic, 6 to 8 percent are Native American, and 1 percent are another race. The high representation of minorities in the homeless population compared with housed people stems from their higher likelihood of being very poor and has no correlation to their race or ethnicity. Geographically, 71 percent of homeless people who rely on homeless assistance programs reside in central cities, 21 percent in suburban or urban fringe areas, and 9 percent in rural areas. Half of all homeless adults receive less than $30o per month—in income, putting them at about 3o to 40 percent of the federal poverty level. In addition, 62 percent have at least a high school diploma, and 44 percent did some work for pay in the month before being surveyed, although only 13 percent held a regular job. Almost half get one or more means-tested public benefits, with food stamps by far the most common type of assistance. Homeless families' welfare eligibility accounts, in part, for the level of income they report; most single people's ineligibility for welfare helps explain their very low incomes. Disabilities Many homeless adults have physical and other types of disabilities. Almost half (46 percent) reported chronic physical conditions. Problems with alcohol, drugs, and mental health among homeless people are well documented and often occur together. Among adults using homeless services, 31 percent reported a combination of mental health and substance abuse problems (alcohol and/or drugs) within the past year. An additional 17 percent reported problems with drugs and/or alcohol problems, but no mental health problems. Further, 12 percent reported only problems with alcohol, and 15 percent reported only mental health problems. Only one in four homeless adults did not report any mental health or substance abuse problems during the past year. Childhood Homelessness The homeless population includes not only adults but also the children these adults bring with them into homelessness. One-fourth of homeless people are children in homeless families. These children are much more likely than housed children to experience serious difficulties, including physical, cognitive, emotional, and mental problems. Further, childhood homelessness translates into a greater risk of homelessness in adulthood. Most children living with homeless parents are very young (42 percent are under age 6) and are therefore physically and emotionally vulnerable in the event of EFTA00857260 household disruptions. Children living with homeless parents, however, are not the only children affected by homelessness. Three out of five homeless people are parents, and half these parents have at least one child age 17 or younger. But only one in four of these children lives with the homeless parent. Children of homeless mothers are much more likely to stay with their homeless parent (54 percent) than are children of homeless fathers (7 percent). Children of homeless fathers typically live with their mothers outside of homelessness. Children not living with their homeless mothers tend to live with relatives other than their fathers (46 percent) or in foster care (19 percent). A period in foster care is a strong predictor of future homelessness. Patterns of Homelessness Clearly, homeless people's lives differ in many ways. The pattern of a person's homelessness reveals much information about how to intervene and ways to reduce or eliminate such episodes. People who are homeless for the first time and experiencing a single crisis may need relatively simple remedies, such as rental assistance, help negotiating with landlords, or referrals to public benefits or services. Persons with repeated or long episodes of homelessness, however, are likely to need considerably more support for longer periods of time. WHAT WILL END HOMELESSNESS With adequate housing resources, homelessness can also be averted for the many people who approach the homeless service system because they do not know where else to turn. Communities throughout the country that have committed such resources have developed a variety of effective programs to prevent homelessness, including • Programs that negotiate with landlords and help with bad credit histories; • Housing trust funds, rental assistance programs, and access to funds that can solve a household's short-term problems, such as paying back rent, security deposits, and other moving expenses; • Programs that encourage developers to build or renovate attractive, accessible properties; and help managers ensure good maintainence and repair; and • Programs that help people develop personal and family financial management skills, establish or reestablish good credit and rental histories, and retain housing. When a community ensures that housing within reasonable price ranges exists, offers its members living-wage jobs, provides quality schooling to develop individuals' capacity to hold good jobs, and offers other supports for families and individuals, people can maintain stable housing. But far too few communities have these resources or are positioned to provide them. The answer? Put simply: • Rebuild communities, especially the most troubled ones; • Build more housing and subsidize the costs to make it affordable to people with incomes below the poverty level; • Help more people afford housing, by providing them with better schools, better training, and better jobs; and • Prevent the next generation of children from experiencing homelessness. Without these basic building blocks of a civil society, we are creating an underclass of persistently poor people vulnerable to homelessness. The costs of this neglect are too high in terms of both individual lives and public dollars for health, mental health, and correctional institutions. It is more effective, more humane, and ultimately more fiscally prudent to invest in prevention and support that leads to self-sufficiency and independence among all residents. EFTA00857261  SUMMARY Recent years show an all-time high in child homelessness in America, amounting to one child in every 3o, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence. Titled "America's Youngest Outcasts," the report being issued by the National Center on Family Homelessness calculates that nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. The number is based on the Department of Education's latest count of 1.3 million homeless children in public schools, supplemented by estimates of homeless pre-school children not counted by the DOE. The problem is particularly severe in California, which has one-eighth of the U.S. population but accounts for more than one-fifth of the homeless children with a tally of nearly 527,000. Therefore until homeless in America is eradicated these children, elderly, people with disabilities and the working poor will be vulnerable to the prospective of being homeless and for this to be possible in the richest country in the world is unconscionable and immoral and this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS ASTROTURF And we are not talking about fake grass The first time that I heard the term Astroturf used for something other than "substitute/synthetic grass"was when a friend recently sent me a TEDx talk at the University of Nevada by veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson who described Afroturf as fake grassroots movements EFTA00857262 funded by political, corporate, or other special interests to very effectively manipulate and distort media messages. Attkisson who was an award-winning correspondent for CBS News, is currently writing a book entitled Stonewalled (Harper Collins), which addresses the unseen influences of corporations and special interests on the information and images the public receives every day in the news and elsewhere. Campaigns & Elections magazine defines Astroturf as a "grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing ofpublic supportfor a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them." Journalist William Greider has coined his own term to describe corporate grassroots organizing. He calls it "democracyfor hire." Senator Lloyd Bentsen, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited with coining the term 'Asiroturf Lobbying" to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that now can be manufactured for a fee by companies like Beckel Cowan, Bivings Group, Bonner & Associates, Burson- Marsteller, Davies Communications, DCI Group, Direct Impact, Hill & Knowlton, Issue Dynamics Inc., National Grassroots & Communications or Optima Direct. Unlike genuine grassroots activism which tends to be money-poor but people-rich, Astroturf campaigns are typically people-poor but cash-rich. Funded heavily by corporate largesse, they use sophisticated computer databases, telephone banks and hired organizers to rope less-informed activists into sending letters to their elected officials or engaging in other actions that create the appearance of grassroots support for their client's cause. Astroturf techniques have been used to: • block the transfer of federal licenses that WorldCom uses for its long distance and Internet services by Issue Dynamics Inc. using non-profit groups like the United Church of Christ • defeat the Clinton administration's proposed health care reform, through a front group called "Rx Partners" created by the Beckel Cowan PR firm, and the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices, created by public relations consultant Blair Childs • harass environmentalists through the Wise Use movement • loosen automobile fuel efficience standards • support clear-cutting American forests, through a front group called Citizens to Protect the Pacific Northwest and Northern California Economy • oppose restrictions on smoking in public places, through a front group called National Smokers Alliance, which was created by Burson-Marsteller • generate a dossier of news-clips orchestrated by Edelman to assist Microsoft lobbyists persuade U.S. state attorney generals not to join a class action against the company. The Gray Panthers & Verizon Sometimes genuine grassroots organizations are recruited into corporate-funded campaigns. In June 2003, for example, the Gray Panthers participated in protests against WorldCom that were funded largely by the telecommunications company's competitors such as Verizon. According to the Gray Panthers, this reflected a policy decision that the organization made prior to and independently of its funding. However, an article in the Washington Post raised questions about failures to publicly disclose the corporate funding which paid for full-page advertisements that the EFTA00857263 Gray Panthers took out in several major newspapers that called on the federal government to stop doing business with WorldCom. The ads said they were paid for the Gray Panthers but did not mention that Issue Dynamics Inc. (IDI), a PR firm that specializes in "grassroots PR," had provided most of the $200,000 it cost to place the ads. Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe has declined to say how much the company is paying IDI, and Gray Panthers Executive Director Timothy Fuller has declined to say how much of the funding for its "Corporate Accountability" project comes from IDI. Notwithstanding the egregious nature of WorldCom's corporate crimes, the lack of transparency in these funding arrangements by WorldCom's corporate competitors raises the question of whether the Gray Panthers campaign should be considered genuine grassroots or an Astroturf. NeoCon Astroturf The rise of the Super PAC has formalized funding for many political groups that would otherwise have little or no financial support. Crossroads GPS (Grassroots Policy Strategies), the sub-Super PAC of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, lists no grassroots groups that it backs, but funded more than $9.7M of anti-Obama television ads by Larry McCarthy, known for the Willie Horton Ad that helped tank Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in the 2012 election campaign cycle. Libertarian Astroturf Groups like "Americansfor Prosperity" (AFP) are largely funded by very wealthy Americans like the Koch Brothers, who use AFP to engage unwitting voters in doing their bidding to bust unions, further deregulate energy industries, and avoid the imposition of regulation in commodities trading. AFP spends generously to elect Tea Party candidates, and has been a primary funder of controversial Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's election and bid to avoid a recall after his crusade to break union negotiating power for government workers in his state. The Kochs are classic Libertarians who see the government as the source of all ill, and desire to dismantle it to its bare functioning minimums, allowing capitalists free reign to do as they will. The Kochs father was a key player in the John Birch Society and David Koch was the Vice Presidential candidate in 198o for the Libertarian Party. A Partial Transcript of Attkisson's TEDx Talk Attldsson starts her talk with a fictitious story about a cholesterol lowering drug that she called Cholestra. The study says Cholestra is so effective that doctors should consider prescribing to adults and have high cholesterol problems. It is so good to be true that you decide to do something of your own research. You do it Google search you consult social media Facebook and Twitter you look at Wikipedia Web MD and you in a peer reviewed published medical journal. It all confirms how effective the Cholestra drug is. And although you do you run across a few negative comments that Cholestra could have a potential linked to cancer, you dismiss these because medical experts call the cancer link a myth, and say that those who think that there is a link are quacks or cranks or nuts. Finally you learn that your own doctor recently attended a medical seminar confirming how effective Cholestra is. So he sends you off with a prescription for some free samples. EFTA00857264 You've really done your homework. But what if all isn't as it seems. What if the reality you found is false. A carefully constructed narrative by unseen special interest designed to manipulate your opinion. A Truman Showesk ultimate reality all around you. Complacency in the news media combined with incredibly powerful propaganda and publicity forces mean we sometimes get little of the truth. Special interest have unlimited time and money to figure out new ways to spin us while cloaking their role. Surreptitious Astroturf methods are now more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress. There is now an entire industry built around it in Washington. Again - What is Astroturf? It's a perversion of grassroots, as in fake grassroots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interest disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and Twitter accounts, publish ads, letters to the editor or simply post comments online to try to fool you into thinking that independent or grassroot movement is speaking. The whole point of Astroturf is to try to give the impression us that there is widespread support for or against an agenda when there is not. Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel that you are an outlier when you are not. One example is the Washington Redskins name. Without taking a position on the controversy Attkisson says " if you are looking at news media coverage over the past year well looking at social media you probably have concluded that most Americans find the name offensive and think that it ought to be changed. But what if I told you that 71 percent of Americans say the name should not be changed. That's more than two-thirds." Astroturfers seek to controversialize those who disagree with them. They attack news organizations that publish stories that they don't like. Whistleblowers who tell the truth. Politicians who dare to ask the tough questions. And journalist who have the audacity to report on all of it. Sometimes Astroturfers simply shove intentionally so much confusing and conflicting information into the mix that you are left to throw up your hands and disregard all of it including the truth. Drown out a link between medicine and a harmful side effect.... say that vaccines and autism... by throwing a bunch of conflicting paid for studies, surveys and experts into the mix confusing the truth beyond recognition. And then there is Wikipedia. Astroturfs dream come true. Billed as the free encyclopedia that everyone can have and anyone can edit, the reality can't be more different. Anonymous Wikipedia editors control and co-op pages on behalf of special interest. They forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda. They skew and delete information in blatant violation of Wikipedia is own established policies with impunity. Try adding a footnoted fact or correcting a fact error on one of these monitored Wikipedia pages of poof, sometimes within a matter of seconds you will find your edit is reversed. In 2012 famed author Philip Roth try to correct a major fact error about the inspiration behind one of his book character cited on a Wikipedia page. But no matter how hard he tried Wikipedia's editors would not allow it. They kept reverting the efforts back to the false information. When Roth finally reached a person the Wikipedia, which is not an easy task and tried to find out what was going wrong, they told him that he simply was not consider