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1312
18TH NW Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 202-835-0779.
Editor: Sam Smith
© The Progressive Review,
2001 |
Inside the Beltway, outside the loop, but ahead of the curve, the
Review has taken on the Washington establishment since 1966. In its early
years (as the DC Gazette) it campaigned against the war in Vietnam, a huge
planned freeway system, and the lack of democracy for the DC's residents.
By the 1970s it was arguing for such then novel notions as bike ways,
light rail, DC statehood, decriminalizing drugs, community-based justice,
neighborhood government, proportional representation, and jury
nullification. It also published the first urban planning comic strip as
well as a regular column by a prison inmate. It introduced to Washington
readers the likes of Tony Auth, Charlie McDowell, Bill Griffith, Ron Cobb,
and Dave Barry. In the 1980s, TPR predicted the break-up of the Soviet
Union and published an award-winning expose of the S&L bailout,
selected by Utne Reader as one of the top ten undercovered stories of past
decade In May 1992 it became the first publication in America to connect
the pieces of the puzzle that would become known as the Clinton scandals.
Its coverage of these scandals has been among the most thorough to be
found anywhere.
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GREEN
THINGS
 GROWING GREEN
ASSN OF
STATE GREENS
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CAMPAIGN
NADER
2000
GREEN
INFORMATION
GREEN OR BUST
THE GREEN PLACE
DC STATEHOOD GREEN PARTY
HISTORY OF THE
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DRIVING MR.
NADER
MULTITUDES
MEMOIRS OF A REBEL
By Sam Smith
INTRODUCTION
FRIENDS: A Quaker
education
MAGNA CUM PROBATION: Falling from grace
at Harvard U Why Harvard and the author didn't quite hit it off.
THE CANARIES IN
STUDIO A in which a young radio reporter learns a lot about the media
and Washington in a short time.
SUSPECT: How the author became a
23-year-old suspected spy.
HOOLIGAN DAYS: A memoir of the Coast
Guard
SEEDS The 60s before they became
the 60s; in which your editor discovers the civil rights and anti-war
movements.
HOW THE TROUBLE
BEGAN:
A long adventure in alternative journalism began in the
mid-sixties
FIRE: The Washington riots and other
suspensions of hope
PLACE: The battle for local
power
DC DIARY: THE EIGHTIES
|
A larger than life presence in the nation's capital . . .A
truly original voice in American journalism: humorous and plain
spoken and filled with common sense -- --Jay Walljasper, Utne
Reader
Washington has but a very few observers of the caliber,
honesty and overall orneriness at the right times and places as Sam
Smith
-- Stephen Goode, Insight
Magazine
His
saucy judgments remind one of the way H. L. Mencken handled
presidential campaigns.
-- Robert Sherrill, The Texas
Observer.
Smith offers [a] community based, participatory politics
that's neither left nor right wing but the whole bird. . . . His
work is not different from what quality journalism ought to be:
truth-seeking, independent, fair-minded and debunking.
--
Colman McCarthy, Washington Post
The
so-called progressive sites are knee-jerk predictable, with one big
exception. That's Sam Smith's Progressive Review. . . Nowhere on the
Web, short of Drudge, is there a man who so heartily enjoys
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SAM SMITH'S
GREAT AMERICAN
POLITICAL
REPAIR MANUAL |
Published by W.W. Norton, New York &
London. Order direct from AMAZON.COM
or from THE REVIEW
"Smith's book is a toolbox for
hacking a corrupt system. It is also funny as hell . . . There are butts
that need kicking in this country. . . Sam Smith is handing out the
boots." -- Alex Steffen, The Stranger, Seattle weekly "Must read. . . combines laughter and trenchant
critique to a degree seldom seen" -- John Rensenbrink, Green Horizons
"The Tom Paine of the
Nineties" -- Chuck Stone "Truly
independent journalist" -- Patrick Mazza, Cascadia Times "Phenomenally interesting. . . I recommend it highly" -- Michelle
Laxalt, co-host of Newsmakers "You'll be
enlightened, challenged, even entertained" -- Chuck Harder on the Talk
America Network.
"Lucid . . . Keep going,
Sam" -- Mario Cuomo "Desperately needed"
-- Roger Morris, author of Partners in Power Featured in Utne Reader and on Weekend All Things
Considered.
Also by Sam Smith:
SHADOWS OF
HOPE
Published by
Indiana University Press in 1994, this was the first book to raise serious
questions about the character and politics of Bill Clinton. Said one
reviewer, "I had to be forcibly restrained from quoting yards of
it." Order direct from AMAZON.COM
or from THE REVIEW
CAPTIVE CAPITAL:
Colonial Life in Modern
Washington. You can
buy this book for $45 at Becker's used bookstore in Houston TX or you can
order it direct from the Review for only $15. This classic description of Washington in
the 1960s and 70s is full of insights and information still useful
today.
MIKE
FLUGENNOCK
PHOTO
 Sam Smith is a writer, activist and social critic who
has been at the forefront of new ideas and new politics for several
decades.
-- He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, the
latest of which is Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual.
-- He has helped to start 5 publications and 6 organizations.
Was one of the organizers of the Association of State Green Parties and,
in the 1970s, was a co-founder of the DC Statehood Party, which held
public office for more than two decades. He also helped to found the DC
Community Humanities Council.
-- He is the author of Shadows of Hope: A
Freethinker's Guide to Politics in the Time of Clinton (1994) which
won cross-party praise and was the first book to challenge the Clinton
myth. In May 1992 he wrote the first article putting together key pieces
of the puzzle that later became known as the Clinton scandals. He was one
of a tiny handful of progressive journalists to cover the scandals
aggressively.
-- Has had articles published in the
Washington Post, Washington Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles
Times, Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, Planning Magazine, Illustrated
London News, Washington World, Regardies Magazine, San Francisco
Chronicle, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Monthly, Washington
Tribune, City Paper, Nashville Scene, Washington History,
Designer/Builder, Progressive Populist, North Coast Express, Yes!, Potomac
Review, Time Out [London] and Utne Reader
-- He is a native Washingtonian who covered
his first Washington story in 1957 as a 19-year-old radio news reporter.
He has been an elected neighborhood commissioner, home & school
association president, Coast Guard officer, semi-professional musician,
and plaintiff in seven public interest law suits, three of them
successful. He and 19 others sued the president and Congress for an end to
DC's colonial status in a case ultimately rejected by the Supreme
Court.
BIOGRAPICAL
NOTES
WRITE SAM SMITH
Complete or partial collections of back issues
of the Idler, Gazette, and Review can be found in libraries at Brown,
Connecticut, Delaware, George Washington, Georgetown, Maryland, Michigan,
Northwestern, Tulane, and Virginia Commonwealth universities. Also at the
Buffalo-Erie, Washington DC, and New York public libraries as well as the
collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The early DC
Gazette is available on microfilm through University Microfilm. The papers
of Sam Smith are in the Washingtoniana division of the Martin Luther King
Jr. Library, Washington DC. |
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE
REVIEW
Free-Range Journalism from Washington's Most Unofficial Source.
Edited by Sam Smith
MIKE
FLUGENNOCK
JAN 2
TODAY IN HISTORY
1611 Elizabeth Bathory is charged with the
murder of 610 people, which she apparently committed as Countess of
Csejthe Castle. Bathory had the theory that the blood of youth would give
her everlasting youth. An eviscerated victim would have blood drained into
a vat for her bathing . . . 1878 While hunting, farmer John Martin
spies a rapidly moving flying disk high in the sky near Denison, Texas. He
is the first to use the word "saucer" to describe a UFO phenomenon . . .
1903 President Theodore Roosevelt closes a post office in
Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to hire a Black postmistress . . .
1939 Time magazine names chancellor Adolf Hitler its "Man of the
Year." . . .
ROTTEN
HISTORY
THE HISTORY
NET
JUST POLITICS
Hollywood may have thought that
"West Wing" was a clever soft-money contribution to the Gore campaign, but
Baltimore Sun reporter Laura Lippman, writing in the New York Times,
suggests that it backfired. Last fall, President Bartlet was shot by a
member of a extremist group known as West Virginia Pride "and the slight
did not go ignored in West Virginia. A state senator encouraged an NBC
boycott, and the Charlestown Gazette ran a rueful item in a Nov. 6 column
the day before the election. West Virginia had gone Republican in the
presidential race only three times before in the 20th century. This time,
Mr. Bush easily won the state's five Electoral College votes. If Mr. Gore
had carried West Virginia, he would have won the presidency."
CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS: Reps.
Sander Levin of Royal Oak and David Bonior of Mt. Clemens are most at risk
when Republicans shrink Michigan's 16 House districts into 15. The Metro
Detroit Democrats are "probably the most-impacted" by census data, said
Sage Eastman, communications director for the Michigan GOP. CAMPAIGNS AND
ELECTIONS
JOHN MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES:
Californians doled out the most money - more than $1.5 million - after the
Clinton Legal Expense Trust was established early in 1998. New Yorkers
forked over the second-highest amount, about $800,000, followed by
residents of the Washington metropolitan area, who gave more than $600,000
. . . Here in the nation's capital, records revealed that bellhops to
college professors opened their hearts - and wallets - for the Clintons.
Now, considering the $8 million advance Sen.-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton
has just landed for her memoirs and the millions of dollars President
Clinton stands to gain for giving speeches in the coming years, not to
mention the multimillion-dollar mansions the Clintons have purchased in
New York ($1.7 million Dutch Colonial) and Washington ($2.85 million brick
Colonial), one has to wonder how much "Clinton compassion" these
sympathizers are feeling today.
WASHINGTON
TIMES
STAR WAR STAR POWER
KARL GROSSMAN, AUTHOR OF
"WEAPONS IN SPACE:" Star Wars has received a huge push with the assumption
of power by the Bush-Cheney administration, intimately linked to corporate
interests committed to expanding space military activities. The goal, as
US military documents state is to have the US 'control space' and from
space 'dominate' the Earth below . . . Spearheading the drive will be
Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney, a former member of the TRW board. His wife,
Lynne Cheney, remains on the Lockheed Martin board but is on a 'leave of
absence.' (Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer, and
TRW are major Star Wars contractors -- and have spent many millions of
dollars lobbying for the program.) A main player, too, will be National
Security Council deputy director-designee Stephen J. Hadley, a Star Wars
advocate whose Washington law firm represents Lockheed Martin. And they
will be working from a foreign policy platform put together at the
Republican National Convention by a committee chaired by Bruce Jackson,
vice president for corporate strategy and development at Lockheed Martin."
. . . WILLIAM HARTUNG, WORLD POLICY INSTITUTE: Donald Rumsfeld has a
reputation as a moderate, dating back to his days as secretary of defense
in the Ford administration in the mid-1970s, but during the 1990s he has
become a darling of right-wing Republicans and a member in good standing
of the Star Wars lobby. As Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott's hand-picked
chairman of a congressionally-mandated commission on Third World ballistic
missiles that bore his name, Rumsfeld grossly exaggerated the ballistic
missile threat to the United States posed by so-called rogue states such
as Iran and North Korea INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
DETAILS
WASHINGTON POST: Overall, about
16 percent of all Americans move every year; 50 years ago, about 20
percent changed addresses annually. Virtually all of this shift toward
stability is due to a dramatic falloff in the number of local moves; the
proportion of Americans who move to another county or state has remained
largely unchanged . . . The figures on mobility today pale in comparison
with the mid-1800s, when vast numbers of people began moving from rural to
urban areas -- or westward. "On average, a 50 to 60 percent change in
residents over 10 years' time was not atypical of an American town or
rural county in the 19th century," [sociologist Claude Fischer] says.
Fischer cited census data that showed only one out of every five residents
living in Sangamon County, Ill., in 1840 was still there in
1850.
FROM OUR OVERSTOCKED
ARCHIVES
 The Accordion
One of the nicest things that
happened over the holidays was that my youngest son asked me whether I
still had my accordion. It was the first time in about two decades that
anyone had inquired after my accordion and even then it was only with
derision. The accordion is an orphan instrument not unlike the oboe, which
has been called an ill wind that nobody blows good. It is an instrument so
derogated that one of its affinity groups is known as the Closet Accordion
Players of America. And it is an instrument that, six months after our
marriage, brought my wife running down to the basement crying, "I can't
believe you have one of those" after I had discovered it behind some boxes
and taken it out for a spin.
Kathy, after all, had been
raised in Milwaukee and too many of her friends had taken accordion
lessons at Lo Duca Brothers and then stood on risers at the Milwaukee
Auditorium with 200 similarly possessed youths playing interminable
choruses of tunes like "Lady of Spain." She was unwilling to follow the
woman described by Yeats, and "barter that horn, and every good by quiet
natures understood, for an old bellows full of angry wind."
My curiosity about the accordion
went back to college days when I played drums with Larry Yanuzzi, already
so proficient a musician that he had the stage name of Larry Vann. Larry
actually played a Chordavox, which was not really an accordion at all,
although it looked like one, since electronics had supplanted the need to
push and pull the bellows.
Later, when I was getting
interested in the piano again after a disastrous childhood introduction, I
was assigned as navigator on a Coast Guard cutter and bought an accordion
as my sea-going piano. I would practice on the bridge -- the only space
far enough from the rest of the crew -- while on duty in home
port.
The accordion player's right
hand is directed to a small keyboard, the left manipulates up to 120
buttons that play the bass notes and chords. On my accordion, the C note
button has a small inset fake diamond to provide a tactile clue to home
base. The buttons above and below it are not the next notes in the C
scale, but rather five notes distant based on the scale of the lower
button. Thus the buttons immediately above C are G, D A, and E. From each
root note there extends a diagonal row of buttons which play the major,
minor, seventh, and diminished versions of the chord.
The five note gaps are anything
but arbitrary; in them lie some of the most profound magic of music, part
of a journey around what is called the cycle of fifths. In fact, the
history of western music is in part that of exploration ever further
around and across this circle. If one is playing an accordion, it is also
a trip ever further away from the little button with the fake diamond
inset.
Despite some years of piano
lessons, I had little sense of the true structure of music. I was unable
to absorb it intellectually. But as I pressed the little black buttons, I
soon became aware of what was going on. What had been, at the piano, a
seemingly arbitrary collection of notes revealed their meaning in my left
hand. With surprising frequency, the buttons I needed to push were close
to each other and part of a pattern. I thus discovered that there was,
after all, a system, as I learned music theory through my
fingertips.
I also learned why the accordion
was no longer so popular. If you play a simple folk song you will perhaps
use only the C, G, and D chords, but if you are playing modern jazz you
may be hopscotching around the cycle of 5ths in a manner that would be
extremely difficult on a squeeze box. Further, as music developed so did
the number of chords. You will not find a button for a C augmented 9th
chord on an accordion. It is an instrument best suited for traditional
music faithful to traditional rules.
After the Coast Guard, my
accordion rested untended. Even after I gave up drums entirely in favor
the piano, it only came out occasionally. One of the few paid gigs in
which I used an accordion was a 4th of July parade in Hyattsville,
Maryland. I had protested to the leader of our band that I couldn't really
work a whole parade on accordion, but he pointed out something I had
missed having never been in a marching band: in a parade you really only
need to know one or two tunes. So I played "Maryland My Maryland" and
"Bill Bailey" 62 choruses each on a trailer pulled by a John Deere
tractor. Then the accordion went back into the basement.
Now it will soon by going to San
Francisco where it may eventually make the eclectic rock sounds of Captain
Tonic even more so. It's a good idea, for rock is a throwback to simpler
chordal times, which helps explain the squeeze box's recent revival. I'm
glad my Scandalli will play again. A soundless instrument is like an empty
house. After all, if you had 120 buttons including one with a fake
diamond, mother-of-pearl decoration, a case lined in shiny blue velvet,
and the ability to play endless choruses of "Lady of Spain," would you
want to end up silent in somebody's basement? CAPTAIN
TONIC
 ONE
PROBLEM WITH ACCORDIONS:
THEY TEND TO MULTIPLY
MARK TWAIN ON
ACCORDIONS
After a long immunity from the
dreadful insanity that moves a man to become a musician in defiance of the
will of God that he should confine himself to sawing wood, I finally fell
a victim to the instrument they call the accordeon . . . My passion for
the accordeon finally spent itself and died out, and I was glad when I
found myself free from its unwholesome influence. While the fever was upon
me, I was a living, breathing calamity wherever I went, and desolation and
disaster followed in my wake. I bred discord in families, I crushed the
spirits of the light-hearted, I drove the melancholy to despair, I hurried
invalids to premature dissolution, and I fear me I disturbed the very dead
in their graves. I did incalculable harm, and inflicted untold suffering
upon my race with my execrable music; and yet to atone for it all, I did
but one single blessed act, in making that weary old man willing to go to
his long home. Still, I derived some little benefit from that accordeon;
for while I continued to practice on it, I never had to pay any board and
landlords were always willing to compromise, on my leaving before the
month was up.
JAN
1
WORD
In the depth of winter, I
finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. - Albert
Camus
1990S FINALLY
EXPLAINED
JUST IN TIME for the new
millennium, a psychiatrist friends has introduced us to a cluster of
syndromes going under such names as higher functioning autism, Asperger's
syndrome, hyperlexia, and semantic pragmatic disorder. As we delved into
the matter, the diagnoses began seeming quite familiar. While obviously an
ephemeral journal such as this can not examine all the ramifications, it
will be perhaps useful to scholars, researchers, and cable talking heads
to consider the possibility that higher functioning autism and its related
disorders provide a unifying theory of the past decade - including such
phenomena as Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, dot-coms, the corporatist media,
postmodern politics, the response to Whitewater and other scandals, and,
indeed, the entirety of boomer America. Could it be that our problem is
that our whole elite is autistic? Consider some of the professional
commentary:
"[The child has] difficulty in
seeing the world through other people's eyes or understanding that other
people think differently from himself."
"When language emerges it is
accompanied by echolalia, jargon and auditory inattention. When they are
older, such children use superficially complex language with clear
articulation but have difficulty with the use and understanding of
language, interpreting over-literally and using language inappropriately
in conversation."
"Echolalia is the compulsive and
apparently senseless repetition of a word or phrase just spoken by another
person."
"Later on in school [children
had great difficulty] in playing with other children. They were also
unable to share and take turns. They could appear aggressive, selfish,
bossy, over confident, shy or withdrawn."
"Children with SPD find it more
difficult to extract the central meaning or the saliency of an event. They
tend to focus on detail instead; for example the sort of child who finds
the duck hidden in the picture but fails to grasp the situation or
story.
"Children who find it difficult
to extract any kind of meaning will find it even more difficult to
generalize and grasp the meaning of new situations. They will therefore
cling on to keeping events the same and predictable. Maintaining sameness,
by following routines slavishly, insisting on eating certain foods or
wearing particular articles of clothing or developing obsessional
interests are all characteristics of children with SPD."
"Because children with SPD have
difficulty in understanding what other people are thinking when they are
talking, they cannot understand when people are lying or deceiving them.
Many parents of children with SPD have reported to us that their children
have had their lunches taken off them or parted with pocket money and
returned home unable to give a clear account of what happened."
"Children with SPD . . . seem to
learn more by memorizing than knowing what the individual words really
mean; so they cannot use language with the same range and flexibility as
other children. Children with SPD remember whole chunks of adult phrases
and because they are not sure which bits are more important than others
they learn everything accurately including the intonation and the accent
of the speaker! Sometimes you can hear yourself talking. All in all they
seem to say a lot more than they really understand."
Children with SPD often remember
to use this echoed language appropriately so they can sound very grown up
which contrasts dramatically with their social immaturity. However, when
you ask them to give you an account of an event or discuss a picture story
which they have not rehearsed, you find them groping for original words
and the whole account is very disjointed.
"Some SPD children become
skilled at talking about pictures or sequences of pictures but you find
them only able to give you the bare facts. Their inability to describe
people's thoughts and intentions within the picture mean they cannot be
creative or abstract in their account or they cannot infer or make
sensible predictions. They cling to the observable features of the picture
without dealing with the implied underlying meaning."
Among the
difficulties:
- Little empathy
- Childish.
- Egocentric.
- Approaches children and adults inappropriately.
- Doesn't understand other peoples intentions.
- Demands a lot of
adult attention.
- Feels bad about himself if he makes a mistake but
doesn't feel embarrassment.
- Doesn't recognize the difference between
good and bad behavior unless told.
[Most of the above comes from
a paper prepared by the English Heathlands - now
Heathermount - School language unit staff for parents and teachers
involved in the care of children with semantic-pragmatic
problems]
STROBE LITE
DRUDGE REPORT: Deputy Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott believes the United States may not exist in its
current form in the 21st Century -- because nationhood throughout the
world will become obsolete. Talbott, who is profiled in the New York Times
[for the second time in six months], has defined, shaped and executed the
Clinton administration's foreign policy. He has served at the State
Department since the first day of the Clinton presidency. Just before
joining the administration, Talbott wrote in TIME magazine - in an essay
titled "The Birth of the Global Nation" -- that he is looking forward to
government run by "one global authority."
"Here is one optimist's
reason for believing unity will prevail ... within the next hundred years
... nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a
single, global authority," Talbott declared in the July 20, 1992 issue of
Time . . . Talbott continued: "All countries are basically social
arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how
permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are
all artificial and temporary." DRUDGE
REPORT
THE
LIST
Mark Weisbrot's
New Year's resolutions
For
Congress.
1. Pressure the Federal Reserve
to lower interest rates
immediately
2. Leave Social Security
alone.
3. Provide universal national
health insurance.
4. End the drug war and the
incarceration explosion.
5. Equal protection in the
ballot booth
6. Real campaign finance
reform
7. A tax cut for the people
instead of yet another windfall
for the rich
8. Cancel the debt of the
world's poorest countries
9. Leave Colombia to the
Colombians
10. Scrap the Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas, a
bigger NAFTA in the making.
CENTER FOR
ECONOMIC & POLICY RESEARCH
LOOSE CHANGE
UPI: A downturn in the auto
industry may be bad news for Detroit's economy. According to the Detroit
News, 2001 may signal the end of slow but steady growth in that sector of
the economy. The paper says that inventories are up. Profits and sales are
down. Unemployment is again rising.
[One of the best articles
we've seen on the dot-com fiasco]
DAVID STREITFELD, WASHINGTON
POST: Patrick Byrne, for one, is happy to go on the record with this
prediction: Amazon will be dead in its present form - bankrupt, acquired,
merged or somehow totally transformed - by June. An e-tailer himself,
Byrne is chief executive of Overstock.com. It's a privately held operation
that feeds in part off the demise of online stores like Jewelry.com,
eHats.com, BabyStripes.com and sporting-goods retailer Gear.com, buying up
their inventory when the Web site is turned off. Byrne figures just about
everyone that operates solely on the Net will go out of business, probably
sooner rather than later. A land-based store, he said, pays about $70 for
an item it sells you for perhaps $100. That $30 difference must pay the
clerks, buy the cash register, pay the rent, allow for returned and stolen
merchandise and, with luck, provide for a modest profit. The Internet
retailer, meanwhile, has that same $30 to work with. "Even if servicing
the Web site were somehow free, even if there were no marketing costs at
all, handling warehousing, packing and shipping would eat up $20," Byrne
said. "The Web company has at best a 10 percent advantage. So even if the
Internet were perfectly efficient, there's not that much to gain. And it's
not perfectly efficient." . . . The faster a company got big, the more
quickly it could be taken public, which is when the venture capitalists
get their payoff. "They are not really interested in a good business,"
Byrne said. "They speak as if they are, but what they are really
interested in is what's going to be hot in six months that they can flip
[into the public markets]? I have nothing but contempt for most venture
capitalists." Or for most Internet entrepreneurs. "Remember all those
articles about those guys who could be you or me going off and starting
something that had the sales of the average 7-Eleven but suddenly they
were worth $200 million? There's a certain amount of delight in seeing the
downfall of these people." WASHINGTON
POST
DETAILS
UPI: Officials at the San
Francisco Zoo say something must be done to stem the tide of recent
zoo-nappings. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Koala bears and
snakes have been stolen from the San Francisco Zoo, an otter is missing
from Oakland's zoo, and someone has shot several birds in Santa Barbara,
Calif., recently.
US AT ODDS WITH ALLIES
OVER
DRUG WAR
ROB EVANS & DAVID HENCKE,
GUARDIAN, LONDON: American diplomats privately accused world leaders of
being "tepid" in their support for the so-called war against drugs,
according to a US presidential briefing paper obtained by the Guardian.
The internal document reveals how Washington sought to rally leading
governments behind an audacious UN plan to halt drug abuse. The
long-running US-led "war against drugs" has often been criticized by
skeptical governments and other critics as a mission doomed to fail and a
waste of money.GUARDIAN
DEC 31
BEST BUSH JOKE SO FAR
George W. Bush and Dan Quayle
were returning from hunting. The two were dragging their dead deer back to
their car. Another hunter approached pulling his along too. "Hey, I don't
want to tell you how to do something... but I can tell you that it's much
easier if you drag the deer in the other direction. Then the antlers won't
dig into the ground." After the third hunter left, they decided to try
it.
A little while later Dan Quayle
said to George W., "You know, that guy was right. This is a lot
easier!"
"Yeah," George W added, "but
we're getting farther away from the truck..."
HMOS KICK OUT ELDERLY
NY TIMES: Across the nation,
933,687 elderly and disabled people will be dropped on the first day of
2001 by H.M.O.'s pulling out of the Medicare program, the government says.
These Medicare recipients - a sixth of those enrolled in H.M.O's - are
likely to be poorer, less educated and in worse health than others in the
program, according to a recent survey by an independent public policy
research group of those dropped last Jan. 1 . . . The most severe
consequence for the elderly and disabled being dropped by their H.M.O.'s,
health experts say, is the loss of the prescription drug benefits that
covered 68 percent of those enrolled in such plans.
Although everyone dropped from a
Medicare H.M.O. can return to the basic fee-for-service Medicare, it does
not pay for drugs. Neither do the supplemental Medicare policies, the
so-called Medigap plans, in which enrollment is guaranteed to those who
are dropped. The costs of these policies, which pay doctor and hospital
charges not paid by Medicare, vary among the private companies that offer
them. They also vary from state to state. In Ohio, they cost from $40 to
$143 a month. NY
TIMES
INTERIOR CHOICE IS WATT
PROTEGE
BRIAN HANSEN, ENS: In a move
that sent shock waves through the environmental community, President elect
George W. Bush today nominated Gale Norton to head up the Department of
the Interior in his incoming administration. Norton, who served as
attorney general for the state of Colorado for eight years, is a protégé
of James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's highly controversial Interior
Secretary . . . "Gale Norton was a close deputy to James Watt, who was the
most notorious anti-environmental Interior Secretary in history," said
Bruce Hamilton, the Sierra Club's national conservation director. "I have
yet to hear anything from Gale Norton's lips that would indicate that she
doesn't agree with those kinds of policies." . . . Norton noted that a
full third of the nation's land is owned by the federal government. She
said that she will work with all of the federal land management agencies
to insure that America's public land is "used in an environmentally
responsible way." . . . Prior to being elected Colorado Attorney General,
Norton worked in Washington as an associate solicitor for the Interior
Department, as well as an assistant to the deputy secretary of the
Agriculture Department. In 1979, Norton went to work for the Mountain
States Legal Foundation, a Denver based legal center whose leaders
describe it as being "dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own
property, limited government and the free enterprise system."
Others describe the organization
differently. "The Mountain States Legal Foundation is a right wing,
anti-environmental organization that is primarily set up to thwart
environmental laws," said the Sierra Club's Hamilton. "Whenever there is a
dollar to be made off of the public lands, the Mountain States Legal
Foundation supports those people that want to make that dollar, regardless
of whether it impacts wilderness, wild rivers, wildlife, clean air or
clean water." . . .
Norton also once chaired an
organization known as the Coalition for Republican Environmental
Advocates, which even Republican environmentalists have denounced as an
environmental fraud. Anne Callison, a Colorado resident and a board member
of the group Republicans for Environmental Protection, called CREA "the
original greenscam." "From my perspective, CREA was a front for a 'wise
use' group," Callison said. "They've done nothing to protect human health,
the environment, or to conserve a single acre of wilderness in this
country." . . . CREA was funded by corporations and lobbying organizations
that have long been the bane of the environmental movement, such as the
Coors Brewing Company, the American Forest Paper Association, the Chemical
Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association, and a host of
petroleum companies.
ENS
THREE-STAR CHEF BANS
MEAT
JON HENLEY GUARDIAN, LONDON:
Battered by revelations about mad cows, chickens tainted with dioxins,
calves fed on sewage and sausages infected with listeria, France's gourmet
pride suffered another blow when a three-star chef said he was banning all
meat except poultry from his menus. Alain Passard, whose £100 a head
Arpège restaurant in Paris's seventh arrondissement was awarded the
Michelin guide's ultimate accolade in 1996, said he was concerned by "the
turn our food is taking" and would devote his menu to vegetables, with the
odd bit of poultry, from next spring. Mr Passard's announcement - an
almost unimaginable leap in a country where vegetarians are considered
either not quite normal, or German, or both - coincided with yet another
EU report criticizing French methods, this time in pork production.
Slaughterhouses, farms and laboratories visited by a team of EU vets
earlier this summer suffered from severe hygiene problems, a worrying lack
of veterinary controls and major lapses in animal welfare, the report
said, echoing a similar EU study of French meat products such as sausages,
pate and mince, released just before Christmas. "Personally, it is many
years since I have eaten meat," admitted Mr Passard, 44. "And it has been
some time since I have been able to find any culinary inspiration in
animal products. I want to become the first three-star chef to use only
vegetables, a driving force in the field of vegetable and flower cuisine."
GUARDIAN
WEB SITE OF THE DAY
THE
YES MEN: Take the time
to read all the letters between a WTO parody site and an group that
thought it was getting Michael Moore's deputy as a speaker.
CORPORATE POETRY
CONTEST
®TMark has launched it fourth
annual Corporate Poetry Contest, which will be judged by Media Fund
Manager Andrei Codrescu. Submissions may be sent by midnight, December 31,
2001. Here's an excerpt from the 1999 winner, the Monsanto
Corporation:
There's a family that lives
here.
A family
of six billion, each
with the possibility of
living
longer and healthier
through the discovery
we, the
people
of Monsanto
have just begun.
CONTEST
ENTRIES
DEC 30
REAL TIME
REUTERS: Science fiction writer
Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," urged the world in a
New Year message to celebrate "the real beginning" of the new millennium
on Jan. 1. "The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January
2001 as the real beginning of the 21 century and the Third Millennium,"
British-born Clarke said in a statement from his home in Colombo. "Those
who celebrated the twin events a year too soon are also invited to join in
the celebrations," said Clarke, who has been deluged with requests for
media interviews ahead of the New Year.
INFOWARS: Pacifica
Following the "Christmas Coup"
which took place last weekend at Pacifica station WBAI in New York,
Bernard White, WBAI's Program Director, Wake-Up Call host and 20-year
veteran was fired, along with Sharan Harper, Wake-Up Call's Executive
Producer and WBAI shop steward. Pacifica's Executive Director Bessie Wash
came to the station late Friday night and, with a locksmith, changed the
locks on all office doors, as well as the station's main doors. When
served with their termination papers early Saturday morning, Harper and
White were threatened with trespass--and by extension arrest--if they came
to the station. A court order was taken out by Pacifica against Bernard
White, Sharan Harper and van Isler. . . Security guards have been in place
at the station since Sunday night and access to the station is still
restricted. Guards have been reported roaming through the station at
different times, using cell phones or walkie-talkies. Many staffers say
the environment is intimidating and tense... On Wednesday night, upwards
of 1100 concerned listeners, WBAI staff and press packed a union hall in
lower Manhattan to protest recent developments and get
information.
DEC 29
WORD
One day Alice came to a fork in
the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she
asked. His responses was a question: "Where do you want to go?" "I don't
know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." --
Lewis Carroll
TODAY IN HISTORY
1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket is murdered in
Canterbury Cathedral by 4 of King Henry II's knights . . . 1890
Over 200 Sioux are killed in Wounded Knee Massacre . . .
NATURAL DISASTERS
PEAK
REUTERS: The world was hit by a
record number of natural disasters in 2000 and global warming and a rising
population are likely to make future years even worse, the world's largest
reinsurer said. Munich Re said the number of what it categorizes as
natural disasters rose by more than 100 to 850 in 2000, although the
number of deaths was much lower than in 1999 because less populated areas
were affected. It said 10,000 people died as a result of natural disasters
in 2000 compared to 75,000 in 1999. Material damage was put at more than
$30 billion in 2000 . . . Storms were clearly at the top of the list of
disasters, accounting for 73 percent of all insured losses, while floods
accounted for 23 percent of insured losses.REUTERS
LOOSE CHANGE
NY TIMES: For the last several
years, lawyers have overseen an incredible spate of public offerings,
mergers and acquisitions. Now that the economy is slowing, they are
quietly preparing to play another role for their clients - by building up
their bankruptcy departments. Both partners at law firms and legal
recruiters say that demand for lawyers with experience in bankruptcy is
soaring . . . Many foresee a sharp increase in bankruptcy filings in the
near future, because companies that are not yet in critical financial
trouble - but expect to be soon - have begun to reserve lawyers in advance
. . . Legal recruiters say that although statistics are hard to come by,
the demand for bankruptcy lawyers at all levels, including partners, has
been rising for several months now, and has increased sharply since
mid-October. NY
TIMES
DETAILS
The teenage market is the
fastest-growing for cellular phone services, with half the teenage
population of the United States predicted to own their own cell phones by
2004.
RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER:
Police believe the same culprits stole one privately owned cash machine
early Christmas morning, then six minutes later tried to take another one
two miles away . . . The same culprits are suspected in a third ATM theft,
Dec. 13 at a Citgo Starmart. That machine had $1,500 cash in it. In each
case, the front door of the store was smashed, the ATMs yanked from where
they were bolted to the concrete floor and dragged toward the door. The
machine stolen Monday weighs about 260 pounds, according to the owner . .
. A surveillance tape at the Burlington Mills Citgo shows a pickup truck
pulling up to the front door and at least two men pushing the ATM around
the store and checking the cash-register drawer before leaving. The theft
lasted three minutes.
LAND OF THE FREE
WASHINGTON POST: "I like JC
better anyway. He's cuter." [That was] 15-year-old Danielle McGuire to 'N
Sync's Justin Timberlake as he ignored her and other fans waiting in a
hotel lobby after a Nov. 19 concert. McGuire filed a lawsuit on Wednesday
claiming that after she made that remark, a security guard escorted her to
an upper floor of the hotel, backed her against a wall and verbally abused
her for the comment. WASHINGTON POST
JUST POLITICS
WHEN NY GOVERNOR GEORGE PATAKI
introduced his new motor vehicle commissioner to the press, one reported
asked if Raymond Martinez had ever been ticketed for speeding or drunk
driving. Replied the new commissioner: "Yes, I have a DWI from 1989, and
also a speeding ticket from 1997." To which Pataki added, "I guess that
qualifies you to be President of the United States then."
ACCORDING TO THE NY TIMES, John
Ashcroft's daddy told him that if he dressed "for the job you want, not
the job you have," shined his shoes every day and wore a "sharp white
shirt and tie, you can carry off virtually anything."
SEAN SCULLY, WASHINGTON TIMES:
President Clinton's vaunted job-approval ratings turn out to be no better
than average compared with other modern presidents. Mr. Clinton, who will
leave the presidency Jan. 20 after eight years in the Oval Office, has an
overall job-approval rating average of 54 percent, according to numbers
compiled by the Gallup Organization. That is more than a percentage point
below the modern average of 55.4 percent for presidents since 1953. The
president with the highest approval-rating average is John F. Kennedy, who
scored a 70 percent average in his nearly three years in office, cut short
by his assassination in 1963. The lowest approval-rating average went to
President Carter, who left office with 45 percent.
WASHINGTON
TIMES
THE MEDIACRACY
WE HAVE TRIED TO AVOID Clinton
legacy stories but the size of the Vanity Fair subhead over the story by
David Halberstam declaring that Clinton "may be the most dazzling
political talent of his era" was too irresistibly bad to avoid. Sure
enough, Halberstam managed to write a whole article about Clinton's legacy
without dealing with lies, criminality, and corruption. The worst he could
say about the man was to recall the Rickey Ray Rector affair -- the
mentally disabled prisoner whose execution Clinton left the NH primary to
oversee. Halberstam did note that Rector was so confused that "he asked
the prison guards to save the pecan pie from his final meal so that he
could eat it on is return." But Halberstam's summation of this repulsive
incident was as stunning as Clinton's action was cynical: "It was the kind
of price a survivalist has to pay."
And so the journalists leaves
the Clinton story as they entered, media Monicas trading in their
credentials for another lick of power. And Clinton, for his part - to
adapt Dr. Johnson's remark about a certain dull individual - was not only
corrupt but the cause of corruption in others.
ENGLAND
VIKRAM DODD, GUARDIAN, LONDON:
The Lord Chief Justice said that fewer convicted criminals should be sent
to jail and that politicians should stop promising to lock more people up
as a way of battling crime. The intervention in the heated law and order
debate by Lord Woolf, the top criminal judge in England and Wales, set him
on a collision course with William Hague. The Tory leader reacted by
saying that under his party, more people may be jailed as a way of cutting
crime . . . In an interview, Lord Woolf said prison numbers, which are
forecast to hit record numbers, were swollen by people who did not need to
be behind bars. He called for more use of community sentences and
described prison overcrowding as a "cancer" which hampered the
rehabilitation of serious offenders. GUARDIAN
HEALTH
REUTERS: Japan's first survey of
"economy class syndrome" found that 25 passengers have died of the
condition at Tokyo's Narita airport in the past eight years, a figure
likely to put pressure on airlines to tackle the issue.
According to
the study by a clinic at Narita airport, 100 to 150 passengers arriving in
Tokyo on long-distance flights are treated each year for the problem,
believed to be caused by immobility and cramped seating on long flights .
. . The long hours in cramped conditions are believed to cause deep-vein
thrombosis, or formation of blood clots, and it can be fatal if the clots
circulate into the heart or the lungs. REUTERS
THE NATION
JACK SHANAHAN & FRANKLIN C.
SPINNEY, LA TIMES: The Defense Department's inspector general recently
identified $6.9 trillion in accounting entries, but $2.3 trillion was not
supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine its
validity. Another $2 trillion worth of entries were not examined because
of time constraints, and therefore, the inspector general was able to
audit only $2.6 trillion of accounting entries in a $6.9-trillion pot . .
. Curiously, even without the foggiest notion of how defense dollars are
being spent, analysts of all political stripes continue to estimate future
defense budget requirements. The Congressional Budget Office reports that
the Pentagon will need an extra $30 billion per year just to maintain
current force levels. The presidential candidates proposed adding tens of
billions over the next 10 years. The Joint Chiefs of Staff see a need for
$180 billion more over the next six years . . . The proposals on both
sides have one thing in common: None mentions the Pentagon's bookkeeping
shambles. LA
TIMES
 WEB SITE
OF THE DAY
ADAM CLYMER FAN CLUB
HOW TO MAKE A NEW YEAR'S
RESERVATION
IN A TOWN WITH 22,000 LAWYERS
1. Call the Sequoia Restaurant
2. Be told to await e-mail with reservation contract
3. Receive
e-mail
4. Download reservation contract attachment
5. Unzip
reservation contract attachment
6. Read and sign contract. Excerpts:
"I give FULL authorization to Sequoia Restaurant to charge the above
credit card for New Year's Eve Reservations. I am fully aware that the
cost is a per person charge that is NON-REFUNDABLE . . . I, [Customer
Name] shall NOT decline, reject or challenge the amount charged on my
credit card for the above-mentioned transaction, as I have agreed to pay
the entire stated amount in advance."
7. Fax same
8. Reconfirm
reservation within 72 hours of New Year's
AND THAT'S ALL, FOLKS
Proving by our brevity,
journalists' best kept secret: news is just another social construct that
doesn't happen on holidays.
Enjoy the respite and the start
of the real millennium. Next year let's try to get it right, okay?
AMAZINGINGLY, THESE
PHOTOS HAVE NOT BEEN DOCTORED. AND THEY'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES. IS THAT
BUSH OR AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODULE? GENE
WEINGARTEN OF THE WASHINGTON POST INVESTIGATES AND SPECULATES
DEC 28
WORD
Sweetie, if you're not living on
the edge, you're taking up space. - Progressive lawyer Flo Kennedy, who
died recently
TODAY IN HISTORY
1872 An Army force defeats a
group of Apache warriors at Salt River Canyon, Arizona Territory, with 57
Indians killed but only one soldier. HISTORY
NET
THE ASHCROFT FIGHT
THE TROOPS GEARING UP for the
John Ashcroft nomination fight might want to keep in mind the difference
between a political action and a political policy. For eight years,
liberals have been AWOL in efforts to prevent the Clinton administration
from undermining the Constitution and civil liberties. The substantive
policy struggles lost under Clinton moved the country far to the right
before most even knew who John Ashcroft was.
Now that liberals are awakening
from their eight-year slumber, they have discovered someone to target,
which many consider the point of politics. It isn't. The point of politics
is to do something, not to fight someone. It is often necessary to oppose
someone, but this is never a substitute for a real program.
Besides, liberal battles over
confirmations tend to be symbolic. There are at least two reasons for
this. The first is that liberals, like conservatives, don't really believe
what the Constitution says about the Senate advising and consenting in
such matters. There is a bipartisan consensus that confirmation battles
are strictly for display purposes. Otherwise, someone would have noticed
that president's chief of staff isn't even required to undergo
confirmation.
The second factor is that
liberals don't have all that much fight in them. For example, after the
Judge Bork confirmation battle, the capital's liberal elite gathered to
discuss future strategy on judicial nominations. The overwhelming sense
was that there was no point in pursuing the matter further. It took
octogenarian liberal Joe Rauh -- who still recalled what liberals were
meant to be about -- to argue for continued struggle against conservative
judicical appointments.
Democrats could agree to use the
current equally divided Senate as a forum in which to strengthen that
body's hand in the selection of executive branch officials. But don't hold
your breath. Neither should one expect the Ashcroft nomination to serve as
the opening salvo in a liberal battle to restore democracy and civil
liberties. After all, what is the liberal policy on civil liberties? No
one really knows but as far as can be determined empirically it is rooted
in the right of a women to choose what happens to her baby while in her
womb and for the government to decide matters for it thereafter. If this
sounds brutal, consider the liberal silence on the explosion of prisons,
the war on drugs, the assault on privacy, and the loss of democracy. It is
far more likely that the Ashcroft nomination fight will be used on behalf
of bragging, rather than for civil, rights.
HOW TO SPY
A common saying has it that
there are no walls which completely block the wind, nor is absolute
secrecy achievable . . . And invariably there will be numerous open
situations in which things are revealed, either in tangible or intangible
form. By picking here and there among the vast amount of public materials
and accumulating information a drop at a time, often it is possible to
basically reveal the outlines of some secret intelligence, and this is
particularly true in the case of Western countries. Through probability
analysis, in foreign countries it is believed that 80 percent or more of
intelligence can be gotten through public materials. - From a Chinese
manual on spying cited by Bill Gertz in the Washington
Times
THE LAST DAYS
PRESIDENT CLINTON is putting one
of the capital colony's new license tags - with the slogan 'Taxation
Without Representation' - on the presidential limousine and had one of his
flacks declare that "the president is a strong supporter of [DC]
statehood." In fact, he is nothing of the sort. As the Washington Post
reported, "Clinton has long voiced support for voting rights in the
District but has made no other public political gestures on the issue
during his eight years in office. And it was his administration's Justice
Department that argued against a suit by city residents asking the federal
courts to bestow congressional voting rights on the District." And the
Post doesn't even tell the whole story. The Clinton also sent his lawyers
to oppose a second suit that asked not only congressional representation
but full self-government including possibly statehood. He further worked
closely with Congress to effectively disenfranchise the majority black
city by placing its elected government under the plenary administration of
a federal control board. He also hijacked the city's pension funds to help
balance his budget (with a vague and unenforceable promise to deal with
the pension problem later), and federalized the criminal justice
system.
Clinton gets away with such
mendacity thanks to people like DC nonvoting delegate Eleanor Holmes
Norton who reacted to the phony license plate gambit by declaring falsely
that the Clinton "has done more for the District of Columbia than any
other president."
Incidentally, DC congressional
representation and DC statehood are far from the same. In fact, the
congressional representation drive has often been used (as it is now) as
way to distract DC residents from far more important issues of full
self-government. DC REPRESENTATION VS. DC
DEMOCRACY
MORNING
LINE
Democrat James Mcgreevey leads
Republican Bob Franks in the latest match-up for the New Jersey
governorship.
LAND OF THE FREE
THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES
UNION says it will soon launch a legal challenge to legislation adopted by
Congress that would mandate the use of blocking software on computers in
public libraries. "This is the first time since the development of the
local, free public library in the 19th century that the federal government
has sought to require censorship in every single town and hamlet in
America," says Chris Hansen, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney. The measure,
which was included in the year's final spending bill, was introduced by
Senator John McCain, R-AZ. It would require libraries and public schools
to adopt acceptable use policies accompanied by a "safety technology" -
i.e., blocking software - that would block access to materials deemed
"harmful to minors."
Earlier this year, an 18-member
commission appointed by Congress rejected the idea of mandating the use of
blocking software, which is notoriously clumsy and inevitably restricts
access to valuable, protected speech. Among those opposing the blockers
are American Library Association, the Society of Professional Journalists,
the conservative Free Congress Foundation and state chapters of the Eagle
Forum and the American Family Association.
The ACLU said that because
blocking programs can be so restrictive and overreaching, they
significantly reduce the amount and diversity of speech and information
available to individuals. For example, House Majority Leader Richard
"Dick" Armey, a staunch proponent of Internet blocking, found his own web
site censored, because it contains the word "dick." And a recent report by
Peacefire found that several dozen web sites of candidates for Congress
had been blocked by censorware. ACLU |