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John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he'd ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. "To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters," he said. "It was overwhelming." Then he added, "I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number." Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents.

The military has long struggled to find more effective ways to reach potential enlistees; for every new GI it signed up last year, the Army spent $24,500 on recruitment. (In contrast, four-year colleges spend an average of $2,000 per incoming student.) Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form—but not all school districts let them know about it.

Yet NCLB is just the tip of the data iceberg. In 2005, privacy advocates discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years quietly amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15. The massive data-mining project is overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, whose website has described the database, which now holds 34 million names, as "arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country." The JAMRS database is in turn run by Equifax, the credit reporting giant.MORE

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

COLLINS: There is funding to help improve our preparedness for a pandemic flu. There is funding to help improve cyber-security. What does that have to do with an economic stimulus package?

The Houston Chronicle notes:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.
Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

In reading over this article, three things jumped to mind:
Issue One: Problem was, most of these people were already using two names:

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.

Issue Two: Ko, brought up people of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent. They all got lumped into “Chinese” when she gave her answer.

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/10/representative-betty-brown-doesnt-want-to-learn-chinese-to-say-your-name/#comments">MORE

Berry said Democrats are trying to blow Brown’s comments out of proportion because polls show most voters support requiring identification for voting. Berry said the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill.

“They want this to just be about race,” Berry said.

The MSNBC anchor was almost taken aback by the "privilege" remark and asked Wamp to explain. "If you have cancer right now do you see it as a privilege to get some treatment?"

"I was just about to say, for some people it's a right but for everyone frankly it's not necessarily a right," he said. "Half the people uninsured today choose to remain uninsured. Half of them don't have any choice, but half of them choose to what's called 'go naked' and take the risk of getting sick. They end up in the emergency room costing you and me a whole lot more money."

Having initially excluded all advocates for single payer national healthcare from the White House Summit on Healthcare Reform, and after protest from activists, the Obama administration reconsidered and invited Rep John Conyers, author of HR 676 the single payer bill pending in Congress, and also a representative of Physicians for a National Health Care Program, to the summit attended by over 120 people Thursday.
Dr. Quentin Young, the founder and National Coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, explores Obama's views on single payer and the battle for healthcare reform.

President Obama says healthcare is no longer just a moral imperative but a fiscal imperative. And to make the necessary changes he has vowed to fight the lobbyists and special interests. But in the middle of a financial crisis will healthcare reform happen? And will single payer advocates have a seat at the table?
Monica Sanchez of the Campaign for America's Future, Adam Thompson, Senior Health Care Policy Analyst at the Progressive States Network, California Nurses Association member Martha Kuhl, and Dr. Walter Tsou of Physicians for a National Health Program on the Sebelius pick and healthcare reform under Barack Obama.

Following the lead of a number of his fellow Republican governors, Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) has given some indication that he will not accept some of the money slated for South Carolina in the $787 billion economic recovery bill President Obama signed into law last week. “At times it sounds like the Soviet grain quotas of Stalin’s time,” Sanford said yesterday on Fox News.
On C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Sanford received a call from a Charleston resident who said he lost his job because he has been taking care of mother and sister, both of whom have serious illnesses. The caller told Sanford he is “wrong” to decline the money. “A lot of people in South Carolina are hurting. And if this money can come and help us out we need it.” In response, Sanford could offer him only his prayers:

CALLER: I hope you all are not playing politics with this. People in South Carolina are hurting. You know how unemployment rates are high right now and going up higher. We are running out of money in the unemployment bank — we need money for that, the people that need help. And I’m one of them, I can’t get no help. […]
SANFORD: Well I’d say hello to Charleston because its home and I’d say hello to this fellow this morning and say that my prayers are going to be with him and his family because it sounds like he is in an awfully tough spot.

Watch it:

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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has said he'll reject some of unemployment insurance from the federal stimulus package. Not to be outdone, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) said he'll not only reject unemployment insurance, but will also "not take $42 million in funding for green buildings."
Yes, because there's nothing worse than paying construction crews to make buildings more energy efficient.
There's apparently a race among some far-right Republican governors -- all of whom are already eyeing the 2012 presidential race -- to see who can be slightly crazier than the other. Jindal is clearly a contender, and Sarah Palin and Mississippi's Haley Barbour are obviously in the mix, but Sanford seems especially driven to get out in front of the pack.
It's leading him to make unusually ridiculous decisions affecting the people in his state, while making truly odd policy prescriptions.

Sanford, asked about the stimulus, said he would probably reject some of the funds. "I think it's a bad idea," he said of the package. "Period. Exclamation point."
"Good medicine to the wrong patient ultimately makes the patient sicker," Sanford continued. "What we're dealing with here is a fundamental misdiagnosis of the problem."

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Think Progress: At Least 22 Lawmakers Have Touted The Money From The Recovery Package They Voted Against Sen: Mike Crapo (R-ID); Kit Bond (R-MO); Lindsey Graham (R-SC); Bob Bennett (R-UT)
Rep: Frank Lucas (R-OK); Greg Walden (R-OR); Glenn Thompson (R-PA); Leonard Lance (R-NJ); John Mica (R-FL); Don Young (R-AK) Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO); Ken Calvert (R-CA); Pete Hoekstra (R-MI); Adam Putnam (R-FL); Cliff Stearns (R-FL); Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL); Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL); Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL); Tom Rooney (R-FL); Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Honorary Republican: Heath Shuler (D-NC)

In early December, the administration finalized a rule that allows the industry to dump waste from mountaintop mining into neighboring streams and valleys, a practice opposed by the governors of both Tennessee and Kentucky. “This makes it legal to use the most harmful coal-mining technology available,” says Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Factory farms are getting two major Christmas presents from Bush this year. Circumventing the Clean Water Act, the administration has approved last-minute regulations that will allow animal waste from factory farms to seep, unmonitored, into America’s waterways. The regulation leaves it up to the farms themselves to decide whether their pollution is dangerous enough to require them to apply for a permit.

In October, two weeks after consulting with industry lobbyists, the White House exempted more than 100 major polluters from monitoring their emissions of lead, a deadly neurotoxin. Seemingly hellbent on a more toxic future, the administration will also allow industry to treat 3 billion pounds of hazardous waste as “recycling” each year, and to burn another 200 million pounds of hazardous waste reclassified as “fuel,” increasing cancer-causing air pollution. The rule change is a reward to unrepentant polluters: Nearly 90 percent of the factories that will be permitted to burn toxic waste have already been cited for violating existing environmental protections.

In another last-minute shift, the administration has rewritten rules to make it harder for workers to take time off for serious medical conditions under the Family and Medical Leave Act.In addition, the administration has upped the number of hours that long-haul truckers can be on the road. The new rule — nearly identical to one struck down by a federal appeals court last year — allows trucking companies to put their drivers behind the wheel for 11 hours a day, with only 34 hours of downtime between hauls. The move is virtually certain to kill more motorists: Large-truck crashes already kill 4,800 drivers and injure another 76,000 every year.

In a rule that went into effect on December 8th, the administration also limited vision and dental care for more than 50 million low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. “This means the states are going to have to pick up the tab or cut the services at a time when a majority of states are in a deficit situation,” says Bass of OMB Watch. “It’s a horrible time to do this.” To make matters worse, the administration has also raised co-payments for Medicaid, forcing families on poverty wages to pay up to 10 percent of the cost for doctor visits and medicine. One study suggests that co-payments could cause Medicaid patients to skip nearly a fifth of all prescription-drug treatments.

Under midnight regulations, the administration is seeking to lock in the domestic spying it began even before 9/11. One rule under consideration would roll back Watergate-era prohibitions barring state and local law enforcement from spying on Americans and sharing that information with U.S. intelligence agencies.

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John Podesta, the transition chief for the Obama administration, has vowed that the new president will leverage his "executive authority" to fight Bush's last-minute rule changes. But according to experts who study midnight regulations, there's surprisingly little an incoming executive can do to overturn such rules. The Bush administration succeeded in repealing just three percent of the regulations finalized before Bill Clinton left office in 2001. "Midnight regulations under Bush are being executed early and with great intent," says Bass of OMB Watch. "And that intent is to lock the next administration into these regulations, making it very difficult for Obama to undo what Bush just did."

To protect the new rules against repeal, the Bush administration began amping up its last-gasp regulatory process back in May. The goal was to have all new regulations finalized by November 1st, providing enough time to accommodate the 60-day cooling-off period required before major rule changes — those that create an economic impact greater than $100 million — can be implemented.

Now, however, the administration has fallen behind schedule — so it's gaming the system to push through its rules. In several cases, the Office of Management and Budget has fudged the numbers to classify rules that could have billion-dollar consequences as "non-major" — allowing any changes made through mid-December to take effect in just 30 days, before Obama is inaugurated. The administration's determination of what constitutes a major change is not subject to review in court, and the White House knows it: Spokesman Tony Fratto crowed that the 60-day deadline is "irrelevant to our process."MORE

Deb already pointed out that the average line worker makes only about $28 an hour (or $56,000 per year). I don't think many people would try to argue that $56,000 is too much for a family with a couple of kids, a mortgage, and the usual needs of a typical American family. Bill Kav noted:

Several Senators have used a figure of $73 per hour to describe UAW labor rates. The actual UAW rates vary, from $14 per hour for new workers at the Big Three to $33 per hour for skilled trades workers. The Republican $73 per hour figure includes not only adding in benefits, but also adding a hefty additional total of ALL current retirees benefits from contracts of years gone by, divided by the number of current workers (a much smaller workforce). Somehow, this figure made it seem as if current workers were rolling in clover at a huge hourly salary— which none of them are actually drawing.

In stark contrast:

[E]xecutives have been redistributing shareholder wealth to themselves -- while the company headed toward a cliff -- and the executive-friendly board allowed them to do it.

For example, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner's 2007 pay ($14 million) breaks down to $7,000 per hour (based on a 2000-hour year). Yes, you read that correctly -- and that was a year that GM had $38 billion in losses.

If the average autoworker makes $28 per hour, then Mr. Wagoner's hourly pay could have instead paid 250 average GM workers -- people directly involved in making products that make money for GM shareholders.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally's 2007 pay was $21 million, which amounts to $10,500 per hour. A year earlier, Ford had record losses of $12 billion. Mr. Mulally's hourly pay could have instead paid 375 average Ford workers.

It doesn't stop with CEOs. Four of Ford's vice presidents were paid $39 million in 2007, an average of $9.75 million each or $4,875 per hour. The total hourly pay of all four execs combined could have instead paid 696 average autoworkers.

I don't have access to compensation data for the dozens -- or hundreds -- of other execs at GM and Ford... (BN-Pol)

But wait! There's more:MORE

In and article subtitled A bipartisan Senate report calls decisions made by the former Defense secretary a 'direct cause' of inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Other Bush officials also are faulted, the Los Angeles Times reported that a bipartisan Senate report puts a great deal of blame for prisoner abuse on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

The report, which was endorsed by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the last five years. In several of its findings, the document also challenged the frequent assertions of senior Bush administration officials that the most egregious cases of prisoner mistreatment were isolated incidents of appalling conduct by U.S. troops.
...The document aimed its harshest criticism at Rumsfeld's decision in December 2002 to authorize the use of aggressive interrogation techniques at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The New York Times adds:

The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the report says, "was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own" but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees." By the time of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Mr. Rumsfeld had formally withdrawn approval for use of the harshest techniques, which he authorized in December 2002 and then ruled out a month later. But the report said that those methods, including the use of stress positions and forced nudity, continued to spread through the military detention system. It added that their use "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

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