Planet Utah

Green Jello: Propaganda, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics -- Reloaded

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:24:32 +0000

On the blog Lady Logician, the blogger used a few statistical pieces of evidence that illegals are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in the US. I am separating this post into two pieces because state Sen. Jon Greiner has graciously provided me with more data regarding the Weber/Morgan Narcotics Strike Force study that was released shortly after the governor's summit several days ago and was quoted by the blogger Lady Logician. I need to spend some time with the report that the Senator provided me so that I can be more objective and fair in my analysis. Don't get me wrong my opinion will be included, but I want to take the time to at least read all available information before opining again on that data.

In the second half of the blog post "The Cost of Illegal Immigration, Pt 1" the lady quotes an alleged 2006 FBI report. She provided no source link, but instead the blogger uses the tried and who knows if it is true "the friend lives near the border, so they are totally engulfed in the story and it must be true" argument. That's right, data coming from someone near the border has zero hidden agendas regarding immigration, right? Here is the data:

The following information is compiled from Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security reports(for 2006 ed):
* 83% of warrants for murder in Phoenix are for illegal aliens.

* 86% of warrants for murder in Albuquerque are for illegal aliens.

* 75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles , Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.

* 24.9% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals

* 40.1% of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican nationals

* 48.2% of all inmates in New Mexico detention centers are Mexican nationals

* 29% (630,000) convicted illegal alien felons fill our state and Federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually

* 53% plus of all investigated burglaries reported in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas are perpetrated by illegal aliens.

* 50% plus of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens

* 71% plus of all apprehended cars stolen in 2005 in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California were stolen by Illegal aliens or "transport coyotes".

* 47% of cited/stopped drivers in California have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 47%, 92% are illegal aliens.

* 63% of cited/stopped drivers in Arizona have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 63%, 97% are illegal aliens
* 66% of cited/stopped drivers in New Mexico have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 66% 98% are illegal aliens.

The blogger got into a tiff with a commentator who asked for the source data, and the writer cited "it was complied from a 2006 FBI/DHS report that is online" as a source. I asked for further clarification like a HTML and she provided this link. She apparently never bothered to look at the link. The link is a FBI state by state analysis of all US crime for 2006 and the list of crimes, ironically, includes no mention of illegal immigration.

I tried Googling the header of the data and I actually found the source. It was on a blog called Free Republic and many commentators asked the same questions I did regarding the authenticity of the alleged FBI report cited by the blog mentioned supra, Lady Logician, and her border-residing friend. One commentator did some digging and this is what was found:

i really need some fact checking on these stats to believe them.
For what it's worth, I took a shot at it. LOL.
I went to the URL linked in Post 1 and it says that these stats were published at PollPundit.com. I went to the web page where these stats were published and the statistics came "from a reader."
Sunday, November 12th, 2006

From a reader, "INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants"
snip statistics
This information was provided by a reader. There are comments in the thread that are questioning the accuracy of this information. Another reader, provided a link for immigration statistical information, HERE.
("HERE" is www.immigrationcounters.com/.)
ImmigrationCounters.com refers you to www.immigrationcounters.com/datasource.html. No INS/FBI report is linked there. Maybe (and I stress maybe) the reader who posted at PoliPundit.com went to all the links listed there and compiled his stats from those different sources.
I searched at Google for "INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants" and came up with three websites. They are:
PoliPundit.com » INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants

INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants. 2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants. CRIME STATISTICS ..

polipundit.com/index.php?p=15968 - 28k - Nov 12, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages rss 2.0

... (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants

CRIME STATISTICS 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens. ...

polipundit.com/wp-rss2.php - 8k - Nov 12, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages

Slowplay.com » Sports

INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants. Polipundit - 3 hours ago. Drudge · DRUDGE RADIO LIVE SUNDAY NIGHT 10 PM ET TO 1 AM. ...

www.slowplay.com/categories/sports/ - 25k - Nov 12, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages
Since the INS doesn't exist anymore, I doubt if there is a report actually titled "INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants". I am no closer to finding a source for this than I was when I started out. Oh well!

Here is a real "smoking gun" example of anti-immigrant pundits extrapolating data to all illegal immigrants that was (as far as this author can tell) invented completely out of whole cloth! More importantly it demonstrates how willing xenophobes are to disregard reason, logic, and even produce fabrications in order to maintain the status quo or pass Nazi-like Arizona laws. Xenophobes are not interested in finding the best solution to immigration, they want people to go back where they came from.

Now is the time to reverse the xenophobic past that has led our immigration system to the embarrassing point it has finally reached. Fabricated, inflated statistics and incendiary rhetoric from the xenophobic, anti-immigrant side is doing nothing to help, as the most recent LDS church statement says:

Find a successful resolution that requires the best thinking and goodwill of all across the political spectrum, the highest levels of statesmanship and the strongest desire to do what is best for all of God's children.

My parents and wife's parents have discussed some embarrassing moments of racist paranoia that they had to put up with from aged relatives in their adolescence. In one instance one of their relatives publicly whispered in a loud, near yelling volume, "hide my purse, its a black person!" Obviously, this was extremely embarrassing. The fallacious, incendiary rhetoric used (in some cases) with statistics that are (in at least one verified case) pure hearsay are just as embarrassing to the state of Utah and the logically minded, informed citizens of this state.

One Utah: A Special Message to The Utah Patrick Henry Caucus

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:11:37 +0000

So I’m driving through the Aves, when I spied this sweaty Mexican gardener wearing a dirty a Patrick Henry Caucus t-shirt. When I slammed on my brakes and backed up to check it out, he started to slunk away. It took some time to explain to him why I wanted to take his picture.

You can tell be the look on his face, he had no idea why I thought his t-shirt was so special. His English sucked. But eventually, he figured out I was a friendly, and he kindly posed for this picture.

Patrick Henry Caucus T-Shirt

I asked him why he was here. He said, “I just want to work.” I asked him if he knew Carl Wimmer. That’s when he gave me the Patrick Henry Caucus salute.

I asked him where he got the shirt. It looks pretty new. Finally, he said he found it in a trash can. I figure somebody’s wife isn’t totally in line with the hubby.

Randall Amster: From the Heart of Arizona, We Still Have a Dream

For the People: 7/28 FTP: AZ Law on Hold, PEW: Most Americans Support Tax Hike, and Like Immigration, States Tackling Cap-and-Trade

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:58:37 +0000

Tonight:

A district court has placed an injunction hold on several key pieces of the Arizona immigration law. Considering the excitement of some that Utah follow suit, we’ll discuss how this could (should!) change the rhetoric. (Talking to you, Rep. Sandstrom!)

A new PEW survey on the “Bush Tax Cuts” is out, showing something surprising. Not only do a majority support letting them expire, but that same majority is willing to put paying a little more out of their own pocket on the table to better the economy. We’ll discuss.

Sighting the “absence of national leadership” on climate legislation, several states — all members of the WCI — are, like Arizona with immigration reform, taking the matter into their own hands. The obvious question is those rallying behind Arizona also support this state based effort? The next question is: Would it work? Also, what does this say about the House and the Senate, and the lack of action on these two issues?

Tune in, or Log in.

Your calls are welcome.

Podcasts of this and previous shows are available here.

One Utah: As a matter of principle Charlie Rangel Should Resign

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:17:30 +0000

Rep. Charlie Rangel is facing some serious allegations of wrong-doing. My instincts tell me that at a minimum some of the allegations are true.

I don’t expect my elected representatives to be angels. We all make mistakes and some mistakes are easily forgiveable. In the case of Representative Rangel, I think he’s corrupt. It looks to me as if he’s used his office to enrich himself. That is not only an abuse of power, it is the most corrosive kind of corruption.

He should resign. If he’s exonerated, I’ll be the first person to say he deserves his seat back.

One Utah: Rep. Chaffetz: Time to Bring the Troops Home

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:02:13 +0000

Although the Afghanistan war supplemental passed the House on a vote of 308-114, Rep. Jason Chaffetz joined 11 other Republicans in opposing more money for escalating America’s longest war. Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune, “If the reason we should stay in Afghanistan is because we are in Afghanistan then it is time to re-evaluate your position.”

Chaffetz was interviewed tonight by Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

HAYES: There are 11 other Republicans who joined you, and that is more than in the past. Do you feel that position is gaining traction among your colleagues in the Republican caucus? What do you hear from them, and how do they respond to you when you make the argument to them?

CHAFFETZ: Well, I make the argument that this is a good conservative position, and I think a lot of them are very hesitant to be perceived as being anything but tough on the War On Terror and I’ve tried to argue, look, we have been very successful over the last nine years and it’s hardly a cut and run strategy to say, hey, it’s time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. It’s the longest war in the history of the United States for goodness’ sake, so we’re making that argument and people like George Will and other notable conservatives are taking this viewpoint. I hope it gains traction. You can still be the tough guy but want to bring your troops home. I think they are still consistent and that is the right way to go.

The Washington Post reports:

On the eve of the vote, Chaffetz called families of the three men from his district who have died in Afghanistan since he was elected and told them he was considering opposing the funding.

“This was one of the toughest votes I’ve had in Congress,” Chaffetz said. “So I asked their opinion. And to a T, they all agreed with me.”

Utah Reps. Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop voted for the bill.

On Daily Kos, David Waldman opines:

The war continues. It gets more money than ever. And despite the promises made by everybody running everywhere for every seat in every branch of the federal government not to fund the wars through supplemental appropriations ever again, this is the second year in a row we’ve done just that. Last year perhaps didn’t “count,” since it was a supplemental for fiscal year 2009, for which the planning was done in 2008 (i.e., under the Bush administration), but there’s no doubting who’s responsible for fiscal year 2010. It is what it is.

Jobs funding in the supplemental was rejected by the Senate – with White House approval. Also, there was no timetable for military withdrawal in the legislation – not even the July 2011 beginning of a drawdown that President Obama promised last year.

UPDATE: Partisan politics at its finest: Karen Hyer, the Democrat who is challenging Rep. Chaffetz this November. tries to use the tired Karl Rove “support the troops by sending them into harm’s way for no good reason” meme.

Hyer believes the funding is necessary to continue and conclude ongoing missions.

“We should support our men in uniform who are currently in harm’s way,” she said.

More info:

The Salt Lake Tribune: Chaffetz bucks GOP, opposes Afghan war funding

The Washington Post: Freshman lawmaker Jason Chaffetz goes against Republican grain on Afghan war

FDL: Some Democrats Breaking with President on War Supplemental, But Not Enough

Ryan Jaroncyk: President Obama breaks emergency war spending pledge

One Utah: Bush’s ‘Ownership Society’ – Wiping Out the Middle Class

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:00:55 +0000

Yesterday I got my annual property tax assessment in the mail. When President Bush’s so-called “ownership society” collapsed, the value of the house I live in plunged 40 percent in one year. Now it has come back up a few thousand dollars to the market price from eight years ago.

The “ownership society” was a right-wing article of faith, but the hard reality is most Americans got owned. By the politicians, by the banks, by the corporations. I’m actually one of the lucky ones, because I don’t owe more on my house than it’s worth– and I still have a job.

From Michael Snyder, Business Insider:

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America

83% of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.

61% of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.

66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

36% of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.

A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32% increase over 2008.

Only the top 5% of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to 1.

As of 2007, the bottom 80% of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

The bottom 50% of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.

Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% when compared with 2008.

In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.

Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.

The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.

What are the Republicans proposing now that the “ownership society” has been exposed as a fraud? They want to raise taxes on what’s left of the middle class to pay for more tax cuts for the rich, and more corporate tax cuts.

UPDATE: On Walking Away: Is Strategic Default All That’s Left to Stressed Homeowners?

For the People: 7/27 FTP: Americans Cutting Costs, Utah “School Money” Request Denied, and the Mero Moment

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:12:42 +0000

Tonight:

According to a new Harris poll, Americans are still cutting their daily expenses. Everyone is looking for a way to save money and reduce their spending. We want to know how Utahn’s are doing it. What is the most creative cost cutting idea you’ve had?

The Feds rejected Utah’s ask for $175 million in “school money.” Home school for everyone this fall? No more pencils in classrooms? “Outdoor” classrooms in Mabelle’s chicken shack? We’ll discuss.

Tuesday. Mero Moment day. Today, Sutherland Institute President Paul Mero will regale us with tales of (and the importance of) self-reliance.

Tune in, or Log in.

Your calls are welcome.

Podcasts of this and previous shows are available here.

For the People: The Forgotten Foreclosure Crisis

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:48:21 +0000

Most of my chosen experience at Netroots Nation ’09 and ’10 has been in the form of campaign type training, and doesn’t make for an exciting post. I did step outside of that more this year to catch panels on Social Security (more on that later, but for now: there is no crisis), immigration, and other policy issues, but due to conflicting panels, I had skipped all but the Q & A of this one. Craig attended and will probably have more to say later at The SideTrack. From the Q & A alone I learned quite a bit, so I wanted to post the entire video of the discussion.

The Forgotten Foreclosure Crisis: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Professor Elizabeth Warren (“Godmother” of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and CPA nominee, Genius), and Firedoglake financial blogger David Dayden (DDay). Moderated by HuffPo’s Ryan Grimm.

About 2 minutes swapping panelists mics, but at 19 minutes Warren is asked a question, and continues until about the 30 min mark with one of the most concise explanations of the crisis, how we got here, and what it means for the entire country going forward.

One Utah: Shamanistic Nation: Biblical Literalism and Constitutional Originalism

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:33:12 +0000

Constitutional originalism is the political variation of biblical literalism, it is an attempt to argue that there is one meaning and only meaning to the constitution. It applies a fundamentalist thought process to the Constitution, it treats the US Constitution as a religious document and responds to it in the manner of religion, offering devotion and reverence rather than dialog and interpretation.

In his book Love’s Body (1966), American scholar and classicist Norman O. Brown offers a fascinating insight on biblical literalism:

Literalism does not get rid of the magical element in scriptural or historical interpretation. The Holy Spirit, instead of a living spirit in the present, becomes the Holy Ghost, a voice from the past enshrined in the book. The restriction of meaning to conscious meaning makes historical understanding a personal relation between the personality of the reader and the personality of the author, now dead. Spiritual understanding (geistiges Verstehen) becomes a ghostly operation, an operating with ghosts (Geisteswissenschaft). The document starts speaking for itself; the reader starts hearing voices. The subjective dimension in historical understanding is to animate the dead letter with the living reader’s blood, his “experience”; and simultaneously let the ghost of the dead author slide into, become one with, the reader’s soul. It is necromancy, or shamanism; magical identification with ancestors; instead of living spirit, to be possessed by the dead.

Literalism combines fetishism of the book with shamanism of the interpreter; science and subjectivity . . . . (page 199)

Brown points us in the direction that many critics of literalism have followed – assertions that one believes in a literal bible must include an element of interpretation. Biblical literalism is a relatively modern invention – our ancestors lived in a world that one might think of as magical. A magical world is a symbolic world – the idea that knowing something true name gives you power over it, magic is symbolism; it invokes essences to control things, it suggests that a token of a thing is the thing itself. The shaman’s world is an uncertain place – surfaces are fluid, constantly shifting and changing; reality itself seems mutable.

Fundamentalist protestantism lives within the shaman’s world of magic. Watch and listen as fundamentalists invoke the name of Jesus Christ as totem, as magic words to ward off evil and danger. Jesus the Christ becomes an idol behind which to hide and to whom offerings must be made. The shaman, whether the lay person speaking in tongues or the preacher unveiling the mystery of the bible’s truth is the shaman, who channels the knowledge of the dead, who is inhabited by the spirit of the dead. Certainty is achieved by asserting the single meaning of The Word; the argument that The Word does not change on the page, therefore its meaning cannot change it has always meant what it has always meant and it cannot ever mean anything other than what it has always meant.

The Enlightenment introduced – more accurately reintroduced – an idea to the western world: an evidence based understanding of the world. Science explicitly tells us we can reject the wisdom of our ancestors as we acquire new information. Therein lies the conflict. As Brown wrote, the shaman’s world is one of “magical identification with ancestors” but the world of the Enlightenment asks us to make common cause with the present, to know that the future may reject what we accept as our descendents acquire new information.

And:

Oldness of letter, and newness of spirit. Historical literalism takes the periodization out of history; in Protestantism, the loss of the sense of the difference between Old Testament and New. Old and New Testament are made consistent, forced into conformity, to reveal the same literal truth. And the Puritans in New England can embark on a literal reproduction of Israel in the wilderness. Bondage to the letter is bondage to the past. Roger Williams fight for symbolic understanding his his fight for freedom.

Just as religious fundamentalism imagines we cannot be more wise than our ancestors, that our goal is to uncover the true and original meaning of The Word that is the Bible, so our political fundamentalists imagine that we cannot be more wise than the men who wrote the constitution. In asserting that one can discern the “original” meaning of the Constitution, these fundamentalists are telling us we cannot possibly know more or better than our ancestors. They have attempted to place us in bondage to the word on the page, to limit understanding to the literal and to reject the symbolic understanding which in legal terms is the constitution as a living document.

Religious fundamentalism embodies itself in assertions of interpretive fidelity to the primal meaning of the The Bible. To make such an assertion, religious fundamentalists have created a series of myths of “perfect” translation – in which translators work separately but choose the exact same words, situations in which the dead Holy Ghost possesses and animates scholars and translates and uses them to reach the predetermined conclusion. Fundamentalist faith demands of its believers that they reject the notion of change in belief and society. We are to be held in bondage to the ancestors.

Constitutional fundamentalism embodies itself in assertions of interpretive fidelity to the primal meaning of the Constitution. Amendments are seen not as expanding or altering the underlying document but as clarifying it to move it closer to the primal meaning. Consider for instance proposed amendments to prohibit same sex marriage - defended in terms of “The Founding Fathers would never have accepted same sex marriage.” Amendments are a process by which the underlying document is further purified to emphasize rather than alter its original primal meaning.

Protestant literalism: the crux is the reduction of meaning to a single meaning – univocation. Luther’s word is Eindeutigkeit: the “single, simple, solid and stable meaning” of scripture.

When constitutional fundamentalists object to the concept of privacy as a legal right they object not on the grounds that they disbelieve in privacy, but on the grounds that it is not found in the words of the document. Brown’s univocation – a single meaning without other meanings – is the core of American political fundamentalism as it approaches the Constitution.

Washington Monthly’s Paul Glastris wrote an illuminating article about militias in 1995 which was described as “Our Roving Reporter goes in search of the militia movement’s amateur soldiers and finds something even scarier—amateur lawyers.” From that article:

What all “patriots” do seem to share, beyond the well-publicized fear that the federal government is stealing their rights, is a passionate devotion to the precise language of the nation’s founding documents. Imagine Robert Bork and Nat Hentoff dropping acid in the woods and you begin to get the picture.

Better yet, imagine a fundamentalist revival meeting where the Bible is replaced by The Federalist Papers. As I chased the Nichols story around the prairie-flat eastern Michigan farm country on the wind-swept shores of Lake Huron, time and again friends and neighbors of James Nichols would bring up the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or The Federalist Papers, chide me for not having studied them, and quote from them as if from scripture. The religious parallels were unmistakable, even down to the millenarian belief, almost universally shared, that Washington’s attack on individual liberty is a prelude to the imposition of a “New World Order”: a totalitarian, one-world government controlled by the United Nations.

Suspicious, even dismissive, of the interpretations of scholarly priests (i.e. judges), patriots prefer an extreme version of Martin Luther’s “priesthood of all believers” in which each individual can clearly grasp the framers’ intent by reading the sacred texts for themselves. But like Christian fundamentalists, these patriots are guided by an idiosyncratic political agenda. They tend to quote selectively and read literally, “isolating the part from the whole and pretending that there can be only one reading,” notes University of Chicago theologian Martin Marty. They are Constitutional fundamentalists.

Today’s tea-baggers are the descendents – probably literally in many cases but also politically – of the militias of 20 years ago. I suspect we’d find many people who were attracted to and supported the militia movement are tea-baggers today. The common thread is an earnest desire for certainty.

Fundamentalism is a fascinating phenomenon. Religious fundamentalism offered biblical literalism as a response to science. It’s not accidental that modern religious fundamentalism rejects much of the traditionally mystical – today’s religious fundamentalists may reject meditation and chant and even the mystical ecstasy that has marked Christian devotees practices for centuries. (The line between evangelicals and fundamentalists is blurred; even blurrier is the line between pentecostals who do embrace some mystical practics such as speaking in tongues or snake handling and fundamentalists; pentecostalism embraces very specific types of mysticism which are grounded in literal readings of scripture.) Fundamentalism in essence argues that the Bible and its “literal” meaning can and should stand in place of science. This dynamic fuels creationism and its bastard step-child intelligent design, it fuels the belief that prayer is as powerful as medicine; at its most extreme one finds believers who refuse modern medicine, who embrace the notion that the earth is 6000 years old.

Many of our political fundamentalists are also religious fundamentalists. The interbreeding and inbreeding of the two sets of ideas inspires – as for example – the production of extensive DVD series which purport to document the orthodox and fundamentalist Christianity of the Founding Fathers or which purport to document the ways in which the Bill of Rights actually mimics the Ten Commandments (just a note, it doesn’t). Our political fundamentalists appeared in response to rapid changes in society; they offered as certainty an absolute meaning of the Constitution.

Shared by fundamentalists of all stripes if Brown’s “bondage to the past.” We are presumed to be less wise than our ancestors and therefore less trustworthy. We are bound to and limited by the past. I think it was Carl Sagan who argued that if you live in an era of minimal change then the wisdom of the past is sufficient and it is trustworthy; it is the collected wisdom of those who came before you, the hard-won knowledge about what plants are deadly, what animals dangerous and how to avoid them and if necessary how to kill them, it is the hard won wisdom about how to prepare food and how relationships work; it is a wisdom that embraces gender roles as fixed things in the world and which sees in the stranger a threat to the well being of the community. In a world with little change, the wisdom of the past is more than sufficient. We do not live in such a world.

In our rapidly changing world, the wisdom of the past is not only insufficient it misleads us, it often moves us in the wrong direction. We learn t0 our chagrin that the wisdom of past – hoarded and preserved unchanged and untainted by contemporary knowledge – cannot adequately answer the demands of today’s world. Fundamentalists political and religious believe in a past that was better than our present and which must of necessity be resurrected to save the world. You cannot remake was history has undone and you cannot unmake that which has been created.

The shamans of our religious and political lives invoke the past as the solution to all our problems. Liberation will not come until we reject the literal and embrace the symbolic, the new, the changing. We have a choice between liberating or binding magics. We must choose wisely.

Sausage Grinder: Tuesday Morning Cup o' Joe

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:43:00 +0000

While I sit here calmly and rejoice that my heel is finally, well, healed, why don't you head on over to some of these links and read some stuff and sip your caffeine:

• Cvan4, aka Chris Vanocur, aka Our Lord of the Walk Toward the Camera, has outed the second List maker — one Leah Carson. It's all unnamed sources and no returned phone calls, but it's probably safe to say that if Vanocur is wrong, we'll all have a good laugh when the lawsuit is filed. (ABC4)

• Oh maaaaaaaaan. Wolves have finally made their way to Utah. Police and wildlife officials are warning all little girls in red hoods to stay the hell away from grandma's house. This is one of those situations that has no real answer. Ranchers are going to lose money or wolves are going to lose their lives. Probably both. Obviously the ranchers aren't going anywhere, but there's plenty of evidence that removing wolves from the circle of wildlife has thrown things for a loop. (Trib)

• Brent Brown sold seven of his eight auto franchises to the Larry H. Miller Group. That's a pretty big deal, considering Brown has been all things to all people for the past decade or so around here. I mean, he ponied up a million smackeroos to get his name on the UVU baseball field. Also, props to reporter Matt Reichman for use of "Miller coffers." I picture execs opening dozens of wooden chests and running their fingers through piles of doubloons.

• If you robbed the First Deseret Credit Union in Provo yesterday, police are looking for you.

• All the hookah bars in Utah County will remain unregulated for now. The health department isn't sure if they fall under the Utah Clean Indoor Air Act. Until the hammer falls, here is a list of all the hookah bars in Utah County:

• Askar over at the Dnews blogs that God wants Harry Reid to win re-election. The problem is that even if Askar has been in the direct contact with the Noodly Appendage, who's his second source? Loftin over at City Weekly knocks back a bottle of gin and gives it a go.

• Tongan women couldn't inherit land? Mind. Blown. Best off-beat story of the day by a mile. (KCPW)

And if none of that interests you, maybe it's because you're distracted, nay overwhelmed in your concern about the possibility of Glenn Beck going blind.

Utah Senate: Pioneer Day in Wyoming

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:33:13 +0000

By Margaret Dayton

Utah State Senator

Of course Pioneer Day is a state holiday in Utah – but our pioneer history is shared w/many in the west. July 24 is not a state holiday in Wyoming – but my family and I have been celebrating Pioneer Day every year in Wyoming for over 3 decades. This weekend, following tradition, we traveled to Cokeville, Wyoming – my husband’s hometown. It is an impressive agrarian community of about 500 people, but the July 24 celebration doubles and sometimes triples the population. Since July 24 fell on a Sat this year, there was no question when the celebration would take place. (Since Pioneer Day is not a state holiday in Wyoming, however, the celebration takes place on the weekend closest to the 24th in other years.)

So what is so special about July 24th in Cokeville, Wyoming? In my mind it is the perfect celebration. The fun begins on Friday with family gatherings, a movie in the city park, and class reunions. This year, 5 years of graduates joined together for their class reunion. My husband’s class was included in that group. I’m always pleased to point out that my husband was the student body president his senior year, and he was 1st chair trombone in their award-winning dance band, and he participated in basketball and football, was president of FFA, and was also the class valedictorian! In his self-effacing manner, he reminds me that there were only 14 in his class – but I am convinced he would have been valedictorian if the class has been 1400. Anyway, about 50 people gathered for the class reunions of the 5 classes on Friday night.

The real Pioneer Day events, however, begin on Sat. morning. There is a parade down Main Street. It is the perfect parade. Flags, floats, and lots of horses, follow the Grand Marshall riding in a horse-drawn buggy. The Grand Marshall is always a General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who comes at the invitation of Elder Perry who, having married a Dayton, also spends the ‘holiday’ weekend in Cokeville. As usual, the parade began today at 10:00 – and by 10:15 it was turning around to come back by a second time. My favorite float this year featured 4 generations of women and included my 100-year old Mother-in-law. There was also a 1918 grader pulled by a1949 tractor. This parade not only includes unique entries, but every entry throws lots of candy – and the kids along the parade route bring sacks to fill as the parade goes down and back.

A special Pioneer Program is next at the Mormon Church on the corner of Main and Dayton Streets. The Grand Marshal always gives an inspiring message – and the Cokeville choir fills the choir loft – almost blocking from view the large-as-life paintings of Peter the Apostle and the Pioneers – both original Minerva Tiechert pieces painted for the church where she worshiped.

At noon, the celebrants enjoy a BBQ – the menu is always the same (why change a great tradition) of roast beef and dutch oven potatoes, corn and cole slaw and cupcakes. The afternoon includes football games, a rodeo and the day ends with a dance. Now I don’t want to disrespect in any way the amazing Days of 47 Parade and celebrations, nor any other well planned and impressive remembrance of our pioneer heritage. There may be many great ones – and I may be prejudice – but I’m convinced, it doesn’t get better than the celebration in Cokeville, Wyoming.

I hope everyone had a great Pioneer Day, wherever you happened to celebrate it.

One Utah: Krugman: ‘If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money’

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:30:13 +0000

The climate bill’s dead. Senate Democrats pulled the plug last Thursday on a bill that wasn’t even as good as the woefully inadequate House bill passed a over a year ago.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trotted out the well-worn “60 votes” excuse. Funny how we never heard about the so-called “60-vote rule” during the Bush administration, when it could have helped the country avoid a series of catastrophes and record deficits. Democrats have a big problem, because it seems inevitable that any bill capable of crossing the 60-vote threshold could be worse than doing nothing.

So we lost, and the special interests won. NYT columnist and Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman wrote the epitaph for climate legislation:

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

What’s next? Well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Several regulatory initiatives are underway, and the Obama administration has pledged to veto any legislation that attempts to suspend the EPA’s rulemaking authority.

It’s possible the United Nations could go ahead and do climate change mitigation without us.

As a way to salvage the 12-year-old Kyoto protocol, the United Nations has suggested amending its rules to require only four fifths of the countries to agree to a climate deal, effectively forcing the opposed nations to accept a cleaner earth. “It reflects a degree of desperation — and justifiable desperation — on the part of the UN,” says Mark Lynas, who advised the Maldives at the international climate summit in Copenhagen last winter.

If the amendment passes this August when countries meet in Bonn, Germany, it could prohibit rogue anti-climate-treaty states — such as the oil giant, Saudi Arabia, or major energy-using nations, such as the U.S. — from holding the treaty hostage. “We saw at Copenhagen how some countries blocked progress and we can’t allow that to happen again,” said Britain’s shadow secretary for energy and climate change Ed Miliband, according to The Guardian.

UPDATE: The Big Green Buy. The Nation’s Christian Parenti covers the need for government to step up and use its buying power to create economies of scale for energy conservation and renewable energy. The federal government is the world’s largest consumer of energy and vehicles, and the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. President Obama can make the switch by executive order, without congressional approval. For example, why isn’t the U.S. Postal Service relying on electric vehicles?

Green Jello: Mike Lee -- Anti-Business Conservatism

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:38:06 +0000

In what will be one of many pre-election clashes, the Tribune had an article highlighting the differences between Mike Lee and Sam Granato on the subject of immigration. Officially, Sam Granato supports a proposal by President Obama that requires illegal immigrants to do the following before being granted a path to legal residency and citizenship:

1.) Pay Back Taxes -- This might be simple or quite expensive for some illegals depending on how they have been treated by employers and how the actual legislation is drafted.

2.) Learn English.

3.) Pay a fine.

Given Mike Lee's own interpretation of the criminal seriousness of illegal border crossing, this is the most logical approach for illegals -- speeders don't face exile, and neither should undocumented workers.

However, Mike Lee doesn't support this approach. Mike Lee instead believes that the government needs to step in with a heavy hand and crack down on American businesses that choose to hire undocumented workers. By so doing, he believes that illegals will simply go home because they will be unable to find work. He wants every illegal in the country (I'm not sure if he means by compulsion or "agency") to return home and to come back through existing legal channels.

My question to Mike Lee supporting right-wingers is this: Can Mike Lee represent conservative values when he is opting for increased government intrusion into businesses who are making decisions based on the economic laws that conservatives claim to embrace?

Taking Mike Lee's own beliefs and statements on immigration, the only reason Mexicans cross the border illegally is because they can find better paying jobs in the United States. The US demands cheaper labor than is available from US citizens due to things like minimum wage, Social Security taxes and many other (usually government caused) issues that cause the price for legal American labor to be high. The Mexican laborers supply cheaper labor and see a benefit in more money than they could make in Mexico. Businesses like farmers, manufacturers, and service businesses (many of which have high overhead without even counting labor costs) benefit by having workers at a price they can afford. These businesses demand the cheaper labor because their profit margins are usually low enough that they cannot afford, let alone find, good American labor at imposed American minimum wage price floors.

To me, it seems like Mike Lee is playing into the liberal hands that first passed the minimum wage and American unions -- all of which have decimated American's competitive edge in the global market place. Although impossible at this point, the "one true conservative" Mike Lee should pursue an end to minimum wages so that the laws of supply and demand, the invisible hand, can work to allow American laborers and businesses to reach market equilibrium. By Mike Lee's own arguments he should be fighting government intervention rather than pursuing more government intrusions into the marketplace -- historically bad governmental market interventions are one issue that makes illegal labor attractive to American employers.

The approach of amnesty and legal residency is a far more business friendly path. Undocumented workers who are usually highly valued by those that employ them can keep farmers and smaller less affluent businesses running. Undocumented workers can be put on a path to legally staying in this country. More importantly, illegals (who in many cases have been taxed for social security and medicare without credit) can begin to be legal voters, can openly file taxes, and can contribute to our society in ways that they can't while they are hiding from ICE.

Otherwise law abiding (no drug smugglers, or felons) illegal immigrants should be granted a path to legal residency and (if desired) citizenship. Our current system is founded on the racism and xenophobia of the 19th century. The time has come for us to return to the original intent of the founders and to, once again, embrace the poor and huddled masses that yearn for the prosperity and freedom our nation provides.

True Conservative? Exactly!

Green Jello: Arizona's Immigration Law -- Perverse Incentive

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:36:54 +0000

Larry Bergen at "One Utah" found this Arizona news report. It highlights the disconnect between anti-immigrant rhetoric and reality in the debate, but it also brings to light a possible conflict of interest for the Governor who signed SB 1070 into law.

I don't know that Pancho Sandstrom has any such connections, but I thought the Governor's evasiveness to the reporters questions were revealing.

One Utah: A Rare Example of Tough Reporting

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:57:05 +0000

It’s always good to see a news organization doing their jobs rather then parroting the local government’s construct of reality. In this case CBS 5 News in Arizona lives up to it’s motto, “Telling It Like It Is” in a big way by going after the governor of the state with some astounding inquiries into the nature of the high profile bill, (SB 1070), that has put Arizona and it’s governor in the national spotlight for weeks now; stepping on the constitutional rights of citizens with brown skin.

Gov. Jan Brewer has been drumming up the fear to the point that the tourism industry is getting very worried about tourist cancellations. According to CBS 5:

[Brewer] has made several statements to the national media, the validity of which CBS 5 Investigates could not confirm. The governor told one media outlet that almost all illegal immigrants are bringing drugs across the border. U.S. Border Patrol officials said that statement is false.

Brewer also said law enforcement officials have found decapitated bodies in the desert. Calls to all of Arizona’s border county medical examiners revealed no decapitated bodies have been reported to them.

It’s obvious from the video connected with this report that Gov. Brewer is not at all interested in answering questions about her statements.

Why?

There may be a very good reason to believe the law Gov. Brewer is pushing so hard for is designed to enrich a certain industry which operates in her state:

Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, holds the federal contract to house detainees in Arizona. The company bills $11 million per month. CBS 5 Investigates learned that two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections to CCA.

The prison industry has been one of the largest public works industries in the United States for decades now and as it grows, so does the prison population. A move to privatize the industry is encouraged to save money for the taxpayers, but what does it actually encourage?

Two judges in the south were recently found to have been making millions, flippantly sending young people to private corrections facilities without spending any time to review their cases and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this insane trend which has given America the largest prison population in the world, even surpassing China.

What we are willing to do for the love of money is beyond disturbing. Do we make our society safer by creating criminals?

CBS 5 News report:

One Utah: The Afghan War Diaries

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:18:24 +0000

It is one of the biggest leaks in intelligence history, and certainly the most voluminous. The Afghanistan War’s equivalent of the Pentagon Papers has arrived, after months of anticipation. WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret military after-action reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. These are now available on WikiLeaks as “The Afghan War Diary.” Release of another 15,000 reports is pending.

According to WikiLeaks:

The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.

…This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.

WikiLeaks has also given the files to three news organizations: The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. All three are in the midst of publishing their own analyses.

UPDATE: The Guardian has a spreadsheet and map of key incidents. The White House spin can be found here.

UPDATE: House to Vote on $33 Billion War Supplemental as World Reads WikiLeaks.

UPDATE: On Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman reports that the WikiLeaks after-action reports recount 144 incidents in which coalition forces killed civilians over six years.

Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahedeen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.

UPDATE: WikiLeaks Docs Show Pakistan-Taliban Cooperation Against U.S.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald:

Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world. Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing. WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall…

UPDATE: At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday.

UPDATE: Report Finds Link Between Civilian Deaths And Recruitment For Insurgency In Afghanistan

UPDATE: White House Attempts to Downplay Fallout from Wikileaks Afghan Logs. “Nothing to see here, it’s old news.” But it’s new news to most Americans, who’ve been kept in the dark about Afghanistan.

UPDATE: HuffPo headline: “WAKE THEM WHEN IT’S OVER: Major News Outlets Bored By Afghan War Leaks, ‘Not News’ That War Is Going Badly”

UPDATE: WikiLeaks Iraq Cache More Than Three Times As Big

Related One Utah posts:

‘We Were Fighting To Make It Home Alive’ (April 9, 2010)

Wikileaks Obtains Video of 2007 War Crime (April 5, 2010)

Leaked: US Rules of Engagement for Iraq (February 4, 2008)

One Utah: Worth Watching: Adam Kahane on Power and Love

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:01:39 +0000

Green Jello: Mormon Culture -- Pioneer Day & "Welfare Mentality"

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:35:12 +0000

I read the Facebook feed of a FB friend, I have never met this individual but I know he is a fellow political junky. This friend had decided to commemorate Pioneer Day by posting the following:

"our pioneer ancestors would be ashamed at our welfare mentality."

This produced some jeering agreement, one commenter mentioning "immorality" in Zion (he is a Mike Lee supporter, so maybe he is referring to those not supporting the one-true conservative, constitutional expert for Senate) and some decent with KVNU and Amicus blogger Tom Grover bringing up the United Order and the law of consecration. Tom's inference that the law of consecration and the United Order are akin to welfare, raised a fair amount of debate and disagreement. Some commentators arguing that the two are completely different, and others argued that tithing is the church portion of the law of consecration and the providing for the poor portion of the law has been replaced by government welfare programs through taxation. One argument made mentioned that millennial consecration will be administered by the government, which was countered by a "actually it will be administered by the church" which should be realized (according to the Mormon canon of scripture) that church and government will be one and the same in the millennium.

This debate spurred this internal question: Do Mormons believe it a sin to seek or receive welfare?

Judging from the pious indignation that some commentators on this feed showed, and some comments I have heard made in the communities of "Zion" where I have lived it would sure seem like it. What does "our welfare mentality" mean anyway? I have always believed that we are to have compassion for the poor and the needy -- isn't that the point of welfare, government or church administered? It can be ceded that the LDS church welfare system has a very wise "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" approach -- while much of Federal welfare remains focused on the giving of the fishes. However, the fact remains that both systems serve the purpose of helping the poor and the indigent.

Although I agree that government welfare is in fact different from the law of consecration (although my unrighteous mind can't quite wrap around the idea that everyone will share everything we have without any compulsion, but I also don't support Mike Lee for Senate and therefore am a stubble candidate). As I mentioned in a earlier post, I think many LDS church members need to examine their compliance to a commandment that Christ identified as the second greatest -- LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. Members of the LDS church here in Utah (self-included) are quick to become myopic in their view of the gospel focusing on some pet commandments or self-imposed dogma (i.e. the commandment of self-reliance, having the mother not work in a family, or the twelfth article of faith) rather than remembering that our observance of commandments needs to be all encompassing -- even the ones (like loving thy neighbor) that require the flexing of a lot of Christ-like muscle. Like Eve, we need to look to the spirit of the commandments rather than, like Adam tried in vain to, be myopically bound to the letter of the law. It is good to self-reliant, but it is not good to condemn those who are unable to be self-reliant (temporary or permanent) for using welfare that is available. The Church of Jesus Christ recognizes this as they maintain one of the most impressive welfare programs in the world, and members who are overly pious about their self-reliance need to realize this as well.

I choose to commemorate Pioneer Day differently -- I believe our pioneer ancestors would be quite proud of the people of Zion. Welfare is available to all when the need arises, and, as the last couple of years has shown, no one is immune to being needy or wanting at sometime or another in their lives. I'm grateful for welfare, church administered or governmental, because it is there to catch me and any of my neighbors when the floor falls out from under us. Most people in Zion do there best to be self reliant, and our church has become a world leader in providing welfare for the poor by helping provide temporal needs in the short-term and educating the needy for job skills necessary to attain self-reliance long-term.

On the other hand. If you are a LDS church member, needing welfare may likely reveals one sinful aspect of that members life -- not following the admonition of the prophets to have a years worth of food storage. There I admit that.

For the People: Heed Babel

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:41:57 +0000

So you’re a Christian …

There has been some talk of late about mostly ALL Americans coming from immigrants and that public speech (Prayer as it were in Hyrum on Independence Day) in Spanish should be a welcome celebration of our American culture and Independent Sovereignty.

I was pondering the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis. Babel translates to ‘the Gate of God’. One of Noah’s great grandsons (the people we truly come from if you believe in that sort of thing) is thought to have lead a charge to build a tower so high they could just walk right up to Heaven and forgo God’s commanded law of righteousness on Earth. The people thought they could ignore the Law and simply and passively invade Heaven. Sound familiar?

God didn’t like the attitude so he confused their tongues (invented other languages) making communication very difficult.

So what happened next? Unity or segregation?

There is no need for pride in the color of one’s skin or one’s cultural heritage. If you’re a Christian such pride simply means you are proud of the changes on Earth brought on by Nimrod’s spirited charge to Heaven.

For Americans, especially on July 4th, pride belongs with one’s allegiance to the Red, White and Blue. Language isn’t a matter of pride, it’s about communication. In America we speak English whether our dialect be the Lingo associated with Jive, Yankee, Southern Drawl, Chicano or Valley Girl. If you move here, learn and use English when addressing strangers.

Those who move here and use pride as an excuse NOT to learn or use English are influencing segregation that will find us falling in division rather than standing proudly united.

One Utah: Woman films herself being attacked by a bison in Yellowstone

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:32:21 +0000

They say “Don’t approach wild animals” for a reason. They’re not just taking the words out for a walk.

I’m glad she wasn’t seriously injured, I’m glad no one died. My list trip to Yellowstone the park rangers had to set up a perimeter in several places so people wouldn’t approach the wild animals. It shouldn’t but it surprises me.

One Utah: Ed Schultz: White House Has A ‘Sissy Room’

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:39:35 +0000

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz delivered a keynote speech at Netroots Nation in Las Vegas. He ripped President Obama’s White House for being afraid of Faux News and the conservative movement.

“They must have a war room at the White House… I think they’ve got a sissy room, too. We’ve got a White House that reacted to a blog story that was reported, promoted and sold on Fox News. They’re not a news organization. They’re a propaganda organization. They’re about one thing: Destroy the progressive movement, win at all costs, trash people, don’t worry about the consequences, and just hammer it home. It don’t gotta be the truth. We’ve just got to make sure we say it over and over and over again.”

One Utah: How Can We Stop the Catfood Commission?

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:08:50 +0000

Glenn Greenwald:

It is absolutely beyond the Republicans’ power to cut Social Security, even if they re-take the House and Senate in November, since Obama will continue to wield veto power. The real impetus for Social Security cuts is from the “Deficit Commission” which Obama created in January by Executive Order, then stacked with people (including its bipartisan co-Chairs) who have long favored slashing the program, and whose recommendations now enjoy the right of an up-or-down vote in Congress after the November election, thanks to the recent maneuvering by Nancy Pelosi. The desire to cut Social Security is fully bipartisan (otherwise it couldn’t happen) and pushed by the billionaire class that controls the Government.

If the Catfood Commission proposes a bill slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits and it comes to the House floor, Republicans and Blue Dog Dems will vote for it. Even if all the progressive-leaning Democrats oppose it on a straight vote, it will probably pass. Millions of retirees will fall out of the middle class into poverty.

Jon Walker on FDL thinks that House progressives can threaten to remove Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House if she allows such a vote. That does not seem likely. IMHO if they had that kind of cojones then Bush would have been impeached and health care would include a public option.

Here’s the question. How can we stop the Catfood Commission?

Related One Utah post:

Budget Priorities Left to Catfood Commission (July 6)

Green Jello: U Accountant -- $100,000 for 10 Days in Jail

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:31:11 +0000

Who ever said that "crime doesn't pay" never met former U of U accountant Jara Jane Wimmer.

Wimmer started defrauding the University's theater department in 2001 with the first of many checks. From then until the U finally caught on in 2009, she fraudulently used professors' University credit cards, paid her husband regular checks from the University coffers, charged plane tickets to Cancun on her University credit card, and enjoyed several thousands of dollars in illegitimate purchases which she covered up by forging invoices, delivery slips, and order requisitions.

What is her punishment?

3rd District Judge William Barrett ordered Wimmer, 33, to serve 10 days in jail, perform 200 hours of community service and pay $123,000 in restitution.

The article states that her theft was 100,000 dollars more that the amount that than the restitution order. So, Ms. Wimmer profited 10,000 dollars per day in jail -- not a bad deal. Sure she has community service and she theoretically "has" to pay 123,000 dollars back. However, Ms. Wimmer and her now deceased hubby lived pretty sweet on a pretty small salary and she gets to keep 45% of her booty -- I wonder if my local college is hiring for bookkeepers?

Internal Controls

There appears to be some basic internal controls that the U theater department was missing all those years -- multiple reviews of department books, duel signatures on department checks, and regular reviews of credit card expense reports. All of these internal controls are taught in lower level accounting courses. Kudos (in a sarcastic way) to Ms. Wimmer for identifying Mack truck-sized flaws in the U of U's internal controls -- if only you had a soul, you would have reported them to management instead of buying purses with taxpayer and donor's funds.

Utah Senate: Illegal Immigration Impact on Drug Crimes

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:56:23 +0000

By Jon Greiner

Ogden City Police Chief and Utah State Senator

For those interested in the immigration discussion, here is a report from one of my team leaders on the Weber/Morgan Narcotics Strike Force. Joe Pyrah used some of these stats in Police: Illegals responsible for much of drug trade

From: Burnett, Troy

Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 2:45 PM

Subject: Illegal Alien effect on Drug Crime in Weber and Morgan Counties

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of discussion and debate over the new law in Arizona dealing with illegal aliens. Locally, there has been debate over the effects of such a law in Utah. Salt Lake City Police Chief Burbank is an outspoken opponent to such a law with Representative Carl Wimmer being a vocal proponent. See http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10598798.

The Strike Force would like to supply you with facts as it relates to Illegal aliens and the drug activity in Weber and Morgan Counties.

From May 2009 to May 2010, Strike Force Agents made 483 drug related arrests. Of those 38, or approximately 8%, were illegal aliens. Those 38 illegal aliens were responsible for 82% of the total drugs seized in that time period, which relates to 17.11 pounds of methamphetamine, 12.86 pounds of cocaine, 1.5 pounds of heroin and 225.16 pounds of marijuana. The Drug Enforcement Administration states in its drug threat assessment for Utah, “Drug Situation: Mexican poly-drug trafficking organizations dominate all facets of illegal narcotics distribution throughout Utah. Sources of supply for methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are primarily located in Mexico, California, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest.” See http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/state_factsheets/utah.html.

In conclusion, if Utah enacted a law similar to the Arizona law, dealing with illegal aliens, the Strike Force would likely see a drastic reduction in the supply of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and marijuana in Weber and Morgan Counties. We would expect to see the price of these drugs increase dramatically, reducing the number of new addicts and a significant reduction in the peripheral crime (burglary, theft and identity/check fraud) associated with drug addicts.

Listed below are some of the cases involving illegal aliens within the last year: [Case studies deleted - call if you need them.]

. . . .

Sergeant Troy Burnett

Weber/Morgan Narcotics Strike Force

801-629-8116

One Utah: Is there any chance the Sherrod blow up will advance the discussion about race?

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:02:09 +0000

When discussing race, it often seems to me that for many whites – liberal, moderate, conservative – the fear of being accused of racism is overwhelming. The conversations are uncomfortable because even at best they seem to go something like this:

“That thing you just said sounds racist.”

“I’m not a racist. How dare you accuse me of being a racist?”

“That’s not what I said . . .”

“I’m not a racist how can you say such a thing to me!? You’ve attacked my good name!”

At which point some bystander announces, “Oh I’ve seen into this person’s soul and I’m here to tell you she/he is a good person, utterly free of racism.”

And the whole “that thing you did or said” conversation becomes the “that thing you are” conversation and that’s a rathole from which no one escapes. In those conversations, at least one person spends their time and energy defending themselves against any hint they might be a racist and the point being made gets completely lost.

The whole conversation becomes an exercise in propping up the egos of white people, assuring them of their essential goodness. Even under ideal circumstances, saying, “That sounded racist” is heard as “You are a racist.” We human animals have a hard time separating “that thing we did or said” from “who we are.”

Hugo has noticed a similar dynamic between men and women, observing:

But one thing I remember from my own college days that I see played out over and over again is this male habit of making nervous jokes about being attacked by feminists. In my undergrad days, I often prefaced a comment by saying “I know I’ll catch hell for this”. I’ve seen male students do as they did today and pretend to run; I’ve seen them deliberately sit near the door, and I once had one young man make an elaborate show (I kid you not) of putting on a football helmet before speaking up!

All of this behavior reflects two things: men’s genuine fear of being challenged and confronted, and the persistence of the stereotype of feminists as being aggressive “man-bashers.”

The variation with regard to race is the “angry black . . .” fill in woman or man according to the specific speaker.

Hugo adds:

Joking about getting beaten up (or putting on the football helmet) sends a message to young women in the classroom: “Tone it down. Take care of the men and their feelings. Don’t scare them off, because too much impassioned feminism is scary for guys.” And you know, as silly as it is, the joking about man-bashing almost always works! Time and again, I’ve seen it work to silence women in the classroom, or at least cause them to worry about how to phrase things “just right” so as to protect the guys and their feelings. It’s a key anti-feminist strategy, even if that isn’t the actual intent of the young man doing it — it forces women students to become conscious caretakers of their male peers by subduing their own frustration and anger. It reminds young women that they should strive to avoid being one of those “angry feminists” who (literally) scares men off and drives them away.

(Emphasis in the original)

In Hugo’s women’s studies classes the situation becomes all about the men – the women work to soothe the male ego, to keep the men safe. When the discussion is about race, the dynamic becomes black people comforting white people and assuring the white people that they (black people) know that the white people are really good people.

Being called a racist or bigot is tough. Very few of us want to be bigoted, very few of us want to be racists. But honest and open conversation requires that we deal with it. If someone says, “That thing you said sounded racist,” we should stop talking for a minute, move beyond our own oh so sensitive feelings and let the person speak. Chances are good it’ll turn out that what we said was racist and we didn’t mean it but we’ll keep saying because we’re too busy defending ourselves to actually hear the message and understand the problem.

Sausage Grinder: What else: immigration.

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:22:00 +0000

• Robert Q. Gehrke outs one of the suspected List makers: Teresa Bassett, a 15-year IT employee who was well liked. Sadly, they weren't able to reach Bassett.

• Lee Davidson III, Esquire, has some more information about the investigation:

Of the 1,112 people named on the list who did come from the state database, all lived in a home where a U.S. citizen also lives, Cox said. In most cases, the citizen was the child of illegal-immigrant parents. Children born in the United States automatically become citizens. ... Fewer than 20 people on the list were here legally, Cox said.

The last part is interesting. The Herald's own phone calls revealed at least a few of the phone numbers were also inaccurate.

• Joseph Biggie Pyrah took a different tact at immigration yesterday, focusing instead on drugs.

Of the 483 busts made between May 2009 and May 2010, 8 percent involved undocumented immigrants. But those 38 people were responsible for 82 percent of the total amount of drugs seized.

• Twitter has finally discovered the cause of so many failwhales — Fox 13's Ben Winslow. In an attempt to ease the strain he is single handedly putting on the system, the company is building a data center in The SLC.

And if none of that interests you, perhaps it's because you're over at ThinkGeek ordering me a duct-tape tie. I said ordering me a duct-tape tie.

Green Jello: Vaild Reason's For the GOP to Object to the Unemployment Package

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:41:36 +0000

President Obama and Senate Democrats have made a hard attempt at demonizing the Senate Republicans for opposing H.R. 4213 -- the bill with extended unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed. However, due to an ugly little tax amendment to this bill, the GOP has at least one valid reason for their opposition. There is one provision that any and all self-employed individuals should oppose. That provision is found in Section 413. The summary of the bill reads as follows:

Requires the recognition of all self-employment income, for purposes of the tax on such income, earned from an S corporation which is a partner in a partnership engaged in professional services or for which the principal assets are the reputation and skill or three or fewer employees.

Not only does this unfairly apply self-employment tax (15.3% tax on the Net Income of a business that is applied to Social Security and Medicare Tax) to a specific set of businesses, but it does so in an extremely subjective and arbitrary manner.

First, this provision requires the valuation of a new intangible asset -- reputation and skill. How will this be measured? In accounting firms, for instance, partners can be valuable for many different reasons. Some partners may be valuable for their abilities to build rapport with current and potential clientele, some may have value in their technical skills. How will the IRS decide (or require businesses to value these abilities)?

Reputation is even more convoluted a concept to try and value. My father-in-law is an emergency physician and he is a really good one. In fact he is so good that the state of Utah recognized him as the best ER doctor in the state one year in the early part of the last decade. However, how are we to say his reputation is the "principal asset of his business" given the fact that doctors are so highly in demand that my father-in-law would be lucratively employable even if he were a mediocre physician.

At least for a while, I predict that (if this provision becomes law) the IRS will take a C-Corp professional services corporation view on this new piece of tax code. In C-Corp professional service corporation tax law, all C-Corporations that are engaged in accounting, medicine, law, engineering, actuarial science, performing arts, and consulting are required to pay a flat 35% tax on net income. This seems like the most simplistic path for the IRS to take with such a convoluted law. Regarding the skill component, the argument can simply be made that the principal asset for all individuals involved in professional services is their skill. The argument will be more tricky for the reputation component, a tax firm that operates as (for simplicity) a HR Block firm can easily argue that their individual reputation isn't the principal asset -- the reputation-identifiable principal asset in this case is obviously the brand name recognition of a well marketed franchiser.

A (Possible) Simple Work-Around

Section 413 has a ridiculous limitation that provides a (possible) simple out in regards to this provision. It states that tax is applied to S-Corp PSC's that have a principal asset of the skill and reputation of three or fewer employees. Therefore any firm involved in accounting, medicine, law, engineering, actuarial science, performing arts, and consulting should have more than three skilled professionals on payroll. Until Congress amends this new probable new piece of IRC, this strategy is at least arguably compliant with such a poorly drafted piece of tax law.

Long-Term Prediction for This Law

If it passes, this law is certainly destined for several court challenges in the coming years. Undoubtedly, the IRS will take a very broad position most likely inclusive of any S-Corp that meets C-Corp PSC requirements. In opposition to the IRS' anticipated broad view of this provision, practitioners will likely pursue any number of strategies to avoid this provision. For example, accountants may start buying their office buildings in order to argue their principal asset is real estate rather than skills and reputation or firms will pursue the "hiring more than three employees" that I mentioned earlier. Eventually Tax Court will have to step in a equalize the rules for this provision if Congress doesn't realize the idiocy of the legislation and amend it within months of it's passage.

One Utah: One Man’s Ceiling…

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:09:46 +0000

Stole this from a friend on one of the social networking sites.

Utah was Mexican territory when the first Mormon settlers arrived in 1847 — shall we rename Pioneer Day as ‘Illegal Immigrant Day’?

Should we also start referring to Mormons as Illegals?

They came across the dry dusty plains to get here… Dust-backs?

This ignores exactly what the local tribes thought of the Spanish when they first arrived!

Funny what changes with a point of view shift. Just thinking out loud here.

One Utah: Profiles in Cowardice

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:13:49 +0000

It’s not often that something in public life just plain pisses me the fuck off but the god damned cowardice of the Obama administration with regard to their unbelievably cowardly response to the invented controversy about Shirley Sherrod has done it.

It goes something like this. Right-wing liar and provocateur Andrew Breitbart edited out some key portions of Ms. Sherrod’s speech to make it sound like she’s racist against white people. The Obama folks completely freaked out and Secretary Tom Vilsack demanded her resignation via blackberry.

So then the whole video comes out and it turns out that Sherrod’s point was pretty much the opposite of what Breitbart made it out to be (big fucking surprise!).

Here’s how Ta-Nehisi Coates describes her story:

Shirley Sherrod, a longtime Civil Rights worker and black USDA appointee . . .dared confess that she’d once been motivated by racial prejudice but had since seen the error of her ways. Sherrod details how, as a child, her family was essentially terrorized by the Klan and white vigilantes. Her father was murdered 45 years ago. Her widowed mother, at one point, had to stand on the porch with a rifle to fight off the Klan. “I know who you are!” she yelled at them.

Sherrod’s personal story is about redemption, and the case she highlights took place 20 years ago, long before she was working for the federal government.

Here’s how Coates summarizes his take:

Taking it all in, it must be said that the landscape is as follows: We have an administration that will contort itself to defend a movement whose convention speakers call for the reinstatement of the tools of segregation. That same administration will swiftly jettison an appointee, herself the victim of homegrown terrorism, for echoing the kind of message of redemption and personal responsibility that has become the president’s hallmark on race. Andrew Breitbart says that Sherrod’s speech, not the Tea Party’s rhetoric, is the real racism. It is an argument that is as old as American white supremacy, and one that this administration, through its actions over the past week, has tacitly endorsed.

From the American Prospect:

If there’s anything that strikes me most about both incidents, it’s that they completely vindicate Attorney General Eric Holder’s assertion that the United States is a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race. I understand that a lot of Americans feel really uncomfortable talking about race, but that’s no excuse for the week we spent debating whether the NAACP is racist against white people, or the fact that the Obama administration punished a dedicated federal employee for the “crime” of speaking honestly about race. Instead of tackling these issues with maturity and candor, we spend our time rebuffing accusations of racism — because there are no racists in America — and shouting nonsense complaints about “reverse racism,” while provocateurs like Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck distort our understanding of racism and prejudice.

You wanna know something? I’m sick and tired of these cowardly centrist Democrats and their lack of conviction. They’ll do whatever they can to make sure no white person ever feels bad about the issue of race but god forbid an black person speak honestly about it. They’ll bend over backwards to avoid offending the delicate sensibilities of raving lunatic tea baggers but god forbid they actually hear what black people have to say.

I have a dear friend whose personal story isn’t so different than Shirley Sherrod’s – born in the segregated South, she saw her friends and family subjected to racially motivated violence. She lived first hand the indignity of Jim Crow. She told me she grew up knowing white people were dangerous. That’s our heritage. And until we face it honestly, too many of us will continue to be taken in by the inversion – that the racists are the victims, that groups and individuals who dare to confront race honestly are the real racists.

In the meantime, the Obama administration should grow a pair, fire Vilsack and offer Shirley Sherrod his job.

And I hope she sues the holy fuck out of that lying sonofabitch Breitbart.

Sausage Grinder: It's Wish I Was Still In Bed Wednesday!

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:03:00 +0000

Dear 107.9 FM,

Your summer contest thing is pretty traditional fare — Twinkies in an aisle of Cupcakes and Ding Dongs. For that I can overlook the obnoxiousness of it all. I cannot, however, overlook your "Summer of 2k10" moniker. The "k" is supposed to replace three zeroes. For example, "Joe's car is worth 1k." Your attempt at hipness has failed. The "k" isn't replacing anything, it's just hiding a bunch of stupid, and not very well.

Sincerely,

The Grinder Staff

And now to immigration:

• The two women who compiled The List are also responsible for putting out the letter to the media, according to DWS. Now that's interesting. Asked about names, that's not expected to be released unless charges are filed against them. Or someone, say an intrepid journalist, does it first. (Herald)

• The governor's roundtable was exactly what we figured it would be — 90 second soundbites by mostly white men. (What is it with Herbert and his monochromatic/gender committees?) Also, history called and wants its issue back. (Herald)

And now to other stuff:

• My favorite story yesterday was was Erin Alberty's "Dude, really, I'm not a prostitute" piece in the Trib. I've never spent that much time in that part of SLC, so it was pretty enlightening. (Trib)

• The state's 4/10s isn't saving as much money as was hoped for. Plus this:

The audit found some employees were failing to work their 10-hour shifts — eating lunch at their desks to shorten their workdays or using state-approved exercise time to lop a half hour off at the end. More are telecommuting and, in some cases, counting work done during their bus or train trips toward their 10-hour days.

I'm not sure I'm opposed to counting commute time as work. If you can be more efficient, isn't that what we want? The other stuff, well, that's another thing. (Trib)

• Someone likely started five fires in Utah County yesterday with fireworks. Makes for a good news day, but I'd rather not have my house burned down. Read the story, call the cops if you know. (Herald)

And if none of that interests you, perhaps it's because you are reading with fascination what drowning really looks like. (Spoiler: Hollywood has it all wrong. Again.)