Orion Crew Module Set for Connection to Heat Shield

At the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the Orion crew module and heat shield are being moved into position for the mating operation. The heat shield will be tested on Orion's first flight in December, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), an uncrewed flight that will put to the test the spacecraft that will send astronauts to an asteroid and eventually Mars on future missions.

EFT-1 will launch an uncrewed Orion capsule 3,600 miles into space for a four-hour mission to test several of its most critical systems. After making two orbits, Orion will return to Earth at almost 20,000 miles per hour and endure temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, before its parachutes slow it down for a landing in the Pacific Ocean.

It’s Sickening

Joseph E. Stiglitz: The People Who Break the Rules Have Raked in Huge Profits and Wealth and It’s Sickening Our Politics

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

I’m an economist — I study how economies work and don’t work. It’s been clear to me that our economy has been sick for a long time. One of the reasons it’s been so sick is inequality and I decided to write an article and a book about it.

Two years ago, I wrote an article for Vanity Fair called, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” which really got to the gist of it. For too long, the hardworking and rule-abiding had seen their paychecks shrink or stay the same, while the rule-breakers raked in huge profits and wealth. It made our economy sick and our politics sick, too.

You all know the facts: while the productivity of America’s workers has soared, wages have stagnated. You’ve worked hard — since 1979, your output per hour has increased 40 percent, but pay has barely increased. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent take home more than 20 percent of the national income.

The Great Recession made things worse. Some say that the recession ended in 2009. But for most Americans, that’s simply wrong: 95 percent of the gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the upper 1 percent. The rest — the 99 percent — never really recovered.

More than 20 million Americans who would like a full time job still can’t get one, incomes are still lower than they were a decade and a half ago, wealth in the middle is back to where it was two decades ago. Young Americans face a mountain of student debt and dismal job prospects.

We have become the advanced country with the highest level of inequality, with the greatest divide between the rich and the poor. We use to pride ourselves — we were the country in which everyone was middle class. Now that middle class is shrinking and suffering.

The central message of my book, The Price of Inequality, is that all of us, rich and poor, are footing the bill for this yawning gap. And that this inequality is not inevitable. It is not, as Rich said yesterday, like the weather, something that just happens to us. It is not the result of the laws of nature or the laws of economics. Rather, it is something that we create, by our policies, by what we do.

We created this inequality — chose it, really — with laws that weakened unions, that eroded our minimum wage to the lowest level, in real terms, since the 1950s, with laws that allowed CEOs to take a bigger slice of the corporate pie, bankruptcy laws that put Wall Street’s toxic innovations ahead of workers. We made it nearly impossible for student debt to be forgiven. We underinvested in education. We taxed gamblers in the stock market at lower rates than workers and encouraged investment overseas rather than at home.

Let us be clear: our economy is not working the way a well working economy should. We have vast unmet needs, but idle workers and machines. We have bridges that need repair, roads and schools that need to be built. We have students that need a 21st century education, but we are laying off teachers. We have empty homes and homeless people. We have rich banks that are not lending to our small businesses, but are instead using their wealth and ingenuity to manipulate markets and exploit working people with predatory lending.

It is plain that the only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity. If we could ensure that everyone who wanted a job and was willing to work hard could get one, we could have an economy and a society that is both more equal and more prosperous.

To achieve that we need to grow our economy. But we can’t do that when paychecks aren’t growing and while insecurity is growing, with looming cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

If we have regulators or a Fed chief who protect the bankers’ jobs and bonuses rather than jobs and rights for all Americans, we won’t achieve it.

We won’t achieve it through mindless cutbacks in public spending, whether in schools, hospitals, police or firemen. These are ways to keep our economy sick. And an economy in which 95 percent of the growth goes to the top 1 percent can only be called that: sick.

What we do need is investment in our future — in education, technology and infrastructure.

And our problems are deeper than weak growth. We are losing the ability to call ourselves the land of opportunity. It used to be that what an American could achieve in life was a result of how hard she or he worked. Today, it depends a lot more on the family we are born into – their income and educational attainment. And it’s worse in America than in almost any other advanced country. We are losing the American dream.

If we became the land of opportunity again, we could find our way to being more equal, more dynamic, more prosperous and fairer.

But to achieve this we need markets to work like they are supposed to. We can’t let monopolists and the 1 percent use their power to siphon off more of the country’s income — away from ordinary Americans.

Our democracy is in peril. With economic inequality comes political inequality. We have a Supreme Court that declares that corporations are people and should have unchecked rights to spend money to influence politics. Our unions are being curbed. Rather than a people’s government, we are becoming a government of the 1 percent.

On paper, we may still uphold equality and the principle of one person-one vote. In reality, some voices are heard more loudly — much more loudly — than others. As a result, we have heard far too much from Wall Street, not enough from Main Street and America’s workers.

Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.

One hundred and sixty five years ago, Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” We have become a house divided against itself – divided between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, between the workers and those who would exploit them. We have to reunite the house, but it won’t happen on its own.

It will only happen if workers come together. If they organize. If they unite to fight for what they know is right, in each and every workplace, in each and every community and in each and every state capital and in Washington. We have to restore not only democracy to Washington, but to the workplace.

It will only happen when workers realize that they own much of our country’s capital, through the pension funds, but that we have allowed this capital to be managed in ways that exploit workers and consumers alike.
We academics can describe what is going on in statistics — but it is you who know what is going on by what you see and experience every day.

The challenge facing you has seldom been greater. You are still a small fraction of America. But you are the largest group representing the vast majority of Americans who work hard and play by the rules.

You must get others to join you, to work with you, to organize with you, to fight with you. It is only you who can raise the voice of ordinary Americans and demand what you have worked so hard for. Together, we can grow our economy, strengthen our communities, restore the American dream and re-establish our democracy — a government not of the 1 percent, for the 1 percent and by the 1 percent, but a government of all Americans, for all Americans and by all Americans.

Playing Voters for Fools

Mitch McConnell Is Playing Voters for Fools With His Big Obamacare Lie 

Will his Democratic opponent have the courage to call him out?

By Brian Beutler

We've already established that Mitch McConnell (The "Turtle") is trying to dodge accountability for supporting Obamacare repeal by exploiting public confusion over the identity between Kentucky's successful, popular insurance exchange—Kynect—and the law itself.

But the real political bombshell here is that the senator feels compelled to dodge accountability for his position at all. This simple observation—perhaps subjoined by six or seven exclamation marks—shatters the conventional wisdom that Obamacare politics are simple, straightforward, and winning for this year's Republican candidates. And the many Democrats who adhere to that wisdom will blow a huge opportunity to capitalize on the opening McConnell just created, if they fail to set it aside for now.

I understand why these Democrats are reluctant. Conservatives spent the last eight months essentially executing a psy-op mission to convince liberals that Obamacare is much less supportable than it actually is, and intimidate Democrats out of running on it proactively. I've been arguing that the politics of Obamacare would undergo a marked shift in 2014 for a long time now, and more or less stuck to my guns during the rollout failures this past fall. Others did too. The whole way through, conservatives met us with gleeful mockery anytime we suggested Obamacare politics carried any risk for Republicans or were nuanced in any way. Including McConnell's spokesman!

All of that was wrong. Obamacare will probably still net poorly for Democrats this year, but the complete picture turned out to be nowhere near as stark as conservatives believed, or wanted people to believe. Taking away people's health insurance is unsupportable. Repealing their consumer protections is unsupportable. McConnell understands this. It completely explains his latest equivocation. And his equivocation in turn proves that Democrats can alter the currents of Obamacare politics at key moments, but only if they're willing to occasionally brave its waters. McConnell's opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, dipped her big toe in those waters Wednesday, but couldn't ultimately bring herself to dive in with the crucial words "Affordable Care Act."

"Mitch McConnell has been in the fantasyland that is Washington for so long that he cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction," said her campaign manager, Jonathan Hurst. "McConnell has voted to destroy Kynect—and he has said he will do it again. In the U.S. Senate, Alison Lundergan Grimes will fix the law to ensure it is working for all Kentuckians."

Remember, McConnell's goal is to mislead voters into believing that repealing Obamacare won't have any bearing on Kynect. And his plan will only work if voters are confused about the connection between the two. Thus, Grimes can only close the loop by making it clear that repealing Obamacare is the thing that will destroy Kynect—even if that means making common cause with the Affordable Care Act. The above statement doesn't accomplish that. Absent a more aggressive followup, McConnell can carry on claiming that Grimes is mistaken, and that Kynect's fate is disconnected from the fate of the unpopular law that provided for its creation.

Kentucky's Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, who built the exchange, got closer, but fell short in the opposite direction. He rightly pointed out that Obamacare is wrapped up in all of its most popular benefits, but failed to include Kynect among them. As if Kentuckians will suddenly discover a connection between Kynect and Obamacare and burn their insurance cards. "Eliminating ACA means that folks with pre-existing conditions will struggle to find coverage, young adults won't be able to stay on their parents' coverage, women won't be treated equally by insurers and federal subsidies for Kentuckians will end," he said. "Senator McConnell either doesn't understand what the ACA is, or is just trying to mislead Kentucky families for his political benefit at their expense."

McConnell really stepped in it. Maybe a Republican candidate from Kentucky running in a non-presidential year can step in it with impunity these days. But he'll tap dance that manure all the way to a sixth term in the Senate if he's allowed to get away with whoppers this brazen. As much as voters might despise Obama, and Obamacare, and the endless fighting over Obamacare, I'm quite confident they prefer all three to unpopular incumbents who condescend to them and play them for fools. 

Sea level

Rising sea levels will be too much, too fast for Florida

By

Harold R. Wanless

It is amazing for me to see the very aggressive building boom underway in south Florida; on the beaches and barrier islands, throughout downtown and in the low western areas bordering the Everglades. They are building like there is no tomorrow. Unfortunately, they are right.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published its assessment of sea level rise in 2012 as part of the National Climate Assessment. Including estimates based on limited and maximum melt of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, it anticipated a raise of 4.1 to 6.6ft (1.25 to 2m) by 2100, reaching 2ft (0.6m) by around 2050 and 3ft (0.9m) by around 2075.

This degree of sea level rise would make nearly all the barrier islands of the world uninhabitable, inundate a major portion of the world’s deltas, upon which hundreds of millions of people live, and leave low-lying coastal zones like southeast Florida increasingly difficult to maintain infrastructure services for and increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes and storms.

The flooding of Florida will begin in earnest within the next 25 years.Peter Harlem, Florida International University

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Most models of projected sea level rise assume a gradual acceleration of sea level in line with gradually accelerating ice melt. But our knowledge of how sea level rose in the past paints a very different picture of response to climate change.

At the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago sea level was some 420ft (128m) lower due to the vast quantities of water locked away in continental ice sheets. Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual process, but rather a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise interspersed with pauses in which coastal environments formed. During pulses the seas rose between 3-30ft (0.9-9m) fast enough to drown not just reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlets and other coastal features, stranding their remnants across the continental shelf, now disappeared beneath the ocean.

The cracks are showing

That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilise some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise. This is what is beginning to happen to the Greenland ice sheet, where surface melting has concentrated dust and black carbon in the ice on the melting surface darkening and further accelerating the surface melt.

More importantly, warmed ocean water has accelerated the ice melt at both poles, working its way into the glacial fjords under the ice sheet in Greenland and under the outlet glaciers around the Antarctic ice sheets. While this “warm” water is only 2-4°C, even this moderate heat is capable of vast amounts of ice melt, and once started, the melt creates positive reinforcing feedbacks that speed the acceleration far beyond anything originally anticipated.

The inundation will speed up over the decades as more meltwater boosts the oceans.Peter Harlem, Florida International University

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Water on the melting ice surface adsorbs more heat which accelerates the surface melt. Meltwater percolating down through the ice lubricates the base permitting faster motion, which results in more extensive fracturing, in turn allowing more, warmer water through the fractures and into the interior of the ice sheet, and so on. We are most certainly witnessing the onset of a rapid pulse of sea level rise.

The view from above

Flying 50 miles over Greenland’s interior last summer, the Jacobshaven (or Ilulissat) Icefjord looked like the bed of a giant meandering stream carved on the surface of the ice. The bottom of the channel, some 500ft (152m) below the level of the ice sheet above was moving faster than than the ice above, having been penetrated by the warmed ocean water. As a result the ice has dramatically fractured and has accelerated, from moving a couple of miles in a year to over 20. A spectacular but most disturbing experience.

Flying over the fractured Greenland ice sheet - we’re in for a bumpy ride.Michael Haferkamp, CC BY-SA

Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere will continue to warm the atmosphere for at least another 30 years. And as most of this heat has already been absorbed by the oceans, which have the capacity to store heat for centuries, the overall effect on ice sheet melt will continue for centuries, accelerating all the way. If we are at just 5ft (1.5m) rise at the end of the century, sea level will be rising at a foot per decade – think about trying to maintain a port facility anywhere with that.

Florida – here today…

To consider the risk in present investments is beyond sobering. By the middle of this century most of the barrier islands of south Florida and the world will be abandoned and the people relocated, while low areas such as Sweetwater and Hialeah bordering the Everglades will be frequently flooded and increasingly difficult places to live. Florida will start to lose its freshwater resources, its infrastructure will begin to fail, and the risk of catastrophic storm surges and hurricane flooding will increase.

Florida counties should be planning for their future to determine at what point the costs of maintaining functional infrastructure, insurance, and human health and safety becomes economically impossible. Already, there are areas and properties that will become unlivable within a 30-year mortgage cycle. The Four-county Compact on climate change in southeast Florida has some 1,200 action items to help ensure some stability for the communities there.

And by the end of the century, large parts will be uninhabitable.Peter Harlem, Florida International University

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For south Florida, forget the levees and dikes. That may be fine for New Orleans and the Netherlands, but not here where the limestone and sand under our homes is much too porous and permeable. For each day action is put off, it becomes harder and more expensive to make the inevitable changes required. Without planning, there will come a point where society will collapse into chaos.

Trojan Horse

Inclusive Capitalism Initiative is Trojan Horse to quell coming global revolt

By  Nafeez Ahmed

Yesterday's Conference on Inclusive Capitalism co-hosted by the City of London Corporation and EL Rothschild investment firm, brought together the people who control a third of the world's liquid assets – the most powerful financial and business elites – to discuss the need for a more socially responsible form of capitalism that benefits everyone, not just a wealthy minority.

Leading financiers referred to statistics on rising global inequalities and the role of banks and corporations in marginalising the majority while accelerating systemic financial risk – vindicating the need for change.

While the self-reflective recognition by global capitalism's leaders that business-as-usual cannot continue is welcome, sadly the event represented less a meaningful shift of direction than a barely transparent effort to rehabilitate a parasitical economic system on the brink of facing a global uprising.

Central to the proceedings was an undercurrent of elite fear that the increasing disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the planetary population under decades of capitalist business-as-usual could well be its own undoing.

The Conference on Inclusive Capitalism is the brainchild of the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a little-known but influential British think tank with distinctly neoconservative and xenophobic leanings. In May 2012, HJS executive director Alan Mendoza explained the thinking behind the project:

"… we felt that such was public disgust with the system, there was a very real danger that politicians could seek to remedy the situation by legislating capitalism out of business."

He claimed that HJS research showed that "the only real solutions that can be put forward to restore trust in the system, and which actually stand a chance of bringing economic prosperity, are being led by the private, rather than the public, sector."

The Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism's recommendations for reform seem well-meaning at first glance, but in reality barely skim the surface of capitalism's growing crisis tendencies: giant corporations should invest in more job training, should encourage positive relationships and partnerships with small- and medium-sized businesses, and – while not jettisoning quarterly turnovers – should also account for ways of sustaining long-term value for shareholders.

The impetus for this, however, lies in the growing recognition that if such reforms are not pursued, global capitalists will be overthrown by the very populations currently overwhelmingly marginalised by their self-serving activity. As co-chair of the HJS Inclusive Capitalism taskforce, McKinsey managing director Dominic Barton, explained from his meetings with over 400 business and government leaders worldwide that:

"… there is growing concern that if the fundamental issues revealed in the crisis remain unaddressed and the system fails again, the social contract between the capitalist system and the citizenry may truly rupture, with unpredictable but severely damaging results."

Among those "damaging results" – apart from the potential disruption to profits and the capitalist system itself - is the potential failure to capitalise on the finding by "corporate-finance experts" that "70 to 90 percent of a company's value is related to cash flows expected three or more years out."

Indeed, as the New York Observer reported after the US launch of the Henry Jackson Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism, the rather thin proposals for reform "seemed less important than bringing business leaders together to address a more central concern: In an era of rising income inequality and grim economic outlook, people seemed to be losing confidence in capitalism altogether."

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who co-hosted yesterday's conference, told the NY Observer why she was concerned:

"I think that a lot of kids have neither money nor hope, and that's really bad. Because then they're going to get mad at America. What our hope for this initiative, is that through all the efforts of all of the decent CEOs, all the decent kids without a job feel optimistic."

Yep. Feel optimistic. PR is the name of the game.

"I believe that it is our duty to help make all people believe that the elevator is working for them… that whatever the station of your birth, you can get on that elevator to success," de Rothschild told Chinese business leaders last year:

"At the moment, that faith and confidence is under siege in America… As business people, we have a pragmatic reason to get it right for everyone – so that the government does not intervene in unproductive ways with business… I think that it is imperative for us to restore faith in capitalism and in free markets."

According to the very 2011 City of London Corporation report which recommended funding the HJS inclusive capitalism project, one of its core goals is undermining public support for "increased regulation" and "greater state" involvement in the economy, while simultaneously deterring calls to "punish those deemed responsible for having caused the crisis":

"Following the financial crisis of 2008, the Western capitalist system has been perceived to be in crisis. Although the financial recovery is now underway in Europe and America, albeit unevenly and in some cases with the risk of further adjustments, the legacy of the sudden nature of the crash lives on."

The report, written by the City of London's director of public relations, continues to note that "the fabric of the capitalist system has come in for protracted scrutiny," causing governments to "confuse the need for reasoned and rational change" with "the desire to punish those deemed responsible for having caused the crisis." But this would mean that "the capitalist model is liable to have the freedoms and ideology essential to its success corroded."

Far from acknowledging the predatory and unequalising impact of neoliberal capitalism, the document shows that the inclusive capitalism project is concerned with PR to promote "a more nuanced view of society," without which "there is a risk that… we will be led down a policy path of increased regulation and greater state control of institutions, businesses and the people at the heart of them, which will fatally cripple the very system that has been responsible for economic prosperity."

The project is thus designed "to influence political and business opinion" and to target public opinion through a "media campaign that seeks to engage major outlets."

The Henry Jackson Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism is therefore an elite response to the recognition that capitalism in its current form is unsustainable, likely to hit another crisis, and already generating massive popular resistance.

Its proposed reforms therefore amount to token PR moves to appease the disenfranchised masses.
Consequently, they fail to address the very same accelerating profit-oriented systemic risks that will lead to another financial crash before decade's end.

Their focus, in de Rothschild's words in the Wall Street Journal, is cosmetic: repairing "capitalism's bruised image" in order to protect the "common long-term interests of investors and of the capitalist system."

That is why the Inclusive Capitalism Initiative has nothing to say about reversing the neoliberal pseudo-development policies which, during capitalism's so-called 'Golden Age', widened inequality and retarded growth for "the vast majority of low income and middle-income countries" according to a UN report - including "reduced progress for almost all the social indicators that are available to measure health and educational outcomes" from 1980 to 2005.

Instead, proposed 'reforms' offer ways to rehabilitate perceptions of powerful businesses and corporations, in order to head-off rising worker discontent and thus keep the system going, while continuing to maximise profits for the few at the expense of the planet.

This is not a surprise considering the parochial financial and political interests the Henry Jackson Society appears to represent: the very same neoconservative elites that lobbied for the Iraq War and endorse mass NSA surveillance of western and non-western citizens alike.

Indeed, there is little "inclusive" about the capitalism that HJS' risk consultancy project, Strategic Analysis, seeks to protect, when it advertises its quarterly research reports on "the oil and gas sector in all twenty" countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Those reports aim to highlight "the opportunities for investors" as well as "risks to their business."

Just last month, HJS organised a conference on mitigating risks in the Arab world to discuss "methods for protecting your business interests, assets and people," including "how to plan against and mitigate losses… caused by business interruption." The focus of the conference was protecting the invariably fossil fueled interests of British and American investors and corporates in MENA – the interests and wishes of local populations was not a relevant 'security' concern.

The conference's several corporate sponsors included the Control Risks Group, a British private defence contractor that has serviced Halliburton and the UK Foreign Office in postwar Iraq, and is a member of the Energy Industry Council - the largest trade association for British companies servicing the world's energy industries.

The "inclusivity" of this new brand of capitalism is also apparent in HJS' longtime employment of climate denier Raheem Kassam, who now runs the UK branch of the American Breitbart news network, one of whose contributors called for Americans "to start slaughtering Muslims in the street, all of them."

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin of HJS' vision of capitalist "inclusivity" is associate director Douglas Murray's views about Europe's alleged Muslim problem, of which he said in Dutch Parliament: "Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board."

Earlier this year, Murray's fear-mongering targeted the supposed "startling rise in Muslim infants" in Britain, a problem that explains why "white British people" are "losing their country." London, Murray wrote, "has become a foreign country" in which "'white Britons' are now in a minority," and "there aren't enough white people around" to make its boroughs "diverse."

So abhorrent did the Conservative front-bench find Murray's innumerable xenophobic remarks about European Muslims, reported Paul Goodman, the Tory Party broke off relations with his Center for Social Cohesion before he revitalised himself by joining forces with HJS.

Yet this is the same neocon ideology of "inclusive" market freedom around which the forces of global capitalism are remobilising, in the name of "sustainable" prosperity for all.

They must be having a laugh.

Gun Bill

After Attack Near Campus, California Weighs Gun Bill

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Just days after a 22-year-old killed six college students and himself near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, state lawmakers are championing legislation that would permit law enforcement officials and private individuals to seek a restraining order from a judge that would keep people with a potential propensity for violence from buying or owning a gun. The process would be similar to the one currently used for restraining orders in cases of domestic violence.

The legislation is being introduced this week in response to the attack on Friday by Elliot O. Rodger, who was able to buy three guns and go on a rampage despite warnings from his family and mental health professionals that he was unstable and possibly dangerous. It is unclear, however, if the measures contained in the bills could have prevented his actions if they had been law.

Although mass shootings have not translated into stricter gun control laws nationally, they have prompted changes on the state level — largely limiting access to guns, but in some cases loosening existing laws, which gun advocates say give people more leeway to arm themselves against criminals. After a mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn., Connecticut and New York passed bans on assault rifles and created stricter background checks.

But California, which already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, could go even further. The legislation, known as a gun violence restraining order, would allow people to notify courts or law enforcement officials if they are concerned that a family member or friend is at risk of committing violence.

Gun control advocates have recently started pushing for such restraining orders in statehouses across the nation, expanding on similar laws that have passed in Connecticut, Indiana and Texas.

“Always after a mass shooting, the question comes up: How could we have prevented this?” said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

“In most cases, my response has to be there isn’t anything we could have done. In this case, this law might have prevented this from happening, and it will absolutely be useful for the future. This addresses the question of what do we do about the people who have not faced some diagnosis and who might just fall through the cracks.”

But even in California, with an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in both houses of the Legislature, it could prove difficult to get the bill passed and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In addition to expected opposition from the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates, the bill is also likely to face challenges from those concerned about limiting civil liberties of those dealing with mental illness.

A spokesman for the N.R.A. declined to comment because he had not seen the bill language.

And Mr. Brown, a Democrat and gun owner himself, has vetoed gun control legislation in the past, including bills last year that would have done more to limit the sale of semiautomatic rifles and further limited gun ownership.

Darrell Steinberg, president pro tem of the California Senate, said in an interview on Wednesday that he was not familiar with the details of the restraining order legislation, though he foresaw concerns being raised about civil liberties. Such a bill “would have to be very carefully crafted, because you do not want the law to get into the middle, or just to be used as a pretext or excuse for leverage in an intergenerational family fight,” he said. “You could see the potential for abuse.”

On the other hand, Mr. Steinberg said: “There might be circumstances where it is appropriate for this additional protection. I think this is worthy of a real serious conversation.”

In other developments on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County sheriff said that the department was investigating whether Mr. Rodger — who stabbed to death three people in his apartment before shooting his remaining victims from his car — may have drugged the initial victims before he stabbed them.

Since the attack on Friday, Richard Martinez, the father of one of the victims, Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, has become a vocal and emotional proponent for gun control legislation.

At a memorial service on Tuesday at the university, Mr. Martinez led thousands of students gathered in a chant of “not one more,” which has become a rallying cry in social media for gun legislation.

“The problem with piecemeal legislation is it’s like building a car out of parts from different manufacturers, and expecting it to run effectively,” Mr. Martinez said in an interview on Wednesday. “That’s not an effective way to approach such a complicated problem.”

Mr. Martinez has said he wants to meet with Peter Rodger, the father of the attacker, and work with him to push for more gun control. A spokesman for Mr. Rodger said Wednesday that the two men were trying to arrange a meeting.

Backers of the California legislation say that the law would work in much the same way domestic violence restraining orders do — with a petitioner directly requesting a restraining order from the courts, or asking law enforcement officials to do so. A judge would be required to have a full hearing to decide whether to grant the restraining order within seven days and then rule on the length of time it would be in effect. Law enforcement officials would then be able to temporarily seize any firearms the person owned and place him or her on a list of people prohibited from purchasing weapons.

Nancy Skinner, a Democratic assemblywoman from Berkeley and the author of the legislation, said she had been working to shape the legislation for months, but the attack on Friday gave urgency to the effort, particularly because Mr. Rodger’s mother had alerted the authorities about her son a month earlier.

“We’ve heard that she was very aware about her son’s well-being, and so concerned that she asked the police to go to him,” Ms. Skinner said. “She should have been able to go to law enforcement and say, ‘Here’s the evidence and — sadly — my son is a threat and could create violence.’ Knowing that in this case a parent tried to intervene and didn’t really have an effective tool is tragic.”

After the shooting in Connecticut, New York passed a legislative package that included expanding an assault weapons ban, doing more to keep guns away from people with mental illnesses and imposing tougher sentences on people who use guns in crimes. Connecticut also toughened its gun laws, requiring buyers to pass a national criminal background check, banning high-capacity magazines and expanding the list of banned weapons.

Still, California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and is one of the few states to prohibit anyone from buying guns if a psychiatrist reports to law enforcement officials that the individual has made a credible threat to a “reasonably identifiable” individual.

“This is a relatively new area of legislation aimed at prevention, with details still being fleshed out,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which lobbies for stricter gun control across the country. “Generally we see this discussed and enacted in response to violence that could have been prevented. We need to prevent access for individuals who are at an elevated risk, regardless of whether the cause is mental illness or drug abuse or something else.”

The legislation will have its first hearing in the State Senate’s public safety committee next month. If it is approved by the committee, the Legislature is likely vote on the bill before it adjourns at the end of August. 

VA

VA IG finds 'systemic' problems

By JEREMY HERB

At least 1,700 veterans waiting for health care at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs medical facility were not included on the facility’s wait list, and patients there waited an average of 115 days for their first appointments, according to a preliminary review by the Veterans Affairs inspector general.

In the review, released Wednesday, the inspector general said it has “substantiated serious conditions” and has expanded its review to 42 VA facilities, more than the 26 initially planned. While the the interim IG report says the agency’s scheduling problems are “systemic,” it says it would be premature to link those delays to allegations that dozens of veterans died waiting for care.

“We are finding that inappropriate scheduling practices are a systemic problem nationwide,” the report said, noting four different “scheduling schemes” used in VA facilities.

The preliminary review comes in response to growing concern on Capitol Hill and at the White House about the practices of VA health facilities. CNN originally reported the allegations that in Phoenix and elsewhere, veterans died while on secret wait lists for appointments. Since then, lawmakers and at least one prominent veterans group have called for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to step down.

Shinseki has vowed to stay on and fix the VA’s problems and has ordered an internal review of VA’s scheduling practices. He also placed the head of the Phoenix facility and two other officials there on leave.

But the interim report from Acting Inspector General Richard Griffin is likely to fuel Shinseki’s critics, who have argued that new leadership is needed to fix the problems.

The IG’s preliminary review was critical of the VA’s practices. It found that 226 veterans in Phoenix waited an average of 115 days for their first appointment, with 84 percent waiting more than the department’s 14-day goal. The Phoenix facility had reported those 226 veterans waited an average of 24 days, and only 43 percent waited more than two weeks.

Still, the review did not conclude the delays reported in deaths.

“We are not reporting the results of our clinical reviews in this interim report on whether any delay in scheduling a primary care appointment resulted in a delay in diagnosis or treatment, particularly for those veterans who died while on a waiting list,” the report said.

The inspector general urged Shinseki to immediately provide care to the 1,700 veterans not included on the official wait list and to initiate a nationwide review of veterans on wait lists.

The 35-page preliminary report notes that scheduling issues are hardly a new problem, and noted that the IG has issued 18 reports since 2005 identifying “deficiencies in scheduling resulting in lengthy waiting times and the negative impact on patient care.”

The full report is expected in August.

Stop Subsidizing Tax Dodgers

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Let’s Stop Subsidizing Tax Dodgers

A new report by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz for the Roosevelt Institute suggests that paying our fair share of taxes and cracking down on corporate tax dodgers could be a cure for inequality and a faltering economy.

This week on Moyers & Company, Stiglitz tells Bill that Apple, Google, GE and a host of other Fortune 500 companies are creating what amounts to “an unlimited IRA for corporations,” some of them paying no taxes whatsoever. The result? Vast amounts of lost revenue for our treasury and the exporting of much-needed jobs to other countries.

“I think we can use our tax system to create a better society, to be an expression of our true values.” Stiglitz says. “But if people don’t think that their tax system is fair, they’re not going to want to contribute. It’s going to be difficult to get them to pay. And, unfortunately, right now, our tax system is neither fair nor efficient.”

Stiglitz continues, “We have a tax system that reflects not the interest of the middle. We have a tax system that reflects the interest of the one percent… What I want to do is create a tax system that has incentives to create jobs. And if you tell a corporation, ‘Look, if you don’t create jobs, you’re taking out of our system, you’re not putting anything back, you’re going to pay a high tax. But if you put back into our system by investing, then you can get your tax rate down.’ That seems to me common sense, particularly in a time like today, when 20 million Americans need a full-time job and can’t get one.”

1848 Mexican-American War, Land grants and surfing.....

There had, until now, been a note of uncertainty about why beach owner Vinod Khosla decided to kick people off Martins Beach, but the billionaire venture capitalist made his motives pretty clear, according to this Chronicle story by Melody Gutierrez.

The green tech titan does not want the hoi polloi touching what he believes is his sand, tidelands or surf.

“Martin’s beach is private property, including the sandy beach and the submerged tidelands seaward of the mean high tide,” argued lobbyists hired by Khosla in a letter to state lawmakers. “There are no existing ‘public’ lands to which access is needed.”

The green tech titan’s hired guns were trying to convince lawmakers to vote against a bill by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo requiring the State Lands Commission to buy the road or obtain access rights to Martins Beach, 6 miles south of Half Moon Bay. The Senate passed the bill 21 to 11 Thursday. It will now be taken up by the Assembly.

The lobbyists for Khosla are using as justification for their position a decision last October by Superior Court Judge Gerald Buchwald that said Martins Beach was still subject to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. The treaty essentially required the United States to recognize Mexican land grants as long as the owner filed a claim. Jose Antonio Alviso, who owned the land grant at the time, filed such a claim, and a patent for the beachfront property was issued in 1865.


Judge Buchwald ruled that Alviso’s patent, handed down over the generations, extinguished all public rights to the property, including beach access rights established under the public trust doctrine in the California Constitution, which was first drafted in 1879.

The letter opposing SB968 claimed that Buchwald’s order means Khosla does not have to provide access to either the beach or off-shore submerged tidelands, which his lawyers point out were specifically mentioned in Buchwald’s ruling.

Lawyers fighting for public access to the beach were apoplectic. “It’s preposterous,” said Joe Cotchett, the lead attorney for Surfrider, which is awaiting a decision on a lawsuit claiming that Khosla needed a California Coastal Commission permit before he could close the road or make other improvements.

Gary Redenbacher, who argued the case before Judge Buchwald, said even under Mexican law beaches were public property below the highest tide line.

“The beach itself has always been public,” he wrote in an e-mail. ”Therefore, the claim by the lobbyists that it is a private beach has zero credibility in the law whether part of a Mexican Land Grant or not.”

There has been speculation that Khosla’s real motive in the beach battle is to extract payment for a public easement and to force the government to absolve him of liability concerns and take over responsibility for public safety and security. His latest actions, opponents say, lay waste to that theory.

“This,” Redenbacher said, ” is a blatant attempt by Khosla to abscond with public property.”

NGC 5139

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter, the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. This astronomically sharp color image of the classic globular cluster was recorded in March under Chilean skies from Hacienda Los Andes.

Expedition 40 arrive

Three new Expedition 40 crew members were welcomed aboard the International Space Station when the hatches between their Soyuz spacecraft and the station were opened at 11:52 p.m. EDT Wednesday.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, Soyuz Commander and cosmonaut Max Suraev of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst are slated to spend 166 days aboard the orbiting complex.

Commander Steve Swanson of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos, who have been aboard the orbiting complex since March 27, warmly greeted the newly arrived flight engineers. Afterward, all six crew members moved into the Zvezda service module so the station’s three newest residents could receive congratulatory calls from family members and VIPs gathered at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Wiseman, Suraev and Gerst launched from Baikonur at 3:57 p.m. (1:57 a.m. Thursday, Kazakh time) to begin a four-orbit chase to catch up with the station. At the time of launch the station was soaring at an altitude of 260 statute miles, just south of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, having passed directly over the Baikonur launch site just two minutes and one second earlier.

The Soyuz docked automatically to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Rassvet Mini-Research Module-1 at 9:44 p.m. as the complex was flying at an altitude of 262 miles and off the coast of northern Peru.
Some of the cargo flown aboard this Soyuz TMA-13M will be used in research investigations that are either ongoing or planned aboard the station.

The In-flight Demonstration of Portable Load Monitoring Devices-Phase I: XSENS ForceShoe (Force Shoes) investigation is an evaluation of the XSENS ForceShoe system as a potential method to measure exercise loads on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) during crew member exercise sessions on the space station. The XSENS ForceShoe is commercial, off-the-shelf hardware used to measure forces and torques under the foot. Up to four astronauts will collect a series of static and dynamic load measurements using ARED.

Researchers will use the measurements made by the XSENS ForceShoe system to quantify exercise load data needed for support of current and future human research investigations. This data also will be applied to populations on Earth restricted from exercise by injury, age, lifestyle or confined work and living space.

Questionnaires for the Space Headaches investigation also were delivered on the Soyuz to obtain in-flight data about the prevalence and characteristics of crew members' headaches in microgravity. Space Headaches researchers use this data to assess crew member headache episodes and provide the basis for developing future countermeasures. The effect of the medication that the crew takes to counteract space headaches helps determine what medication could be effective in treating intracranial pressure change related symptoms on Earth.

Equipment also was transported for the Multipurpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network Quick Start a / Delay Tolerant Network (METERON) investigation. This European Space Agency technology demonstration examines the operational and technical capability to remotely control robots on Earth by astronauts on the space station. The study’s goal is to validate technology for future human exploration missions where an astronaut in orbit will control a robot as it explores its target, such as an asteroid or Mars.
The remote operation techniques developed for METERON can be used on Earth for telemedicine and for operating robots in hazardous environments, such as in handling radioactive material or working in a nuclear power plant after a leak.

The crew will team up for a safety review to discuss emergency roles and responsibilities before wrapping up the day’s activities aboard the station. The entire Expedition 40 crew will have an off-duty day Thursday to shift its sleep schedules back to the usual 2 a.m. reveille beginning Friday.

The tenure of Expedition 40 will include a variety of research projects focusing on human research, biology and biotechnology, Earth and space science, physical science investigations, technology demonstrations and educational activities. Results from these activities will help advance the body of scientific knowledge, leading to potential Earth benefits such as improved weather forecasts and human medical advancements.

The hardware and samples for many of these experiments – along with crew supplies and other cargo – will arrive on four different resupply vehicles scheduled to visit the station during Expedition 40: Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus, a Russian Progress resupply ship, the European Space Agency’s fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle and the SpaceX Dragon.

There are also two Russian and three U.S. spacewalks planned during Expedition 40.

When Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev head back to Earth on Sept. 10, it will mark the end of Expedition 40 and the beginning of Expedition 41 under the command of Suraev. Three additional Expedition 41 crewmates will arrive later that month.

Wiseman, a U.S. Navy commander, is making his first spaceflight. He reported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in August 2009 and completed astronaut candidate training in May 2011.

Suraev is making his second long-duration visit to the station, having logged more than 169 days in space as an Expedition 21/22 flight engineer from Sept. 30, 2009 through March 18, 2010. He completed a 5-hour, 44-minute spacewalk on Jan. 14, 2010, to prepare the Poisk Mini-Research Module-2 for vehicle dockings and inaugurated that same port when he relocated his Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft there a week later.

Gerst, who was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009, is making his first trip into space.

Serpens Cloud Core

Stars that are just beginning to coalesce out of cool swaths of dust and gas are showcased in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Infrared light has been assigned colors we see with our eyes, revealing young stars in orange and yellow, and a central parcel of gas in blue. This area is hidden in visible-light views, but infrared light can travel through the dust, offering a peek inside the stellar hatchery.

The dark patch to the left of center is swaddled in so much dust, even the infrared light is blocked. It is within these dark wombs that stars are just beginning to take shape.

Called the Serpens Cloud Core, this star-forming region is located about 750 light-years away in Serpens, or the "Serpent," a constellation named after its resemblance to a snake in visible light. The region is noteworthy as it only contains stars of relatively low to moderate mass, and lacks any of the massive and incredibly bright stars found in larger star-forming regions like the Orion nebula. Our sun is a star of moderate mass. Whether it formed in a low-mass stellar region like Serpens, or a high-mass stellar region like Orion, is an ongoing mystery.

The inner Serpens Cloud Core is remarkably detailed in this image. It was assembled from 82 snapshots representing a whopping 16.2 hours of Spitzer observing time. The observations were made during Spitzer's "warm mission," a phase that began in 2009 after the observatory ran out of liquid coolant, as planned.
Most of the small dots in this image are stars located behind, or in front of, the Serpens nebula.

The 2MASS mission was a joint effort between the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena.


JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Not for the faint of heart...

Swedish sailor Sven Yrvind, 75 years old, is making plans to break a world record. His goal is to sail solo non-stop around the world with the smallest vessel ever, the Yrvind Ten, a 10-foot, 1.5-ton boat he has built himself using DIAB (Laholm, Sweden) Divinycell composites.

The journey, estimated to take about 600 days, this will be Yrvind's longest voyage alone at sea. "People say it's impossible. Who cares? It is not the first time people have discouraged me," Yrvind says. Nearly 35 years ago, the U.K.'s Royal Cruising Club granted him the Seamanship Medal for sailing a 20-ft boat alone through the notoriously tempestuous waters off Cape Horn. His new endeavor will take him through those waters again. That is why he is taking no chances in constructing the Yrvind Ten. Composite construction is crucial in rough seas.

Decades of experience, research and intuition have given Yrvind unique expertise in boatbuilding. He knows it is not a question of if, but when the boat will capsize, strike something at sea or otherwise be put to the test. However, he believes there is no reason to fear the sea. On the contrary, he finds it safer than land — as long as one is smart and prepared.

As for Divinycell, he's hardly a novice. He has been building boats using DIAB composites since the 1980s. His very first Divinycell-boat, with the centerboard uniquely placed in front of the mast, can today be seen at the Maritime Museum in Stockholm.

Using Divinycell H100 reportedly makes the boat strong, lightweight, well-insulated and practically unsinkable. The hull itself is made of small tiles, or quadrangles, of Divinycell that are glued together and laminated. Secure in his proven boatbuilding skills and the sturdy Divinycell composite construction, Yrvind knows he can meet the challenges ahead.

Expedition 40 up...

The Soyuz TMA-13M rocket is launched with Expedition 40 Soyuz Commander Maxim Suraev, of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst, of the European Space Agency, ESA, and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman of NASA in the early hours of Thursday, May 29, 2014 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Suraev, Gerst, and Wiseman will spend the next five and a half months aboard the International Space Station.

Sunsets on Titan

Sunsets on Titan Reveal the Complexity of Hazy Exoplanets

Scientists working with data from NASA’s Cassini mission have developed a new way to understand the atmospheres of exoplanets by using Saturn’s smog-enshrouded moon Titan as a stand-in. The new technique shows the dramatic influence that hazy skies could have on our ability to learn about these alien worlds orbiting distant stars.

The work was performed by a team of researchers led by Tyler Robinson, a NASA Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The findings were published May 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It turns out there’s a lot you can learn from looking at a sunset,” Robinson said.

Light from sunsets, stars and planets can be separated into its component colors to create spectra, as prisms do with sunlight, in order to obtain hidden information. Despite the staggering distances to other planetary systems, in recent years researchers have begun to develop techniques for collecting spectra of exoplanets.
When one of these worlds transits, or passes in front of its host star as seen from Earth, some of the star’s light travels through the exoplanet's atmosphere, where it is changed in subtle, but measurable, ways. This process imprints information about the planet that can be collected by telescopes. The resulting spectra are a record of that imprint.

Spectra enable scientists to tease out details about what exoplanets are like, such as aspects of the temperature, composition and structure of their atmospheres.

Robinson and his colleagues exploited a similarity between exoplanet transits and sunsets witnessed by the Cassini spacecraft at Titan. These observations, called solar occultations, effectively allowed the scientists to observe Titan as a transiting exoplanet without having to leave the solar system. In the process, Titan’s sunsets revealed just how dramatic the effects of hazes can be.

Multiple worlds in our own solar system, including Titan, are blanketed by clouds and high-altitude hazes. Scientists expect that many exoplanets would be similarly obscured. Clouds and hazes create a variety of complicated effects that researchers must work to disentangle from the signature of these alien atmospheres, and thus present a major obstacle for understanding transit observations. Due to the complexity and computing power required to address hazes, models used to understand exoplanet spectra usually simplify their effects.

“Previously, it was unclear exactly how hazes were affecting observations of transiting exoplanets,” said Robinson. “So we turned to Titan, a hazy world in our own solar system that has been extensively studied by Cassini.”

The team used four observations of Titan made between 2006 and 2011 by Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument. Their analysis provided results that include the complex effects due to hazes, which can now be compared to exoplanet models and observations.

With Titan as their example, Robinson and colleagues found that hazes high above some transiting exoplanets might strictly limit what their spectra can reveal to planet transit observers. The observations might be able to glean information only from a planet’s upper atmosphere. On Titan, that corresponds to about 90 to 190 miles (150 to 300 kilometers) above the moon’s surface, high above the bulk of its dense and complex atmosphere.

An additional finding from the study is that Titan’s hazes more strongly affect shorter wavelengths, or bluer, colors of light. Studies of exoplanet spectra have commonly assumed that hazes would affect all colors of light in similar ways. Studying sunsets through Titan’s hazes has revealed that this is not the case.

“People had dreamed up rules for how planets would behave when seen in transit, but Titan didn’t get the memo,” said Mark Marley, a co-author of the study at NASA Ames. “It looks nothing like some of the previous suggestions, and it’s because of the haze.”

The team’s technique applies equally well to similar observations taken from orbit around any world, not just Titan. This means that researchers could study the atmospheres of planets like Mars and Saturn in the context of exoplanet atmospheres as well.


“It’s rewarding to see that Cassini’s study of the solar system is helping us to better understand other solar systems as well,” said Curt Niebur, Cassini program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Super Rich.... Or Super Bad?????

Can You Be Too Rich?

by Umair Haque

Is there such a thing as too rich?

Like most reasonable people, I agree wholeheartedly that people who accomplish greater, worthier, nobler things should be rewarded more than those who don’t. I’m not the World’s Last Communist, shaking his fist atop Karl Marx’s grave at the very idea of riches.

Perhaps I’ve asked an absurd question. Perhaps there’s no such thing as too rich — anywhere, ever. But try this thought experiment: Imagine that there’s a single person in the economy who is so rich he’s worth what everyone else is, combined. If there were such a person, he’d be able to buy everything the rest of us own.

In time, his family, inheriting his wealth, would become a dynasty and he could, by bestowing favors, direct the course of society as he so desired. In all but name, such a person would be a king and no one else’s rights, wishes, desires or aims could truly matter. And so no society with such a person in it could be reasonably said to be free.

It seems to me, then, there is such a thing as too rich, at least for people who wish to call themselves free. The only question is: Where is the line is drawn? How rich is too rich?

Imagine that you’re so rich you can afford the finest of every good in the economy. The best education, the best car, the best champagne and so on. Would that be a justifiable level of wealth for a person to not just enjoy — but to aim for? A lot of people would probably say yes.

Now imagine you’re so rich that you can buy the finest of every good in the economy not just once — but 10 times over. Everything. The 10 finest homes. Meals. Doctors. Servants. Entire wardrobes. Apartments, mansions, investment portfolios. The 10 best yachts. Ten private jets. Would that be an excessive level of wealth?

Suddenly, such a level of wealth begins to sound not just unreasonable, but senseless. After all, what possible purpose could owning 10 gigantic homes, yachts or jets serve? Why should anyone want to be that rich?
Not just rich — but super-rich?

What is it that induces a sense of repugnance in many of us — in most sensible people — about not just riches, but super-riches? Why is it that when an invisible line is crossed, our attitudes to wealth transform from admiration, to repulsion?

The doctor, the businessman, the neighborhood banker — all these are likely to be merely rich; and probably, many would argue, justifiably so. Their riches can be evidently seen to reflect a contribution to the common wealth. There is a purpose to their work, which requires long years of training and discipline, to which society rightly assigns a steep value.

But to paraphrase the famous line from F Scott Fitzgerald: the super-rich are very different from the merely rich. The super-rich are not just worth millions — but billions. And they are not doctors, businessmen and bankers. They are hedge fund tycoons, “private equity” barons, privateers who have bought the natural resources of entire countries whole and CEOs with golden parachutes the size of small planets. And their wealth is questionable; not just in moral terms, but also in economic ones. For what useful purpose do speculation, profiteering and company-flipping serve? In what way do they benefit the societies that incubate them?

The rich, if they do not plant prosperity’s seeds, at least tend to its branches — but the super-rich appear to be merely picking off the choicest fruit.

When societies allow the rich to grow into the super-rich, they are making a series of mistakes. The mistake is not just that a class of super-rich are fundamentally undemocratic because they hold the polity ransom. The mistake is not just that a class of super-rich is fundamentally uneconomic because the super-rich hoard vast amounts of capital, starving the economy of investment and opportunity. The mistake is not just that a class of super-rich is fundamentally inequitable because it is essentially impossible that any human being has single-handedly truly created enough value to be worth tens of billions. The mistake is not just that a class of super-rich is fundamentally unreasonable because there is no good reason for anyone to want such extreme riches. The mistake is not just that a class of super-rich is fundamentally antisocial, for the super-rich will never have to rely on public goods in the same way that the merely rich still need parks, subways, roads and bridges.

All those are small mistakes. Here is the big one.

When societies allow the rich to grow into the super-rich, they are limiting what those societies can achieve. Imagine a bountiful forest. And then — no one can say quite why — a small handful of the trees suddenly grow tall. Much taller. They became so tall and strong and broad that they block the sunlight from all the other trees. The other trees begin to wilt and wither and disappear. Their roots crack and split and turn to dust. And one day, not long after, even the roots of the tallest trees can find no water, can grip no soil. They begin to fall. Soon the whole forest becomes a desert.

A dry academic term like “income inequality” doesn’t really begin to cover it, does it?

When super-riches grow unchecked, no one wins — not even the super-rich themselves, in the long run. Everyone’s possibility is stifled when the invisible line from rich to super-rich is crossed. And that is precisely why no society should desire a class of super-rich; for it assures us that a society’s human potential will be eroded. And that is precisely why the moral sentiments of most reasonable people are instinctively, naturally opposed to the idea of super-riches.

At this juncture, I’m sure that defenders of free markets will complain: Who are you to say that anyone shouldn’t be super-rich? But it is precisely defenders of free markets who should object most vehemently to the super-rich. I defy you to find me a fully-fledged member of the super-rich today who isn’t a monopolist, a scion, an oligarch … or all three.

Is there such a thing as too rich? Here is my answer: No forest should become a desert.

Food

It’s Time to #VoteFood

by Tom Colicchio

I’m a chef, a food activist, an avid eater and a healthy-cooking parent, though most people know me from my role as head judge on Bravo’s Top Chef. All of the above warrant my inclusion in what is known as the food movement.

So you may be surprised to learn that lately I’ve been asking myself this question: Is there actually a food movement?

Twenty-five years ago, as a fledgling chef, I didn’t ask these sorts of questions. I started purchasing fresh food for my restaurant from farmer’s markets because it tasted better. Back then I could actually back my truck up into the market at Union Square and load up on root vegetables and fresh herbs from Guy Jones and the other early farmers who sold vegetables there. I was buying local and organic — not because I was concerned about the environment or farm workers — but because it simply tasted better and my goal at the time was to be the best chef I could be. It was higher quality food, period.

Around the same time, I was invited to cook at a Share Our Strength Taste of the Nation fundraiser. I was happy to support SOS’s mission to combat hunger, but frankly, I agreed because it meant I was invited to cook alongside the country’s most elite chefs that night, and I was flattered to be included.

What I learned that evening really made me start to think about hunger in this country. At the same time, issues pertaining to our food supply and our fisheries became more important to me and I educated myself about them too, with the dawning understanding that my success as a chef rested on the viability of the ingredients at my disposal.

Around this time I started to feel uneasy about the great schism between the variety and quality of what I could offer my guests at restaurants, and the food available to millions of other Americans for whom a meal at Craft or Colicchio & Sons was not an option. As a chef, it’s my job to feed people, and given my own humble roots, it didn’t feel right to only feed the luckiest few. That was the impulse behind ‘wichcraft – I wanted to offer great, high quality food at a more democratic price point. But that wasn’t enough to quiet my growing discomfort. A $10 artisanal sandwich wasn’t the answer to unequal food access.

Over the years I continued to cook for any group that was tackling hunger. I saw my role as a fundraiser, plain and simple. When asked, I also lent my voice to groups who were pushing for more sustainable ways of farming the land, and to environmental groups bent on protecting our food and fisheries.

Then, about six years ago, my wife Lori began working on a movie that examined our nation’s hunger crisis. She was determined to ask some hard questions about how the world’s wealthiest nation could have a massive hunger crisis — a crisis virtually unknown in other wealthy, developed nations.

Making A Place at the Table changed my thinking radically, because I learned a remarkable truth: hunger in the US is solvable. We actually can end it, if we resolve to look honestly and critically at the policies that contribute to the issue. Other nations have done that, and they are not faced with the same hunger crisis. We, on the other hand, comfort ourselves with charitable work that barely makes a dent in the problem. I was so used to raising money, I thought the answer was food banking. Food banks do really excellent, needed work, but they’re not getting us any closer to ending hunger.

To put it in perspective: The most successful fundraising gala I’ve ever attended raised $2 million dollars to support the food banks of New York City. Earlier this year, Congress voted to slash $8.8 BILLION dollars from SNAP. To make up for $8.8 billion dollars in cuts to food for hungry people, we would need to replicate the success of that fundraiser every single night. For the next 12 years.

The truth is that the great work of charities is being undermined by really bad policy, and until we face that truth, we’re deluding ourselves. If bad policies — like cruel cuts to food stamps or a minimum wage so low that working people can’t afford food — are creating the problem, then it will take good policies to fix them. And where do policies get written, decided and voted on? Washington, DC.

Marion Nestle once described a meeting she had on Capitol Hill where she used the term “the food movement.” The congressman chuckled and said, “The food movement? What food movement?” As he saw it there was no food movement because Congress wasn’t hearing from them and they weren’t voting people in and out of office on the basis of these values.

Plain and simple, his point was: you might think you’re a movement, but if you’re not getting anyone elected, then your issues don’t matter here. Sorry.

So far, the food movement has been no match for the food industry, especially on Election Day. That’s why so many of our food policies benefit industrial agriculture and giant food processors at the expense of struggling families.

Unfortunately, the Americans most affected by policies that lead to hunger haven’t been able to move the needle on influencing our leaders for obvious reasons — when you’re struggling just to get enough food together for your kids each day, you’re unlikely to be able to focus on organizing a political movement.

For years now, food advocates and hunger advocates have been in silos — so focused on making modest gains that many times we are faced with bargaining between good food policy and reducing hunger.

The key to our success is impossible to ignore — we have to get out of our silos and work together as a political movement. When that starts to happen, we won’t be in the kind of situation we were in during this last Farm Bill debate, which split people who care about hunger from people who care about healthy diets and organic farmers. We all share the same food values, but we were too divided to deliver the food system Americans overwhelmingly want.

That’s why I worked with food leaders from across the country to help create Food Policy Action. Finally, we are uniting food leaders from across the country, and are holding legislators accountable. We can see whether or not they share our values. Because that’s what this is about. This is about creating a system that works for everyone. It’s about more than just food: it’s about justice.

Every year, Food Policy Action issues a scorecard that tracks how legislators are voting on the issues we all care about, issues like hunger, nutrition, food access, food and farm workers, food safety, local food and farming, animal welfare and reforming farm subsidies.

This kind of accountability is crucial to our ability — as a movement — to promote the policies that will change the way we eat and how our food is grown. Right now, we have a gun rights movement that votes expressly on Second Amendment rights. We have a anti-abortion movement that votes entirely based on reproductive rights. It’s time we have a food movement that votes on a good fair food system for all.

Now is the time for us to band together with people working on all food issues to make food matter in elections. We can work together to introduce tax incentives that promote the right kind of behavior from industry. We can raise Americans’ awareness of how their leaders are voting on issues that directly impact the quality and availability of their food. We can call out our leaders who show disdain for American eaters by voting for bad food policies and force them to defend those votes in primaries, talk to SNAP recipients, and stare down the 17 million kids who routinely go hungry through no fault of their own. We can start to vote for good food not with our dollars, but with our votes.

As soon as one legislator loses their job over the way they vote on food issues, it will send a clear message to Congress: We are organized. We’re strong. Yes, we have a food movement, and it’s coming for you.

More Foreclosures - More Suicides

More Foreclosures Means More Suicides, Study Finds

By Ansel Herz

South Seattle woman Phyllis Walsh shot herself on her front lawn two days before her eviction last year, after she was foreclosed on by US Bank, as I reported. She thought she was in the "middle of a refinance," according to her suicide note.

I've been struck every time I've listened to someone talk about going through foreclosure: They all describe in similar terms how the process hollows out your hopes, how being buried in paperwork and slowly but surely losing one's home makes you feel alone and desperate. Now, a study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Purdue University confirms that an increase in foreclosures during the past six years drove up the suicide rate:

To search for relationships between foreclosure and suicide rates, the researchers controlled for certain variables like the unemployment rate, and then honed in on intrastate data. … These steps led the researchers to a grim discovery—one that implicates banks’ irresponsible lending practices in more than just the death of middle-class prosperity. 

"Our results suggest that the foreclosure crisis significantly contributed to the increase in suicides in the Great Recession," the researchers write in their paper. 

A statistically significant within-state foreclosure effect on suicide rates was detected between 2005 and 2010 for two age groups studied—30- to 45-year-olds, and 46- to 64-year-olds. The effect for 30- to 45-year-olds was small. It was vast for those who were still of working age but approaching retirement, helping explain the 18 percent suicide rate among 46- to 64-year-olds. [Dartmouth sociologist Jason] Houle says the findings help explain the puzzling rise in middle-aged suicide rates in a recession-wrecked nation.

In the past year, the Seattle City Council has talked about doing something to stop unethical or illegal foreclosures—but so far, has done nothing.

Ideological and corporate interests

Federal Judge Who Halted Walker Dark Money Criminal Probe Attended Koch-Backed Judicial Junkets

By Brendan Fischer

The federal judge who ordered a halt to Wisconsin's "John Doe" criminal investigation into spending during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections has regularly attended all-expenses paid "judicial junkets" funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and other ideological and corporate interests.

On May 6, federal District Court Judge Rudolph Randa blocked an ongoing John Doe criminal probe into allegedly illegal coordination between nonprofit groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth, which spent $9.1 million on electoral ads during Wisconsin's recall elections, and the recall campaigns of Governor Scott Walker and state senators. John Doe investigations are similar to grand jury investigations, and Wisconsin Club for Growth -- and its director, Eric O'Keefe, a longtime compatriot of the Koch brothers -- asked the federal court to stop the probe, alleging it violated their "free speech" rights.

Judge Randa sided with O'Keefe, and also ordered prosecutors to destroy all evidence gathered in the investigation, an extraordinary edict in a criminal case made even more astounding by the fact that it came in the context of a preliminary injunction. The Seventh Circuit has blocked this part of his ruling; an appeal of the remainder of his decision is pending.

An analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that Judge Randa attended privately-funded, all-expenses-paid judicial seminars put on by George Mason University in 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012, according to publicly-available financial disclosure forms. (The 2013 disclosure form has been requested but has not yet been publicly posted).

The George Mason University seminars are bankrolled by a long list of right-wing foundations, like Koch, Bradley, and the Searle Freedom Trust, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and corporations like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Dow Chemical. Many of these interests have long opposed limits on money in politics, although it is not known whether campaign finance reform was a topic at the seminars Randa attended.

The seminars amount to a privately-funded all-expenses paid trip for judges, with conference sponsors picking up the costs of a judge's flights, hotel rooms, and meals. One seminar Judge Randa attended was in La Jolla, California, a swanky San Diego suburb that is home to both great golfing and Mitt Romney; the location of other seminars Randa attended is unknown. The content of the seminars has a decidedly pro-corporate bent, and the expensive gifts raise concerns about improper influence when corporate sponsors have a stake in a case before a judge. (Some reports have directly connected the trips to judge's decisions).
No other federal district judges in Wisconsin attended the privately-funded George Mason seminars, according to the Center for Media and Democracy's review of publicly available financial disclosure documents.

Koch and Bradley Bankrolled Junkets Randa Attended

The Judicial Conference of the United States -- which oversees the conduct of federal judges -- has noted that judges may be "influenced inappropriately" at the privately-funded events, and since 2007 has required that seminar organizers disclose the names of funders.

The disclosures do not specify how much each funder contributed towards the judge's expenses and seminar costs, but for the years that Judge Randa attended the seminars, some donations can be ascertained by foundation tax filings.

According to the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation's tax filings, in 2012 it gave $5.45 million to the George Mason University Foundation, and $51,000 to its "Law and Economics Center." The Charles G. Koch Foundation gave $4.7 million to George Mason in 2010 for "general operating support and education programs," $2.78 million in 2008 for "general operating support," and $350,000 in 2006 for "educational and research programs."

The Koch network also funded Wisconsin Club for Growth, which filed the case before Judge Randa. A full list of the Club's funders is not known, but tax filings show that the Koch-connected Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) funneled $225,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth in 2011. CPPR also entirely bankrolled the Coalition for American Values, which spent $400,080 on pro-Walker ads in the final weeks of the recall elections. (In California, CPPR was hit with an unprecedented $1 million fine for its involvement in a campaign finance shell game to evade the state's donor disclosure laws.) Other Koch groups, like Americans for Prosperity, have reportedly been subpoenaed in Wisconsin's John Doe investigation.

In 2010, the Bradley Foundation gave George Mason $40,000 "to support educational programs for judges conducted by the Law and Economics Center." It also gave George Mason $40,000 in 2008 "to support the judicial education program," and $35,000 in 2006 "to support education programs."

The Bradley Foundation's President and CEO, Michael Grebe, chaired Scott Walker's 2010 and 2012 gubernatorial campaigns. Walker's 2012 campaign is under investigation in the John Doe for allegedly illegal coordination.

Both Bradley and Koch have long demonstrated antipathy for limits on money in politics, and for years have bankrolled organizations that fight against campaign finance reform, like the Center for Competitive Politics.

Judicial Seminars Reflect Principles in Powell Memo

Some have drawn a direct line between these corporate-funded judicial seminars and the 1971 Powell Memo, a call-to-arms for corporate America to aggressively push back against the "attack on the free enterprise system" -- represented by the likes of Ralph Nader -- by developing a set of institutions to reshape politics and law.

The Powell Memo reportedly sparked the development of a right-wing infrastructure and the formation of groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known as ALEC), the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society (with which Judge Randa is affiliated), and others. As the New York Times recently reported, Charles Koch specifically referenced the Powell Memo in a 1974 speech previewing what has become the "Koch network," calling for a "well-financed cadre of of sound proponents of the free-enterprise philosophy" and for business to "undertake radical new efforts to overcome the prevalent anti-capitalist mentality."

Some of the memo's most aggressive language was reserved for the judiciary, which its author, then-tobacco lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, called “the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”

As a Supreme Court Justice, Powell would play a key role in decisions like First National Bank v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo, which declared that "money equals speech" and reshaped the First Amendment into a tool to protect the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to spend on elections.

Privately-Funded Seminar Disclosure Still Spotty

Although the Judicial Conference requires that judges publicly disclose their attendance at privately-funded seminars, and that those who conduct the events publish details about their funders, tracking the reports can be difficult, as the Center for Public Integrity has noted.

The Eastern District of Wisconsin website has a page that is supposed to list all seminars attended by federal judges in that court over the past three years, yet claims that there is "no attendance reported" for any Eastern District judges since 2011. This is contradicted by a review of Judge Randa's 2012 financial disclosure form.

Requesting an individual judge's financial disclosure form can take weeks, although Judicial Watch has posted many forms online.

Judge Randa reported no travel reimbursement on his 2010 financial disclosure form, but the Center for Public Integrity reports that he attended a 2010 seminar at George Mason titled "The Rule of Law."

George Mason also has apparently tried to dodge the limited donor disclosure rules that do exist. Prior to 2012, it disclosed its list of corporate and foundation seminar funders -- which consistently included Koch and Bradley and corporations like Exxon Mobil -- but in 2012 listed the only funder as "xyz corp," and listed itself as the only donor. In 2013 it returned to providing a full list of donors.