LA TIMES - A measure to legalize marijuana will be on California's November ballot Supporters of the initiative collected well more than the 433,971 signatures needed for it to go before voters in the fall, again putting the state at the forefront of the nation's drug debate. . .

The measure, like the medical marijuana initiative, could put California on a collision course with the federal government. The possession and sale of marijuana remain a federal crime.

This month, President Obama's drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, decried legalization in a speech to police chiefs in San Jose.

The initiative would allow adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce for personal use.

Possession of an ounce or less has been a misdemeanor with a $100 fine since 1975, when Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who was then governor, signed a law that reduced tough marijuana penalties that had allowed judges to impose 10-year sentences.

Legalization supporters note that misdemeanor arrests have risen dramatically in California in the last two decades. The initiative would also allow adults to grow up to 25 square feet of marijuana per residence or parcel.

But the measure, known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act, goes further, allowing cities and counties to adopt ordinances that would authorize the cultivation, transportation and sale of marijuana, which could be taxed to raise revenue._______________________________________________________

The corporate media has finally been forced to face up to the fact that Pope in the mid-90s was head of a watchdog group meant to deal with church sex abuse charges. Five years ago, the Review was one of the few American journals to tell its readers what British Observer had uncovered about how the Pope handled those cases in a manner that would be considered criminal obstruction of justice under American law:


JAMIE DOWARD, OBSERVER, UK, 2005 - Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'. . .

Ratzinger's letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been 'perpetrated with a minor by a cleric.' The letter states that the church's jurisdiction 'begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age' and lasts for 10 years. . .

'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication._______________________________________________________

WASHINGTON POST - Nearly one out of five District residents lives at or below the poverty line. The study, undertaken by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute on behalf of a coalition of more than 40 local organizations, concludes that last year the District experienced its biggest single-year increase in poverty since 1995.

Based on unemployment rates and other data, the coalition estimates that the city has 106,500 residents -- up 11,000 in a year . . .

The overall poverty rate in the District rose to 18.9 percent in 2009, up from 16.9 percent the previous year, according to the report. In contrast, the Census Bureau has reported a steady increase in median household income in the District, estimated at $58,000 in 2008. But there are big disparities between white and black families. Although white households had a median income of about $101,000 in 2008, the median income of black households was about $39,000._______________________________________________________

 
Above are 4th grade reading scores for the nation and California, recently released by the federal test tyrants. To understand what is going on here, imagine that you were paid $30,000 a year in 1992. If your salary had gone up as fast as national reading scores you would currently be paid $30,600. The federal takeover of public schools is a major fraud on parents and children that is not not being reported in the corporate media. Note the asterisk implying that such a small increase is "signicantly different."_______________________________________________________

VICTORIA NEIGHBORHOOD JUSTICE, AUSTRALIA - The Brumby Labor Government's Neighborhood Justice Centre helped reduce crime and increased offender compliance in the City of Yarra, Deputy Premier and Attorney-General Rob Hulls announced today.

Mr Hulls said an extensive review of the Neighborhood Justice Centre in Collingwood - the only community justice centre in Australia - found it had also delivered value for money.

The evaluation of the NJC, completed by the University of Melbourne, Flinders University, the Brotherhood of St Lawrence and Price Waterhouse Coopers, found:

- Recidivism rates dropped from 41 per cent to 34 per cent among NJC offenders;

- NJC offenders were 14 per cent less likely to re-offend than offenders at other courts;

- NJC offenders completed an average 105 hours of unpaid community work compared to the state average of 68 hours;

- The Yarra crime rate had dropped by 12 per cent since the centre was established.

"These results show that the Government's commitment to community justice works, and the NJC has the capacity to turn around people's lives and get people engaging with their neighbourhoods," Mr Hulls said.

The Neighbourhood Justice Centre was set up in 2007 as a multi-jurisdictional court that also provides drug and alcohol counseling, advice on mental health, housing and employment, victims' support and appropriate dispute resolution.

Mr Hulls said the evaluation found the NJC had provided Victorians with a return on their investment. "For every $1 the Government has invested in the NJC, the expected return is between $1.09 and $2.23 in savings to the wider justice system," he said.

"More than 11,000 residents have made contact since the centre was established in 2007 and, as it celebrates its third anniversary, it's important to note it has become a real community asset to the Collingwood area and its surrounds."_______________________________________________________

VIDEOS
Contraflow bike lanes
The making of an activist:  How one woman got into the battle against corporate interference in our politics
Sam Smith's Apology to Younger Americans set to music by John Halle, performed by the Now Ensemble with Sarah Chalfy.



BOOKS Backing Into Forward: A memoir by Jules Feiffer
The Big Short: Inside the Wall Street meltdown
Death and Life of the Great American School System
We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World
The Spirit Level
Ending the war in Afghanistan
We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now,
False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy Dean Baker
Graffiti New York
Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization




FILMS Soundtrack for a Revolution: music of the civil rights movement
Waiting for Armageddon
The Corporation: Dissecting one of America's great myths
The Garden: An LA community tries to save its 14 acre garden from politicians and developers
Invictus: The story of Nelson Mandela_______________________________________________________

WALL STREET JOURNAL - The United States Conference of Mayors is citing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs as its members push for more infrastructure money to go directly to local governments. They are pointing to the legacy of programs like the WPA to bolster their case that such direct public-sector job efforts can work when mayors run them. . . The Civil Works Administration, created during a lunchtime meeting in November 1933, put 4.3 million people to work 10 weeks later on roads, schools, parks, playgrounds and athletic fields, according to Bonnie Fox Schwartz, a historian of the program. President Roosevelt's better-known WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps employed millions more and left durable monuments all over the country.

WASHINGTON POST - Maryland, trying to protect a species whose ranks have declined by 99 percent, is cracking down on watermen who catch oysters in protected sanctuaries or with banned equipment. Over the winter, officers with the Maryland Natural Resources Police conducted undercover surveillance operations in small fishing towns and on rivers, hiding on patrol boats in the dark. . . In the past few months, police and poachers have played hide-and-seek in a tense drama that seems out of place along the new Chesapeake, with its art galleries and weekend homes.

USA TODAY - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Itawamba County, Miss., school board violated the rights of a lesbian student by canceling the prom when the student challenged a ban on same-sex dates, but the judge stopped short of ordering the district to reinstate the April 2 prom. U.S. District Court Judge Glen Davidson said he denied the injunction request because a private prom parents are planning will serve the same purpose as the school prom and because "requiring defendants to step back into a sponsorship role at this late date would only confuse and confound the community on the issue." ACLU Mississippi legal director Kristy Bennett called Tuesday's ruling a victory. "This ruling clearly tells school districts there is a First Amendment right to bring same-sex dates to the prom," Bennett said.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER - The Obama administration's six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama's term.

TECH NEWS WORLD - Biking directions and extensive bike trail data are now available for the United States through Google Maps, giving cyclists nationwide a way to customize their trips, figure out the most efficient routes, make use of bike lanes and avoid big hills. . . More than 12,000 miles of trails are now included in biking directions and outlined directly on maps through the service . . . Also included are data on bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the country.

LOCAL HEROES - The Idaho House of Representatives has voted to limit use of digital strip search machines. The 58-9 vote sends Bill 573 to the Idaho Senate, which will vote on the anti-body scanner measure. The bill would bar body scanners as primary screening, require security officers to offer an alternative search, and mandate an independent investigation into the scanners' health risks.

HOW TO BUILD A RAISED GARDEN BED_______________________________________________________

EDWARD TUFTE

- You probably encountered Edward Tufte for the first time, as I did, in the glorious Whole Earth Catalog; but I'm sure most people don't know who he is so it would be fair to post links to his website - or better, to his essay on PowerPoint and the Columbia disaster - Axel_______________________________________________________

UNSILENT GENERATION - No one is even trying very hard to pretend that the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has any purpose other than cutting Social Security, Medicare, and probably Medicaid as well. That choice was clear from the get-go, based on Obama's choice of Alan Simpson to co-chair the commission. The former Republican senator from Wyoming has already described his mission as "saving" the United States from "insolvency" by hacking away at entitlements. And if we want any more proof, we need only look at Simpson's background, as detailed by Saul Friedman in his latest "Gray Matters" column:

"This time President Obama, in his obsessive reaching across the political aisle, may have gone a stretch too far. For the Republican he picked to co-chair the so-called deficit reduction commission, former Sen. Alan Simpson, has been a harsh critic of Social Security and Medicare. And he sought to destroy their most powerful defenders, especially AARP.

"That was 15 years ago, but as recently as 2005, Simpson, a conservative from Wyoming who left the Senate in 1997, supported attempts by President George Bush to privatize Social Security by turning part of the pension and insurance program into millions of individual investment accounts, which by now would have lost 20 percent of their value. Bush's plan failed, largely because of the opposition of AARP and other advocates that Simpson sought to discredit.

"Even now, Simpson, who should know better, conflates or deliberately confuses Social Security's long term fiscal problems, which are minor, with its supposed contribution to the federal deficit, which is almost nil.

"In an interview with the NewsHour after his appointment, Simpson said of Social Security, 'You have two choices. . . you either raise the payroll tax or decrease the benefits or start affluence testing. The rest of it is B.S. And if the people are really ingesting B.S. all day long, their grandchildren will be picking grit with the chickens. This country is gonna go to the bow-wows unless we deal with entitlements, Social Security and Medicare.'"

In an interview on CNBC, Simpson referred to cutting entitlements as "correcting Social Security."

Simpson also told old people and their advocates to stay out of the debate, since the cuts would only apply to younger people. . ._______________________________________________________

COMMON DREAMS: Agencies are still bitterly resisting requests and lawsuits for release of internal records under the Freedom of Information Act according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama vowed to conduct government business with openness and ordered federal agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA." Since that promise, PEER has filed eight new FOIA lawsuits, as agencies either ignore requests and appeals or improperly withhold records._______________________________________________________

CONTRARY TO THE IMPRESSION deliberately given, insurance companies can still deny coverage to new children applicants because of pre-existing conditions. It's only children already under coverage who are in the clear. The new young applicants won't be covered until 2014.

BLOOMBERG - President Barack Obama faces a fight over the health-care overhaul from states that sued today because the legislation’s expansion of Medicaid imposes a fiscal strain on their cash-strapped budgets. Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania are among 14 states that filed suit after the president signed the bill over the constitutionality of the burden imposed by the legislation. The health-care overhaul will make as many as 15 million more Americans eligible for Medicaid nationwide starting in 2014 and will cost the states billions to administer.

States faced with unprecedented declines in tax collections are cutting benefits and payments to hospitals and doctors in Medicaid, the health program for the poor paid jointly by state and U.S. governments. The costs to hire staff and plan for the average 25 percent increase in Medicaid rolls may swamp budgets, said Toby Douglas, who manages the Medicaid program for California, which hasn’t joined the lawsuits._______________________________________________________

GUARDIAN - The police have issued a warning for harassment against an airport worker after he allegedly took a photo of a female colleague as she went through a full-body scanner at Heathrow airport.

The incident, which occurred at terminal 5 on 10 March, is believed to be the first time an airport worker has been formally disciplined for misusing the scanners. . .

The BAA employee took a photo of his co-worker, Jo Margetson, when she inadvertently went through a scanner.

The incident is likely to reignite privacy concerns over the scanners by civil liberty groups. The Equality and Human Rights Commission last month warned that the government needed to take action to bring its policy for body-scanning passengers at UK airports within the law.

The commission said it had concerns about the apparent absence of safeguards to ensure the scanners were operated in a lawful, fair and non-discriminatory manner. It raised doubts as to whether the decision to install them at all UK airports was legal._______________________________________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY - A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight." . . ._______________________________________________________

CNN - The latest trend at teen parties isn't warm beer or prescription medicines pilfered from parents' medicine cabinets. Instead, increasing numbers of youths are turning to an herb-based product to get high, and unlike marijuana, it's perfectly legal.

It's known as K2 or Spice, a synthetic substance that, when smoked, gives users a marijuana-like high, according to drug authorities. . .

Manufactured in Asia and sold online or in local stores, K2 and similar substances are marketed as herbal incense. A disclaimer on a K2-selling Web site reads: "K2Herbal products are novelty incenses and are not for consumption."

Sold in various flavors in 3-gram bags, the product consists of herbs that are sprayed with synthetic substances that mimic THC, the high-causing natural chemical found in marijuana._______________________________________________________

NY TIMES - When Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, was chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, his office kept a log of nearly 40 pages listing the local politicians and business people and others who sought help getting children into the city’s most selective public schools.

According to an article in The Chicago Tribune, which first obtained and reported on the confidential log, those who sought such help included 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office, the State House speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary and a former United States senator.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said that the log was a record of those who asked for help, and that neither Mr. Duncan nor the aide who maintained the list, David Pickens, ever pressured principals to accept a child. Rather, he said, the creation of the list was an effort to reduce pressure on principals. . .

According to The Chicago Tribune, about three-quarters of those in the log had political connections. The log noted "AD" as the person requesting help for 10 students, and as a co-requester about 40 times, according to The Tribune. Mr. Duncan’s mother and wife also appeared to have requested help for students.

"The fact that his name might be next to some of these names doesn’t mean he was trying to get the kid in a school," Mr. Cunningham said. "He was only asking after someone said, ‘Hi, Arne, is there any way to get into this school?’ ". . .

Admission to top Chicago schools has long been a competitive and murky process, with longstanding rumors of abuse. Mr. Duncan created a formal appeals process in 2008, and when he left to join the Obama administration, his successor, Ron Huberman, created a system to stop the gaming of the system._______________________________________________________

DEAN BAKER - The media have been bombarding the public with scare stories about the country's "record" budget deficits. Newspapers and news shows that never bothered to mention the growth of the $8 trillion housing bubble that eventually crashed the economy are giving us an endless barrage of stories claiming that current and projected future deficits will bankrupt our grandchildren. The implication of most of these stories is that we have to cut back Social Security and Medicare for all those high living seniors as a matter of generational equity.

Most of these deficit stories feature a potpourri of wrong or misleading information. One item that is especially effective at raising fear levels in the public is the warnings from Moody's, the huge bond-rating agency, that it may downgrade its rating of U.S. government debt. U.S. government debt has always held Moody's highest AAA rating. If Moody's were to lower the rating on government debt it would be a huge embarrassment to the country; essentially an indictment of the government's poor financial practices. It would also could have the practical effect of raising the government's interest burden as a downgrade could lead to higher interest rates on U.S. government debt. . .

Moody's and the other bond rating agencies have featured prominently in the build-up to the financial crisis. These agencies gave investment grade ratings to complex financial instruments filled with subprime mortgages and other bad assets. These ratings allowed Goldman Sachs and other investment banks to sell this trash around the country and the world, ensuring that the effects of the collapse of the housing bubble would reverberate throughout the financial system.

It was not just incompetence that caused Moody's to misunderstand the quality of the issues it was rating; it was corruption. Moody's and the other bond rating agencies were getting paid by the banks whose assets that they were rating. The bond-rating agencies knew that these companies wanted investment grade ratings for their issues. As one examiner for Standard & Poor's said in an e-mail, they would give investment grade ratings to products "structured by cows."

This record must be kept in mind when considering the possibility of a Moody's downgrade of U.S. government debt. It is no secret that many on Wall Street would love to see Social Security and Medicare cut back or even privatized. Investment banker Peter Peterson has even committed $1 billion toward promoting this agenda. When Moody's threatens to downgrade U.S. government debt, or if it actually does so, it may reflect its actual assessment of the creditworthiness of the U.S. government or it could be a reflection of the Wall Street agenda to cut back these key public programs.

There is one way in which the public can better recognize Moody's motivations. All banks, including giants like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, hold huge amounts of U.S. government debt. There are also reliant on the U.S. government for all sorts of reasons, including potential bailouts. If the U.S. government were to default on its debts, then it would almost certainly wipe out every major bank in the country. There is no plausible scenario in which the U.S. government defaults on its debts and the banks will still be able to make good on their debt payments.

This means that if Moody's were to downgrade the government's debt, to be consistent it must also downgrade the debt of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the other big banks. If Moody's downgrades the government's debt, without downgrading the debt of the big banks -- or even threatens to downgrade the government's debt without also threatening to downgrade the debt of the big banks -- then it is more likely acting in pursuit of Wall Street's political agenda than presenting its best assessment of the creditworthiness of the U.S. government.

It is unfortunate that we have to suspect a major credit rating agency of such dishonesty, but given its track record, serious people have no choice. To paraphrase an old Winston Churchill joke, we already know about the character of the bond-rating agencies, we are only asking if they are prostituting themselves now._______________________________________________________

INSIDE THE BELTWAY, WASHINGTON TIMES - The ever-enthusiastic Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. muttered a choice cuss word near an open White House mike before his boss took over to bask in health care reform glory Tuesday. The moment is already immortalized on YouTube and emblazoned upon an instant T-shirt priced at $23.50, courtesy of the wags at Zazzle.com.

370: The number of stories the moment generated within 60 minutes of its occurrence.

"F--ing": Term preferred by The Washington Times, Associated Press, CBS News, Times of London, Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Entertainment Weekly.

"F-Bomb": Term preferred by the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, New York Post, Politico, USA Today, Kansas City Star, Newsday, Russia Television, National Public Radio.

[fracking]: Used only by The Washington Post

The real expletive: Britain's Guardian newspaper, Reason, Rolling Stone._______________________________________________________

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT - WMR has learned from sources close to ousted White House chief counsel Greg Craig that it was not President Obama's top legal adviser who balked at ordering the Justice Department to review the politically-motivated criminal cases brought by the Bush administration against three top Democrats in the South, but it was White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who made the decision to nix any White House backing for new trials for the southern Democratic officials involved -- former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, former Georgia state Senate leader Charles Walker, and Mississippi attorney Paul Minor.

Walker and Minor are currently incarcerated in federal prisons while Siegelman was freed from prison pending an appeal of his conviction in a trial headed by a corrupt Bush-appointed federal judge and former Republican operative, Mark Fuller.

Craig announced his resignation as chief counsel last November. Although press reports indicated that Craig was forced out by Emanuel over Craig's determination to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison and to release Bush administration Justice Department memos on harsh interrogation techniques, the new information suggests that Craig and Emanuel also differed over Bush-era Justice Department prosecutions of Siegelman, Walker, and Minor, with Craig favoring a Justice Department review of the cases and possible new trials.

The involvement of Emanuel in blocking Justice Department review of the cases against Siegelman, Walker, and Minor is the first evidence that ties Obama's chief of staff to the continuation of the political prosecutions of a number of Democrats that was brought about largely by President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove.

This is not the first instance in which Emanuel and Rove find themselves on the same side. Obama's Harvard Law School friend, Representative Artur Davis (D-AL) is running to be the first black governor of Alabama. Davis has not only received the support of Rove's good friend, Alabama Republican and businessman Bill Canary, whose wife, Leura Canary, prosecuted Siegelman, but also signed up former Alabama Lieutenant Governor Jere Beasley, who served under Governor George Wallace, as his campaign manager._______________________________________________________

HOUSTON CHRONICLE - A new report by the Center for American Progress says it will cost $285 billion to find, apprehend, detain, legally process and transport the almost 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and maintain current enforcement levels at the border and interior for five years.

CAP says deportation alone would cost $200 billion. Then you have to figure in the $85 billion needed to maintain the current enforcement strategy for five years.

From the report:

"When viewed through this most narrow but most telling fiscal lens, it should be clear that a deportation-only strategy is highly irresponsible. In these challenging economic times, spending a king's ransom to tackle a symptom of our immigration crisis without addressing root causes would be a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Spending $285 billion would require $922 in new taxes for every man, woman, and child in this country.

"If this kind of money were raised, it could provide every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade an extra $5,100 for their education. Or more frivolously, that $285 billion would pay for about 26,146 trips in the private space travel rocket._______________________________________________________

WIRED - Lawmakers are proposing a national identification card - what they're calling "high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security cards" -that would be required for all employees in the United States.

The proposal by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) comes as the states are grappling to produce another national identification card at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security. Virtually none of the states are in compliance with this Real ID program - adopted in 2005 - requiring state motor vehicle bureaus to obtain and internally scan and store personal information like Social Security cards and birth certificates for a national database.

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, suggests the plan would undoubtedly lead to a national database. He added that "there is no practical way of making a national identity document fraud-proof."

What's more, Richard Esguerra, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's in-house activist, notes that a national ID card likely would expand from its stated purpose.

"Because of the ID card's proposed universality, it will likely be requested and required by airlines, insurance agencies, health care providers, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and so forth," he said.


See Also:_______________________________________________________