Later On

I made it.

Deboning the thighs was easier than I expected. The boiling water needs about 3-4 minutes, unless you have a big bowl (more boiling water will have more heat—I used a small bowl (lots of tomatoes, little water) and had to re-scald them.

I made half a recipe. It looks damn good in the oven.

UPDATE: And here it is:

From Transform:

The U.S. House Domestic Policy Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), held a hearing today on the White House’s drug war budget and forthcoming 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. The Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (also known as the drug czar), Gil Kerlikowske, gave testimony. Ethan Nadlemann from the Drug Policy Alliance gave oral evidence, and his complete testimony is copied below. A brilliant performance, well worth a read:

Good morning. I’m Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the nation’s leading organization advocating alternatives to the failed war on drugs. I want to thank the subcommittee for inviting me to testify on ONDCP’s priorities and objectives.

It is hard to talk in detail about ONDCP’s overall strategy when their 2010 Strategy is not yet out, but there are certain things we know based on their proposed FY11 Budget Highlights and recent statements and remarks by Director Gil Kerlikowske and others.

I want to highlight four issues — ONDCP’s flawed performance measures, the lop-sided ratio between supply and demand spending in their budget, the lack of innovation in their proposed strategies, and their failure to adequately evaluate drug policies. But first a little context is required.

The predominant role that criminalization and the criminal justice system play in dealing with particular drugs and drug use in this country is unsustainable in both fiscal and human terms. Police made 1.7 million drug arrests in 2008 alone, including 750,000 for nothing more than possession of marijuana for personal use. Those arrested were separated from their loved ones, branded criminals, denied jobs, and in many cases prohibited from voting and accessing public assistance for life.

The United States now ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration rates, with less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prison population. Roughly 500,000 people are behind bars tonight for a drug law violation. That’s ten times the total in 1980, and more than all of western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for all offenses. More than half of federal prisoners are there for drug law violations; relatively few are kingpins and virtually none are queenpins.

Yet, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars and arresting millions of Americans, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available throughout the country and the harms associated with them continue to mount. Meanwhile, the war on drugs is creating problems of its own – broken families, racial disparities, and the erosion of civil liberties. Few government policies have failed for so long without any serious effort to question or revise them.

U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) said recently, speaking about our country’s uniquely high incarceration rate, "either we have the most evil people in the world or we are doing something wrong with the way we approach the issue of criminal justice." He went on to say "the central role of drug policy in filling our nation’s prisons makes clear that our approach to curbing illegal drug use is broken." Unfortunately, ONDCP seems unwilling to reassess this role in any meaningful way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some say because of this profile by Jeff Stein in the Washingtonian.com:

Senator Dianne Feinstein was furious. Somebody was going to pay.

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” the California Democrat said coldly, standing in a marble corridor just off the Senate floor.

It was January 6, 2009. Barack Obama’s team was reaching for the levers of the intelligence bureaucracy.

By God, she hadn’t gotten to be the first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a last bastion of old bulls, by being pushed around. And she sure wasn’t going to be rolled by the national-security guys around Obama, an Illinois politician who had shown almost no interest in foreign affairs during his four years in the US Senate.

Did they really want Leon Panetta, a former California congressman whose intelligence experience amounted pretty much to sitting in on CIA briefings as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff?

And that was before Osama bin Laden and 9/11, before the Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, secret prisons, renditions, warrantless wiretapping, the invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and waterboarding. And before the CIA was once again snarled in controversy, its officials hauled before oversight committees—like Feinstein’s—to explain missing torture videotapes.

Fine, Feinstein decided, you can have Panetta. But there’s a price. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge,” she told reporters.

A professional—not a politician. There would be no Panetta without a professional backing him up—and Feinstein had one professional in mind: Steve Kappes.

Who? Stephen R. Kappes, the spy agency’s deputy director, was a 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Operations Directorate, one of those who worked on “the dark side,” in the memorable characterization of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Kroll has a good post in which he discusses each of the five big fights, which are:

1) Shining a Light on Shadow Banking

2) The Ratings Agencies’ Conflict of Interest Problem

3) CEOs vs. Shareholders

4) The Broker Loophole

5) Skin in the Game

Kevin Drum comments on the post as well.

Steve Benen:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma recently told a group of constituents not to let Fox News warp their sense of current events. "[D]on’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good," the senator said, among other things.

The comments were not, as one might imagine, well received at the Republican cable network. Bill O’Reilly spoke to Coburn directly last night, and told the conservative senator that some of his allegations are incorrect.

"[Y]ou don’t know anybody on Fox News — because there hasn’t been anyone — that said people will go to jail if they don’t buy mandatory insurance," O’Reilly said. He added: "[W]e researched to find out if anybody had ever said you are going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody has ever said it. What it seems to me is you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn’t qualify there."

Maybe O’Reilly needs new "researchers."

November 13, 2009: Glenn Beck tells Fox News’ audience that those without coverage will "go to jail."

November 12, 2009: Beck said "there will be jail time" for those who refuse to participate in the health care system.

November 9, 2009: Dick Morris argues, "One of the provisions in the Pelosi bill is you actually can go to jail for not having health insurance."

November 10, 2009: Sean Hannity tells viewers, "Penalties for people who don’t get government-mandated health insurance, uh, jail time, a possibility?"

October 7, 2009: Greta Van Susteren says it’s "theoretically possible" that if "you can’t afford insurance for whatever reason" the government could "send you to jail."

November 10, 2009: The on-screen graphic during Fox & Friends tells viewers during a segment on the health care debate: "Comply or go to jail."

Remember, O’Reilly promised Coburn, "[W]e researched to find out if anybody [on Fox News] had ever said you are going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody has ever said it."

O’Reilly does realize that it’s not that difficult to search Fox News transcripts, doesn’t he?

From the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, the 10 worst offenses in 2010.

Aaron Weiner in the Washington Independent:

Mike’s reported on the White House’s shift away from a “war on drugs” mentality toward an increased focus on prevention and treatment. Today, National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske emphasized that shift in testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subpanel on domestic policy.

From a press release sent along by the Office of National Drug Control Policy:

National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske said today “a new direction in drug policy” is required to reduce the strain on the Nation’s economy caused by drug abuse and to improve the public health and safety of our citizens.

Testifying before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Director Kerlikowske outlined national drug control priorities and the Fiscal Year 2011 National Drug Control Budget, noting that the Obama Administration approach to drug policy is “grounded in common sense, sound science, and practical experience.”

With drug use accounting for tens of billions of dollars per year in healthcare costs, and drug overdoses ranking second only to motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of accidental death, the Nation “needs to discard the idea that enforcement alone can eliminate our Nation’s drug problem,” Director Kerlikowske said. “Only through a comprehensive and balanced approach – combining tough, but fair, enforcement with robust prevention and treatment efforts – will we be successful in stemming both the demand for and supply of illegal drugs in our country.

“The forthcoming National Drug Control Strategy calls for addressing our Nation’s enormous demand for drugs by scaling up our public health policy response, integrating treatment programs into mainstream medicine, and recognizing that effective drug policy requires engagement at the community level,” Director Kerlikowske said.

He also noted that ONDCP would continue to work to “break down the silos between the prevention, treatment, and law enforcement communities– and the greatest use must be made of the finite resources at our disposal.”

The President’s $15.5 billion Fiscal Year 2011 National Drug Control Budget lays the foundation for these efforts and provides resources for five major drug control functions: substance abuse prevention; substance abuse treatment, domestic law enforcement, interdiction, and international support. The budget request specifically calls for an increase of $521.1 million over the FY 2010 enacted level, and includes a 6.5 percent increase for prevention and treatment; an increase of $73.8 million for Federal interdiction efforts; and an increase of $20.1 million for international support.

Mark Bittman points out an earlier column that begins:

I’M sure you know how to make a burger. But do you make a burger you love, one that people notice, one that draws raves?

In a world where “burger” most often means a thin piece of meat whose flavor is overwhelmed by ketchup, mustard, pickle or onion, it doesn’t take much effort to make a better one. In fact, it’s almost as easy to cook a really great burger as it is to cook a mediocre one.

When I was young, my mother and her friends produced good burgers. They used different butchers (some were kosher), had different preferences (chuck, round or sirloin), and cooked either in a pan or the broiler (there was no grilling, except when we visited some relatives on Long Island).

A favorite recipe in the neighborhood called for garlic powder, an exotic ingredient in 1958; chopped onion; and — gasp! — Worcestershire sauce. This avant-garde recipe was treasured and shared sparingly.

What the burgers of my childhood all had in common was high-quality meat, and this is exactly what is missing from most of the backyard barbecues I visit. I see people buying everything from packaged ground meat to frozen patties. With these ingredients, the best they can hope for is to mimic fast food.

The key is to avoid packaged ground meat. When you buy it, you may know the cut of the meat — chuck, for example — and the fat content.

But you have no way of knowing whether the meat came from high- or low-quality animals. It could come from dozens of animals, and they could all be poor-quality animals — old dairy cows, for instance, rather than cattle raised for beef. The meat from these animals is ground together in huge quantities.

If the aesthetics of that don’t give you pause, consider the health concerns. Massive batches of ground meat carry the highest risk of salmonella and E. coli contamination, and have caused many authorities to recommend cooking burgers to the well-done stage. Forgive my snobbishness, but well-done meat is dry and flavorless, which is why burgers should be rare, or at most medium rare.

The only sensible solution: Grind your own. You will know the cut, you can see the fat and you have some notion of its quality.

“Grinding” may sound ominous, conjuring visions of a big old hand-cranked piece of steel clamped to the kitchen counter, but in fact it’s not that difficult. As the grinder was an innovation in its day, the food processor has taken over. It does nearly as good a job — not perfect, I’ll admit — in a couple of minutes or less.

Take a nice-looking chuck roast, or well-marbled sirloin steaks or some pork or lamb shoulder. Cut the meat into one- to two-inch cubes, and pulse it with the regular steel blade until it’s chopped.

If you have a 12-cup food processor, you can do a pound or a little more at a time; with a smaller machine, you’ll need to work in batches. You can do a few pounds at a time and freeze what you won’t use immediately, or you can grind the meat as you need it.

There are a few rules here. One, …

Continue reading. And note the recipes:

The Real Burger

Garlicky Pork Burger

Inside-Out Lamb Cheeseburgers

Bruce Schneier makes a good point:

Chris Hoofnagle has a new paper: "Internalizing Identity Theft." Basically, he shows that one of the problems is that lenders extend credit even when credit applications are sketchy.

From an article on the work:

Using a 2003 amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act that allows victims of ID theft to ask creditors for the fraudulent applications submitted in their names, Mr. Hoofnagle worked with a small sample of six ID theft victims and delved into how they were defrauded.

Of 16 applications presented by imposters to obtain credit or medical services, almost all were rife with errors that should have suggested fraud. Yet in all 16 cases, credit or services were granted anyway.

In the various cases described in the paper, which was published on Wednesday in The U.C.L.A. Journal of Law and Technology, one victim found four of six fraudulent applications submitted in her name contained the wrong address; two contained the wrong phone number and one the wrong date of birth.

Another victim discovered that his imposter was 70 pounds heavier, yet successfully masqueraded as him using what appeared to be his stolen driver’s license, and in one case submitted an incorrect Social Security number.

This is a textbook example of an economic externality. Because most of the cost of identity theft is borne by the victim — even with the lender reimbursing the victim if pushed to — the lenders make the trade-off that’s best for their business, and that means issuing credit even in marginal situations. They make more money that way.

If we want to reduce identity theft, the only solution is to internalize that externality. Either give victims the ability to sue lenders who issue credit in their names to identity thieves, or pass a law with penalties if lenders do this.

Among the ways to move the cost of the crime back to issuers of credit, Mr. Hoofnagle suggests that lenders contribute to a fund that will compensate victims for the loss of their time in resolving their ID theft problems.

Businesses are concerned only with increasing their profits. To modify their behavior, it’s necessary to ensure that disapproved behavior affects profits directly and visibly and immediately.

John Cole at Balloon Juice:

I love meat, but I’m not sure how many more stories like this I can stomach:

The U.S. government is not fully guarding against the contamination of meat by traces of antibiotics, pesticides or heavy metals, a new report warns.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general said federal agencies have failed to set limits on many potentially harmful chemical residues, which “has resulted in meat with these substances being distributed in commerce.”

When it comes to pesticide traces, only one type is tested for, according to the report. There are also no set limits for some heavy metals, like copper.

In 2008, Mexican authorities turned away an American shipment of beef, because it did not meet Mexico’s limits when tested for copper traces. But the very same rejected meat could be sold in the United States, since no limit has been set, the analysis says.

It’s foam finger time! USA! USA! We’ll eat ANYTHING!

It’s the same old story over and over and over again. The only thing that changes is what is being not being regulated. Dead miners, lead in toys, understrength drugs, poisonous food, rampant fraud in the financial markets, polluted drinking water, poison dumped in our streams and rivers, carcinogens in the air, and on and on and on. No wonder no one is actually going Galt. We’re already in a libertarian paradise.

Seriously- about the only thing we regulate with any effort in this country is drugs, and even then we do a shitty job.

Japan has also refused to accept beef from the US—and now Mexico. How many more?

Unfortunately, Mr. Thiessen is dishonest. Conor Friedersdorf starts to dissect Thiessen’s response, but fairly quickly gives up: the sh*t is stacked too deep. Friedersdorf:

In National Review, former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen responds to the review of his book written by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer.

Mr. Thiessen writes:

Mayer declares categorically that “the Bush administration’s interrogation policies . . . yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit.”

Here is what Ms. Mayer actually said in her article:

Thiessen’s book, whose subtitle is “How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” offers a relentless defense of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, which, according to many critics, sanctioned torture and yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit.

Conclusion: When Mr. Thiessen uses ellipses be sure to check up on what he elides.

Mr. Thiessen continues:

She must not have been listening when Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, declared: “High value information came from [CIA] interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.”

This neglects to mention the other statement by Admiral Blair that appeared in the same New York Times article:

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

Mr. Thiessen writes:

She must have forgotten that when she herself interviewed Leon Panetta, Obama’s CIA director, he told her, “Important information was gathered from these detainees. [The CIA program] provided information that was acted upon.”

Here is the relevant excerpt from Ms. Mayer’s article:

Dick Cheney has repeatedly claimed that “enhanced” interrogations yield results. Opponents say that torture is counterproductive. Panetta is more agnostic. He told me, “The bottom line would be this: Yes, important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that in fact was acted upon. Was this the only way to obtain this information? I think that will always be an open question.” But he is certain that “we did pay a price for using those methods.”

Mr. Thiessen writes:

And she must have forgotten her 2007 interview (also quoted in the Panetta article) with John Brennan (now Obama’s homeland-security advisor), in which she asked him if enhanced interrogation techniques “were necessary to keep America safe,” and he replied: “Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”

Here’s the relevant excerpt from Ms. Mayer’s article with a bit more context:

Brennan has described himself as an internal critic of waterboarding—a position that friends, such as Emile Nakhleh, a former senior officer, confirm. Yet, in an interview with me two years ago, Brennan defended the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques and extraordinary renditions, in which the C.I.A. abducted terror suspects around the globe and transported them to other countries to be jailed and interrogated; many of those countries had execrable human-rights records. He also questioned some people’s definition of “torture.” “I think it’s torture when I have to ride in the car with my kids and they have loud rap music on,” he said. Asked if “enhanced” interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, he replied, “Would the U.S. be handicapped if the C.I.A. was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”

In other words, Mr. Brennan is advocating for “enhanced interrogation” but using that term in a way that excludes waterboarding as something that should not be done.

To summarize so far, Mr. Thiessen accuses Jane Mayer of asserting that Bush era interrogations yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit, even though she doesn’t assert that — rather, she very clearly reports, accurately, that some of Bush’s critics assert that position, never asserting it herself.

Subsequently, he purports to defend his own position about enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding, by selectively quoting people who turn out to argue that either enhanced interrogation generally, or waterboarding in particular, shouldn’t be used and do more harm than good. That he neglects to mention their words when they are contrary to his own arguments is telling.

And we’re only three short paragraphs into Mr. Thiessen’s article.

In paragraph four, Mr. Thiessen notes that various Bush Administration officials assert that the Bush era interrogation program was valuable. This is indisputably true, and in no way disproves anything in Ms. Mayer’s review. He then writes, “In her review, Mayer asks us to accept that all of these CIA directors and directors of national intelligence from both Democratic and Republican administrations are wrong, and she is right. Readers can judge for themselves.” In fact, Ms. Meyer isn’t pitting Bush era officials against herself — she is pitting their views against numerous credible sources, including intelligence experts, who she quotes at length to rebut assertions by Bush Administration officials, and who offer a different account of interrogation practices from 2001 to 2008.

There is a lot left in Mr. Thiessen’s piece. I don’t have time to assess its remaining paragraphs right now — wading through all the source material is time consuming work — but depending on whether anyone else writes persuasively about them I may return to the subject of his latest writing.

Mr. Thiessen’s tactics seem completely in tune with the GOP today, and of course the National Review editors had no problem with it at all: their standards are in keeping with the GOP’s.

One caused a big brouhaha, with many Republicans on TV and many talking heads talking; the other seems not to be noticed—not even by the GOP, which (based on what it has said in other situations) should be in a storm of outrage. I just don’t understand the GOP.

Steve Benen:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was at the center of a terrorist plot to kill Americans last year. Najibullah Zazi was at the center of a terrorist plot to kill Americans last year. Both targeted U.S. transportation — Abdulmutallab intended to attack on a plane, Zazi on a New York subway — and both, fortunately, were thwarted and taken into custody.

The former became the subject of intense media interest, heated political debate, and far-right apoplexy. The latter has been largely ignored, especially by conservatives. Kevin Drum wonders why.

Am I missing something here? Because I don’t remember Fox News putting Zazi on a 24/7 loop and insisting that trial in a civilian court was basically a surrender to al-Qaeda. The right wing world doesn’t seem to be objecting to this latest development, either. Why? Is blowing up an airplane somehow different from blowing up a subway? Are civilian courts and Miranda rights OK if the terrorist plot is broken up before it can be carried out, but not after? Or what? I’m a little confused about the conservative position on this stuff. Help me out.

The disconnect is interesting, isn’t it? Zazi, who was reportedly close to executing the worst domestic terrorist attack since 9/11, was treated the same way all suspected terrorists taken into U.S. custody are treated — law enforcement prevented the attack, arrested the suspect, read him his rights, gave him a lawyer, charged him, and put him behind bars.

This should, in theory, outrage Republicans, right? GOP official don’t believe counter-terrorism is a law enforcement issue, don’t want suspected terrorists to be treated like criminals, and don’t want them to be imprisoned on American soil. So why would the right stay silent?

I suspect it’s because the Zazi case makes the Obama administration look fantastic, and conservatives would just as soon hope that no American ever hears about the story at all.

Indeed, this story is a classic example of the American system working to perfection, executed by officials who got everything right. A radical, al Qaeda-recruited terrorist and some accomplices were close to setting off deadly explosives in the two busiest subway stations in New York City. The consequences would have been devastating had they succeeded. Instead, federal officials learned of the plot, realized the attack was near, and prevented a catastrophe.

Once in custody, the administration followed the rule of law and it worked wonders — Zazi cooperated with authorities, provided valuable intelligence, and rolled over on his accomplices. There was no torture, no military commissions, no Gitmo.

By any reasonable measure, from top to bottom, this was counter-terrorism working beautifully. The U.S. officials who made this happen are heroes.

So, why aren’t Republicans whining incessantly? Because that would shine a light on the case, and that’s the last thing conservatives want.

Conversely, why don’t Democrats shine a light on the case, and maybe try to bring the story to the public’s attention? Perhaps because, even now, Dems choose not to emphasize national security, even when it’s a tremendous victory for a Democratic administration.

She is so far from her stated principles—and apparently because of her loyalty to an employee. I’m talking about this:

Source: American Council on Science and Health, April 12, 2010

The pesticide and chemical industry front group American Council on Science and Health is lauding organic gardens advocate Alice Waters for her refusing a request from the Organic Consumers Association to publicly oppose growing food in toxic sewage sludge, or ‘organic biosolids compost’ as the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission prefers to call it.

The ACSH, bankrolled by a long list of polluting companies, cites a recent New York Times blog about the controversial sludge-for-your-garden give-away that San Francisco was forced to temporarily halt just ahead of a March 4, 2010, protest at City Hall.

ACSH’s Gilbert Ross bemoans the temporary victory won by OCA, saying "the program has been halted, to everyone’s detriment."

The Executive Director of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation is Francesca Vietor, who is also the Vice President of the Commission that has since 2007 been deceiving and fooling San Francisco gardeners into putting toxic sewage sludge on their gardens, telling them it is organic compost.

The OCA is now organizing to make their victory permanent and to force San Francisco to clean up the gardens they contaminated with their sludge give-away program.

OCA would also like chef Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse Foundation to take a clear public stand against growing any food in toxic sludge.

Blogger Jill Richardson has also appealed to Waters, writing that ACSH still thinks "DDT should be legal. Don’t let them count you as being on their side" in the sewage sludge fight.

Richardson notes that San Francisco’s own testing found nasty toxins including dioxins in its phony organic compost.

Alice Waters presumably thought she could trust businesses to do the right thing.

Ed Brayton:

From the clown prince of dumbassery, Rush Limbaugh, ranting about the West Virginia coal mine explosion:

Was there no union responsibility for improving mine safety? Where was the union here? Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?

ThinkProgress answers those idiotic questions:

There’s a simple reason the union didn’t protect the miners: the Upper Big Branch Mine, like nearly all of the mines under Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s control, is non-union. In fact, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) "tried three times to organize the Upper Big Branch mine, but even with getting nearly 70 percent of workers to sign cards saying they wanted to vote for a union, Blankenship personally met with workers to threaten them with closing down the mine and losing their jobs if they voted for a union."

Blankenship rose in Massey’s ranks by breaking its union mines in the 1980s. Blankenship said then that busting unions is "invaluable" to profits, as non-union companies can "sell coal cheaper and drive union coal out of business."

Union mines have a significantly better safety record than non-union mines especially for major disasters, as union miners can refuse unsafe work and report dangerous conditions without fear of retaliation. In addition to preventing Blankenship-style intimidation, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act would increase whistleblower protections for non-union and union workers alike. Under Blankenship’s direction, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association have spent millions to oppose passage of such legislation for worker rights, comparing it to a "firestorm bordering on Armageddon."

Immediately following the tragedy, the UMW sent trained support personnel to the disaster site. "We are all brothers and sisters in the coalfields at times like this," UMW President Cecil Roberts said in a statement offering the assistance, which was refused by Massey company officials.

Barbara Shelly at McClatchy:

Coal baron Don Blankenship is the ultimate free marketeer, a trendy niche in this day of seething resentment against government big and small.

He has clever names for environmentalists (greeniacs) and brainless congressmen (scarecrows).

His outspoken hatred of taxes and regulations won him a seat on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He has no use for unions and he abhors "nuisance" lawsuits, though he’s filed a few. A few years ago, he spent millions to run a judge out of office.

Last year, Blankenship forked over $1 million to help sponsor the huge "Friends of America" rally, which brought 70,000 people to a reclaimed mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia to watch big-time entertainers and listen to rants about environmentalists and government regulators.

"Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety," Blankenship told a cheering crowd at that rally. "The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."

He should have given government more credit. Its regulators have fined Blankenship’s companies repeatedly over the years. They know a few things about safety, and they knew there were problems in Blankenship’s mines.

Last week, an explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W.Va., killed 29 workers. It’s the worst mining disaster in 25 years.

The cause so far is unknown. But Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, stated the obvious when he told news organizations: "Something went very wrong here."

Blankenship has invested heavily in defiance over the years.

His companies paid $4.2 million in fines and penalties after two workers died in a fire in a Blankenship mine in 2006. His primary company, Massey Energy, paid a $20 million fine in 2008 for clean water violations found by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2004, Blankenship contributed $3 million to fund a deceptive advertising campaign that unseated a West Virginia state Supreme Court judge. The benefactor of that largess responded by tipping the court balance in a decision that threw out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.

Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the "bought" judge should have disqualified himself from the case.

These examples represent just a sliver of the money Blankenship has spent over the years paying fines, fighting unions and contributing to candidates and political groups nationwide that share his disdain for taxes, regulations and environmental concerns…

Continue reading. A great example for the commenter who believed that we should just trust businesses to do the right thing.

Interesting article by Peter Hecht at the Sacramento Bee:

For Sacramento and other California cities wanting fewer medical pot clubs, Steve DeAngelo offers a potential model: the world’s largest marijuana dispensary.

DeAngelo is executive director of the Harborside Medical Center, a 48,000-member patient collective he says serves more marijuana users than anywhere else. For sure, the Oakland dispensary – one of just four allowed in the city – is a titan in California’s legal medicinal pot trade.

Greeting up to 800 people a day, Harborside’s Oakland center has a neuropathic primary care doctor, an acupuncturist and a chiropractor. Its staff teaches yoga, stress management and “universal life force energy” – and doles out a harvest of weed.

Harborside, which recently opened a second dispensary in San Jose, handles $20 million annually in pot transactions at its Oakland facility, DeAngelo says.

Harborside, by law, operates as a nonprofit. Yet its Oakland location produces nearly $2 million in state sales taxes and another $360,000 under a local levy that Oakland voters approved for marijuana businesses, DeAngelo says.

In Sacramento, where the city is trying to figure out what to do with 39 registered pot shops, officials studied Oakland, which is slightly smaller in population. A proposal before the Sacramento City Council would cap the number of dispensaries at 12.

Council member Sandy Sheedy said a dozen medical marijuana sites was viewed as more reasonable for the capital city. “I would not like to see Wal-Mart clinics,” she said.

But DeAngelo, a veteran advocate who smoked pot as a teenager in pro-marijuana protests outside the White House, insists that fewer, bigger dispensaries are the way to go.

“I think it’s a real mistake to be afraid of the large facilities,” said DeAngelo, who started as a hemp products importer. “They are more easily regulated. They provide a familiar, secure base for services for patients.”

He added: “Do we want a lot of ‘pot shops’ or do we want ‘health facilities’?” …

Continue reading.

Neil MacFarquhar in the NY Times:

In recent years, the idea of giving small loans to poor people became the darling of the development world, hailed as the long elusive formula to propel even the most destitute into better lives.

Actors like Natalie Portman and Michael Douglas lent their boldface names to the cause. Muhammad Yunus, the economist who pioneered the practice by lending small amounts to basket weavers in Bangladesh, won a Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2006. The idea even got its very own United Nations year in 2005.

But the phenomenon has grown so popular that some of its biggest proponents are now wringing their hands over the direction it has taken. Drawn by the prospect of hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more.

“We created microcredit to fight the loan sharks; we didn’t create microcredit to encourage new loan sharks,” Mr. Yunus recently said at a gathering of financial officials at the United Nations. “Microcredit should be seen as an opportunity to help people get out of poverty in a business way, but not as an opportunity to make money out of poor people.”

The fracas over preserving the field’s saintly aura centers on the question of how much interest and profit is acceptable, and what constitutes exploitation. The noisy interest rate fight has even attracted Congressional scrutiny, with the House Financial Services Committee holding hearings this year focused in part on whether some microcredit institutions are scamming the poor.

Rates vary widely across the globe, but the ones that draw the most concern tend to occur in countries like Nigeria and Mexico, where the demand for small loans from a large population cannot be met by existing lenders.

Unlike virtually every Web page trumpeting the accomplishments of microcredit institutions around the world, the page for Te Creemos, a Mexican lender, lacks even one testimonial from a thriving customer — no beaming woman earning her first income by growing a soap business out of her kitchen, for example. Te Creemos has some of the highest interest rates and fees in the world of microfinance, analysts say, a whopping 125 percent average annual rate.

The average in Mexico itself is around 70 percent, compared with a global average of about 37 percent in interest and fees, analysts say. Mexican microfinance institutions charge such high rates simply because they can get away with it, said Emmanuelle Javoy, the managing director of Planet Rating, an independent Paris-based firm that evaluates microlenders.

“They could do better; they could do a lot better,” she said. “If the ones that are very big and have the margins don’t set the pace, then the rest of the market follows.”

Manuel Ramírez, director of risk and internal control at Te Creemos, reached by telephone in Mexico City, initially said there had been some unspecified “misunderstanding” about the numbers and asked for more time to clarify, but then stopped responding.

Unwitting individuals, who can make loans of $20 or more through Web sites like Kiva or Microplace, may also end up participating in practices some consider exploitative. These Web sites admit that they cannot guarantee every interest rate they quote. Indeed, the real rate can prove to be markedly higher.

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I think we’ve all pretty much concluded that cilantro’s taste depends on your genetic make-up, and that for some it tastes like soap. And it’s true, as Harold McGee reports in the NY Times:

Food partisanship doesn’t usually reach the same heights of animosity as the political variety, except in the case of the anti-cilantro party. The green parts of the plant that gives us coriander seeds seem to inspire a primal revulsion among an outspoken minority of eaters.

Culinary sophistication is no guarantee of immunity from cilantrophobia. In a television interview in 2002, Larry King asked Julia Child which foods she hated. She responded: “Cilantro and arugula I don’t like at all. They’re both green herbs, they have kind of a dead taste to me.”

“So you would never order it?” Mr. King asked.

“Never,” she responded. “I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.”

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Disturbing story by Saeed Shah and Nancy A. Youssef in McClatchy:

An airstrike on suspected Islamic extremists in Pakistan’s tribal zone killed at least 71 civilians, local residents said Tuesday, just as thousands more people are being forced to flee a U.S.-backed military offensive against Taliban and al Qaida fighters.

The Pakistani strike underscored the difficulties that the U.S. and its allies face in fighting militants who intermingle with innocent civilians, while grappling with poor intelligence and trying to win popular and political support.

Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, has made reducing civilian casualties there a priority, but Afghans are growing increasingly exasperated with civilian deaths.

On Monday, American troops fired on a bus, killing at least four civilians and wounding 18 in the country’s restive southern Kandahar province. The attack led to impromptu chants of "Death to America!" and Death to infidels!" by nearby residents.

The attack on the bus came as the U.S. military is preparing to launch a major offensive in Kandahar province, the nexus of Afghanistan’s Taliban. The United States is struggling to get Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s support for the offensive, but on Monday he instead criticized NATO for the bus shooting.

In Pakistan, accidental killings of innocents and the forced evacuation of people from their homes to escape bombardment are threatening the campaign to win over the people of the areas bordering Afghanistan, many of whom had supported the Pakistani Taliban…

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