The General Accountability Office’s (GAO) June 29, 2005 report on the Workforce Investment Act found that of the $2.4 billion Congress authorized in WIA funds for 2003 only $929 million (39%) was used to train adults and dislocated workers. About 416,000 participants received training during program year 2003.

The title of GAO’s report sums it up:

Workforce Investment Act: Substantial Funds Are Used for Training, but Little Is Known Nationally About Training Outcomes

In other words, the money goes in, but we have no idea what comes out.

When I lived in New Zealand, my car insurance cost $40 US a year. The reason? We were only paying for collision, we had an old car, and, most important, our car insurance was not paying for accident victims’ health care because New Zealand had national health care. That was great for me, but the fact is:

national health care would most benefit US corporations.

The president has invested 150,000 American lives and billions of dollars, created the largest deficit in the history of the United States of America through his reckless fiscal policies and picked the wrong enemies half the time. 

Howard Dean, Hardball with Chris Matthews, June 29, 2005.

Second runner up: "You know, I'm not big on propaganda. I leave that to the Republicans."

Tell us what's on your unbossed mind.

If anyone is keeping the faith(s), it is the http://www.nicwj.org/">Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (ICWJ). The (ICWJ) calls upon “religious values in order to educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community in the U.S. on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers.” Among its focuses are protecting worker rights, building relationships, developing resources, and engaging religious employers.

Colorado Representative and Homophobe-in-Chief Marilyn Musgrave is making a rare public appearance next week in my hometown for a panel discussion and Q&A on economic development issues.

Suggestions from the Peanut Gallery on prospective questions I should ask other than "What the hell did you have to do to get so much campaign money from Tom DeLay and would Rick Santorum approve"?

UPDATE: On the flipside, is some background info on the local economic situation.

It was a Republican president – and a general – who recognized the importance of having a highway system as important to our national security. In 1956 President Eisenhower signed legislation establishing the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways consists of limited access facilities of the highest importance to the nation and are built to uniform geometric standards. They connect, as directly as practicable, the principal metropolitan areas, cities and industrial centers and provide important routes to, through and around urban areas. They serve national defense purposes and connect at border points with Canada and Mexico along routes of continental importance.

Today, the Republicans and their allies want to tear down what Ike established 50 years ago.

Everywhere you look these days, you will see news clips about the unfairness of forcing older workers to retire. We are told that Older workers are happier workers (March 3, 2005) and that they do not want to retire: Retire? Why? Work offers fun, money (June 18, 2005)

Others argue that the old are just rotters or blood suckers who want to suck money from the young: John Tierney, The Old and the Rested, New York Times (June 14, 2005).

Eh, not really, but I'm always fascinated by the front page editorial decisions of local newspapers.

Does your paper take the lead from the nationally distributed papers, like the NYT and Post? Is it beholden to wire service reports? Does it attempt to insert a local angle into a larger national or international story? Or does it totally reject (War? What war?) or ramp up (Clinton got a blow job! Arrrrrgggghhhhh!) the critical stories of the day to lay cover for the editorial board's political leanings.

Let's take an example from the Denver Post:

What was on your door step this morning?

Many had never heard of journalist Gary Webb until he took his own life last December. Before that, though, he was a hero to people who revered investigative journalism. Now some of his most important work is available on the internet for the first time since it was disappeared in 1996.

How significant can a very small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania be? Pretty significant if it’s Grove City College.

Never heard of it? Well, you should and you certainly see the impact of what it does.

Look at any Right Wing Think Tank’s list of personnel – in the US or abroad – and you will likely find a Grove City connection. There are so many, it’s impossible to list them all. But here are a few ways that Grove City matters on policy issues including the environment, education, minimum wage, and anything economic and conservative.

Declining by Degrees - Higher Education at Risk - the show on the University of Arizona’s hate list - examines today’s education at four US institutions of higher education: the University of Arizona; Amherst College; Western Kentucky University; and the Community College of Denver.

It examines a wide range of issues in higher education today, including a lack of financial commitment to higher education, despite lip service to the need to educate all our people for tomorrow’s jobs. The current federal budget for Pell grants, this nation's largest grant program for the lowest income students, now covers only about 57% of the average tuition a 4-year public college or university. Twenty years ago, it covered 95 % of average tuition.

"Declining by Degrees" also discusses the commercialization of education and the impact of declining state taxpayer support for public universities.

Could it be that in 1986 Karl Rove - unlike anyone else - read The Handmaid’s Tale, not as a bestselling novel, but as a blueprint for our times? Perhaps he saw its potential when its author, Margaret Atwood, described reactions to her novel:

"In Britian they said, 'Jolly good yarn.' In Canada, 'Could it happen here?' In America, 'How long have we got?'" -- Paul Bentley Librettist for the Opera of The Handsmaid’s Tale, A Handmaid's Diary

Imagine that the Taliban had taken over the US and imposed a religious fundamentalist dictatorship where everything is bible-based. This is Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead. Not the biblical Gilead. There is no balm in this one.

And especially no balm for women.

Tomorrow—June 24, 1982—the Equal Rights Amendment went down to defeat.

Originally introduced in 1923, ERA seeks to affirm:

It was finally passed in Congress on March 22, 1972 and was submitted to the states for ratification. Supporters were required to secure 38 states within seven years, with an additional 3 year extension tacked on later. Still, only 35 states have ratified the amendment, leaving hold-outs Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia to account for their lack of support.

But truth be told, it is far more important these days for Old Glory to be protected from careless lighters and kids in black hoodies, than to ensure that Old Gloria has a decent standard of living free from sex discrimination.

Private Savings Accounts as part of Social Security may be going or gone or on the horizon. Proponents of private savings accounts always sidestep the issue of why putting money into private accounts has to be part of Social Security. After all, there are banks and credit unions, and we can all open savings accounts there. In addition, the federal government has created various retirement savings vehicles. So why isn't that enough?

The obvious answer is that poor people spend every last dime on just staying alive. But that's not the whole reason. The federal government actually structures savings accounts to put barriers in the way of the poor. This is, of course, the flip side of giving incentives to the rich.

But it's about much, much more than that.

Identity theft. It is literally as easy as throwing a rock through a door. That is just how it happened for Motorola employees, and it shows you just how carefully your private information is being protected.

Back before the November 2004 elections, MI State Rep. John Pappageorge (R-Troy) made news when he said that the Republican Party needed to "suppress" the Detroit vote. More specificall, Pappageorge was quoted as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

Pappageorge admitted these words had left his mouth, but, he said it was just a matter of "a bad choice of words." Pappageorge said that in no way shape or form should these words be "be construed as racist."

Neither, of course, should the most recent budget for higher education. Despite appearances to the contrary. But they got a lotta 'splainin to do.

Years ago, a community organizer friend of mine told me an interesting story about the organization's most recent meeting. The subject was teens getting into trouble. Folks were railing about teens hanging around on street corners and getting into trouble.

One of the attendees said, "Well, it's obvous what we have to do. We have to get rid of the street corners." There is a certain logic there. A version of draining the swamp to get rid of the gators.

But seriously, folks, there's a lot of magical thinking going on out there. In response to Em-dash's post on pill splitting, I raised the magical solution to the high price of drugs - reimport them from Canada. Pass laws to allow this. No one wanting to turn the critter over and figure out why that's cheaper.

Nominations are now open for the magical thinking of the week, day, year award. To remind you of the rules: Points are awarded for creativity and degree of difficulty. Anything related to the past unpleasantness in early November 2004 get negative points, like shooting fish in a barrel (not that I can think of how this is easy).

Remember - Magical Thinking is M-T thinking.

While on my way to work last week, I was surprised to see a USA Today headline screaming “The Debate’s Over: Globe Is Warming.” My first thought was that another study on the topic had just been published, and that it was somehow more conclusive or compelling than all the other studies that have shown how much we’re screwing up our climate. It turns out, though, that USA Today is finally acknowledging global warming because … well, because enough other people say it’s a problem.

But you can. That is the title and message of a publication on the US Department of Labor's website.

Yes, your Department of Labor is full of helpful advice for the the faithful.

My Drinking Liberally group was featured on page 10 (you'll need to know that in order to navigate the world's most confusing website) in this week's edition of the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn, an alternative newspaper for Northern Colorado.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is probably not on your regular internet browsing schedule. Though it is worth a look now and then for the comprehensive data it collects and makes available free of charge to anyone. You can even construct your own charts.

But the BLS has decided that there are things it is better that we not know. It has announced plans to stop collecting some data and start collecting other data. Do you agree with the BLS that this is information too unimportant to have? Read on to decide.

There's been some talk in the blogosphere recently about delving deeper into the state and local political arenas. So much of the current conversation revolves around national and foreign affairs that quite frankly most of us will have very little affect on.

With a country as diverse in geography as well as culture, perhaps we should get to know one another a little better? Here's your opportunity to post facts, figures, and weird tidbits about your home state as the first in a series of Unbossed Trans-National Kumbaya Political Experience™. How are we similar? How do we differ? What makes your state unique?

Feminism is my family tradition, and I learned it at my Granny's knee. My strongest memory of her is a compound, of the many, many times when she'd talked about the battle for the right to vote, of the marches, of taking trains to New York and Washington, DC. Her head would slowly shake back and forth, and a faraway smile would leave her radiant. Seeing Granny happy of course made me happy, and thus I learned at a tender age that marching for women's rights was a good thing.

In my rustbelt state - Michigan - the state legislature, which is dominated by Republicans, is trying to tax cut its way to prosperity. But this strategy has been met with a lot of lean years in which official state unemployment stays stubbornly around 7%. There are serious concerns that the state now offers little to keep citizens, especially younger state residents. As a result, we can expect to lose even more congressional representatives after the next census and clout.

One way to look at this is as a natural experiment testing whether conservative economic doctrines work. So far the evidence in their support is glaringly absent. Among the more radical of these is a version of Say’s Law. Libertarian neoclassical economists argue that when government contracts, the private sector will step up to take its place (Say's Law of Markets developed by J.B. Say).

In today's exciting episode, Scottie McClellan gets in a cat fight with yet another press pool temptress wielding the fiery sword of truth.

Let's take a peek at today's White House Press Briefing

Q Scott, on Guantanamo Bay, understanding that you're saying -- well, but the Geneva Convention does not apply to the prisoners there, looking at part three, section one, article 17, it talks about prisoners of war, but there's also, in the third paragraph, the first five words, "each party to a conflict." So I'm trying to figure out -- to understand where you are. "Conflict" with people, meaning not soldiers or soldiers, that's still something -- that still covers those people that you have in Guantanamo Bay, correct? Even if you try to say it's not war.

At a talk Dean gave in Detroit last year just after the election - a great talk - it really picked us up when we were really down - Dean said that he was the only candidate for president who talks about race with all groups. Dean said that the other candidates only raise this subject with minorities.

Dean said that this is a conversation this country needs to have and needs to get into the open. This is not a problem that belongs to a “special interest” - this is a problem for all of us in this country. We are all in this one together. In this one respect, race does not matter. So, lets all begin talking about race - all of us.

The battle lines across this country are so clear, that you can predict how the parties and partisans will react. Almost always. But every once in awhile, they don’t. So when I hear news that doesn’t fit, I start trying to figure out what devious plan is afoot. Nowhere on my list is that someone is taking an action because it is the right thing to do. Right as in correct. When pigs have wings.

Eyes Right - Eyes on Right Wing Think Tanks - II - Privatization

So you’ve decided to give up the blogging life and get into something that pays the bills. Smart move.
Have you considered the lucrative world of government contracting? A few years back, the Right-Wing Think Tank – Reason – used to send out solicitations to prospective privatizers that had words like “PROFIT” in bold face. Multiple times. “PROFIT” “PROFIT” “PROFIT” “PROFIT”

Should General Motors – and other employers who are saddled with obligations to now retired employees – terminate their retiree health plans? That’s the question that business analysts and others are tossing around behind closed doors. They are intrigued by the idea that General Motors – or a corporate raider, such as Kirk Kerkorian – could or should terminate GM retirees’ health plan. That this is the strategy seems credible. We know that Kerkorian is actively buying up GM shares, and General Motors is playing tough.

The plan was reported by the Detroit Free Press May 28, 2005 (Analyst says cutting retiree benefits a viable option - sorry no link available.)

Both private and public employers have serious problems when they outsource work, according to a new study by Deloitte Consulting, Calling a Change in the Outsourcing Market - New Study Reveals Outsourcing Falling from Favor Deloitte found that 70% of employers reported negative experiences with outsourcing. These results were reported by experienced managers who collectively managed about $50 billion in contracts.

What do they have in common? They all get caught in my spam filter. Why you ask?

Exhibit #1

INBOX: Email 55 of 1008
From: "Tom McMahon" [Add to Address Book] [View Source]
To: "Sassy Boots"
Subject: You asked for it
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 20:21:43 +0000

Cute. With a subject line like that I'm expecting a grainy webcam picture of a hairy Russian guy spanking a nubile barely-legal teenage girl.

Nope, it's an update on the DNC's 50-state challenge. Okay, but, surely it's just an overly imaginative communications intern at the DNC who just needs a stern talking to about professionalism and effective direct mail strategies, right?

Um... not quite.

In Colorado, as we gear up for the statewide 2005 election cycle in anticipation for all-out warfare in the 2006 mid-terms, I need your help in developing a take-it-to-the-streets training program for new grassroots activists.

I serve on the board of Democracy for Colorado as the representative for the Fourth Congressional District. For those of you playing along at home, the vile Marilyn Musgrave is our representative in a district that, geographically speaking, is the size of the state of Indiana.

That would be the B-I-G pink blob ranging east to west from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to the Kansas border and Wyoming to Oklahoma running north and south.

Gulp.

In the current issue of Nature, more than one-third of NIH-funded scientists in the US admitted that they had engaged in unethical behavior--from falsifying data to inadequate record-keeping.

In a-first-of-its-kind quantitative analysis, the study conducted by HealthPartners Research Foundation anonymously surveyed 3,247 early- and mid-career researchers and found that about a third admitted to at least one of the ten most serious offenses. The authors concluded that "our evidence suggests that mundane 'regular' misbehaviors present greater threats to the scientific enterprise than those caused by high-profile misconduct cases such as fraud.

At a time when scientific inquiry is under assault by the TheoCon Wing of the Republican Party, I'd suggest we take a long hard look at these results.

The Bush Administration has been pushing private pensions - ooops - personal accounts - as the savior of our retirement system. But when you really look at what has been happening with private pensions, it is not a pretty sight. A crisis in private pensions has been brewing for months (see Private Pensions: The Real Retirement Crisis).

Of course almost no one has been paying attention, but times change. Recently, this issue is starting to bob to the surface, thanks to the thousands of workers who have lost out as their airline employers have been shedding pension obligations with the bankruptcy courts’ blessing.

There, there child. Shhhhh. Everything is going to be just fine. Auntie Em's here.

Sometimes when things seem at their bleakest and the world just doesn't seem to understand you, it's always best to surround yourself with loving family and friends.

Short of that, kick the living shit out of a munchkin. It'll make you feel better and they can't fight back anyways. Fucking little n'er-do-wells. Always livin' the high life off the Emerald City and do nothin' but bitchin' and eatin' over-sized lollipops and oohin' and ahhin' over that Glinda bitch. Goddamned welfare queen never worked an honest day in her sparkly little bling-bling life. And that pimpin' bubble? How the hell did she afford that bubble?

Rest your head on Auntie Em's heaving bosom and tell her your troubles.

WASHINGTON - In a bold move today, several house Republicans introduced a bill to privatize the government of the United States.

In keeping with the small government, pro-business party platform, the bill outlines the last steps needed to sub-contract the few remaining functions of government to the private sector.

Said one of the sponsors of the bill, "We're already being paid by corporations, why not make it official? It's not fair to make the taxpayers subsidize Congress."

Today the Supreme Court has decided Ashcroft, et al. v. Raich, et al. in which two medical marijuana patients and their caregivers had filed a complaint against John Ashcroft and the DEA Administrator.

Now the AP is reporting Court Rules Against Sick People. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the 6 - 3 decision.

After seeing dozens of essays about George Lakoff and his framing gospel, I finally got around to reading Don’t Think of an Elephant last week. The basic concept is compelling: Progressives need to start framing political debates in a different way, so that people who share our values will support our policy directions rather than those of our opponents, who’ve been using framing to their advantage for a long time. Lakoff presents a convincing argument, and his prescriptions for progressives make a lot of sense. Still, I can’t help being disturbed by his apparent readiness to accept what I view as a decline in our country’s political discourse.

^{From Ananova}

A range of fashion clothing for chickens has been launched by a group of designers working in Austria and Japan.

...Several farmers have already had chicken suits with the name of their farm ordered and many advertisers have enquired about the possibility of having sponsored suits promoting everything from KFC to chicken soup.

So this got me to thinkin'.

Spokane Mayor, Jim West, used to be so righteous, so pious, so straight and narrow. Now he's exposed as a big ol' hypocrite, or perhaps something worse.

For 20 years he's been one of the most powerful legislators in Washington State. He rode to power on a platform of anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-values clap-trap. In other words, butting into people's private business and encouraging discrimination based on folks' personal lives.

Today, after it has been exposed that West is not only gay, but corrupt and possibly involved in a child molestation case, he held a press conference amid calls for his resignation. And guess what? Apparently he believes with all his heart that a person's private life is no one else's business!

Here's what he had to say for himself. (Quotes transcribed by me from the broadcast on NorthWest Cable News. Any errors are mine.)

Ed Brayton, of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, says a source whom he trusts has information that William Rehnquist will be stepping down as chief justice this month. (The current business of the Court wraps up June 23, with loose ends due to be tied up in September before the start of the new term on the first Monday in October.)

Brayton's source also has a horse in the running to replace Rehnquist--and it is neither Thomas nor Scalia. Thomas has allegedly told the Bush administration that he's not interested in going through another high-tech lynching confirmation fight. Scalia is apparently out of the running because he's perceived as being too divisive a figure on the Court to be effective as chief justice. I agree with Brayton that both scenarios are plausible, though I also feel a certain amount of sympathy for the sentiments expressed by some of the commenters on his post ("since when has Bush demonstrated any tendencies toward either the rational or the plausible?").

In the days since the identity of legendary Watergate whistleblower "Deep Throat" was revealed as former FBI honcho Mark Felt, the airwaves have been filled with culprits and co-conspirators (unindicted and otherwise) denouncing Felt's actions. It's been a veritable rogue's gallery: Charles Colson, Al "I'm in control here" Haig, G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan.

Finally, the prime target of the Watergate burglary itself has spoken. The response of 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern (D-SD)? We need a new Deep Throat now. Some of McGovern's comments to Fox News Radio (!) below the fold.

From Free Will Astrology:

A judge in Los Angeles was peeved when a potential juror let out a loud yawn during the jury selection process. "I'm sorry, but I'm really bored," the man confessed. The judge found him in contempt and fined him $100. Similarly, Aries, the universe will find you in contempt if you let yourself get sucked into activities that dull your senses, shut down your curiosity or numb your lust for life. This week it's your sacred duty to seek out only the most interesting stimuli.

So, my friends, what gets you going?

If you've ever spent time in a hospital you've seen them--the boarders. Folks stacked up like cord wood in the Emergency Department waiting for treatment or, more likely, people so injured or ill that they require hospitalization biding their time in a hallway or observation bay until a bed becomes available on an inpatient floor.

At the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine last week, researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Mainmonides Medical Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital presented some damning figures on the frequency of medical errors and adverse effects on hospital boarders. The broader implications on the ability of hospitals to care for injured people in the event of a national emergency while they are clogged with boarders are downright chilling.

Flip the tight hospital corner sheet for more...