EFTA00841209.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 11/08/2015 Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2015 07:20:25 +0000 Attachments: Obamacare's_Medicaid_Expansionis_Helping_The_Unins_uredju2014_Where_Mu2019s Allowed_To_Huff Post_10.07.15.docx; Prison_vs._Harvaren_an_Unlikely_Debate_Leslie_Brody_WSJ_Sept._18,2015.docx; Why_you_shouldn't_be_surprised_that_prisoners_crushed_Harvardlu2019s_debate_team_P eter_Holley_TWP_10.07.15.docx; Talking_Heads_bio.docx; Israells_Richard_Nixon_Richard_North_Patterson_Huff_Post_10.27.15.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(15).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png DEAR FRIEND Why you shouldn't be surprised that prisoners crushed Harvard's debate team Inline image From left, prison inmates Carl Snyder, Dyjuan Tatro and Carlos Polanco embrace after winning the debate. Although the event happened almost a month before I noticed it and two months from now, I didn't notice it until I read an article by Peter Holley in The Washington Post explaining why three prison inmates at Eastern New York Correctional Facility, in Napanoch, NY (a maximum-security prison in the Catskills), defeated the Harvard College Debating Union team in an intercollegiate competition. The winning team of Carl Snyder, Dyjuan Tatro and Carlos Polanco (all with violent criminal records) defeated a team of three Harvard University undergraduates. The inmates beat a Harvard team that had won three of four American Parliamentary Debate Association national EFTA00841209 championships. And as Holley wrote, "It sounds like an underdog story pluckedfrom the pages of a yet unwritten Walt Disney screenplay — and in some ways, it is." But then how? Except that it's worth pointing out the fallacy of our underlying assumptions about such a matchup — the first (and most pernicious) being that criminals aren't smart. If a definitive link between criminality and below-average intelligence exists, nobody has found it. Despite living behind bars, prisoners have recorded albums, produced fine literature, run lucrative criminal enterprises and mastered the ancient meditation technique known as Vipassana. As the highly sophisticated prison break from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., made clear earlier this year, inmates not only can be intelligent but often are more capable and deliberate than those of us on the outside. Richard Matt may have been smart enough to tunnel his way out of prison using rudimentary engineering skills picked up on the fly, but like many career criminals, his greatest gifts were probably rhetorical in nature, prison staffers said. The inmates are part of the Bard Prison Initiative which begun in 2001 to give liberal-arts educations to talented, motivated inmates. The privately funded program, in which incarcerated men and women earn degrees from Bard College. Program officials say about 10 inmates apply for every spot, through written essays and interviews. There is no tuition. But what makes the victory over Harvard impressive is less about who pulled it off than how they did it. To prepare for the competition, the inmates, members of Bard's Prison Initiative, were forced to acquire knowledge the old-fashioned way: Without access to the Internet, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2015, can you seriously imagine preparing for anything — purchasing a movie ticket, looking up directions or researching basically anything — without going online? Complicating their challenge, the Journal noted, was the fact that research requests for books and articles had to be approved by the prison administration, something that could take weeks. Consider that for a moment: Weeks, not minutes or even days — and all while attempting to map out a research strategy that hinged upon institutional approval. If debate is equal parts rhetorical flourish and strategy, it's worth asking whether circumstance forced the prisoners to devise an approach — in which limited resources demanded sharper focus and more rigorous planning — that resulted in superior lines of argumentation. Please check out the web link below to see the rigors of the BPT program. Web Link: http://wapo.st/iJSY4Bg Going into the competition, the inmates, who had a solid decade of life experience on the college kids, knew the stakes extended well beyond the debate, largely because of how the two adversaries wo ed afterward. "If we win, it's going to make a lot ofpeople question what goes on in here," li a 31-year-old from Manhattan who was convicted of manslaughter. "We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we work really hard." And although it may be tempting to label the inmates as novices, they had something else going for them — a record of recent successes, as noted by the Wall Street Journal. The prison team had its first debate in spring 2014, beating the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Then, it won against a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont and in April lost a rematch against West Point. The annual debate with West Point has grown into a rivalry, according to the Associated Press. The latest debate, about whether public schools should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students, was described by the Journal as "fast-moving." In the end, the inmates presented an elaborate argument with which they personally disagreed, essentially telling judges that if the children were denied admission, then nonprofits and wealthier schools would pick up the slack, according to the Journal. EFTA00841210 Harvard team members told members of the press that they were impressed by their opponents' preparation and their unanticipated position. `They caught us off guard,"Anais Carell, a 2o-year-old junior from Chicago, told the Wall Street Journal. Less surprised were those who helped teach the inmates in their college courses. Some of the program's students have continued their educations at Yale and Columbia universities, Max Kenner, executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative, told the AP. He noted that his students "make the most of every opportunity they have" and aren't treated like men with criminal records in the classroom. "Students in the prison are held to the exact same standards, levels of rigor and expectation as students on Bard's main campus," Kenner told the AP. "Those students are serious. They are not condescended to by their faculty." The initiative's roughly $2.5 million annual budget comes from private donors and includes St spends helping other programs follow its model in nine other states. Last year Gov. Andrew ,a Democrat, proposed state grants for college classes for inmates, saying that helping them become productive taxpayers would save money long-term. He dropped the plan after attacks from Republican politicians who argued that many law-abiding families struggled to afford college and shouldn't have to pay for convicted criminals to get degrees. The Bard program's leaders say that of more than 300 alumni who earned degrees while in custody, less than 2% returned to prison within three years, the standard time frame for measuring recidivism. In New York state as a whole, by contrast, about 4o% of ex-offenders end up back in prison, mostly because of parole violations, according to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. If we as a society really want to decriminalize our prison system we have to teach inmates more than making license plates. We definitely have to stop warehousing inmates with little to do other than trying to survive, exercise and develop additional criminal skills. By making education as a ladder to success and adding elements of competition such as the Bard Prison Initiative it is easy to see a way to really change both our prison system and society as a whole. Tell Us About the N.J. Pension Fund Governor EFTA00841211 GOP presidential contender New Jersey Governor Chris Christie loves to brag about how well his state is doing under his watch, except that it is not true when it comes to the state's pension fund which a new study by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators found to be the most underfunded of all 50 states. That chronic underfunding has led to a deepening pension crisis and individual pension funds that could run out of money by 2027, officials say. In a comparison of state's contributions as a percentage of the annual required contribution, from fiscal year 2001 to 2013, New Jersey came dead last at 38 percent. Some states such as Connecticut, Montana, Maine and West Virginia exceeded required contributions. New Jersey and Pennsylvania were the only states whose payments over that time frame were less than half of what was recommended. All but six contributed at least 75 percent. "This study finds that although variation exists in (annual required contributions) ... among states and other pension plan sponsors, i.e., cities, school districts, etc., most governments made good-faith efforts to fund their pension plans, and only a few severely neglected their pension funding responsibilities," it said. The study reviewed 112 state and local public employers that the organization said make up more than 8o percent of all public pension assets and participants. From 2001 to 2013 for all those plans the annual required contributions jumped from $27.7 billion to $93.7 billion. The required contributions were low early in that span because of high investment returns at the turn of the 21st century, the group said. But when returns fell off from 2000 to 2002 and in 2008 and 2009, governments struggled to pay rising required contributions. New Jersey governors have been shortchanging the pension system since 1996, and the state skipped payments altogether from 2001 to 2004, when the annual required contribution called for $2.8 billion. While the state was taking a pension holiday, it increased benefits for employees. The state tried to get its unfunded pension liability under control with a 2011 pension reform package designed to gradually increases the state's pension contribution over seven years until it reached the full annual required contribution. In addition, the retirement age was raised, cost-of-living increases were suspended, and workers were required to contribute more toward their benefits. EFTA00841212 But the state has fallen off that seven-year climb. Last spring Gov. Chris Christie slashed $2.4 billion in planned pension payments for the fiscal year ending last June and the current fiscal year when tax collections came up short. Public worker unions in February won a battle in Superior Court to reclaim the $1.57 billion cut from this year's payment, and they've announced plans to sue the governor for shorting the payment in his proposed 2016 budget. New Jersey's faces an $83 billion unfunded pension liability. Christie has called for sweeping reforms to the state retirement system, including freezing the pension system and moving active employees into a hybrid defined-benefit, 4o1(k)-like defined-contribution system.... And yes, you can claim to have cut taxes and balance the budget, when you don't pay the state's bills. But is this the way Americans want their government to operate? By the way, New Jersey also ranks 49 in Job Growth, which Governor Christie never mentions either.... ****** More Good News 274000 new jobs with unemployment falling to 5% Inline image 1 U.S. job growth surged in October after two straight months of tepid gains, with the unemployment rate hitting a 7-1/2-year low in a show of domestic strength that makes it almost likely the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates in December. Nonfarm payrolls increased 271,000 last month, the largest rise since December 2014, the Labor Department said on Friday. In addition, average hourly earnings increased 9 cents last month. The solid gains added to robust automobile sales in painting an upbeat picture of the economy at the start of the fourth quarter. The unemployment rate fell to 5.0 percent, the lowest level since April 2008, from 5.1 percent the prior month. The jobless rate is now at a level many Fed officials see as consistent with full employment. EFTA00841213 Payrolls data for August and September were revised to show 12,000 more jobs created than previously reported. With speeches from several Fed officials, including Chair Janet Yellen, suggesting a low bar for a December rate increase, economists say monthly job gains above 150,00o in October and November would be sufficient for the central bank to lift benchmark overnight borrowing costs from near zero. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast nonfarm payrolls increasing 18o,000 last month and the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.1 percent. The employment report joined October's strong services sector and auto sales data in supporting views that economic growth will regain momentum in the fourth quarter after braking sharply to a 1.5 percent annual pace in the July-September period. Last month's rise in wages, which have been almost stagnant despite a tightening labor market, lifted the year-on-year reading to 2.5 percent. That was the biggest increase since July 2009 and could give Fed officials confidence that inflation will gradually move towards their 2 percent target. There were improvements in other labor market measures that Fed officials are eyeing as they contemplate raising rates for the first time since 2006. A broad measure of joblessness that includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 9.8 percent, the lowest level since May 2008. But the labor force participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, held at a near 38-year low of 62.4 percent. Employment gains in October were broad-based, though manufacturing added no jobs and mining shed 4,000 positions. Manufacturing has been hit by a strong dollar, efforts by businesses to reduce bloated inventory and spending cuts by energy companies cutting back on well drilling and exploration in response to lower oil prices. Mining employment has declined by 109,000 since peaking in December 2014. Oilfield services provider Schlumberger last month announced further layoffs in addition to the 20,000 jobs it has already eliminated. Construction payrolls, however, increased 31,000 last month, the biggest gain since February. The services sector added 241,000 jobs last month, with large gains in retail, health and leisure. Government payrolls increased 3,000 last month. For those of you who are also Obama's success deniers, the American economy is doing great and since Republicans have openly denied any participation for creating the current policies the credit has to totally be given to the Obama Administration, unless you believe that inheriting the worse recession since the Great Depression is good luck GOP Congressman wants to Impeach Hillary Clinton So Ridiculous that it is almost Funny EFTA00841214  Inline image 1 Sometimes you see a headline that it is so outrageous that you have to read the article to see what you are missing. And this week hasn't let me down, as the headline on Monday's Huffington Post read - CRAZY TOWN: GOP REP. READY TO IMPEACH HILLARY. YES, a GOP Congressman is already floating impeaching Hillary Clinton. How could a sane person talk about impeachment, when she isn't President and hasn't even secured the Democratic nomination? But a Republican congressman is already getting ready for the opportunity to impeach her -- on the first day of her hypothetical presidency. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) recently spoke with talk radio host Matt Murphy and said the real issue with Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state is "how many lives she put at risk by violating all rules of law that are designed to protect America's top-secret and classified information from falling into the hands of our geopoliticalfoes who then might use that information to result in the deaths of Americans." Brooks added Republicans are going to make sure this issue follows Clinton into office, should she be elected president in 2016. "And in my judgement, with respect to Hillary Clinton, she will be a unique president if she is elected by the public next November, because the day she's sworn in is the day that she's subject to impeachment because she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors," he said. Brooks said this even before Clinton was scheduled to testify later in the week before the House Select Committee on Benghazi to find out what they claim to be "the truth." The committee has taken a beating in recent days after a couple of self-inflicted wounds from its own members questioning the nonpartisan nature of the panel. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) applauded the taxpayer-funded committee for helping damage Clinton's presidential prospects -- and then spent the following week trying to backtrack. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) said "a big part" of the Benghazi investigation was designed to go after Clinton rather than get to the bottom of the attacks. And a former Republican staffer on the committee also said his bosses were singularly focused on going after the former secretary of state. By the way During the Reagan and Bush Administrations there were 23 embassy attacks, that resulted in 394 deaths, which included 2S4 U.S. Marines, 18 CIA officers, 22 embassy employees, 3 EFTA00841215 American diplomats of which i was a U.S. ambassador. And the number of investigations: 1. During the Obama Administration there have been 13 separate investigations, costing American taxpayers 14 Million Dollars. Numbers don't lie. The difference is GOP witch- hunting. We also have to ask where the same Republican outrage were when the Bush/Cheney and Karl Rove erased an estimated 22 million emails, especially after the unprecedented midterm dismissal of seven U.S. Attorneys (targeted to impede investigations of Republican politicians orfor theirfailure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters), on December 7, 2006, by the George W. Bush administration's Department of Justice. If this current investigation and the recent comments/admissions of Republicans doesn't signal `artisan witch hunt" then nothing And as I have said, time and again — Hillary Clinton's emails, her private internet server and Benghazi may not have been her best decision but they are sham issues. If Congress really wants to find out more about Benghazi, why aren't they concentrating on the military who actually had the responsibility for the protection the embassy and its staff? Or the CIA, who have the responsibility of our intelligence gathering? We should immediately and emphatically shut down all impeachment talk being used politically to take down political adversities. And yes, Congressman Mo Brooks is a bozo. But ignorant and bias people listen to bozos.... repeating their nonsense as gospel Think about -- people voted for the bozo... ***** Palestinians aren't Nazis By calling the Palestinians Nazis, the Israeli prime minister was saying they can never be negotiated with — that Israel must fight them to the bloody end. Inline image 1 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a speech at the World Zionist Congress, Jerusalem, October 20, 2015 EFTA00841216 For those who still support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the past several weeks, I have to ask how can you. This is not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, since I love Israel and have a Jewish son. But listening to Netanyahu castigating Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and Occupied Territories, is reminiscent of Donald Trump on "illegal immigrants" here in America. Except that Palestinians are not immigrants. And since they have not been given the right to vote, then give them (promised) land that their families have been living on for centuries. Last week Netanyahu reaffirmed that he does not envision a two-state solution for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories any time soon. During a parliamentary committee meeting, Netanyahu told members of the Knesset that he has no current plans to surrender control of the occupied West Bank to the Palestinians as part of a peace agreement. "At this time, we need to control all of the territoryfor theforeseeablefuture," he told lawmakers. Netanyahu accused members of the opposition government, who have lobbied for renewed two-state solution negotiations, of indulging in an unrealistic fantasy. "You think there is a magic wand here, but I disagree," he told them. "I'm asked if we willforever live by the sword - yes." Just last month, Netanyahu publicly called for a return to peace talks without preconditions at the United Nations General Assembly. And last week, he reiterated that he is, in theory, ready to concede territory to the Palestinians, but that he lacks a legitimate negotiating partner on the other side. "Half of the Palestinians are ruled by extreme Islam that wants to destroy us; if there were elections tomorrow, Hamas would win," Netanyahu told lawmakers. While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' popularity is declining, there is no evidence to suggest that Hamas would easily win an election. When the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asked Palestinians last month who they would vote for in an impromptu election, llamas and Abbas' Fatah party were tied with 35 percent of the vote. By announcing his intention to retain control of the occupied Palestinian territories for the time being, Netanyahu is effectively fulfilling an election guarantee, in which he promised pro-settlement voters that there would be no Palestinian state if he remained prime minister. Even so, during the parliamentary meeting, pro-settlement lawmakers criticized Netanyahu for continuing to entertain the long-term prospect of a Palestinian state. "Why do you even talk to Abbas? Why pull the world's leg?' asked Knesset member Betzalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home party. Netanyahu's latest renunciation of Palestinian statehood comes shortly before the loth anniversary of the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He was killed by an extremist Israeli who opposed Rabin's push for a two-state solution. Two years before Rabin's assassination, Netanyahu, who was chairman of the Likud Party at the time, compared him to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for championing a phased Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories. "Instead of giving peace a chance, it is a guarantee of increased tension,future terrorism and, ultimately, war," Netanyahu said in 1993 of the proposed peace agreement. The Oslo Accords, first set in motion by Rabin, called for the Israelis to transfer authority of the West Bank to the Palestinians by 1998. The peace deal is now largely defunct, with the exception of security cooperation between the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. In the absence, however, of any current political process aimed at reaching a two-state solution, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories have descended into a month-long wave of violence that has killed nine Israelis and 53 Palestinians. Uncoordinated stabbings, shootings, and vehicular attacks by young Palestinians have this month become near-daily occurrences in Jerusalem. Israeli security forces have responded with an aggressive use of lethal force against suspected Palestinian attackers. EFTA00841217 In an effort to quell tension over Muslim and Jewish access to the Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem - - the flashpoint for the current conflict -- Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the mosque be placed under constant video monitoring. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki responded skeptically to the proposal, saying he feared video footage could be used by Israeli security forces to arrest Muslims worshipping at the mosque. Although Abbas has not yet commented directly on the surveillance cameras, Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said that the Palestinian leader told Kerry "that he should look into the roots of the problem, and that is the continued occupation." Max Blumenthal took it to another level when in an article for AlterNet he wrote — Painting Palestinians as Nazis, Netanyahu Incites a Wave of Vigilante Violence - and that Netanyahu's comments about the Mufti were much more than a hysterical lie. In a speech to the Zionist Congress two weeks ago Netanyahu said that it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II and that "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews." You have to believe that Netanyahu dearly can't believe that Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini is more responsible than Hitler for the Holocaust. Yet, the prime minister said that the mufti, Haj Amin alHusseini, had protested to Hitler that "they'll all come here," referring to Palestine. "So what should I do with them?'" Mr. Netanyahu quoted Hitler as asking Mr. Husseini. "He said, `Burn them.'" Prof. Meir Litvak, a historian at Tel Aviv University, called the speech "a lie" and "a disgrace." Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, a specialist of German history at Hebrew University, said, "With this, Netanyahu joins a long line ofpeople that we would call Holocaust deniers." Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition in the Israeli Parliament, said the accusation was "a dangerous historical distortion," and he demanded that Mr. Netanyahu "correct it immediately." Netanyahu has written feverishly on the Mufti's collaboration with Nazi Germany in his 1993 book, A Durable Peace, citing dubious testimony by one of Adolph Eichmann's underlings that the "Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry." (In his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann denied that Husseini played any such role or that he knew him well). The long dead Palestinian patriarch has been one of Netanyahu's favorite boogeymen ever since, helping him implicate the Palestinians in crimes that had nothing to do with the occupation or settler-colonial domination. Back in 2012, in fact, in a speech before the Israeli Knesset, Netanyahu claimed the Mufti was "one of the leading architects of the Final Solution."And a year later, at Bar Ilan University, Netanyahu attempted to draw a direct line between Nazi Germany and the Palestinian national struggle. There is no evidence to support Netanyahu's statements about the Mufti's malignant influence over Hitler. According to a full readout of the November 28, 1941 meeting between the two, the Mufti never urged Hitler to 'burn [the Jews],"as Netanyahu alleged. Hitler's discussion with the Mufti occurred months after the liquidation of nearly the entire Jewish population of Lithuania and weeks after the slaughter at Babi Yar, where over 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in one of the largest massacres of World War Two. Contrary to Netanyahu's claims, the engines of genocide were roaring by the time the Mufti and Hitler met. And almost every aspect of Netanyahu's screed was false, down to his claim that Husseini died in Cairo before he could be summoned to testify at the Nuremberg Tribunal. (He EFTA00841218 died in Beirut in 1974). In absolving Hitler of overseeing the Jewish genocide, Netanyahu dabbled in Holocaust denial, a crime in several European countries. Over the course of his career, Netanyahu's seemingly outlandish behavior has always been animated by a cynical logic. By projecting the phantasms of the Holocaust onto the stark tableau of the Arab Muslim world, he has expertly exploited the psychological vulnerabilities of Jewish Israelis. His perseverance is perhaps the best validation of the phenomenon known as Terror Management Theory, in which average people turn to militaristic and authoritarian political leadership to cope with frightening encounters with mortality. But let's ignore the obvious lies because I believe that Netanyahu's intentions are more sinister because by blaming a Palestinian for the Final Solution, Netanyahu has helped his countrymen adjust to the macabre reality. He reassured them that they were not settler overlords or vigilante brutes, but Inglorious Bastards curb stomping SS officers in the woods outside Krakow. And he sent them the message that those Palestinians lurking behind concrete walls and under siege in ghettoes were not an occupied, dispossessed people, but a new breed of Nazis hell-bent on Jewish extermination. Netanyahu's comments about the Mufti were much more than a hysterical lie; they were an invitation to act out a blood soaked fantasy of righteous revenge. This bogus portrayal emboldens the Israeli army, riot police and settlers to take the full authorization to shoot teenage stone throwers with live bullets. Netanyahu only cares about "his people" and will say and do whatever he can to discredit anyone who does not support his position. Even worse you have believe that he sees Palestinian toddlers as "future enemies". Benjamin Netanyahu's "mufti speech" and his recent Nazi comments were not delivered in a vacuum. They come in the midst of the worst deterioration of relations between Jews and Arabs inside the Green Line since October 2000. Netanyahu is no observer on the sidelines. He is the prime minister. His exegeses and commentary help shape the world around us. But in his world there is no room for Palestinians. It is Israel's tragedy, and the world's, that its leader has so thoroughly squandered his moral authority to speak for "all the Jewish people," either the living or the dead. And for this reason the world community should do whatever it can to bring about the two-state solution or one-man one-vote for both Israelis and Palestinians alike. In a recent article in The Washington Post, Richard North Patterson compared Netanyahu to Richard Nixon without the vision which informed his better moments and a residue of insular, divisive, self-serving, rhetorical dishonesty and politically amoral: who exploits the dangers facing his country to assure his grip on power. Consequently, Israel is falling deeper into the dangerous abyss because of his refusal to risk his right-wing power base, and his readiness to say anything to retain it. Polling now shows that half of all Israelis no longer believe that a two-state solution is possible. A soluble political divide has become a religious one, far less soluble, in which extremists on both sides touch the levers of power, with Netanyahu as both cheerleader and enforcer for the coalition of fundamentalists, settlers and other adamant opponents of a Palestinian state. Needless to say, as long as this government survives, there will be no peace agreement. Still.... there is also another way of looking at things. The situation is very, very bad but it is not irreparable. Violence is taking place here and there, but millions of Jews and Palestinians are going about their lives. Anxious and suspicious, but going about their lives. This is not Syria. It is not a religious war. It's important to look around every once in a while and remember that. There are no EFTA00841219 Nazis are in the West Bank and Gaza. The conflict is still taking place in a political framework, a framework over which Israel still has control. The vision of living together — in two states, one state or a confederation — has not vanished. The problem is that for Netanyahu there is no such vision. There are only Arabs in droves. There is Islamic State. There are Nazis. And a prime minister's speech which carries weight and has dramatic influence over the world. But again, Palestinians are not Nazis no matter what the Israeli Prime Minister says.... and yes, Netanyahu retracted the statement on October 3oth but it is like calling one's wife a bitch.... you can't take it back.... When he comes to Washington this week, Netanyahu is a man on a mission. His mission? To make it clear to Israelis that he is still the "master" of America. Unfortunately, Democrats and Republicans, alike, will serve as his enablers. Netanyahu will meet with the President. This time there will be no real pressure to stop settlements and make peace and no real apology for his statements demonizing the Palestinians and the President. Instead, we are told that Israel is in line to receive a dramatic increase in US aid--possibly as high as $4.5 Billion a year. Netanyahu will then be honored at an event hosted by the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute. And in order to reassure to Israelis that the "master" can still dominate US politics, the Prime Minister wrangled a speaking engagement at the liberal Center for American Progress and secured a glowing op-ed written by Hillary Clinton who pledged that, if elected president, she "would reaffirm [the] unbreakable bond with Israel--and Benjamin Netanyahu." The entire exercise is shameful and distressing. Enabling Netanyahu's bad behavior only encourages more of the same. It's embarrassing and it's dumb. It's one thing to acknowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead, but it makes no sense to reward the guy who two decades ago pledged to kill peace, and then spared no effort to do just that and this is my rant of the week WEEK's READINGS Republican candidates' dangerous incoherence on guns EFTA00841220  Inline image 1 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks in Ankeny, Iowa, last week. INCREASINGLY UNHINGED commentary by Republican presidential candidates about the massacre last week at a community college in Oregon might not seem worth a second glance. Some of the statements have been contemptible and/or ignorant, it is true. But they are worthy of attention, if only for what they say about the poverty of the argument against regulation of gun ownership. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal prefaced a blog post on the shooting with a good deal of self- congratulation about his willingness to discuss what other politicians "are afraid to talk about. ... I don't care at all if some people don't like it, the truth is important." It turns out that what took so much courage was Mr. Jindal's broadside against the father of the now-deceased Oregon shooter, for being divorced and insufficiently involved in his son's life. "He's a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public," Mr. Jindal bravely wrote. "He's the problem here." Candidate Ben Carson identified a different problem: the insufficient gumption of the students and faculty of Umpqua Community College. "Of course, you know, if everybody attacks that gunman, he's not going to be able to kill everybody," Mr. Carson told Fox News. "But if you sit there and let him shoot you one by one, you're all going to be dead." He made this argument without even realizing — here is where the ignorance comes in — that Army veteran Chris Mintz had tried to stop the shooter and been shot seven times in the process. He also said that kindergarten teachers should be armed; but, he later clarified, maybe not all kindergarten teachers; and they shouldn't leave the guns lying around but should lock them; but as a result they would have to be "trained in diversionary tactics and whatever needs to be done in order to get there and" — well, you get the idea. It's a mishmash of absurdity untroubled by contemplation. We suppose that, in contrast, the nation should be grateful for the "stuff happens" reactions of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Donald Trump; they both responded by saying, in essence, that there will always be some bad people who do bad things, so why don't we just move on? EFTA00841221 Up to a point they are right, of course; the government will never prevent all violence. But it's also perfectly obvious that the government could take steps that would reduce the incidence of mass shootings, suicides, domestic homicides, children shooting children and other gun violence. Bad people exist in other countries; mentally ill people exist in other countries; young, disturbed men play violent video games in other countries. Some of them even grow up without fathers. But countries that do not allow so many guns to circulate so freely lose many, many fewer of their citizens to gun crimes or accidents. Republican candidates are increasingly tying themselves in knots on this issue, because there's no logical way to refute that one, clear truth. New York Times Editorial Board — October 7, 2015 ****** Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion Is Helping The Uninsured — Where It's Allowed To How the Supreme Court and bitter partisanship over Obamacare are letting Red America slip further behind while Blue America moves forward. Inline image 1 History of Medicaid Medicaid is a healthcare program for low-income people created in 1965. It is jointly managed and finance by the federal government and the states. More than 70 million Americans arm row and Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, and related benefit. Medicaid mainly covers children, pregnant women, some patients of poor kids, people with disabilities and elderly nursing home patients. Before the Affordable Care Act, adults who had no children living at home or who didn't have a disability will usually excluded, no matter how poor they were. EFTA00841222 o states adopted expansion March 2010 President Barack Obama signs the Affordable Care Act. The law includes the largest expansion of Medicaid coverage for poor adults and the programs history. The ACA creates a new minimum standard allowing legal U.S. residents with incomes just above the poverty level to enroll in the program. The federal government will cover no less than go% of the new spending. 6 states adopted expansion Five states and the District of Columbia begin phasing him expansion early during 2010 and 2011. June 2012 The Supreme Court rules 7-2 that states may opt out of the laws Medicaid expansion without losing previous federal funding. The decision leaves millions of poor residence without health coverage and states that the side to reject broader Medicaid eligibility. 26 states adopted expansion Over the course of 2013, a number of states pass bills to take administrative steps to accept the ACA's Medicaid expansion, which took full effect on Jan. 1, 2013. April 2013 Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) strikes a compromise with the majority Republican Legislature to pass the private option, a version of the Medicaid expansion that uses federal want me to subsidize private insurance. This inspires the adoption of similar plans in States with Republican leaders and divided government. June 2013 EFTA00841223 Arizona Gov. Jim Brewer (R) muscles a Medicaid expansion through the legislature, prompting a still- unsettled legal challenge from angered republican legislators. September 2013 Iowa and Michigan follow Arkansas is lead when their Republican governors and legislatures and act privatize variations of the Medicaid expansion. October 2013 Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) circumvents the Republican majority in the legislature and expand Medicaid via an up skewer budgetary mechanism, a maneuver later affirmed by the State Supreme Court. January 2014 Medicaid coverage becomes available to newly eligible residents of states that join the ACA's expansion. Debate over Medicaid expansion continues across the country and 2014 and 2015. 27 states adopted expansion March 2014 After a prolong fight with the majority GOP legislature, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) signs a privatize Medicaid expansion into law. 28 States adopted expansion July 2014 EFTA00841224 Governor Tom Colbert (R) of Pennsylvania, a former Medicaid expansion opponent, signs a privatize version of the policy into law. Six months later, his Democratic successor, Tom Wolf, scraps it begins moving enrollees into stand it Medicaid. 29 states adopted expansion April 2015 The majority Republican Legislature and Montana Gov. Steve bullock agree on a privatize expansion of Medicaid. A year earlier, Medicaid expansion legislation had nearly passed, but a Democratic lawmaker accidentally voted against the bill, leaving at one vote short. Federal authorities haven't yet approved Montana's plan. 3o states adopted expansion May 2015 Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) and the Republican Legislature the most conservative version of Medicaid expansion today, which requires enrollees to show more of the medical course them on the big traditional program. 31 states adopted expansion July 2015 Gov. Bill Walker (I) of Alaska ends months of fruitless negotiations with Republican Legislators and expands Medicaid under his arm authority, an action GOP lawmakers challenge in court. Elected officials and states including North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming continue to debate Medicaid expansion. In Texas and other states, mostly in the south, expansion repeat is dead for now. The history of Medicaid suggests the expansion will continue to spread. When the program launch 5o years ago, just over half the state signed up in the first two years. The last state to join, Arizona, didn't begin participating until 1982. EFTA00841225  R Inline image 2 R Inline image 3 Inline image 0 By Jeffrey Young, Nicky Forster, Hilary Fung and Alissa Scheller — Buffington Post — Oct. 7, 2015 EFTA00841226  a, Inline image 1 Web Link: bawdys utt ipe6CMvW0Dg This is a short documentary film made by Spencer Cathcart questioning our freedom, the education system, corporations, money, the American capitalist system, the US government, world collapse, the environment, climate change, genetically modified food, and our treatment of animals. I urge you to listen it the whole way through. If everyone in the world would hear every word in this video and then act upon their feelings the world would change overnight... "At this moment you can be anywhere, doing anything. Instead you sit alone before a screen. So what is stopping usfrom doing what we want, being where we wanna be? Each day we wake up in the same room,following the same path to live the same day as yesterday. Yet at one time, each day was a new adventure. Along the way something changed. Before, our days were timeless, now our days are scheduled. Is this what it means to be grownup, to befree, but are we reallyfree? Food, water and land, the very elements we need to survive are owned by corporations. If you try to take what earth provides you'll be locked away, so we obey their rules." Some may think this video is a bit hokey but I believe that if you really listen, no matter your politics, you will find something to think about. If not, feel free to laugh at those of us who do.... ****** Let's Keep The Pressure On New York is investigating E,ccon Mobil for allegedly misleading the public about climate change EFTA00841227  Inline image 1 A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas. The state of New York is investigating whether Exxon Mobil misled the public and investors about the risks of climate change, a move sought by environmentalists that could signal a broader reckoning with the conduct of big energy companies. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil confirmed Thursday that the company had received a subpoena from the office of the attorney general of New York, Eric Schneiderman, related to the subject of climate change and was "assessing" its response. The investigation focuses on whether Exxon Mobil intentionally clouded public debate about science and hid from investors the risks that climate change could pose to its business according to a person familiar with the matter. Schneiderman has broad leeway to take on such a sweeping target under both consumer protection laws and New York's Martin Act, a securities law that protects investors. The inquiry seeks a variety of documents and records from the company, according to the person familiar with the probe, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the subpoena have not been made public. "We unequivocally reject allegations that Exxon Mobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of Exxon Mobil's nearly 40- year history of climate research that was conducted publicly in conjunction with the Department of Energy, academics and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," Exxon Mobil spokesman Scott Silvestri said. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, is also conducting a similar investigation regarding Peabody Energy, a leading coal company. The person familiar with the matter suggested that other energy companies could also face scrutiny. Environmental advocates hailed the probes as a major victory. For well over a decade, such organizations have been probing alleged links between Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded energy company, and the raising of public doubt about climate change. They cited not only direct statements and advertisements by Exxon Mobil, but also its alleged past support for think tanks and advocacy organizations that express climate change skepticism. "We have watched Exxon sow doubt on climate science and delay action on climate change for nearly a generation," said Kert Davies, formerly with Greenpeace and now the Climate Investigations Center.