A radical fringe conspiracy theory has become Arizona state law: “Agenda 21″ is the new FEMA death camps. Tinfoil hat, Glenn Beck-addled Republicans are in charge of an American state legislature; before they’re done, Jan Brewer may have signed legislation against George Soros and black helicopters.

Let me stress that Agenda 21 is absolutely a nontroversy — a bizarre creation of the paranoid fringe that now enjoys a place in American law. Here’s how the New American, the website of the magazine of the John Birch Society, reported the bill before passage:

The two-page bill, known as SB1507, would prevent the state, county, and city governments of Arizona from adopting any tenets of the UN Declaration and the Statement of Principles for Sustainable Development. It would block any other international schemes that violate the U.S. or state constitutions as well.

Under the proposed law, all public entities in Arizona would also be barred from cooperating with, funding, or implementing any programs linked to a controversial global organization known as ICLEI (formerly named International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives). The UN-backed non-profit organization, based in Germany, seeks to force the “sustainability” plan on the world by stealth.

It is difficult to describe how insane this nonsense is. “Agenda 21″ is a nonbinding resolution that encourages local sustainability efforts and provides definitions of success. It has no enforcement mechanism or powers of persuasion; ICLEI could not “force” a sustainability plan on anyone even if it wanted to.

The organization’s website carries news and information about world cities adapting to climate change, reducing carbon footprints, encouraging gardens, etcetera. Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) is an association of cities and regions interested in such sustainable development practices; the organization holds events to let cities show off their planning and construction.

What part of this strikes anyone as a conspiracy? Frankly, it’s the word “sustainable.” A buzzword has been turned into a shibboleth, and it is now aimed with regularity against things like efficient light bulbs and electric vehicles.

This absurd paranoia extends to organizations like the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute. Indeed, all of the thousands of community groups, planning commissions, and nongovernmental organizations that participate in any form of sustainable urban planning are suspect.

Agenda 21 is such a broad “conspiracy” that it includes much of the free market. Developers, for instance, want to develop cities for profit, which requires planning. Governments want more tax revenue from their streets and want to avoid a repeat of the sprawl that nearly killed them. Taxpayers want a sense of place and a better city. Contractors want the work. Entrepreneurs want the opportunity. Businesses want the location.

Normally, such ventures enjoy broad bipartisan support. Mitt Romney, for instance, has supported sustainable development initiatives. The hottest real estate markets are now in the urban core, especially those near transit, because a new generation is less willing to endure the hourlong car commute. None of this is socialist.

In fact, smart, sustainable growth advocates see local entrepreneurship as crucial to the sustainability of the neighborhood. For this reason, they often find themselves at odds with misguided ordinances. Dallas restricts street-level shops from shading their sidewalks, for example, discouraging walkers from sitting to spend money at an outdoor cafe.

Smart, sustainable planning is the free market unleashed, profitable from the bottom-up. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you stupid.

After several years of transportation agencies and organizations lobbying for a connection between land uses and transportation planning, the industry is finally starting to walk the talk. I posit that the land use/transportation connection did not swell dramatically because of heightened awareness in the design community; it took a nationwide financial crisis. We haven’t been letting the market work.

State and local agencies can no longer afford to build their old wish list of transportation infrastructure that prioritized the fast-moving automobile over quality of life, personal freedom, return on investment, and public safety. They can, however, afford the paint and flowerpots needed to create bike lanes and pedestrian plazas.

And since these efforts are all local, they’re as “small government” as you get. God forbid that local governments share information on their successes at building more prosperous and sustainable communities, however, because…you know, foreigners. Terms like “smart growth” or “transit-oriented development” are insufficiently polemical for this kind of activism; “agenda” sounds so helpfully sinister.

Agenda 21 activism, like tea party activism, is really about suburbanism. “Agenda 21″ is a notional plot in which property developers and transportation departments and international socialists want Americans to give up the “freedom” of exurban automotive distance and separation for “communist” buses, trains, sidewalks, and bike lanes.

Arizona’s new law is just one of a raft of similar teapublican initiatives around the nation, and there is nothing at all “free market” about any of them. The anti-Agenda 21 agenda is paranoid, lunatic, radical big government — and deserves to be reported as such.

Ted Nugent calls the Secret Service’s investigation of his incendiary comments “classic Saul Alinsky” and then proceeds to prove that he doesn’t know the first thing about Saul Alinsky. There is nothing entertaining about this, and let it not pass as entertainment. It isn’t rock and roll, either, but something else.

I posted a few weeks ago about the farm nontroversy in Michigan that Nugent references here. It’s not even about a federal regulation, but a state one.

The problem is this: Back in 2004, the European Union opened membership to seven countries who’d been part and parcel of the old Soviet bloc, amongst the Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A lot of people from countries already in the EU sounded an alarm. These new EU citizens would have the right to work in any member country without a work permit. Many people, in Germany, Italy and France (and let’s not forget that the EU was created solely for the benefit of bettering France and Germany), were worried that an influx of workers from the old Eastern Europe would flood into Western European countries seeking employment. Businesses being businesses and in the business of making money, would snap these people up – basically, because they would work for lower wages than the citizens of the Western European countries.

So places like Germany, Italy and France imposed limits on the number of legal immigrants they would allow into their own countries – you have to look after your own first, right?

Did Britain, then under the leadership of that nice Tony Blair? In a word, no. There were no immigration limits set, although Blair anticipated that not more than 500,000 per year would arrive, and that they’d only be interested in doing the jobs most Brits wouldn’t touch – things like cleaning and waiting tables and the like.

Wrong.

They came in millions and they were hired in millions, to such a degree that they were hired in preference to Brits. They spoke the language better, they were more polite and they worked harder for less. So wages were driven down. And the result was that around 500 foreign workers per day found work in Britain last year whilst unemployment amongst British workers rose.

In some instances, British workers are made redundant in order to employ legal foreigners.

Another good thing businesses like about the Eastern bloc legal workers is that they are totally disinclined to join a union of any sort – and that’s ironic too, especially for the Poles, who were led from behind the Iron Curtain by, yes, a trade union leader.

The Easter holiday is upon us here in the UK. Not for any religious reason, but it signifies the beginning of the holiday season, proper. The schools shut on Friday for a two-week holiday, the weather’s been high and hot enough for the Brits to parade pasty fish-flesh about for all and sundry to see, and people will, naturally, take to the roads.

So, about a week ago, the trade union UNITE, which covers professional haulage drivers, started making noises about tanker drivers, those who ensure that gas stations are provided with fuel for which people pay the equivalent of nine dollars a gallon, threatening to go on strike over the Easter holiday. The reason? More and more oil firms were cutting costs and maximising profits by hiring (legal) foreign drivers – people who don’t speak English and many of whom, whilst experienced drivers, know nothing about this particular part of the industry. The union cited Health and Safety measures as a means for striking.

Now, the Conservative governnment, headed by that nice David Cameron and that roly-poly, little bat-faced boy, George Osborne – neither of whom has ever worked a day in their lives and neither of whom have any sort of warm, fuzzy feelings about unions or, really, workers in general, decided to meet the possibility of a strike head-on in inimitable (modern) British fashion.

They panicked.

You see, about ten years ago, there was a similar tanker strike in the UK, which actually happened, and gas stations actually did run out of fuel. So, rather than have that terrible occurrence occur again on their watch – the last time, it was on Tony’s – they wheeled out the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, in order to give the country, via the media, a little common-sense pep talk.

(Right … keep in mind that “Conservatives” plus “common sense” plus “British people” all put together in one bag and shaken, not stirred, equals potential catastrophe.)

Francis Maude is as patrician as that nice David Cameron and fat boy frat boy George Osborne. His name sounds it, and he looks it. He’s from the aristocracy – the old aristocracy. If he were Virginian, he’d be a paid-up charter member of the FFV (First Families of Virginia). If he were from New York, he’d be a Rockefeller or a Roosevelt or even an Astor. Somewhere along the line, he’s probably related to the Queen and Dubya Bush. In short, like that nice David Cameron and Georgie-Porgie-Pudding-and-Pie, he’s never worked a day in his life. And were he standing behind Mitt Romney when Mitt said he wasn’t overly concerned about poor people, Francis would have fucking kissed Mitt.

So, out comes Francis, full of beans and British confidence, and advises, advises people to take precautions in the event that the wicked, evil union calls a strike. First, they should always be prepared. Fill up their cars, and as the gas gauge hits half-a-tank, pull in and fill up again. And, secondly, dig out a jerry can and fill that up. Keep it either in the trunk of your car or in your garage in case there is a strike and the gas stations run dry.

Now, considering the sheepability and low level of critical thinking amongst the peasants British public, this was the equivalent of waving a red flag to a bull – especially some wise wag in the British media reckoned the strike would start on Friday, just as the schools shut and people began the great British migration over the Easter holidays.

Panic! Panic! Horde alert! Greed alert! Every man for himself, and I’m-all-right-Jack-fuck-you!

Thursday saw humongous queues at gas stations across the land, some with lines forming five miles deep. The British public, ever so keen to look after their own asses (sorry, arses) but not too keen on looking after their neighbours (which is why they elected Cameron), not only filled up their tanks, but also filled up one, two, three, even four jerry cans to keep in reserve because they were oh-so-sure the strike would start on Friday.

As the queues formed, no one noticed that gas stations, one by one, surreptitiously began raising gas prices. Please keep in mind that the majority of money figured into gas prices here, goes to the government in taxes, so somewhere in the bowels of Number 10 Downing Street, that nice David Cameron and Georgie-Boy are smiling over the sums as the tills ring up a melodious note. And the Great British Public are too knee-deep in panic to notice.

(Cue the Whiffenpoof Song for the Brits – the chorus totally applies to them):-

By Friday, the government was backtracking quicker than the late Michael Jackson could Moon Walk. By then, the union kept saying that it had no plans to strike before Easter and (get this) if the government had been clued up, they’d have known that a union has to give ten days’ notice before striking in order to allow negotiations in hopes of avoiding such a measure.

But the Conservative government isn’t clued up about such things as unions and ordinary people and such. After all, it’s only been a week since the top 1% here got a major tax cut.

So, immediately, that nice David Cameron understood the situation, he duly sent Francis Maude out again, this time with a different message:-

“Don’t panic! Don’t panic! I’m in charge now!”

But it was too late. The queues returned Friday morning. According to a snippet of conversation I overheard today as I waited for an order of fish and chips for my husband, a young man who worked in a large gas station near Croydon in Surrey (on the outskirts of London), related that the queues outside his establishment on Thursday stretched for three miles. The business cleared £20,000 (about $30,000). By Friday, he said, his boss had imposed restrictions. Five people worked the tills, three manned the forecourt. Boaters could only buy £40 worth ($60) of fuel, and no jerry cans could be filled. In many instances, physical fights broke out on the forecourt. A business which normally stayed open until 10pm, had to close at 6pm. They’d run out of fuel.

That was the story all over. The husband and I ventured into London today. In times of crisis or bad weather, the husband, like all Brits, has an insatiable need to travel. The gas station at the top of the hill onto the motorway (“interstate” to civilised people) to London was limiting fuel purchases to half-a-tank. I knew, I’d have to have more fuel if I hoped to return home this evening. It was in Hythe, along the South Coast where I live, that I made that purchase. I stopped at five fuel garages between that point and London, and there was no fuel. Admittedly, some stations were taking on emergency deliveries, after that nice David Cameron had to issue emergency plans allowing tankers to travel the roads during the weekend (and which also meant oodles of overtime for the drivers). Just outside my destination in London, I found a garage with fuel.

But my inconvenience was minor, amidst all this cacophony. And here’s a singular tale of British greed, hoarding and lack of common sense.

In the wake of Francis Maude’s idiotic advice to stock up on gas in jerry cans the way people stock up on non-perishables in inclement weather, a lady in Yorkshire filled up several jerry cans of fuel and brought them home. Her daughter, suddenly, realised that she was low on fuel but was so skint that she didn’t have the means to go queue at a service station in order to buy gas, so she called Mommy Dearest to see if she had any spare fuel going.

Well, of course, she did, she’s a mother, isn’t she, and, of course, she’s there for her totally unindependent twentysomething daughter. Never fear, Mommy would just transfer some fuel from a jerry can into some other container and Miss Junior could pick it up and put it in her tank right then and there.

So Mommy, decides to decant the fuel from a jerry can into something else … in her kitchen. Specifically, whilst she’s cooking dinner. You can read about what happened, as only Rupert Murdoch could write about it, here.

But I can understand if you don’t want to honour Murdoch with a hit, so suffice it to say, there was an explosion, a fireball, and the woman is in hospital with 40% burns, whilst people are calling for Francis Maude to resign … because, you see, if Francis Maude hadn’t told this lady to stock up on jerry cans, she wouldn’t have panicked and … well, you get the picture. One example of lack of common sense is being blamed for another example of lack of common sense. I mean, who the hell mucks around with gasoline in a kitchen while you’re cooking?

And after all this is said and done, there are still queues at gas stations, the (immigrant) drivers are having to work around the clock on a weekend to re-supply all the fuel garages, that nice David Cameron will wipe the egg off his face, throw it at Francis Maude and sack him, whilst hoping that the people stay mad at this situation long enough to enable him to carry on dismantling the National Health Service. After all, if the Brits can’t get on the road during a holiday period, there’ll be hell to pay, so make them mobile and carry on fucking up the health system.

And in the midst of all this, George Galloway won a by-election in which the Conservative Party got so few votes, it lost its deposit.

In case you don’t know what a holiday period is like in Britain, here’s a good example why the pumps must belch fuel …

]]> http://www.osborneink.com/2012/04/wherein-the-british-conservative-party-like-the-republicans-spreads-irrational-fear-and-creates-a-crisis-from-nothing.html/feed 0 http://www.osborneink.com/2012/03/death-panels-for-pigs.html http://www.osborneink.com/2012/03/death-panels-for-pigs.html#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:00:45 +0000 Matt Osborne http://www.osborneink.com/?p=20031 Continue reading →]]>

Wild hogs are no joke; a boar doesn’t have to be Hogzilla-sized to do enormous damage to the local ecology. Which is why Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment declared feral pigs an invasive species last year:

Feral pigs eat anything and everything, including endangered wild plants, the eggs of game birds, young deer or lambs, reptiles and farm crops. Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates they cause about $800 million in damage each year to agriculture. The pigs also can carry diseases including bovine herpes virus, swine fever, foot and mouth disease, influenza, anthrax and swinepox virus.

“They will really rip up a farmer’s fields,” DNRE spokeswoman Mary Detloff said. “Overnight, they can destroy acres of corn and wheat. They dig wallows 3-feet deep and 5-feet wide, which are a real danger to farming equipment.”

The Michigan Animal Farmers Association wanted the state agency to be specific about how it would enforce their decision, so naturally the agency promulgated some rules governing the identification of feral pigs (.PDF). Here is the most important part of the document establishing what species of pig are prohibited:

Wild boar, wild hog, wild swine, feral pig, feral hog, feral swine, Old world swine, razorback, eurasian wild boar, Russian wild boar (Sus scrofa Linnaeus). This subsection does not and is not intended to affect sus domestica involved in domestic hog production. (Emphasis mine)

“Sus domestica” means domesticated pig, i.e. non-feral. I don’t think a regulation could possibly be clearer than the word “not,” either — a subsection that is not intended to affect domestic pigs on a pig farm should not spark controversy. And yet it has. Farmers raising “heritage pigs,” i.e. breeds that do not belong to a corporate behemoth, claim the law is aimed at curtailing their business to the benefit of factory farming.

If this was true, it wouldn’t be the first time that corporate agriculture succeeded in replacing small-scale pig farming with its proprietary pork. Anyone familiar with the history of the Creole pig in Haiti will recognize the potential for Third World disaster capitalism here, and Michigan is currently going through an era of disaster capitalism with Governor Rick Snyder’s Emergency Manager laws. Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, an organization that supports family-scale farming on issues like raw milk, sees the new regulation as a threat:

There are two political agendas at work here. According to Baker’s complaint, DNR has tried unsuccessfully for many years to have the legislature eliminate hunting estates and preserves. In these facilities, privately owned pigs and other animals live in a contained natural environment where customers pay for a chance to hunt and harvest these animals. DNR earns revenue from fees paid by those hunting on public lands; getting rid of private hunting preserves would increase the department’s income.

The other agenda at work is that of the Michigan Pork Producers Association who has publicly supported the ISO. In a February 27 editorial published in the Manistee Advocate newspaper, Senator Booher mentioned, “The small farmers I have talked to wonder why the DNR is singling out their pigs and is joining forces with the Michigan Pork Producers Association on this issue. They believe the association wants all pigs to be raised in confinement facilities, and the best way to achieve that is to make it illegal to raise certain swine, especially those offering alternatives to the white pork raised in confinement” [2, para. 9]. At this time it is certain only that swine raised in confinement facilities would be exempt from the ISO. For the confinement operations, the ISO could effectively reduce or eliminate the competition.

The first ‘graff refers to Mark Baker, outspoken opponent of the new rules — which, as the second ‘graff says, “could” reduce or eliminate his pork products from competition with Monsanto. At his website, Baker expands on the “farming” techniques he uses:

Whether you agree with the hunting preserves or not, the fact remains that they are a viable business that provides jobs and brings in tourism dollars.  Are they any more evil than a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation that raised their animals in small pens in barns, on concrete, and hires “mass killers” (butchers) to do the dirty work?  As opposed to a “hunting preserve” where the animals live in spacious fields, behaving as they were meant to, enjoying naturally good health, and harvested by one person who will enjoy the gift of their life personally?  This is what the DNR seeks to Declatory Rule out of existance (sic). (Emphasis mine)

“Farming,” then, actually means “hunting preserve.” Free-range pig meat is apparently prized as a delicacy by chefs, which is fine as long as the hogs live inside an enclosure. In that post, Baker points to this article from an Upper Peninsula newspaper about a man with ten-foot high fences around his property:

(Jeff) DeBacker said he does not consider his boars as invasive species, but considers them as livestock raised on a farm. He also added the invasive species order is unclear whether or not regular farm hogs fall under this category.

DeBacker also noted the DNR rules relate to “feral” swine which means swine which have escaped captivity and are running wild.

“My hogs are not escaped. They’re under my husbandry,” he said.

Which is true, I suppose. But is it true that the state of Michigan wants to kill his pigs so they can own all the hunting lands and replace specialty red meat with CAFO-raised other white meat? I doubt it, because the state will be plenty busy finding and destroying actual feral pigs that have actually escaped from preserves and farms and are actually tearing up the Michigan landscape. Nevertheless, the regulation’s description of feral pig features — a necessary part of identifying them for destruction — has Mr. Baker clamoring to protect his own pigs, which as far as I can tell from watching his own video are exactly what the regulation exempts. You be the judge:

There is a moral hazard to letting one side set the story quickly — just ask ACORN. James O’Keefe’s ‘pimp’ story took time to debunk, and the truth never caught up to the lie. An organization was libeled, defunded, and destroyed before most Americans understood what had happened. Even today, misinformation reigns: ACORN was never charged with a crime because no one in the organization committed a criminal act, but altogether too many people — even avowedly liberal folks — still think something was amiss. Smoke equals fire, after all, so if you blow enough smoke people will assume there are flames.

Students of Alpharetta reached out to me through email and social media over the weekend, and they are not happy that their school has become the center of unwelcome attention. In fact, the “gay prom” meme threatens to ruin their prom. That should not be allowed to happen. I refuse to repeat the ACORN experience with a high school senior class; my conscience won’t allow it. Time to clear the smoke. 

Alpharetta High School is not a podunk cowtown schoolhouse. It is a very large and diverse suburban student community that enjoys high levels of academic success. The school administration’s actions are almost certainly not driven by anti-gay bias. In fact, homophobic remarks or actions are a quick way for Student Council members to lose their positions because Alpharetta has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying.

Students opposed Lack’s attempt to change the prom court rules, and their opposition doesn’t seem to have been motivated by anti-gay bias, either. Lack would have changed the prom court to a couple rather than a pair. The distinction isn’t subtle: students were adamant they wanted a boy and a girl, not a dating couple, to be king and queen. Prom courts are almost always a popularity contest, but very few are “most popular couple” contests.

Readers may think back on their own high school prom courts: here is the king and his date; there is the queen and her date. That was true of prom at my own high school altogether too many years ago. Nothing in the Alpharetta prom rules prohibits a gay king or a lesbian queen, or prevents anyone from bringing a same-sex date to the prom. (Edit: I confirmed after press time that same-sex couples have attended the Alpharetta prom before without incident.)

Reuben Lack’s suit contends it was his reintroduction of this prom court proposal to the Student Council — after having tabled it earlier in the face of student and staff opposition — that led to his dismissal. Here is how James Radford, Jr., Lack’s attorney, argues this point in a post on his website this weekend:

First, the question arises, is this how democracy works? If someone is elected to office in America, can they be stamped out, forcibly removed, because one or two (or even several) people have the opinion that they are a bad leader? Sure, this is a class president, and not President of the United States. But student government is meant to be an exercise in democracy, an education in how democracy works. And deposing an elected leader based upon the subjective determination that they are a “bad leader” is not how democracy works. That’s anti-democratic.

As an education in democracy working, the reintroduction of an unpopular measure against firm instruction is a fine example of what not to do. Student government is not an actual government, either, but a kind of government-in-training under adult supervision. The grown-ups have to be in charge because “subjective determination” of poor leadership is what the parents actually expect.

In this case, the grown-ups say that Reuben Lack had failed on other counts: scheduling meetings on his own time when faculty advisers were busy, not attending meetings, favoring pet projects over official duties, etc. Lack’s attorney contends this is untrue, and that Lack never received a warning about these previous shortcomings. A court will now determine the truth by examining meeting minutes, teacher notes, etc., and it is possible that Lack has a case in that regard. It is also possible that he doesn’t. Without poring over those documents myself, I can’t say.

What I can say without reservation is that Reuben Lack is not fighting for gay and lesbian equality. He might have reintroduced any measure on any topic in the same way and earned the same action from faculty; this initiative just happened to be the one guaranteed to win national attention. Because of recent travesties — the name Constance McMillen comes to mind – all you have to do is say the words “gay” and “prom” and millions of Americans will reflexively support you.

We have become conditioned to act this way, especially in these latter days of right wing hate radio and teapublican culture wars. Neal Boortz was apparently being awful on this topic last week, for instance. That sort of speech charges the already-polarized, as do the negative social media comments about Reuben that Mr. Radford recorded in his post. Yes, some students have called Reuben names now, which feeds the fire of righteous indignation. But they are not the students who sent me this screenshot of a Facebook thread that has been deleted:

Anushka Panday, Reuben’s debate team co-captain mentioned above, also weighed in on the controversy in a deleted Facebook thread written in answer to Nathaniel Lack, Reuben’s father:

Every day I find myself having to tell an misinformed individual of what is going on with Reuben Lack at Alpharetta High School and I’m personally offended at these accusations and this case since working on student council, etc I am aware that the situation is what you all are making it seem. It is frustrating to know that someone who is representing our school, students, debate team, and friends is bending the truth so much. I’ve had about enough of it, so I’m gonna definitively tell you I do not support you or Reuben on this and I will testify for the school if I am asked.

“…the remainder are patently false and provably so, it really doesn’t matter.” Incorrect. They do matter Mr. Lack. As any club/organization at Alpharetta High School exists, there are rules attached to them. I’m almost tired of hearing about this now since it is tarnishing our teams reputation, our school’s reputation, our teachers’ reputations and our students’ reputations.

“The act of removal is a punishment and it was unlawful.” Your son was removed from student council for the following reasons: He did not attend any student council events to support the organization. He did not help plan any of those events. If I can actually recall, the only meeting I went to he designated tasks and then left. He failed to cooperate with other members, rather, was obsessed with teaching us about legal procedures, etc.

Yes, I agree that we should discuss issues and debate them out, but we also have teachers who are in charge for a reason. If they say no vote, it means NO VOTE. There was conflict, so the teachers who were already frustrated at Reuben’s lack of respect and compromise ceased discussion when they agreed that Prom was not couples, rather one boy and one girl selected by their peers. The selection was democratic and not limiting out any one based on their sexual preference. When Reuben brought it up again, it was not an act of anti-gay belief when the teachers halted discussion, rather one of frustration with Reuben’s behavior and belief that he could just ignore their decision and proceed. Your legal report even mentions that students were going to vote against it, so Reuben tabled it. That is enough evidence in it of itself to show that Reuben for pursuing his own advocacy at the expense of the fair procedure he outlined in the bylaws. It is a matter of pride which is ridiculous. Yes the chat probably isn’t a valid reason to get kicked off, but guess what… everything above is.

“If you read the brief, then it should be quite clear.” Yes it’s clear in them because you pretty much falsified everything. No question about it. Ask any student on council (and don’t you dare claim that they were against Reuben so of course they’d say this since some of these kids are honest individuals who instead of complaining about Reuben’s lack of work, took up his slack and carried out the responsibilities of putting on Homecoming, ABDC, The Talent Show, The Pageant, Pep Rallies, Prom, and Spirit Weeks) and they would immediately expose the truth that you all are so bus trying to hide (i.e. deleting dissenters opinions on Facebook, failure to report in totality what has happened, falsely mischaracterizing the situation, etc) . I myself was kicked off of student council this past year since I wasn’t attending meetings or helping plan events. Instead of trying to challenge the system, I accepted responsibility for my lack of effort. I am not spiteful towards Reuben since he is after all my friend and debate partner, but I do not agree with any of this and I feel the need to speak out against it since it’s plain wrong.

From the moment Reuben started student council, all he has cared about is changing the way things are. It has never been about fulfilling the needs of the students, rather the idea that he could create a name for himself and make a change to the system (since default he thought it was bad). Well he’s obviously doing it now Mr. Lack. Going out and defaming his school. Makes tons of sense to make his student body look like they’re knuckle-draggers and the staff is incompetent and overly conservative.

It is perfectly natural for Nathaniel Lack to stick up for his son, and for his son to stick up for himself. I’m sure they believe he was treated unfairly, and perhaps he was. But questions about his firing, and whether it was appropriate, are quite separate from questions of anti-gay bias. Reuben Lack’s lawsuit is not really about gay and lesbian acceptance at all; it’s about Reuben Lack.

And that’s fine, but it’s not a story that deserves national attention — and it should not be allowed to tar students at Alpharetta High School trying to enjoy their prom, or dedicated teachers trying to guide student government, with false charges of homophobia.

It’s also difficult to swallow claims of stifled debate when fair-minded but opposing Facebook comments keep getting deleted. The elder Lack also showed up in the comments under my post last Friday to denounce Anushka and the rest of his son’s classmates as “little brats” conspiring to keep his son off the council, declaring they would all crumble under cross-examination. Bullying is the hallmark of homophobia, but just who is the bully here?

“It’s not that it’s not hilarious. It’s, again — nothing. Nothing at all.”

My first reaction when I heard about it, saw the videotape, and witnessed the insanely passionate outrage surrounding it coming from the usual suspects on the right was, to be honest, pity. It’s almost sad that this is the best they can do when it comes to uncovering — or even manufacturing — a scandal against this president.

This is all they’ve got. (Emphasis mine)

The word we’re all grasping for is “nontroversy.” Though I cannot claim to have invented it, this blog actually began popularizing the word with Breitbart’s first appearances on FOX Noise in 2009. It is the word that fits. However, anyone can be ignited by nontroversy; for example, even three years later, it’s difficult for many observers to see just how nothing-and-nowhere the ACORN nontroversy was. Breitbart depended on sexual suggestion to color reactions and create an impression of criminal conduct where none existed, and it worked. Told that James O’Keefe III had been dressed like a pimp (which he never was), viewers’ minds did the rest on their own.

It didn’t matter than the subjects of O’Keefe’s camera had been housing advisers trying to give advice on housing, or that even prostitutes and undocumented El Salvadoran immigrants need a place to live. These were issues guaranteed to light the minds of Sarah Palin voters on fire. The ACORN nontroversy took on a life of its own, becoming a congressional defunding campaign with the help of a compliant and lazy media.

It was a pattern that was to repeat itself many times over the next three years. Indeed, the most disturbing thing about Breitbart’s career is how long it took Americans to figure him out. The ACORN nontroversy was followed by the Yosi Sergeant nontroversy, the Sesame Street nontroversy, the spamgate nontroversy, and the White House Christmas tree ornament nontroversy. All of this came before the Shirley Sherrod nontroversy, and you will remember how even the White House fell for that one by firing Sherrod.

Indeed, the only Breitbart story that wasn’t a nontroversy was his successful exposure of a very stupid congressman, Anthony Wiener, as a sex text freak. In summation, Andrew Breitbart’s career as a “journalist” was entirely spent at the Weekly World News level except for the one time he rose to National Enquirer level.

He had nothing, and made something out of it — over and over and over again. He didn’t just fool us once, but over and over and over again; shame on us.

Banter Media’s own Nicole Sandler won’t give up her belief in death panels-for-freedom:

One who argued with me about this provision in the bill kept referring to a 1 1/2 page summary of the 900+ page bill – and badgered me repeatedly with “did you read it? I read it!..” Well, a summary does NOT tell you what’s in the entire bill.

Reading that, I flashed on Parker Griffith hefting the thousand pages of HR 3200 at his 2009 town hall event with a triumphant insistence that death panels were definitely, positively somewhere inside them, simply had to be in there because the stack of paper was so imposing, and that we should revolt against Obamacare because of those imaginary death panels.

Something like that has been going on with NDAA, an omnibus defense spending bill that has been turned into Teh End of Freedom Act™. So let’s be clear about what the National Defense Authorization Act is, and is not.

The last American soldier to leave Iraq expects to be paid on time. The contractor fixing the air conditioner on that soldier’s radio truck expects to be paid on time. Pentagon purchase managers maintain a supply chain of pens, spare bulbs, diesel fuel, MREs, ammo pouches, uniforms, and a million other things essential to continued day-to-day operations — but contractors only supply this stuff when they get paid on time.

That’s in addition to weapons procurement, training, maintenance, and everything else going on within the Department of Defense. Without money authorized by Congress, this massive machine grinds to a halt.

To be sure, there are plenty of progressives who would read that last sentence and do a happy-dance. Halting the war machine is very important to them — as important as, say, shutting down the federal government and damaging the national credit rating are to a bus full of raging teabaggers. So you will understand that when President Obama threatened to veto NDAA because of the very language that set off this whole fiasco, he was courting a public relations disaster over Constitutional principles. That takes cojones.

Not that he gets any credit, of course.

Imagine, if you will, that a bipartisan group of Senators tried to insert lower gasoline mileage standards into a routine transportation bill, and the president — who has worked very hard to increase CAFE standards — threatened to veto it. That is essentially what happened with NDAA. Look at the membership list of the Senate Armed Services Committee; when you see that Joe Lieberman and John McCain are the moderates in that bunch, their attempt to enshrine indefinite detention into law makes more sense.

Context is everything. With the offensive language now changed, the real story of NDAA begins and ends in Congress. President Obama’s first act in office was to order the closure of Camp X-Ray, the Bush regime’s Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Congress has been sandbagging him ever since by refusing to fund any transfer of detainees for trial at courts in the United States. Sandler again:

Even if you don’t want to take my word for it… here are a few other people you can trust. Senator Bernie Sanders, in an email after the vote on the NDAA on Thursday wrote…

That would be the Senator Bernie Sanders who voted to keep Camp X-Ray open in May of 2009. If there is a threat to habeas corpus and American freedoms, it’s not coming from the White House; indeed, the problem-makers are the ones being quoted now about their disappointment that the president will sign essential, routine spending legislation. They know what they’re doing: it’s called demagoguery.

Despite our differences, I have always liked Nicole. I ran into her in the hallway at Netroots and jabbered with her for a bit. She was walking toward that infamous panel with Jane Hamsher and Dan Choi: “What to Do When the President is Just Not That Into You.” Writing about the event at TIME Magazine, Michael Grunwald noted:

Somehow…the disillusionment addicts of the left have concocted a narrative of Obama-as-sellout that bears little resemblance to his actual presidency. Democratic infighting is usually described as a “circular firing squad,” but this is more like soldiers fragging their commander in battle because he isn’t screaming loud enough.

Nicole was very excited about the panel, but proffered that I wouldn’t be because I “like Obama.” While it’s true that I like Obama, my objection to the panel had nothing to do with liking him and everything to do with the consequences of poutrage and hyperfocus on his every action; it burns off precious oxygen. Running into Dave Weigel an hour later, I told him that I simply wasn’t interested in discussing the president: we have too much other work to do.

Exhibit A is Sandler’s representative in the House, none other than the nightmarish Allen West. My representative is teapublican Mo Brooks. Both came to office in the midterm wave. Both are happy to keep the scary Muslims locked away forever in Cuba. Both are great arguments against blowing so much smoke over a president. Indeed, with nearly one thousand abortion bills introduced in state legislatures around the country, Scott Walker’s union-busting in Wisconsin, Alabama’s HB56 “papers please” law, Michigan’s emergency manager law, and voter disenfranchisement efforts nationwide, our biggest progressive challenge clearly does not inhabit the White House.

We are at war with oligarchy; Obama is not the oligarchy. We are fighting culture warriors who volunteer to defend the oligarchy; Obama is not a culture warrior. And when Congresscritters insert odious language in a routine bill, let’s remember that Obama is not a member of Congress.

The White House objected to several provisions contained in the National Defense Authorization Act, threatening to veto the bill if they weren’t changed. The blogosphere nevertheless erupted over NDAA, with the usual suspects insisting the president would never veto it because he had asked Congress to clarify its detention provisions. Then yesterday, Congress changed the troublesome sections:

“As a result of these changes, we have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the president’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the president’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” it said.

[...]

The bill that emerged from the conference committee on Tuesday dropped a section from the House version that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute Qaeda suspects. It also dropped a House-written provision enacting a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies.

But the bill includes a narrower provision, drafted by the Senate, authorizing the government to detain, without trial, suspected members of Al Qaeda or its allies — or those who “substantially supported” them — bolstering the authorization it enacted a decade ago against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Another section would require officials to hold noncitizens suspected of being Qaeda operatives in military custody. The administration had focused its objections on that section, but the panel expanded the executive branch’s ability to make exceptions.

So it’s not everything the president wanted, but it’s also not the end of freedom in America, either — unless that’s what you want to see, like Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY):

If the Senate had wanted to make clear that a U.S. citizen could not be detained forever without charge, it could have said so unambiguously, but it did not. At best, we are shooting dice with our liberties and hoping that a federal court, down the line, will rule that it really does mean what the sponsors of this bill say it means.

I’m sure we’ll see Glenn Greenwald quote Nadler, but not Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), who fought to change the offensive sections of NDAA:

(T)he AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) section in our bill, Section 1021, merely codifies current law. It specifically states, “nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”  Quite simply, our courts will decide what the law is regarding detention of U.S. citizens.

Remember the “death panels” in health care reform? They didn’t exist, but as long as a very charged-up tea party kept talking about them, they might as well have existed. The same is true for progressives and NDAA: what you think you see is exactly what you want to see, regardless of what the bill actually says. See how that works?

There will be plenty of opinions, but here are three that might actually count: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. They’re the guys backing the president’s veto threat.

The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens. (Emphasis mine)

That fails the most basic test of civics knowledge. DHS is a cabinet-level agency; it has a Secretary, the current one being Janet Napolitano, who answers directly to the president. Congressional oversight hardly “implies” operational planning. This might have given American editors a clue they were printing tripe; as it stands, Wolf’s British editors at the Guardian should apologize for touching off a wasted weekend  in the ‘sphere, which formed a perfectly circular firing squad over this one. More on Naomi’s perfidious wolf-calling here, here, and here.