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Good Jobs First is a national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. We provide timely, accurate information on best practices in state and local job subsidies, and on the many ties between smart growth and good jobs. Good Jobs First works with a very broad spectrum of organizations, providing research, training, communications and consulting assistance.
Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.
Finally, the author argues that anti-rational government is not the product of a Machiavellian plot by “Washington” but is the inevitable result of “an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge” that has left many ordinary citizens and their elected representatives without the intellectual tools needed for sound public decision-making. The real question is not why politicians have lied to the public but why the public was so receptive and so passive when it heard the lies. At this crucial political juncture, The Age of American Unreason challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what our descent into intellectual laziness and our flight from reason have cost us as individuals and as a nation. [Emphasis added.]
People power goes techie, ousts Tunisian dictator
Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 01:25:00 01/16/2011
Seeds of protest
The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the small town of Sidi Bouzid burned himself to death in despair at the frustration and joblessness confronting many educated young people here. But the protests he inspired quickly evolved from bread-and-butter issues to demands for an assault on the perceived corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling family.
The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Bouazizi and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the US Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, which detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president’s family. And the protesters relied heavily on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.
It's a good think Ike is dead… else he would realize his nightmare survived. Chuck
Newsday January 13, 2011 Pg. 34
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
Eisenhower warned against the influence of arms production, but did we listen?
By Bob Keeler
EXTRACT: Now, the deficit has caused some unexpected voices to say, ever so softly, that everything is on the table – including defense cuts. Last week, Gates talked about plans to slow the defense budget's growth by $78 billion over five years. That dainty nibble is a start, but we need big bites. A group called the Sustainable Defense Task Force has laid out ways to cut $1 trillion in 10 years. That's better.
I have read the released Odom interview MFR. Odom is not kind (perhaps not fair) to CIA or Gen Mike Hayden. Interview, like all others in extensive series, was done circa 2003-2004. Some prominent military SO names, such as Schoomaker and Boykin are among the interviewees. Extent of redaction ranges from fairly light to very heavy. Pre-sanitization/release original classification of interview MFRs ranges from U to TS//SCI (multiple caveats). As documented, little/no evidence that 9/11 Commission interviewers operated in hostile/coercive manner. Even through sanitization, knowledgeable readers can glean some interesting opinions.
The CIA is “out of control” and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.
“The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control,” says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.
Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.
. . . . . . .
While deeply critical of the CIA, Odom also had harsh words for other NSA directors, including Adm. Bobby Inman, whom he accused of “playing games” in Washington. He also said that Gen. Michael Hayden, then the director of the NSA, was “destroying” the agency and didn't know his “intellectual limits.”
Mark Zuckerberg is Time's Man of the Year, the movie about him seems likely to be an Oscar winner, and now Goldman Sachs is raising $1.5 billion from its favorite investors on behalf of the social networking company.
At the very same moment, Facebook's only real competitor –NewsCorps' waning social networking site, MySpace — is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.
But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, as I read the situation, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. These aren't the symptoms of a company that is winning, but one that is cashing out.
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