A police statement did not identify Ms. Brooks by name but said a 43-year-old woman had been detained for questioning by officers investigating both the phone-hacking scandal and payments made to corrupt police officers. A News International official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the woman detained was Ms. Brooks.

via British Police Arrest Rebekah Brooks in Phone Hacking – NYTimes.com.

How far up the ladder will they climb?

So Obama who while cracking wise and laughing at Trump at the White House Correspondents dinner as Bin Laden was being dumped in the ocean at his command is suddenly unable to face the Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va)?

Hey, remember when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said President Obama walked out of the debt talks yesterday? So, yeah — Obama says that never happened.

“No,” Obama told Cox TV’s Scott McFarlane in an interview Thursday. “At the end of the meeting, what I said to the group was what the American people feel: We have a responsibility to do the right thing. We shouldn’t be partisan, we should solve problems.”

via Obama: No, I Didn’t Storm Out Of The Debt Ceiling Talks (VIDEO) | TPMDC.

I’m sure Obama is annoyed and pissed off. But I don’t believe Cantor is the guy who can push him past a boiling point.

Shutdown forcing MillerCoors to pull beer from shelves.

Over at the Dish a reader wonders why a 26 mile Chinese Bridge is so much cheaper than a 2 mile refurbish of an existing US bridge. Maybe it’s the fact that median income in China is just under 10 times less than median income in the US and as we know from the iPhone factories, workers don’t have rights either.

Much like the slave trade in our country, forced, captive labor is the most effective and ghastly engine to their economy.

What do you get when college costs skyrocket but average incomes barely budge? Yet another blow to the middle class.

“As the out-of-pocket costs of a college education go up faster than incomes, it’s pricing low and medium income families out of a college education,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of financial aid sites FinAid.org and FastWeb.com.

via Rising college costs price out middle class – Jun. 13, 2011

Median Income is stuck at about $33k per person USD since 1988. The median income for households is $46,326 and for dual earner households is $67,348. Median tuition for four year institutions has increased from $2500 per year to $6500 per year. How much is an education worth when it allows you to face 4.5% unemployment during one of the greatest recessions of our country’s history? For people over 25 years of age the unemployment rates by education level break out like so (source June 3,2011 US Bureau of Labor and Statistics Employment Information release):

• 14.7% for high school dropouts
• 9.5% of holders of a high school diploma
• 8.0% for those who have some college/and or an associates degree
• 4.5% for college graduates

That’s half the current national unemployment rate of 9.1% and less than 1/3 of the rate for high school drop outs. That is a huge difference even before you account for the higher median salary earned by people who hold bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees.

Second, the returns from a degree have soared. Three decades ago, full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree made 40 percent more than those with only a high-school diploma. Last year, the gap reached 83 percent. […] Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better-paying companies or open their own businesses.

via College Degrees Are Valuable Even for Careers That Don’t Require Them – NYTimes.com.

In the previous post World War II decades, you could conceivably work for the summer or full time during the summer and part-time and pay for most if not all of school. That is all but impossible for today’s college entrants from middle class households due to college’s continually escalating tuition and fees. So many students have to borrow to pay for their educations, and yes, they do incur debt, but they more often than not are gainfully employed and able to pay those debts off. In too many articles the question becomes “is college worth it?” instead of: “what colleges and universities in a state offer the best value for the average student from that state?”. Example: If you are from my hometown of Harrisburg, Penn State Harrisburg and living at home is a much more affordable proposition than going to main campus at University Park . The degree is the same, the tuition is cheaper and most parents wouldn’t charge room and board to their children.

The Thiel Fellowship’s 20 under 20 fund, an eponymous project funded by Peter Thiel. Thiel alleges that college is turning people into debt slaves and that his fellowships results will prove the weight of that debt is unnecessary.

Instead, these teenagers and 20-year-olds are getting $100,000 each to chase their entrepreneurial dreams for the next two years. ”It seems like the perfect point in our lives to pursue this kind of project,” said Cammarata of Newburyport, Mass., who along with 17-year-old David Merfield will be working on software to upend the standard approach to teaching in high school classrooms. Merfield, the valedictorian of his Princeton, N.J., high school class, is turning down a chance to go to Princeton University to take the fellowship. […] ”Turning people into debt slaves when they’re college students is really not how we end up building a better society,” Thiel said. […] Thiel says the ”20 Under 20” program shouldn’t be judged on the basis of his own educational background or even the merits of his critique of higher education. He urges his critics to wait and see what the fellows achieve over the next two years.

I would assume Thiel means that his Fellowship will provide a template for a learning experience that is a superior alternative to a college education. Except what his program is achieving is not a replacement of the partial or complete college education.

1. Where do Silicon Valley’s power players and productive workers come from?

Apparently, half of the people who work in the region where Thiel made his money hail from Thiel’s Alma mater. Stanford University. I’ts one of the top research institutions of higher learning in the world. Not only that, Stanford is a primary source of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs:

Today, more than 50 percent of Silicon Valley’s product comes from companies of Stanford alumni — and that excludes Hewlett-Packard, one of the Valley’s largest firms.

Not only can you learn how to create, the networking opportunities are staggering. Thiel can draw on his connections from Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law. He also lectures at Stanford as well. Thiel doesn’t want critics to consider that he has been extensively educated and continues to contribute to the Stanford academic community years after his graduation when debating whether or not his Fellowship program makes sense.

2. How do the countries where Thiel has lived value educational attainment?

Thiel, a native of West Germany (now part of unified Germany) and grew up in Foster City, CA which today boasts median incomes of $135470/$118231 for households/dual earner households, respectively). Germany allows students to go to college for free or next to nothing as long as they pass a certain battery of tests. If he wants no debt slaves, he would propose that the US adopt a system more like Germany’s the more expensive a program is, but that would be against his libertarian ideal.

3. Thiel believes the biggest source of academic research funding is actual a detriment to society’s progress.

Thiel is a libertarian. A radical one. You know who subsidizes most research funding? The federal government. Let alone the cheapest access many students had to funding for school was the Pell Grant program which has been reduced due to the new found conservative implemented (libertarian owned) thirst for less government intervention. Where would students get 100,000 per student for two years for any program in perpetuity?

4. Thiel’s candidates have access to taxpayer subsidized AP classes.

Most candidates in this fellowship group seem to have been raised in affluent, above average environments. Two are from Newburyport, MA and Princeton, NJ, localities that also enjoy a much higher median income than the average tax payer. Newburyport, Mass. has a yearly median income of $78,557K per household, $103306 for dual earner households. Princeton, NJ has a median income of $94580 per household and $123098 for dual earner households. Why does this matter? Public schools here have multiple AP courses under English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Science. If these kids graduated from these high schools with AP credits under their belt, they are already at the “Some college” level of educational attainment and there was no debt incurred to pay for those classes. (This includes the home schooled fellows.)

5. The Doogie Howser candidate.

Some of the fellowship recipients have become college graduates prior to being awarded Thiel’s grant and 100k:

The foundation’s website said the winners include Andrew Hsu, who started at the University of Washington at age 12 and was, at age 19, pursuing his Ph.D. at Stanford when he left to work on his startup. Darren Zhu is dropping out of Yale to pursue his interest in synthetic biology, and 19-year-old Eden Full has already founded a solar energy startup. Laura Deming enrolled at MIT at age 14 and is working on ways to extend the human lifespan by hundreds of years.

Even more of the fellowship recipients have attended college or taken college level courses and I would bet many if not all have parents who were able to direct them to advanced learning experiences (summer or after school advanced classes, internships at companies they worked with or owned) and more resources than the average teen student (information access and equipment). These are things most accessible to students through college study.

6. Theil’s candidates have most probably been offered full academic scholarships to a lot of fine programs

What of the fact that these top students probably all had tons of scholarship offers. In fact these offers may even help guide the Fellowship’s selection. Thiel is attempting to claim he is striking out against the college debt issue by enriching students who have the best chance of getting free education.

The Thiel Fellowship seems like a fine program (as long as there are no strings attached after the 100K and two years are up).

A fellowship program that is basically an incubator for exceptional students run by an exceptionally rich businessman with the ability to provide exceptionally generous capital is an exciting alternative to internships, co-ops and entry level jobs for the very best graduates of the very best programs. In that, this fellowship is an innovative alternative to an honors program.

But it isn’t an experience mutually exclusive from a college education nor the college experience. Furthermore, Theil’s program does nothing to create a free market solution that would keep kids attending college and leave them with less debt. I don’t know what “the results” will show except that Thiel solved a problem that doesn’t need solving by giving those who have the best funding options for college (students with affluent educated parents, top grades, top assessment test results, genius level IQ, stable nutrition) more money. Thiel is a hard edged libertarian and this fellowship is a model for finding the cheapest possible way to recruit the best talent to create corporate enterprise.

This fellowship and any other programs like it should be mentioned in “is college worth it” conversations when it is an actual functional alternative for the average student. Right now it isn’t. The great thing about the US higher education systems and private counterparts is that there are so many opportunities to students around the nation and rising tuition does decrease that access, but it isn’t completely prohibitive to the middle class.

After reading about Sweeney’s poor leadership in New Jersey, I searched my Google Reader feeds for Sweeney and found this gem that exposes the bizarre rationale he used to justify forging a a bill with Governor Christie’s approval in mind that effectively ended NJ public employee union right to collectively bargain for health benefits.

In a stunning turnaround, New Jersey state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D) said his vote last year against marriage equality was the “biggest mistake” of his political career.

via New Jersey Senate President Says Opposing Same-Sex Marriage Was ‘Biggest Mistake’ Of His Career | ThinkProgress.

So Sweeney, in a state that already has civil unions, acknowledges he voted against the Democratic base preference for marriage equality, in a blue state because he thought it was politically expedient. To make up for that, he promptly decided that he would no longer vote for political gain. So his vote against marriage equality, an issue polling at well over 50% among NJ Dems at the time, became his rationale to craft a budget that destroyed NJ public employees right to collectively bargain for health benefits. Seriously.

The Democrat made the remarks after a floor speech regarding a bill that could overhaul state workers’ pensions and health insurance. He compared the political calculation of this bill to last year’s consideration of marriage equality, adding that he would no longer decide how to vote based on political gains.

Again, the rationale, however stunningly ridiculous, doesn’t really matter in the end. The results do. Democrats in NJ had two opportunities to be at the forefront of protecting workers rights and advancing marriage equality, two core base issues, and both times Sweeney was at the forefront of leading his caucus to failure.

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

FEC is useless.

From Adam Serwer: U.S. Sentencing Commission Makes New Crack Sentencing Guidelines Retroactive.

Halperin should focus on telling true stories meant to be newsworthy, not comedy. Part of reporting is having a basis of respect for the subjects you cover. If Halperin can’t refrain from calling the President a “dick” because he hurt his feelings, what does he think of “real” Americans he has to cover every day? He just diminished the attention the actual press conference will get and made himself the story. He is Time magazine’s editor at large. Instead of blaming the World Wide Web for reduced circulation, news organizations should blame their professional standards and thirst for sensationalism that enable and encourage behavior like Halperin’s.

Guilty Blago will probably mean that Jesse Jackson, Jr. will be targeted by the same knives came out for Anthony Weiner:

Jackson had been accused of telling one of his major campaign donors to give money to Blagojevich so the former Illinois governor would appointed Jackson to the Senate seat left empty by President Barack Obama.

via End Of Blago Case Could Mean House Ethics Probe For Jackson Jr. | TPMMuckraker

I don’t know what Dem leadership can do once they set the threshold for cutting a representative loose at “this scandal is a distraction so our colleague has to go” and at the same time can’t expedite ethics investigations.

The DREAM act is not controversial. Nothing is controversial about this.

One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.

via My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant – NYTimes.com

There needs to be more attention to the Republican sponsors of the bill who bailed on it for political expediency.

Our health care system? Socialized with a mix of government (more efficient/inexpensive) and private (less efficient/expensive) payers:

But 1986 does seem to me to be the real moment when America socialized medicine – under Reagan! In a real Ron-Paul style free market in healthcare, where everyone has to buy their own insurance or not and deal with the consequences, chronically sick poor people must, in principle, be left, at some point, to suffer and die alone or bankrupted. Something in the American psyche does not want that to be America. Whatever part of the psyche that is, it sure isn’t inspired by Ayn Rand. It wants to put a floor under human suffering and sickness, to have a minimal baseline for care. We don’t want to see people dying in the streets.

via Emergency Care Isn’t Health Care, Ctd – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

The ACA will reduce these emergency room visits which every insured health care user already pays for. The Republican party wants to enact policies that will make ER for neglected care trips or desperation moves like this, neccessary:

The Washington Post reports that, according to the inmates handbook, prisoners in North Carolina typically only have to pay a $5 to $7 co-payment for most visits or emergencies.

“However, no one will be denied access to healthcare whether they have money or not,” states the handbook. “You will not be charged for visits about life- or limb-threatening emergencies, referrals to specialty clinics, defined chronic disease such as TB, HIV, high blood pressure, diabetes, pregnancy care, vaccinations, and periodic health assessments.”

State prisoners in North Carolina absolutely have better health care then the average American.

The cost of health care for the average American in 2010? $8100/year according to the NIHCM report on health care spending. Also, 5% of the population is responsible for 50% of the health care spending as obesity becomes a greater cause of superfluous health care need. In 1997 health care spending was $4166/person. From 2005 to 2009 spending rose 18.4%.