Rob's Blob » My Government http://robertcoss.com/blog The Best of My Brain Mon, 21 May 2012 14:12:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Informing Ourselves To Death http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/20/informing-ourselves-to-death/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/20/informing-ourselves-to-death/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 03:33:37 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4880 Continue reading →]]>  

Following speech was given at a meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart, sponsored by IBM-Germany.

Informing Ourselves To Death

by Neil Postman

The great English playwright and social philosopher George Bernard Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the common folk.  He meant that those who belong to elite trades – physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists – protect their special status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public.  This process prevents outsiders from understanding what the profession is doing and why – and protects the insiders from close examination and criticism.  Professions, in other words, build forbidding walls of technical gobbledegook over which the prying and alien eye cannot see.

Unlike George Bernard Shaw, I raise no complaint against this, for I consider myself a professional teacher and appreciate technical gobbledegook as much as anyone.  But I do not object if occasionally someone who does not know the secrets of my trade is allowed entry to the inner halls to express an untutored point of view.  Such a person may sometimes give a refreshing opinion or, even better, see something in a way that the professionals have overlooked.

I believe I have been invited to speak at this conference for just such a purpose.  I do not know very much more about computer technology than the average person – which isn’t very much.  I have little understanding of what excites a computer programmer or scientist, and in examining the descriptions of the presentations at this conference, I found each one more mysterious than the next.  So, I clearly qualify as an outsider.

But I think that what you want here is not merely an outsider but an outsider who has a point of view that might be useful to the insiders. And that is why I accepted the invitation to speak. I believe I know something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more about what technologies undo in a culture. In fact, I might say, at the start, that what a technology undoes is a subject that computer experts apparently know very little about. I have heard many experts in computer technology speak about the advantages that computers will bring. With one exception – namely, Joseph Weizenbaum – I have never heard anyone speak seriously and comprehensively about the disadvantages of computer technology, which strikes me as odd, and makes me wonder if the profession is hiding something important. That is to say, what seems to be lacking among computer experts is a sense of technological modesty.

[Robert] Technology Giveth and Technology Taketh Away

After all, anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure.  A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys.  Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates.  But it is never one-sided.

The invention of the printing press is an excellent example.  Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.  Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition.  Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion.

[Robert] Freedom for Who?

Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.

In the case of computer technology, there can be no disputing that the computer has increased the power of large-scale organizations like military establishments or airline companies or banks or tax collecting agencies. And it is equally clear that the computer is now indispensable to high-level researchers in physics and other natural sciences. But to what extent has computer technology been an advantage to the masses of people? To steel workers, vegetable store owners, teachers, automobile mechanics, musicians, bakers, brick layers, dentists and most of the rest into whose lives the computer now intrudes? These people have had their private matters made more accessible to powerful institutions.  They are more easily tracked and controlled; they are subjected to more examinations, and are increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them. They are more often reduced to mere numerical objects. They are being buried by junk mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies and political organizations. The schools teach their children to operate computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children. In a word, almost nothing happens to the losers that they need, which is why they are losers.

It is to be expected that the winners – for example, most of the speakers at this conference – will encourage the losers to be enthusiastic about computer technology.  That is the way of winners, and so they sometimes tell the losers that with personal computers the average person can balance a checkbook more neatly, keep better track of recipes, and make more logical shopping lists.  They also tell them that they can vote at home, shop at home, get all the information they wish at home, and thus make community life unnecessary.  They tell them that their lives will be conducted more efficiently, discreetly neglecting to say from whose point of view or what might be the costs of such efficiency.

Should the losers grow skeptical, the winners dazzle them with the wondrous feats of computers, many of which have only marginal relevance to the quality of the losers’ lives but which are nonetheless impressive.  Eventually, the losers succumb, in part because they believe that the specialized knowledge of the masters of a computer technology is a form of wisdom. The masters, of course, come to believe this as well.  The result is that certain questions do not arise, such as, to whom will the computer give greater power and freedom, and whose power and freedom will be reduced?

[Robert] Examples of Unanticipated Outcomes

Now, I have perhaps made all of this sound like a well planned conspiracy, as if the winners know all too well what is being won and what lost. But this is not quite how it happens, for the winners do not always know what they are doing, and where it will all lead. The Benedictine monks who invented the mechanical clock in the 12th and 13th centuries believed that such a clock would provide a precise regularity to the seven periods of devotion they were required to observe during the course of the day.  As a matter of fact, it did. But what the monks did not realize is that the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours but also of synchronizing and controlling the actions of men. And so, by the middle of the 14th century, the clock had moved outside the walls of the monastery, and brought a new and precise regularity to the life of the workman and the merchant. The mechanical clock made possible the idea of regular production, regular working hours, and a standardized product. Without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible. And so, here is a great paradox: the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; and it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.

I might add, by way of another historical example, that Johann Gutenberg was by all accounts a devoted Christian who would have been horrified to hear Martin Luther, the accursed heretic, declare that printing is “God’s highest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.” Gutenberg thought his invention would advance the cause of the Holy Roman See, whereas in fact, it turned out to bring a revolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Church.

[Robert] The Unspoken Danger of Computers

We may well ask ourselves, then, is there something that the masters of computer technology think they are doing for us which they and we may have reason to regret? I believe there is, and it is suggested by the title of my talk, “Informing Ourselves to Death”.  In the time remaining, I will try to explain what is dangerous about the computer, and why. And I trust you will be open enough to consider what I have to say. Now, I think I can begin to get at this by telling you of a small experiment I have been conducting, on and off, for the past several years. There are some people who describe the experiment as an exercise in deceit and exploitation but I will rely on your sense of humor to pull me through.

Here’s how it works: It is best done in the morning when I see a colleague who appears not to be in possession of a copy of {The New York Times}. “Did you read The Times this morning?,” I ask. If the colleague says yes, there is no experiment that day. But if the answer is no, the experiment can proceed. “You ought to look at Page 23,” I say. “There’s a fascinating article about a study done at Harvard University.”  “Really? What’s it about?” is the usual reply. My choices at this point are limited only by my imagination. But I might say something like this: “Well, they did this study to find out what foods are best to eat for losing weight, and it turns out that a normal diet supplemented by chocolate eclairs, eaten six times a day, is the best approach. It seems that there’s some special nutrient in the eclairs – encomial dioxin – that actually uses up calories at an incredible rate.”

Another possibility, which I like to use with colleagues who are known to be health conscious is this one: “I think you’ll want to know about this,” I say. “The neuro-physiologists at the University of Stuttgart have uncovered a connection between jogging and reduced intelligence. They tested more than 1200 people over a period of five years, and found that as the number of hours people jogged increased, there was a corresponding decrease in their intelligence. They don’t know exactly why but there it is.”

I’m sure, by now, you understand what my role is in the experiment: to report something that is quite ridiculous – one might say, beyond belief. Let me tell you, then, some of my results: Unless this is the second or third time I’ve tried this on the same person, most people will believe or at least not disbelieve what I have told them. Some- times they say: “Really? Is that possible?” Sometimes they do a double-take, and reply, “Where’d you say that study was done?” And sometimes they say, “You know, I’ve heard something like that.”

Now, there are several conclusions that might be drawn from these results, one of which was expressed by H. L. Mencken fifty years ago when he said, there is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it. This is more of an accusation than an explanation but in any case I have tried this experiment on non- professors and get roughly the same results. Another possible conclusion is one expressed by George Orwell – also about 50 years ago – when he remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no matter what.

But I think there is still another and more important conclusion to be drawn, related to Orwell’s point but rather off at a right angle to it. I am referring to the fact that the world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact – whether actual or imagined – that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.  We believe because there is no reason not to believe. No social, political, historical, metaphysical, logical or spiritual reason. We live in a world that, for the most part, makes no sense to us. Not even technical sense. I don’t mean to try my experiment on this audience, especially after having told you about it, but if I informed you that the seats you are presently occupying were actually made by a special process which uses the skin of a Bismark herring, on what grounds would you dispute me? For all you know – indeed, for all I know – the skin of a Bismark herring could have made the seats on which you sit. And if I could get an industrial chemist to confirm this fact by describing some incomprehensible process by which it was done, you would probably tell someone tomorrow that you spent the evening sitting on a Bismark herring.

[Robert] Do you believe that we have no consistent picture of the world anymore and therefore will fall for anything?

Perhaps I can get a bit closer to the point I wish to make with an analogy: If you opened a brand-new deck of cards, and started turning the cards over, one by one, you would have a pretty good idea of what their order is. After you had gone from the ace of spades through the nine of spades, you would expect a ten of spades to come up next. And if a three of diamonds showed up instead, you would be surprised and wonder what kind of deck of cards this is. But if I gave you a deck that had been shuffled twenty times, and then asked you to turn the cards over, you would not expect any card in particular – a three of diamonds would be just as likely as a ten of spades. Having no basis for assuming a given order, you would have no reason to react with disbelief or even surprise to whatever card turns up.

The point is that, in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.

In fact, George Orwell was more than a little unfair to the average person in the Middle Ages. The belief system of the Middle Ages was rather like my brand-new deck of cards. There existed an ordered, comprehensible world-view, beginning with the idea that all knowledge and goodness come from God. What the priests had to say about the world was derived from the logic of their theology. There was nothing arbitrary about the things people were asked to believe, including the fact that the world itself was created at 9 AM on October 23 in the year 4004 B. C. That could be explained, and was, quite lucidly, to the satisfaction of anyone. So could the fact that 10,000 angels could dance on the head of a pin. It made quite good sense, if you believed that the Bible is the revealed word of God and that the universe is populated with angels. The medieval world was, to be sure, mysterious and filled with wonder, but it was not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women might not clearly grasp how the harsh realities of their lives fit into the grand and benevolent design, but they had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.

[Robert] Is being coherent more important than being rational?

The situation we are presently in is much different. And I should say, sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious. It is rather like the shuffled deck of cards I referred to. There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore, in a sense, we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything. The skin of a Bismark herring makes about as much sense as a vinyl alloy or encomial dioxin.

[Robert] Something worth pondering…”we can be made to believe almost anything.”  I believe it.

Now, in a way, none of this is our fault. If I may turn the wisdom of Cassius on its head: the fault is not in ourselves but almost literally in the stars. When Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens, and allowed Kepler to look as well, they found no enchantment or authorization in the stars, only geometric patterns and equations. God, it seemed, was less of a moral philosopher than a master mathematician.  This discovery helped to give impetus to the development of physics but did nothing but harm to theology. Before Galileo and Kepler, it was possible to believe that the Earth was the stable center of the universe, and that God took a special interest in our affairs. Afterward, the Earth became a lonely wanderer in an obscure galaxy in a hidden corner of the universe, and we were left to wonder if God had any interest in us at all. The ordered, comprehensible world of the Middle Ages began to unravel because people no longer saw in the stars the face of a friend.

And something else, which once was our friend, turned against us, as well. I refer to information. There was a time when information was a resource that helped human beings to solve specific and urgent problems of their environment. It is true enough that in the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. This began to change, as everyone knows, in the late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg, from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a printing machine, and in so doing, created what we now call an information explosion. Forty years after the invention of the press, there were printing machines in 110 cities in six different countries; 50 years after, more than eight million books had been printed, almost all of them filled with information that had previously not been available to the average person. Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.

But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos.  If I may take my own country as an example, here is what we are faced with: In America, there are 260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes; 362 million tv sets; and over 400 million radios. There are 40,000 new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) and every day in America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail boxes every year. Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.

The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.

And there are two reasons we do not know what to do with it. First, as I have said, we no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don’t know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. Second, we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information. As a consequence, our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don’t know how to filter it out; we don’t know how to reduce it; we don’t know to use it. We suffer from a kind of cultural AIDS.

Now, into this situation comes the computer. The computer, as we know, has a quality of universality, not only because its uses are almost infinitely various but also because computers are commonly integrated into the structure of other machines. Therefore it would be fatuous of me to warn against every conceivable use of a computer. But there is no denying that the most prominent uses of computers have to do with information. When people talk about “information sciences,” they are talking about computers – how to store information, how to retrieve information, how to organize information. The computer is an answer to the questions, how can I get more information, faster, and in a more usable form? These would appear to be reasonable questions. But now I should like to put some other questions to you that seem to me more reasonable. Did Iraq invade Kuwait because of a lack of information? If a hideous war should ensue between Iraq and the U. S., will it happen because of a lack of information? If children die of starvation in Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of information? Does racism in South Africa exist because of a lack of information? If criminals roam the streets of New York City, do they do so because of a lack of information?

Or, let us come down to a more personal level: If you and your spouse are unhappy together, and end your marriage in divorce, will it happen because of a lack of information? If your children misbehave and bring shame to your family, does it happen because of a lack of information? If someone in your family has a mental breakdown, will it happen because of a lack of information?

I believe you will have to concede that what ails us, what causes us the most misery and pain – at both cultural and personal levels – has nothing to do with the sort of information  made accessible by computers. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront – spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. Does one blame the computer for this? Of course not. It is, after all, only a machine. But it is presented to us, with trumpets blaring, as at this conference, as a technological messiah.

Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better – best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.  I said a moment ago that computers are not to blame for this. And that is true, at least in the sense that we do not blame an elephant for its huge appetite or a stone for being hard or a cloud for hiding the sun.  That is their nature, and we expect nothing different from them. But the computer has a nature, as well. True, it is only a machine but a machine designed to manipulate and generate information. That is what computers do, and therefore they have an agenda and an unmistakable message.

The message is that through more and more information, more conveniently packaged, more swiftly delivered, we will find solutions to our problems.  And so all the brilliant young men and women, believing this, create ingenious things for the computer to do, hoping that in this way, we will become wiser and more decent and more noble.  And who can blame them? By becoming masters of this wondrous technology, they will acquire prestige and power and some will even become famous. In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy.  Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people – perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.

[Robert] What does Postman mean?  How does one “turn to” philosophy, theology, the arts, etc.?  Is information involved?  How does one access these subjects?  How does one “learn from such people?”

As things stand now, the geniuses of computer technology will give us Star Wars, and tell us that is the answer to nuclear war. They will give us artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is the way to self-knowledge. They will give us instantaneous global communication, and tell us this is the way to mutual understanding. They will give us Virtual Reality and tell us this is the answer to spiritual poverty. But that is only the way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the information junkie, and the technological idiot.

Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Here is what Goethe told us: “One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.” And here is what Socrates told us: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And here is what the prophet Micah told us: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”  And I can tell you – if I had the time (although you all know it well enough) – what Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Spinoza and Shakespeare told us. It is all the same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.

Even the humblest cartoon character knows this, and I shall close by quoting the wise old possum named Pogo, created by the cartoonist, Walt Kelley.  I commend his words to all the technological utopians and messiahs present. “We have met the enemy,” Pogo said, “and he is us.”

http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Criticisms/informing_ourselves_to_death.paper

                                               

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Observations and Reservations

1.       The Information Age has created the Age of Mis-Information or created so much noise and distraction that one cannot access wisdom.

2.       What does Postman mean?  How does one “turn to” philosophy, theology, the arts, etc.?  Is information involved?  How does one access these subjects?  How does one “learn from such people?”

Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people – perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.

3.       Is it possible to change the “sort of information made accessible by computers?”  Is that not evolving?  Has Facebook changed the sort of information made accessible?  Has it made a difference?

I believe you will have to concede that what ails us, what causes us the most misery and pain – at both cultural and personal levels – has nothing to do with the sort of information  made accessible by computers.

Share on Facebook ]]> http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/20/informing-ourselves-to-death/feed/ 0 How to Improve Education Overnight http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/19/how-to-improve-education-overnight/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/19/how-to-improve-education-overnight/#comments Sun, 20 May 2012 04:20:53 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4878 Continue reading →]]>

  • Education Week Teacher: The Error of Our Ways

    • The Error of Our Ways

      By Neil Postman
       

      We could improve the quality of teaching overnight, as it were, if math teachers were assigned to teach art, art teachers science, science teachers English. My reasoning is as follows: Most teachers, especially high school and college teachers, teach subjects they were good at in school. They found the subject both easy and pleasurable. As a result, they are not likely to understand how the subject appears to those who are not good at it, or don’t care about it, or both. If, let us say, for a semester, each teacher were assigned a subject that he or she hated or always had trouble with, the teacher would be forced to see the situation as most students do, would see things more as a new learner than as an old teacher. Perhaps he or she would discover how boring the textbooks are, would learn how nerve-racking the fear of making mistakes is, might discover that a question that has unsuspectingly aroused his or her interest must be ignored because it is not covered by the syllabus, might even discover that there are students who know the subject better than he or she could ever hope to.

    • Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/19/how-to-improve-education-overnight/feed/ 0     Husband’s Suicide Yesterday, Wells Fargo to Evict Wife Tomorrow Anyway http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/husbands-suicide-yesterday-wells-fargo-to-evict-wife-tomorrow-anyway/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/husbands-suicide-yesterday-wells-fargo-to-evict-wife-tomorrow-anyway/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 16:15:05 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4846 Continue reading →]]> 24

    Just like the last VICTIM OF WELLS FARGO I wrote about, Wells Fargo claimed that Norman and Oriane Rousseau had missed a mortgage payment.  But the payment HAD been made in person at a Wells Fargo branch by Cashier’s Check, and Mrs. Rousseau has the receipt for the transaction.

    The Rousseaus file a dispute with Wells Fargo over the supposed missing payment.  Wells Fargo “investigates” and comes back saying that the Rousseaus had stopped payment on the check.  They stopped payment on a Cashier’s Check?  Seriously?

    I don’t want to spend too much time on this ridiculous point, so here’s how Rousseau’s lawyer explains this technical yet wholly insipid issue, and then we’ll move on…

    The teller’s receipt establishes that the cashier’s check was in the custody and control of Wachovia on April 1, 2009, and the research by the Cashiering Department should have concluded that Wachovia screwed up by not applying the cash-equivalent funds to the Rousseau’s account. After delivery and acceptance to the branch office, it was Wachovia’s responsibility to safeguard the instrument; Wachovia itself effectively stopped payment on the cashier’s check.

    Okay, so let’s get back to the meat of the story…

    Concerned that they could not resolve the payment dispute but told they should apply for a loan modification, the Rousseaus hired a law firm and submitted a loan modification application.  After that it was standard operating procedure at Wells Fargo… we lost this, and we lost that, resend this, and resend that… for almost a year.

    Good Lord, Wells Fargo, could you please do something differently just once?  This article is almost becoming a form letter.

    Wells Fargo then of course told the Rousseau family not to make their payments, that they were being considered for a loan modification and that making their payments would immediately disqualify them.

    So, they saved their payments just in case Wells decided to deny them a modification.  Saved every single one just in case the bank decided to act like… well, Wells Fargo Bank.

    Then Wells sent them a Notice of Default, but when they called to say they wanted to reinstate their loan, Wells said what they always say… IGNORE IT… don’t worry about it, everything’s fine, it’s just an automated sort of thing… why, you’re being considered for a loan modification.

    Then Wells filed a Notice of Sale on October 28, 2010.  Their home would be sold on November 22, 2010.  And still Wells said… IGNORE IT… it’s just another automated sort of thing… your loan modification is still pending… and please re-submit some documents.

    It was November 10, 2010… just 12 days before their home was to be sold… when the Wells Fargo representative told the Rousseau’s that their loan modification had been denied.  The reason: Insufficient income.

    Yeah, but you know the funny thing about that is that their income hadn’t changed a nickel since they applied for the loan modification.  So, what’s the deal?  Did it take Wells Fargo a year to figure out the Rousseau’s income was insufficient?  Is that the story I’m supposed to be buying into?

    You’re a liar, Wells Fargo.  Either you knew you weren’t going to approve their loan modification, or you’re the most incompetent financial institution in the history of the world.  And you don’t just do this sometimes, you do this all the time… and especially to people in their 60s or older.  Why is that do you suppose? 

    In case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to, I’m actually collecting Wells Fargo stories at this point.  I figure it’ll be a hoot to put them all together into a book.  What do you think?  Should I autograph a copy for you when it’s done?

    That same day the Rousseaus found a lawyer and discovered they had a RIGHT TO REINSTATE their loan.  (Nice of Wells not to tell them that, by the way.)  They contacted Wells and requested a reinstatement quote… TWO DAYS LATER Wells finally gave them the phone number for RCS, the trustee.

    33

    But, RSC said that reinstatement would take two weeks and trustee sale was going off as planned in 8 days.  Wells got them their reinstatement quote too… it was dated November 15, but received via email on November 17, 2010.

    And it expired in two days and had to be received in Texas by November 19, 2010.

    The Rousseaus had more than enough in savings to reinstate their loan, they told Wells Fargo that… but now they couldn’t get the money from their IRA in time for the 2-day deadline and Wells refused to postpone the sale.

    So, the Rousseau’s home sold at the trustee sale on November 22, 2010.

    Next the Rousseaus go through a series of lawyers.  Finally, they get a good one and in July of 2011, the court grants an injunction contingent on them making a monthly payment of $1800.

    But, by December of 2011, Wells finally wore the Rousseaus down and they just couldn’t make December’s payment.  They used up all their money fighting Wells Fargo, and Norm had been unemployed since the foreclosure.  He was taking odd jobs as a handy man to make ends meet.

    Wells Fargo immediately goes to court… gets the injunction dissolved… then proceeds with the Unlawful Detainer… the lockout is set for May 15th, 2012… at 6:00 AM.

    THAT’S TOMORROW MORNING… AT 6:00 AM.

    Over this past weekend, Norm Rousseau talked with their attorney who is working pro bono by the way.  Basically, his lawyer tells him…

    “Look… let’s face the facts here.  We’ll proceed with the lawsuit.  We’ll fight like hell to get you back in the home, but you have to be ready with some sort of plan so you’re not left homeless and on the streets.”

    Norm found someone who has a 27-foot motorhome he can use, but after he gets it home on Saturday… it stops running… it won’t start.  But, Norm Rousseau is a man in his 50s with mad skills.  He goes to work around the clock taking apart the engine, doing everything he can to get it running so that on Tuesday morning he will have somewhere to house his family.  He’s up all night Saturday night, but still can’t get it running.  It’s too big to tow with a car.

    His mind must have been wandering late on Saturday night.  What must a man, a father, a provider be thinking when he knows that everything in life has somehow gone terribly wrong and there’s nothing left to do?  He must have been imagining the sheriff pulling up to evict his family on Tuesday morning… just two days away, as the motorhome’s engine lay in pieces in his driveway.

    I can only imagine what must have been going through his mind as he worked tirelessly, without sleep, on that engine and electrical system… as the clock ticked away the hours, I’m sure going faster and faster as time was running out.  Damn, it’s already 11:00 PM… then it’s 3:00 AM… and then 5:00 AM… and then before he knew it… a most unwelcome sun was shining… 9:00 AM…

    I can almost hear him thinking: “Damn it, what am I going to do?  How could this have happened?”  I can hear him swearing under his breath as he fights with the old parts trying to get them to work together again… I can see him staring at the engine as the will to go on was leaving his soul…

    Norman and Oriane Rousseau had bought their home in Ventura, California in 2000, putting nearly 30 percent down, which was their life savings.  In 2006, every time they went into the World Savings branch they’d get pitched on refinancing into one of World’s infamous Option ARM loans… that are now illegal, I believe.  After a couple of years of being pitched, they finally bought into World Saving’s lies.

    They had told World Saving’s loan officer, ERIC COOPER, that they were only interested in obtaining a conventional 30-year, fixed-rate loan.  They wanted consistent payments over the life of the loan.

    But COOPER assured them that they could significantly reduce their monthly payments… by more than $600 per month, with a lower interest refinanced loan. COOPER said that the new Pick-A-Payment loan product was better suited to their situation.

    He described the Payment Option ARM as the new industry standard.  He pointed out that the lower interest rate and payment flexibility were valuable advantages that were not available with other loan products.  And he said that even more importantly, unlike the previous WORLD loans, the interest rate was tied to an index with historically low rates that were continuing to decrease.

    According to COOPER, industry experts projected the interest rates to continue to fall, and so their monthly payments would be EVEN LOWER than their initial payments.

    42

    Even under the worst case scenario, COOPER assured them, the historical data for the index indicated that changes in the interest rate would only be slight, and if an increase should occur it would have a negligible effect on their monthly payments… no more than a few dollars.

    And besides, COOPER explained, the loan would only be around for a couple years, as they should expect to refinance within the next two years to take advantage of even more favorable interest rates and as the steadily rising housing values would surely increase the amount of their equity in the property.

    Then COOPER went for the close…

    On the condition that the Rousseaus apply for the new loan that very day, he would agree to waive their pre-payment penalty, stating that there would be virtually no costs to refinance beyond a $35.00 application fee.

    Yeah, COOPER, you’re a real peach.

    COOPER also convinced the Rousseaus that it was in their best financial interests to consolidate approximately $25,000 in unsecured debt in the refinance transaction, citing the benefits of the lower interest rate and the convenience of having only one payment.

    The Rousseaus provided COOPER with accurate and truthful information regarding their income and assets, and COOPER was such a nice guy that he offered to complete the Quick Qualifying Loan Application on their behalf.

    Gee, thanks COOPER.

    It was right around November 1, 2007, that WACHOVIA arranged for a notary to complete the closing at the Rousseau’s home.  The notary discouraged their review of the documents and directed them straight to the signature lines, but the Rousseaus noticed that a pre-payment penalty in excess of $4000.00 was included in the closing costs… the fee that COOPER had promised to waive if they applied that same day.  They called COOPER and he apologized for the oversight, but tried to get them to sign anyway, because it would only add a couple of bucks to their payment.

    They said… no… they’d reschedule the appointment and wait for the four grand to be taken off their bill, thank you very much.

    Two weeks later, the notary returned and they signed the paperwork for their new $368,000 state of the art loan.

    Now, the Rousseaus didn’t know it at the time, but COOPER was a lying sack of garbage that had misrepresented just about everything having to do with their new loan.

    The 7.2% interest rate of the new loan was actually higher than their old loan and higher than the 6.8% quoted by COOPER.  The “significant reduction in monthly payments” was an illusion accomplished by comparing the fully amortized payment of the 2006 loan with the negative amortizing minimum payment due under the new loan.

    The new loan, at annual change dates, added deferred interest to principal and the loan amortized, with payment increases capped at 7.5% for ten years.  Then, the new loan recast when negative amortization reached 125%.

    51

    The Rousseaus were never told about the new loan’s fully amortizing payment of $2,497.94 per month, in fact their payment amount was intentionally misrepresented by COOPER.  And the new monthly payment could never decrease because it represented the minimum payment possible… the negatively amortizing option that meant payments would increase at each change date.

    But that wasn’t enough for our boy COOPER.  The Rousseaus were charged $2,640.00 in origination fees for the “low cost” refinance, which made a tidy profit for World/Wachovia/Wells/Whatever bank.

    And best of all, an undisclosed Yield Spread Premium (“YSP”) of $4,195 was charged for placing them in a loan with an interest rate .50% higher than they qualified for, and that YSP increased their monthly payments by $123.32, or $44,395.20 over the life of the loan.

    The truth is that the Rousseaus were a heck of a long way from being considered well qualified for their new loan. Their fully amortized payment represented a total debt-to-income ratio of 27.91%, but that percentage was based on income figures that were grossly overstated by guess who? That’s right… COOPER.

    The Rousseaus told COOPER their total gross annual income was, $76,000, but somehow it got listed as $136,800 on the application.  You know… the application that good old COOPER was nice enough to fill out for the Rousseaus.

    4

    So, it was Sunday… yesterday… around 10:00 AM… and Norm couldn’t get the motorhome running.  He must have realized that he couldn’t handle the shame of seeing his wife and stepson evicted with nowhere to go… living on the street.  I don’t know how anyone could face that reality.  I don’t think I could. 

    How could it be that just 12 years before they had put their life savings down on their first and likely last home?  They had done everything right, but nothing was right anymore, and I’m sure to Norm Rousseau, nothing would ever be right again. 

    Their church had offered to help them, maybe find them somewhere to stay temporarily, and that would be fine for his wife and her son… but not for him.  I’m sure he wept as he looked at the engine parts laying there, realizing that it was over.

    Norm Rousseau called me a couple of months ago.  He wasn’t asking me to help him, in fact, he never even told me about what he was going through with Wells Fargo.  No, Norm was concerned about someone else who was losing a home.  A really good person who’s done so much for so many others, was how he described her.  It wasn’t right what the banks were doing he said.  He was hoping that I could do something to help someone he knew, because she was someone who had helped others… but he didn’t say a word about himself.

    Norman Rousseau gave up over that engine that sits in pieces in his driveway today, the sun shining down making the metal parts hot to the touch.  Maybe it was the frustration of having nowhere to turn for justice, maybe it was the shame he felt that somehow he had let his family down… even though that was not the case at all.

    Sometime mid-morning on Sunday Norm Rousseau ended his own life.  He went into his garage and shot himself.  At one point he could have reinstated his loan, that’s what he had planned to do, but Wells Fargo had made that impossible… they stripped him of everything he had.

    And now, his wife and stepson are to be evicted at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning.  They have nowhere to go, they have no money, they are still in shock over the loss of Norm.

    And I don’t know what to do really.  I’m going to call the sheriff’s office in Ventura… see if I can persuade them to drag their feet for a week before locking them out.  Their lawyer is trying to file something with the courts, but maybe you can think of something too.

    Maybe you can forward this article to people in the media.  Tell them what’s going on… maybe someone will care enough to do something.  It’s 11:21 AM and I’ve been up all night again, I can’t really keep this up much longer… but somehow I felt like telling Norm’s story was the very least I could do.

    Since Wells Fargo had already done the very least they could do.

    Rest in peace, Norm Rousseau.

    Mandelman out.

    http://mandelman.ml-implode.com/2012/05/husbands-suicide-yesterday-wells-fargo-to-evict-wife-tomorrow-anyway/

    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/husbands-suicide-yesterday-wells-fargo-to-evict-wife-tomorrow-anyway/feed/ 1     1%er Facebook Co-Founder Runs Away to Evade Taxes? Here’s What Eduardo Saverin Owes America http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/1er-facebook-co-founder-runs-away-to-evade-taxes-heres-what-eduardo-saverin-owes-america/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/1er-facebook-co-founder-runs-away-to-evade-taxes-heres-what-eduardo-saverin-owes-america/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 15:02:17 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4840 Continue reading →]]>

  • 1%er Facebook Co-Founder Runs Away to Evade Taxes? Here’s What Eduardo Saverin Owes America

    • The move allows the 30-year old Saverin to avoid paying a significant chunk of the taxes he will owe on the windfall coming his way with the impending Facebook IPO. In making this decision, the Brazilian native did more than expose his blind disregard for all that his adopted country has done for him. He has made himself the poster child for the callous class of 1 percenters who are all too happy to use national resources to enrich themselves, and then skate, or cry foul, when asked to pay their fair share. The story evokes the image of the marauding aliens from the movie Independence Day, who come to Earth to take what they can get before moving on to another planet.
    • Saverin, who stands to make billions from his 4 percent share in Facebook, hastily moved here at the age of 13 when his name turned up on a list of potential kidnap victims targeted by criminal gangs in Brazil. His father was a wealthy businessman, with a high profile in their home country, and so his family relocated to Miami to protect the youngster. Eduardo thrived in his new country, eventually attending Harvard University, where he had a stroke of life-changing luck when he was assigned future Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate. Their subsequent struggle over the company has been immortalized in the blockbuster Academy Award–winning film, The Social Network, which portrayed Eduardo as an outsider within the close-knit circle of friends, who eventually only won his stake in the company through a lawsuit based on an early investment in the company.
    • Writer Farhad Manjoo does an excellent job at pandodaily identifying all the ways that young Eduardo’s years in the United States played a role in the financial bonanza he’s about to experience. Starting with the obvious protection from kidnapping that wealthy people generally enjoy here in the United States all the way through the reasonably functional US court system that awarded him the shares that are about to make him a billionarie, this country played a critical role in this young man’s life. In return, Saverin has decided to relocate to Singapore, where he’ll pay no capital gains taxes on any Facebook shares he sells in the future. In fact, he’ll only pay an “exit tax,” which will be determined by his own team’s estimated value of his net worth at the time he renounced his citizenship. This little move could cost the US Treasury as much as $600 million dollars. That’s a novel way to thank your adopted country.
    • Saverin exemplifies the spoiled 1 percenter who erodes the fabric of the country that afforded such opportunity by not paying back the investment America made in him. His decisions are a slap in the face of every person who recognizes that, to be a place that can facilitate the birth of new innovations like Facebook, the United States needs resources. Doubt that? Remember what government funded the research that created the Internet and the web? Harvard University, where the Facebook plot was hatched, took in almost $700 million in federal grant support for tuition and research last year alone.
    • But Saverin’s decision is even more insulting to the millions of his less wealthy fellow immigrants who work hard to gain the privilege of giving back to the country that affords them opportunity to pursue their dreams in relative safety. Not to mention the DREAMers who offer to fight and possibly die for the country that they yearn to make their own.
    • Saverin aside, immigrants add an enormous amount to our economy every year. Despite right-wing rhetoric, even undocumented workers pay plenty of taxes too, including not only sales taxes but often payroll taxes.A study from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy showed that undocumented immigrants paid over $11.2 billion in taxes in 2010, including income, property and sales taxes.
    • Immigrants are also disproportionately entrepreneurial. A long-term study in 2008 showed that immigrants are almost 30 percent more likely to launch a small business than their non-immigrant counter parts. Their aggregate total contribution to the business income of the US economy is over 10 percent. In some places like Long Island, they account for upwards of 16 percent of small-business profits.
    • Most of these immigrants see paying taxes and generating income as an opportunity to reinvest in the country that extended a hand to them and their families. Not so Saverin.
    • This week we’re going to be overrun with stories about the Facebook IPO and the instant billionaires that it creates. It is the kind of economic fairy tale we love to pore over, with the enigmatic Zuckerberg ready to pay over $1 billion in taxes while asking the board to slash his salary to $1 annually. In the midst of this, Saverin’s craven selfishness will help us rethink not only enforcement of our tax code, but also how we recognize and define loyalty and patriotism for all of us, immigrant and native-born, who call America home.

    • Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/1er-facebook-co-founder-runs-away-to-evade-taxes-heres-what-eduardo-saverin-owes-america/feed/ 0     Wisdom Is Better Than Warheads ~ God http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/wisdom-is-better-than-warheads-god/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/wisdom-is-better-than-warheads-god/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 15:01:48 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4842 Continue reading →]]>

    Eccl 9:13-18

    One day as I was observing how wisdom fares on this earth, I saw something that made me sit up and take notice. 14 There was a small town with only a few people in it. A strong king came and mounted an attack, building trenches and attack posts around it. 15 There was a poor but wise man in that town whose wisdom saved the town, but he was promptly forgotten. (He was only a poor man, after all.)
    16 All the same, I still say that wisdom is better than muscle, even though the wise poor man was treated with contempt and soon forgotten.
    17 The quiet words of the wise are more effective than the ranting of a king of fools.
    18 Wisdom is better than warheads, but one hothead can ruin the good earth.

                                                   

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    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/16/wisdom-is-better-than-warheads-god/feed/ 0     How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/15/how-our-demented-capitalist-system-made-america-insane/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/15/how-our-demented-capitalist-system-made-america-insane/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 15:08:20 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4837 Continue reading →]]> “We live in an age when news consists of…Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. ”

    • Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane | Economy | AlterNet

      • When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft.
      • Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony.
      • The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress.
      • The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.
      • When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value.
      • Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion.
      • The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire.
      • Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies
      • Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers’ utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies.
      • The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a “democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.” Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, “The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois.” European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.
      • Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels.
      • Seventeenth century European philosophy and the Enlightenment, meanwhile, exalted the separation of human beings from the natural world, a belief also embraced by the Bible.
      • The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”
      • The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction.
      • The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.
      • The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who in 1846 was “adopted” by the Seneca, one of the tribes belonging to the Iroquois confederation, wrote in “Ancient Society” about social evolution among American Indians. Marx noted approvingly, in his “Ethnological Notebooks,” Morgan’s insistence on the historical and social importance of “imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind.” Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. … Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”
      • All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the power to transform us, is being steadily extinguished by our corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the elemental speech of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, “as a looking glass does his face.” And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and technology seeks to crush.
      • Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation “conditioned by religion,” but is an “essentially religious phenomenon,” albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage.
      • The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed.
      • There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/15/how-our-demented-capitalist-system-made-america-insane/feed/ 2     How Corporations Like Monsanto Have Hijacked Higher Education http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/14/how-corporations-like-monsanto-have-hijacked-higher-education/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/14/how-corporations-like-monsanto-have-hijacked-higher-education/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 15:57:01 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4835 Continue reading →]]>

    How Corporations Like Monsanto Have Hijacked Higher Education

    • Academic research is often dictated by corporations that endow professorships, give money to universities, and put their executives on education boards.
    • “When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer’s markets were stocked with ‘black market vegetables’ that ‘are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.’ It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket.”
    • Conducting research requires funding, and today’s research follows the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules.
    • “So if the rules and regulations and policies are based on science that is industry-biased, then the fallout goes beyond academic articles. It really trickles down to farmer livelihoods and consumer choice.”
    • all corporate agricultural research, $7.4 billion in 2006, dwarfs the mere $5.7 billion in all public funding
    • Influence does not end with research funding, however. In 2005, nearly one third of agricultural scientists reported consulting for private industry. Corporations endow professorships and donate money to universities in return for having buildings, labs and wings named for them
    • corporate boards and college leadership overlap
    • In 2009, South Dakota State’s president, for example, joined the board of directors of Monsanto, where he earns six figures each year. Bruce Rastetter is simultaneously the co-founder and managing director of a company called AgriSol Energy and a member of the Iowa Board of Regents. Under his influence, Iowa State joined AgriSol in a venture in Tanzania that would have forcefully removed 162,000 people from their land, but the university later pulled out of the project after public outcry.
    • What is the impact of the flood of corporate cash? “We know from a number of meta-analyses, that corporate funding leads to results that are favorable to the corporate funder,” says Schwab. For example, one peer-reviewed study found that corporate-funded nutrition research on soft drinks, juice and milk were four to eight times more likely to reach conclusions in line with the sponsors’ interests. And when a scrupulous scientist publishes research that is unfavorable to the study’s funder, he or she should be prepared to look for a new source of funding.
    • That’s what happened to a team of researchers at University of Illinois who were funded by a statewide fertilizer “checkoff” after they published a finding that nitrogen fertilizer depletes organic matter in the soil. Checkoffs are a common method used to market agricultural products, and they are funded by a small amount from each sale of a product – in this case, fertilizer. Richard Mulvaney, one of the U of I researchers, feels it is twisted that, in this way, farmers fund research intended to promote fertilizer use with their own fertilizer purchases.
    • But often the industry influence may be more subtle. Joyce Lok, a graduate student at Iowa State University, said, “If a corporation funds your research, they want you to look at certain research questions that they want answered. So if that happens it’s not like you can explore other things they don’t want you to look at… I think they direct the research in that way.”
    • The unholy trinity of industry, government and academics promoting industrial agriculture and de-emphasizing or dismissing sustainable methods has a long history and it continues today.
    • In its report, Food and Water Watch advocates a return to robust federal funding of research at land grant universities. But government is hardly immune from serving the corporate agenda either.
    • In a system in which corporations and government both fund research, but due to the revolving door, the same people switch between positions within industry, lobbying for industry, and within government, what is the solution?

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/14/how-corporations-like-monsanto-have-hijacked-higher-education/feed/ 0     The Right-Wing’s 20 Biggest Sex Hypocrites | Sex & Relationships | AlterNet http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/05/the-right-wings-20-biggest-sex-hypocrites-sex-relationships-alternet/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/05/the-right-wings-20-biggest-sex-hypocrites-sex-relationships-alternet/#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 14:10:12 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4806 Continue reading →]]>

  • The Right-Wing’s 20 Biggest Sex Hypocrites | Sex & Relationships | AlterNet

    • the more the GOP became the party of far-right Christian fundamentalism, the more Republican politicians and the evangelists who supported them became involved in major sex scandals.
    • Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart
    • talk radio host Laura Schlessinger
    • while Gingrich was lambasting Clinton
    • Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana
    • The Rush Limbaugh Show
    • Republican Larry Craig of Idaho
    • Evangelical minister Ted Haggard
    • Republican Henry Hyde
    • Jim Bakker
    • Republican James West
    • Republican Michael D. Duvall
    • Bob Allen
    • Tony Alamo
    • Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana
    • Mark Sanford
    • Lou Beres
    • Florida Republican Mark Foley
    • Republican Roy Ashburn
    • Rev. Michael Hintz

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

    Share on Facebook ]]>     http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/05/the-right-wings-20-biggest-sex-hypocrites-sex-relationships-alternet/feed/ 0     Full Show: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/04/full-show-big-money-big-media-big-trouble/ http://robertcoss.com/blog/2012/05/04/full-show-big-money-big-media-big-trouble/#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 03:51:30 +0000 Robert Coss http://robertcoss.com/blog/?p=4801 Continue reading →]]> Excellent program!

    • Full Show: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

      • I kept thinking of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglass, “Wait a moment, Mr. Lincoln, before you take up the issue of slavery, we have a commercial for you.”

      • MARTY KAPLAN: It was a rogue C.I.A. agent played by Kiefer Sutherland. And often the storyline would turn on his using torture because some terrible thing was about to happen. And even though it was against the rules, he knew that that was something you had to do. You had to overrule the handbook at moments like this. And then he would get the information from the suspect.

        The problem is that torture doesn’t work. Not only is it illegal and immoral, it doesn’t produce the kind of information we want. But the cadets at West Point, who are watching “24,” decided, involuntarily, “Well, that’s how it works.” So that even though their textbooks, even though their teachers in class were telling them, “Torture’s wrong and it doesn’t work.” Even though that was happening, they were absorbing the lesson of this melodrama on television.

        And it was so scary to the military brass that the dean of West Point had to go to Hollywood and plead with the shows not to do it. To tell them, “You have the power. You have a power that is beyond what you understand. And with that power comes responsibility. So please understand you can work black magic on our troops. Don’t do that.”

      • Well, the problem with telling the truth is that in this postmodern world, there’s not supposed to be something as truth anymore. So all you can do if you are a journalist is to say, “Some people say.”
      • They have taken over the process, in that regard.
      • Because if they did have to do with the content, then the moderators would have to spend all their time saying, “I can’t believe you just said that. That is so wrong. How can you say that?” Instead they say, “Well, Governor Perry, what do you think of what Congressman Bachmann just said?” That’s what happens. That’s what passes for journalism. And that’s what gets us to watch the ads for soap
      • Walter Lippmann in the 1920s had a concept called “spectator democracy” in which he said that the public was a herd that needed steering by the elites
      • We are programmed to love stories. That is in our genes. Our wiring says that when you say, “Once upon a time,” I am hooked.
      • What is the basic consequence of taking the news out of the journalism box and putting it over into the entertainment box?
      • Let us fight about you know, whether this circus or that circus is better than each other, but please don’t focus on the big change which has happened in this country, which is the absolute triumph of these large, unaccountable corporations.
      • MARTY KAPLAN: Exactly. Instead, the purpose of these debates is in order to have commercials.
      • BILL MOYERS: And it’s why when you see a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug, the picture’s lovely even though the words are horrifying.
      • We looked at every station airing news and every news broadcast they aired round the clock.
      • So because it’s not entertaining, because the stations think it’s ratings poison, they don’t cover it on the news.
      • People don’t hear about issues. They hear these negative charges, which only turn them off more. The more negative stuff you hear, the less interested you are in going out to vote. And so they’re being turned off, the stations are raking it in, and the people who are chortling all the way to Washington and the bank are the ones who get to keep their hands on the levers of power.
      • But since then, the notion of spectator democracy has, I think, extended to include the need to divert the country from the master narrative, which is the influence and importance and imperviousness to accountability of large corporations and the increasing impotence of the public through its agency, the government, to do anything about it. So the more diversion and the more entertainment, the less news, the less you focus on that story, the better off it is
      • BILL MOYERS: What struck me in those Republican debates is that they’d get into 15 to 20, maybe 30 minutes of an exchange, and then the moderator would say, “Hold it right there. We’ll be back after a commercial.”
      • “How much in that half hour was about transportation, education law enforcement, ordinances, tax policy?” everything involving locals, from city to county. The answer is, in a half hour, 22 seconds.
      • But then somewhere in the 1980s, when 60 Minutes started making a profit, CBS put the news division inside the entertainment division. And then everyone followed suit. So ever since then, news has been a branch of entertainment and, infotainment, at best.
      • you said the battle of the future is between big data and big democracy. In layman’s language, what is that?
      • BILL MOYERS: You once proposed that political ads be accompanied by a disclaimer. And it was this disclaimer, quote, “The scary music, photo shopped pictures, and misleading sound bites in this ad are tricks intended to manipulate you in ways of which you are not consciously aware. Voting for this candidate is unlikely to improve how awful things are.” When I read that, I thought, “Fat chance.”
      • We have continual partial attention to everything and tight critical attention on nothing.

      • BILL MOYERS: Do you think these ads make us stupid?

        MARTY KAPLAN: We start stupid. The brain is wired to be entertained. We don’t pay attention to the words. We pay attention to the pictures and the drama and the story. If it’s pretty, if it’s exciting, if it’s violent, if it’s fast, that’s where we are. So the fact that these mini dramas are being used to get us to vote for one person or another is just like what we all learned propaganda was used for and thought we learned our lessons from in World War II. They are propaganda. And propaganda is irresistible. If it were resistible, people wouldn’t do it.

      • “push journalism” and “pull journalism.”
      • the audience’s demand is what drives the placement and the importance of journalistic content.
      • “How dare you do this? That’s just the liberal media.” They have this trope of the liberal media, which they use in order to demonize anybody who is willing to enforce standards of accuracy.
      • No one is able to say, wait a minute, that’s not true.

    Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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    Bank of America Protest Draws Preemptive Crackdown

    The city of Charlotte, N.C., has announced broad restrictions on protests planned for a May 9 Bank of America shareholders meeting, citing safety concerns. The restrictions are prompting fears that constitutionally protected civil liberties may be suppressed, and that the preemptive bans for demonstrators could serve as a preview of the city’s tactics when it hosts September’s Democratic National Convention.

     

    Charlotte City Manager Curt Walton said Monday that citizens would be banned from carrying a host of commonplace items, including bicycle helmets, padlocks and permanent markers, along with weapons, mace, pepper spray and pipe. The rules also ban any animals that are not part of an official parade or working as service animals during the protest. Since violation of the ban within a designated protest area would be considered grounds for arrest, local citizens could be jailed for simply walking their dogs on May 9. Anyone carrying a backpack or a briefcase with the intent to hide any prohibited items can also be searched or arrested, as can anyone wearing a scarf or a mask with the intent to hide her identity.

     

    "How does law enforcement know that you’re carrying a backpack with the intent to conceal weapons? . . . It doesn’t seem like it’s possible for police to divine that intent," said Katy Parker, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. "That’s our concern, because then you have unfettered discretion on the part of law enforcement, and that’s unconstitutional."

     

    The city’s new rules for the protest, first reported by the Charlotte Business Journal, follow significant controversy surrounding the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting last week in San Francisco. Activists and community groups involved in the Wells Fargo event are organizing people to protest Bank of America’s foreclosure abuses and its heavy lobbying operations and political donations.

     

    Bank of America is headquartered in Charlotte, and Wells Fargo also has a presence there stemming from its acquisition of Wachovia, which was also based in the city. Local and state politics are heavily influenced by those big banks. Bank of America was not immediately available for comment Tuesday, and Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx declined to comment.

     

    Wells Fargo responded to the San Francisco protest by barring dozens of legitimate shareholders from the meeting and screening out those of the company’s owners who appeared critical of the bank, according to activists present at the meeting.

     

    "I had a proxy. I showed up 2 hours early," labor organizer Stephen Lerner told HuffPost. Lerner serves on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, and is a frequent critic of the financialization of the U.S. economy. "We got in line and they locked most of the doors, and they kept saying, ‘We’ll let you in later.’ And we saw people going in the front door, and they said, ‘Well, those are just people who are vendors.’ And then finally at the end, their justification was firecode — there wasn’t enough space for us. Only about 15 or 20 of our people with proxies got into the room. The riot squad was in there, and they were arrested."

     

    Wells Fargo spokesperson Mary Eshet told HuffPost, "Wells Fargo wants to welcome as many shareholders as possible to our annual shareholder meeting, and we did our best to ensure the meeting proceeded smoothly. We respect the right of people to peacefully assemble and express their opinions."

     

    By law, any shareholder of a corporation is allowed to attend the company’s annual meeting and cast votes in its board elections and on some of the company’s policies. On Monday, officials from 10 protest groups sent a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan warning him not to repeat Wells Fargo’s tactics.

     

    "Bank of America must not engage in the same bad faith practices with its shareholders," the letter reads. "You must ensure that the meeting room is big enough to accommodate all shareholders that have a legitimate right to be present and that all shareholders are in the same room with board members and top executives. In addition, you must honor legitimate shareholders’ rights, including the right to designate a proxy to attend the meeting in their stead. We will have legal and citizen voting rights observers on hand to observe and publicly report if legitimate shareholders are deliberately excluded from the meeting."

     

    The new anti-protest rules were originally approved by Charlotte City Council in January in preparation for the DNC, but also include a ban on public camping which resulted in the eviction of the city’s Occupy demonstrators. The council granted the City Manager the power to designate any event an "extraordinary event," which the ACLU worries will chill free speech. The police response to the May 9 protest will prime expectations for the September DNC, which is expected to be the focal point of much larger demonstrations. While the rules state that people arrested at protests can be exonerated if found to be possessing items "legitimately," or for never using the items violently — intensive searches and arrests could nevertheless stifle protests.

     

    Protesters say they will be bringing at least 100 members with proxies to the Bank of America event, with the hopes of getting them into the meeting to speak before company executives. But even if the protesters are ultimately blocked, organizers emphasize that aggressive response from banks and local officials serves as a public reminder of the power that large corporations can exercise over American society.

     

    "To me, this is a sort of glimpse into an America of the future, in which banks and corporations can write all of the rules," Lerner, the labor organizer, told HuffPost.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/bank-of-america-protest-civil-liberties_n_1468740.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

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