City School Northampton: Week 1

City School - A Great Idea

I expect to attend all 10 weeks of City School here in Northampton, Massachusetts. You may ask, what, pray tell, is City School? To give you an intro, please see my previous post. To summarize and save you time (although my ego would appreciate it if you read that post and send me your comments or post them at the bottom of my blog or link directly to my blog from your blog or - and this would be best of all - you could run with idea and try to get something similar started in your community.). See I haven't even summarized yet, so here I go.

City School is an education program for the citizenry of a municipality to acquaint them with how their city works and perhaps inspire them to volunteer their time or share their experiences with others. When I find out the origins of City School, I will share this. When I find out, I will not be surprised that the idea is simply the result of a stroke of brilliance by a civic-minded citizen of our town. Currently it is attributed to our mayor. But as I learned during our first week of City School, our Mayor is very busy - perhaps too busy to come up with this great idea.

I might as well say here, that I do not expect to be particularly particular here. I don't expect to criticize deficiencies that I encounter. (OK, I might point out something.) I will not strictly be a cheerleader. I know that most of the people doing the work here at City School are unpaid or under-paid and overworked. I have the easy end of things. I show up and listen. I ask questions and they are answered - no questions asked. (Errr, am I allowed to write a sentence like that last one?) I might treat the whole thing like my own private reality show. Except there are no cameras and I'm learning the reality of smaller end of government. Hey, this would make a great reality show - unfortunately there's not enough drama and no gimmick.

One more thing, I don't expect to put all my notes here. Sorry, but don't think I can deal with listing all the details, and I doubt you want to read it all.

Week One

OK, I've done two weeks of City School, and I had better do my homework here and catch up on this chronicle. We don't have real homework, although we were told that there might be some information that we would receive ahead of time, so we might be prepared. One advantage to being prepared would be that we could have good questions for the presenters.

Week One started off with me meeting the 17 other students and an aide to the Mayor of Northampton. Karen has been arranging all this, something I appreciate since she doesn't work full time and probably has better things to do at 6 o'clock at night.

School Committee

We had a presentation from Stephanie Pick who is on the School Committee. People elsewhere might call this the School Board, just like they call the "PTA" here the "PTO". The School Committee is elected. There are 9 members - one for each of our 7 Wards and 2 elected at-large. The Mayor chairs the meetings and also gets one vote. The committee also has a yearly joint meeting with City Council. Stephanie said that during elections most seats are unfortunately uncontested. (It's my impression that there is a theme in city government that if any seat is open, then it is likely to be contested, but otherwise the incumbent is likely to get a free-ride.) She spoke about how she first ran for School Committee - she was asked to run. She said how helpful it is to have a contested election - you visit constituents, debates issues, etc. (This is something I'm sure I will hear again.)

Stephanie had a few take-aways for us. One is that 61% of the city budget dollars go to education - $28 Million dollars. The allocation of this comes down to these 10 votes. Not enough people realize this. If you care, the you should get involved. If you care about an issue, speak up. They meet monthly on that 2nd Thursday of the month at JFK Middle School. They also have subcommittee meetings and special meetings. They review contracts and hire the superintendent of schools. They do many things. Stephanie said that unfortunately the always need to make do with less money each year. Even if they get a level-service budget, costs for everything will go up, so there will need to be cuts. Stephanie said that she has deep regrets cutting anything and also that once a program is eliminated, it is hard to ever restore. (This makes sense, since to bring it back, you'd be starting from scratch.)

It's my sense that the the people on the School Committee are parents, educators, and all are people who care about students and education. They are making very important decisions for our community and our children.

Mayors Office

Regrettably, the Mayor was not at our first meeting, but I am sure we will hear from her in the future.
(I actually have a syllabus, but I'm not about to type it in here. Plus it's top-secret. Just kidding about it being secret. BTW, I haven't named our Mayor here, maybe I'll name her later or after we finally meet in class. I've met her in the super-market - actually the Food Coop. Hey, it's a small town - that's one of my themes here if you haven't already guessed. Anyway, I will refer to her as 'her' or 'she' or 'the Mayor'. I've also chosen to capitalize whatever I want, so it stands out. I realize I could make it bold or put it in italics, but I probably won't. Oh, one more thing, as you may notice, I may include healthy digressions like this one.)

Representing the office of the Mayor was Chris Pile Finance Director of the City of Northampton. I will be missing some information here, as promised, but to summarize, our Mayor is busy. We have a 'Strong Mayor' form of government. This is something that has been in place since the city was incorporated in 1884. OK, it may have came after that, but it's in place. It's in the current city charter.

A 'strong Mayor' does everything. She is the Energizer-Bunny of the city. Here's a non-exhaustive list: the Mayor chairs City Council and the School Committee, signs contracts and city council documents, prepares agendas for same, does labor relations with the City's 14 unions, evaluates and supervises department heads and meets weekly with most of them, negotiates health insurance - with insurance companies, belongs to various advocacy groups like the Western Mass Mayors Association, the Mass. Municipal Association, and is spokesperson of the city. She is our public face. She meets with the Chamber of Commerce, local Representatives, presents the Budget. The budget includes a capital program to maintain city assets. (We'll learn more about finance later.) She mediates and meets with constituents. And from what I hear, she mediates a lot. Actually, everyone here mediates a lot (another  small town thing.) In all this, we were told that the Mayor is very busy. For contrast, the City of Worcester, Mass. has a "weak Mayor" (no offense intended). They hire a manager who does the heavy lifting and leave the Mayor in to represent the city in some way.

City Council

You thought I might be done, but no, there's more. We have a City Council. Like the Mayor, they were recently elected. David Narcewicz is the very new President of the City Council and gave us some information about it. There are 9 members, representing the 7 Wards plus 2 at-large seats. The Mayor chairs meetings and this is one of only 2 or so cities in the state in which the Mayor does so. This is by statute in our city charter. (In fact, all those weird duties of the Mayor I mentioned before are mainly based on what she has to do by law. In this case, it's city law, which being a city charter which actually makes it state law. If you are like me and not the lawyering kind, then you will wonder about the woven fabric of law. I feel like a little of it is starting to make sense to me. Perhaps I will look into the subject of Law a little more.)

The City Council can approve or reduce the Mayor's proposed budget. In other words, they are not allowed to mess with it or submit their own budgets. They can only do what I said back there 2 sentences ago. They approve major official actions by the Mayor. They meet the 1st and 3rd Thursday every month. Narcewicz who was elected by the rest of the Council as Council President gets to appoint people to committees. There are a dozen or committees and most everyone wants to be part of 2 or 4 committees and likewise there are 3 committees which nobody wants to be on. Narcewicz mentioned that we was about to make the appointment announcements and most Councilors will get their first choice, often Ordinance and Finance are popular, but some would end up on committees they were not interested in. To me, Appointments sounds dull, but then again you get to review potential appointments around the city and interview people, so perhaps it might be fun.

The Council is subject to the Open Meeting Law which requires an agenda, 48 hour notice, and minutes for meetings. It has been a subject of recent controversy of late. I'm pretty sure that emailing and texting to make decisions is a no-no. Generally, my sense is that usually is on the ball about this stuff. NCTV, our public access TV, records the meetings, and the Council seems willing to embrace new technology to meet the requirement to record them.

Much of this information was prepared by Narcewicz ahead of time, but as we are City School, many of the people in the class asked many good questions.

City Charter

OK, I can sense you are getting weary. I am getting weary. I think this has been a long class for you, so I'll try to finish up. Council President Narcewicz spoke to us about how city charters work. I can only give you my take. Basically to change the city charter, you need to elect a charter commission, then vote on their proposals. Alternatively, for some changes the City Council can adopt a change and then get the Massachusetts State Legislature to approve the change. Cool, eh? There is a new city charter review committee forming. They are simply going to read that long document and see if anything is antiquated or cumbersome considering it's been over a 100 years since the first version was written. You could see if you'd like to join it. Just call up City Council or the Mayor and see if they need help. If you want to read our city charter and all of its amendments, you will find it here. It's in a hypertext form. There are real things in the City Charter which maybe should go. We actually have this on the books:

In accordance with the provisions of the laws of the commonwealth, the Mayor and City Council shall annually in the month of January, and from time to time as may be convenient, appoint:

A. One or more Measurers of Wood and Bark and other articles.

B. One or more Weighers of Coal and other articles.

C. One or more Surveyors of Lumber. 

And the city does do it because they are obligated by the Charter.

Government Organization


We were given some organizational charts as to the structure of City Government. I may digest this for you in a different post, or if you are lucky, I'll never get around to it. Actually, if you are lucky, I'll find a copy of the chart on the web and and let you browse it at your leisure.

So that ends our first class. See you next week!

City School Northampton: thinking about the government

OK, I've been thinking about the government. I've had for me what is becoming a typical convergence of events.

Consider this:

As you know, I moved to Massachusetts a few years ago, a state (or commonwealth as we call it here) where some of the seediest of seeds of our nation were first sown.

This week my step-father-in-law just completed and published a book (now available as a PDF on CD). His book is a time-line of Massachusetts history. The last 1,000 years worth. It covers events and people from the original inhabitants, to those tourists on Mayflower cruise, to the real Tea Party, to the toll house cookie, to the Big Dig. He has written other books including a definitive citizens guide, Your Massachusetts Government. It unfortunately is out of print, and for some reason a copy is selling for $100 used. I'm reading this book, since the author kindly gave our family a well read copy when we moved here.

We recently had our newsy premature election of Republican Scott Brown to represent us in the US Senate, so our state is back in play as they say. Those of you who think the outcome was a bit odd should recall that we had four Republican governors before the present Democrat one. The prior Democrat governor was Michael Dukakis. And now that I have totally digressed on the subject of Governors, I might as well add that our first governor was John Hancock. (Hancock should be famous enough, or at least his eponymous signature is, if in-fact a signature can be such, that I won't need to find a special web link for his name.) Even Calvin Coolidge was a governor of Massachusetts. Sorry, a few more digressions are coming, but there's a point somewhere. Coolidge was President, as you know, but he also was Mayor of the city of Northampton - the City that I live in. A city older than this country - though technically it was a town back then. Which brings us back from my Scheherazade moment to the title of this entry.

You see, I'm attending City School. I'm not sure of the actual history of it, but our city first offered this "school" on how our city government works last year. And I enrolled this year. I've taken two classes, and I've learned quite a few things. Actually, none of it is the stuff I wrote about above. In City School, there are classes once a week. Each class is in a different location around our city and at each class city employees, officials, or volunteers make presentations on the workings of our local government. I just finished week 2 and so far we have met at City Hall and the Lilly Library. There are no strings. We get to ask probing questions like "How much do you earn?". FYI, City Councilors get a $2,500 stipend. Not much, considering they are elected, meet several times a month, and get calls and emails from their neighbors complaining about things like missing street signs. (My spouse did just that last week, and this week we have a new sign.) Back to City School. I heard that this program was so successful last year, that other municipalities have approached our Mayor to see if they can copy this model. So far, we have met with our City Council President, Mayoral staff, a School Committee member, librarians from our two famous libraries, the head of our Arts Council and our Health and Recreation Departments. I had nothing like this experience before and where I grew up (suburban Long Island) and later lived (New York City) there was no chance that I would get to do this.

Soon, I hope, I will try to tell you more here about what I'm learning at City School and perhaps promote the value of educating citizens.

See you next week!

My Friend is a Stooper

Yesterday I read a story in the New York Times, and much to my surprise, I found a new word: Stooper. A Stooper is a culler, a gatherer, a dumpster-diver. A person who separates the wheat from the chaff, although in this case the odds are against them, since there is mostly chaff here. The kind of Stooper that the Times writes about spends his days on the floor of the OTB going through spent racing tickets and making a good living. It turns out that yearly there are over $4 million dollars in unclaimed tickets discarded by accident or by gamblers who gave up in a haste.

My good friend is a Stooper, but instead of racing tickets, it's Metrocards. And instead of making a living, he either uses them himself or gives them to others in need of a ride. Instead of spending his days at the OTB, he's running the streets of NYC with a brief pause at a subway station to do some collecting. He also has been know to use them creatively. On the bottom left of his blog, you'll see a running inventory of his discoveries.

(The photo above was found on the web via a web search for "metrocard art" and to my knowledge was not taken by me or anyone I know. If you took it and want credit or want me to remove it or if the image link goes to your server and you don't want me using your bandwidth or if that is you in the photo and you think I have encroached on your privacy, please contact me. So much for internet-style photo credits.)

AT&T Hurt My Feelings

I don't own an iPhone.

I've been paying AT&T oodles for years and have reported more than once that their service is spotty in my own home. But it seems that AT&T only cares about iPhone users. They recently released an app so that iPhone users can tell them where their service is weak. Of course, the puzzle is how to actually use their network to report network problems when that same network is not working.

And if your plain old cell phone doesn't work? Well, you can wait on hold with customer service on your land line. Then complain. And then they will likely never get back to you or fix it. That's what happened here.

Shakespeare's Manager

I hadn't looked at Geni in a while, but when I first used it, it was an awesome site to build your family tree - if you care about such things. It recently notified me that there are other family trees out there with my relatives on it, but they now charge monthly for me to find out more. Other features they added were statistics on your family - average life expectancy (59 male, 63 female for my family), age and birth month distribution. Handy, but a bit compulsive if you ask me.

Regardless, they are popular enough that people have entered some famous people, presumably distant relatives, or in a wiki-like manner in the pursuit of complete knowledge they have entered the well know family trees of well known people. Shakespeare and Dickens are here. Is Jesus and his Mom and Dad here?

And check out the link to contact Shakespeare's manger. I wonder who gets that email?

The Connecticut River

The Connecticut River is the longest river in New England. It's beatiful as it winds its way down to the Long Island sound. Here are some photos taken by me last weekend from the air.

Baby Cecil DeMille

The great director Cecil B. DeMille was born nearby in the Hilltowns. Someone in Ashfield unearthed this factoid a few years ago and decided to honor him with a film festival. Since he only "resided" in the town for the first few days of his life, they chose to limit all the films to 3 minute shorts to compensate. Pictured here is the actual award to honor the winner.

Stupid Reason To Move To Massachusetts - Cheap Gas

Yup, in case you hate the price of gas and the place where you live, then here's a real lousy reason to move near me.

This was taken nearby on October 10. The price is about 20¢ higher today which is still pretty low.

157 and other numbers

I came across 157 this morning on Wikipedia.

157 is the number equal to 100 + 50 + 7, following 156 and preceding 158.

Juicy information about this number with, if you notice, links to 7, 50, 100, 156, 158.

Yup, you guessed it, just about every fairly low common integer has a page on Wikipedia. Some were created automatically - references in several other entries have created de-facto index pages. But a few have wonderful commentary a bit more interesting than 157above.

How's this:

69 is a semiprime. Furthermore, since the two factors of 69 are both Gaussian primes, 69 is a Blum integer.

Adding up the divisors of 1 through 9 gives 69.

Because 69 has an odd number of 1s in its binary representation, it is sometimes called an "odious number." Of note is that 69² (4 761) and 69³ (328 509) uses every digit from 0-9. 69 is equal to 105 octal, while 105 is equal to 69 hexadecimal. This same property can be applied to all numbers from 64 to 69.

On many handheld scientific and graphing calculators, the highest factorial that can be computed within memory limitations is 69! or 1.711224524*10⁹⁸.

The number 69 can be rotated 180° and remain the same.

Oh joy. Oh bliss. TMI.

MS CRM 4.0 Query to return all business unit id GUIDs and names

MS CRM 4.0 Query to return all business unit id GUIDs and names:

SELECT businessunitid, name
FROM dbo.FilteredBusinessUnit BU

Cost Of War to you

www.costofwar.com

Winter Visitor

The morning after a winter snowfall, we had a visitor.

Clearly not playing possum.

Hell No!

Lily Skeleton Cartoon

Click for larger image.

Never Events

I was recently given this list at my workplace. No, not a list of things that happen to Peter Pan and his buddies. This is a serious list of serious occurrences. Meanwhile, since they happen, they are really Rarely Events. Also, if you look at each event, you would probably think that you don't need the three rights, since, for instance, you probably shouldn't be charged for having the wrong kidney removed. So I'm glad to know that I have a right to expect to not be abducted at the hospital and that if I am abducted I should get a report and not be charged for my room while I'm with the kidnappers.

Know your rights, if any of these Never Events happen to you:

• You have a right to be informed by the provider that a “never event” has happened to you.
• You have the right to see a report prepared by the hospital detailing what happened and how it occurred.
• You and your health plan should not be charged for costs and deductibles related to the event. Nor should you be charged for any necessary remediation.

Here is a list of the 28 "serious reportable events" as defined by NQF:

1. Surgery on the wrong body part
2. Surgery performed on the wrong patient
3. Wrong surgical procedures performed on a patient
4. Unintended retention of a foreign object in a patient after surgery or other procedure
5. Interoperative or immediately postoperative death in an ASA Class I patient
6. Patient death or serious disability associated with the use of contaminated drugs, devices, or biologics provided by the healthcare facility
7. Patient death or serious disability associated with the use or function of a device in patient care in which the device is used or functions other than intended
8. Patient death or serious disability associated with intravascular air embolism that occurs while being cared for in a healthcare facility
9. Infant discharged to the wrong person
10. Patient death or serious disability associated with patient elopement (disappearance)
    
11. Patient suicide, or attempted suicide, resulting in serious disability while being cared for in healthcare facility
12. Patient death or serious disability associated with a medication error (e.g., errors involving the wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong time, wrong rate, wrong preparation, or wrong route of administration)
13. Patient death or serious disability associated with a hemolytic reaction due to the administration of ABO/HLA incompatible blood or blood products
14. Maternal death or serious disability associated with labor or delivery in a low-risk pregnancy while being cared for in a healthcare facility
15. Patient death or serious disability associated with hypoglycemia, the onset of which occurs while the patient is being cared for in a healthcare facility
16. Death or serious disability (kernicterus) associated with failure to identify and treat hyperbilirubinemia in neonates
    
17. Stage 3 or 4 pressure ulcers acquired after admission to a healthcare facility
18. Patient death or serious disability due to spinal manipulative therapy
19. Artificial insemination with the wrong donor sperm or wrong egg
20. Patient death or serious disability associated with an electric shock while being cared for in a healthcare facility
21. Any incident in which a line designated for oxygen or other gas to be delivered to a patient contains the wrong gas or is contaminated by toxic substances
22. Patient death or serious disability associated with a burn incurred from any source while being cared for in a healthcare facility
23. Patient death or serious disability associated with a fall while being cared for in a healthcare facility
24. Patient death or serious disability associated with the use of restraints or bedrails while being cared for in a healthcare facility
25. Any instance of care ordered by or provided by someone impersonating a physician, nurse, pharmacist, or other licensed healthcare provider
26. Abduction of a patient of any age
27. Sexual assault on a patient within or on the grounds of a healthcare facility
28. Death or significant injury of a patient or staff member resulting from a physical assault (i.e., battery) that occurs within or on the grounds of a healthcare facility Blue
    

Please tell us what you think of this list.

Dow Down

I know I'm not Mr. Financial News, but just now I noticed that the Dow Jones is down. Down low. Down so low it's not only back where it was in 2003, it's down as low as it was in 2002, and as it was soon after 9/11. It's even as low as it was in 1998 - 10 years ago. If that doesn't quite make sense, you can look at a chart of the Dow over time and see that it goes up, it goes down. It tanked after 9/11, for instance. It just has never dived so far, so fast. And it never quite affected me and everyone I know before.

Definition

This is from Miriam Webster.

Nonpareil: noun Date: 1593

1. an individual of unequaled excellence : paragon
2. a small flat disk of chocolate covered with white sugar pellets b: sugar in small pellets of various colors

Not a bad name for a candy!

How to install Windows XP SP3

UPDATE:

As of now (12/21/2008), this amazing fix described below no longer does the trick.
XP SP3 is completely flaky once again.
Ugggg!!! (Banging head against wall.)

-------------------

Microsoft continues to update and support Windows XP, fortunately.

One way to install Windows XP SP3, is to let your windows updates do it the old-fashioned way. Then one day your computer will wake up and find it has done so. This is what I did and usually do for updates, but after my mother's computer basically died after SP2, I was wary. I let SP3 sit there a few months before letting it install on my computer. After running fine on my computer for awhile, I tried it on my wife's. Hell.

The Problem

For the past few month's her computer running XP professional SP3 had issues:

XP Professional SP3 won't shutdown or go to standby.

After installing XP Professional SP3 on my laptop from windows update, the laptop won't consistently shutdown or go to standby. It will do so the first time after closing the screen, but not the second or more time. It gets stuck on a blue screen saying "preparing to standby".

I brought this up with Dell support who helped me (during the final week of the laptop's warranty) and concluded after some time: uninstall SP3. Yeah, right.

I searched the web several times and didn't find anything helpful. Hence, this post.

The Solution

Today I contacted the big boy. If you didn't know it, Microsoft has free support for Windows SP3. Who get's anything for free nowadays?

To summarize, after over an hour of a chat where most of the time I read email, vacuumed the house, and waited while installer and uninstaller ran, I have the answer.

1. Download the SP3 installer to your desktop. It's a big file.
   
2. Go to your control-panel, select Add/Remove Programs and uninstall Windows SP3. This will take some time, since Safe Mode lives in a parallel universe where time moves slooowly. Reboot when it tells you to.
3. Check if things are OK. (You are on your own here.)
   
4. Now reboot in Safe Mode (hit F8 while booting up, then select Safe Mode)
5. Install SP3.

It works for me now.

Thanks to Vinod from Microsoft, presumably in India, who even called me after the computer was all tucked-in and sleeping normally just to see if I was OK.

It's snowing a little here on this quiet Sunday.

Cheap bullets

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

Any of these will make your jaw drop.

Courtesy of Project Censored.

• #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

• # 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA

Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with “deep integration” of a more militarized tri-national Homeland Security force. Taking shape under the radar of the respective governments and without public knowledge or consideration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)—headquartered in Washington—aims to integrate the three nations into a single political, economic, and security bloc.

• # 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business

More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect and provide information on fellow Americans. In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials.

• # 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?

A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy in Latin America. By 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increased by thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000. In a marked shift in US military strategy, secretive training of Latin American military and police personnel that used to just take place at the notorious School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture and execution techniques—is now decentralized.

• # 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets

President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

• # 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”

• # 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking

While the guest worker program in the United States has been praised and recommended for expansion by President Bush, and is likely to be considered by Congress as a template for future immigration reform, human rights advocates warn that the system seriously victimizes immigrant workers. Workers, labor organizers, lawyers, and policy makers say that the program, designed to open up the legal labor market and provide a piece of the American dream to immigrants, has instead locked thousands into a modern-day form of indentured servitude.

• # 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly

In light of a declassified Office of Legal Counsel proclamation that the president can secretly change his signing statements at will, we are left exposed to the whims of a secret, unchecked executive agenda.

• #9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify

Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupation publicly testified at the four-day Winter Soldier gathering about crimes they committed during the course of battle—many of which were prompted by the orders or policies laid down by superior officers. Such crimes include targeting innocent, unarmed civilians for murder and detention, destroying property, desecrating corpses, severely abusing detainees (often torturing to death), and using corpses for medical practice.

• # 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture

The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force was assembled in response to growing evidence that psychologists were not only taking part in procedures that have shocked the senses of humanity around the world, but were in fact in charge of designing those brutal tactics and training interrogators in those techniques.

• # 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror

Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents at a July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s water supply and distribution systems.

• # 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind

The architect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Bush’s first senior education advisor, Sandy Kress, has turned the program, which has consistently proven disastrous in the realm of education, into a huge success in the realm of corporate profiteering. After ushering NCLB through the US House of Representatives in 2001 with no public hearings, Kress went from lawmaker—turning on spigots of federal funds—to lobbyist, tapping into those billions of dollars in federal funds for private investors well connected to the Bush administration.

• # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

Beginning in April 2003, one month after the invasion of Iraq, and continuing for little more than a year, the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq. The US military delivered the bank notes to the Coalition Provisional Authority, to be dispensed for Iraqi reconstruction. At least $9 billion is unaccounted for due to a complete lack of oversight.

• # 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste

Radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into regular landfills, and are available for recycling and resale.

• # 15 Worldwide Slavery

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any time in human history. As many as 800,000 are trafficked across international borders annually, and up to 17,500 new victims are trafficked across US borders each year, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). More than 30,000 additional slaves are transported through the US on their ways to other international destinations. Attorneys from the DOJ have prosecuted ninety-one slave trade cases in cities across the United States and in nearly every state of the nation.

• # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights

The 2007 edition of the survey, covering 138 countries, shows an alarming rise in the number of people killed as a result of their trade union activities, from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006. Many more trade unionists around the world were abducted or “disappeared.” Thousands were arrested during the year for their parts in strike action and protests, while thousands of others were fired in retaliation for organizing. Growing numbers of trade union activists in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific are facing police brutality and murder as unions are viewed as opponents of corporatist governments.

• # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights

The declaration was passed by an overwhelming majority vote of 143–4. Only the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand voted against the resolution, expressing the view that strong emphasis on rights to indigenous self-determination and control over lands and resources would hinder economic development and undermine “established democratic norms.”

• # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers

In a nationally conducted survey, the Associated Press contacted each state agency that oversees juvenile correction centers and asked for information on the numbers of deaths as well as the numbers of allegations and confirmed cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by staff members since January 1, 2004. According to the survey, more than 13,000 claims of abuse were identified in juvenile correction centers around the country from 2004 through 2007—a remarkable total given that the total population of detainees was about 46,000 at the time the states were surveyed in 2007.

• # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction

Consequences of the livestock industry’s globalization include the threat to sustainable development and global food security, destruction of the livelihoods of over one billion people worldwide, smallholder bankruptcies and suicides, and the extinction of some of the world’s hardiest breeds of animals.

• # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record

For the fourth year in a row, US marijuana arrests set an all-time record, according to 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. At current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every thirty-eight seconds, with marijuana arrests comprising nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

• # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are considering a first strike nuclear option to be used anywhere in the world a threat may arise. Former armed force chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands authored a 150-page blueprint calling for urgent reform of NATO, and a new pact drawing the US, NATO, and the European Union (EU) together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an “increasingly brutal world.” The authors of the plan insist that “the first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

• # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid

In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the countries where it is received.

• # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turns a blind eye, drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects. Though companies are required to submit their advertisements to the FDA, the agency does not review them before they are released to the public.

• # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror

In a parliament Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee session held to debate the ethics of renewing Japan’s “anti-terror law,” which commits Japan to providing logistical support for coalition forces operating in Afghanistan, Yukihisa Fujita opened the session by stating, “I would like to talk about the origin of this war on terrorism, which was the attacks of 9/11, . . . When discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask ourselves, what was 9/11? And what is terrorism?”

• # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.

Armchair Activist: Inferior Secretary Kempthorne

The presumably outgoing Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has decided to out-do James Watt. He recently announced changes which undermine the Endangered Species Act.

According to the Center For Biological Diversity the new regulations would:
- Exempt thousands of federal activities from review under the Endangered Species Act;
- Eliminate checks and balances of independent oversight;
- Limit which effects can be considered harmful;
- Prevent consideration of a project's contribution to global warming;
- Set an inadequate 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project in the instances when they are invited to participate -- or else the project gets an automatic green light;
- Enable large-scale projects to go unreviewed by dividing them into hundreds of small projects.

Express your righteous indignation by taking action.