Privacy Chumps

If You Want To Be Angry About Privacy Then Stop Giving It Away

By David Phillips

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, click here.

With all the recent discussion about Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, and the NSA leaks, I was hit with a surprising feeling of…indifference. As a Patriot Act hating progressive, I was troubled by my own lack of outrage.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the NSA surveillance is definitely a case of government overreach and more than a little creepy. Does it bother me less that the program is currently under the Obama administration? I suppose it does. Not because I think I’m an apologist, but because I know he’s not Ted Cruz.

Of course, the scary part is that after expanding this program what would it look like under a President Ted Cruz? We aren’t going to have a Democrat in the White House forever. I shudder at the thought.

Charlestown Tapas

Lots more tasty tidbits of local news

By Will Collette

[Boston Public Library]

Great article on Tarzan Brown

The national Native American news service, Indian Country Today, ran a terrific biography on Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, who was perhaps Charlestown’s greatest athlete ever. The article is written by Tarzan Brown’s great-nephew John Christian Hopkins.

The article is rich with photos showing his victories in the Boston Marathon in 1939 and in other competitions, plus shots of him later in his life before his tragic death in 1975.

I had heard a few of these stories from his late daughter Sis Brown (I worked with Sis on various organizing projects in the 1970s) and read a lot more about him. But this new article added more information and texture to the life story of a complex and troubled man.

Mr. Hopkins goes into detail about Tarzan Brown’s up-bringing, his quirky running style, the story behind his disappointment at the 1936 Olympics in Germany and his efforts at redemption as a repeat Boston Marathon champion. Mr. Hopkins doesn’t gloss over Brown’s flaws, especially his problems with alcohol and how that factored into his death in the parking lot of a Misquamicut bar.

I highly recommend reading the whole article which you can get on-line by clicking here.

Westerly Council gives Craven terrible review

When Charlestown’s assistant town solicitor Bob Craven was hired part-time by the town of Westerly to serve as a special zoning officer to deal with the terrible Copar Quarry in Bradford, I thought he had hit the ground running. In short order, Craven issued a comprehensive cease-and-desist order against Copar citing the many problems reported by Copar’s neighbors.

But, like so many stories, there was a lot more to it than that.

Grow your garden green

From Fake Science

Charlestown in the Red Zone this week

From Pollen.com

Rites of spring

URI to host 13th annual East Farm Spring Festival, May 10

Todd McLeish, URI

KINGSTON, R.I. –The University of Rhode Island’s 13th annual East Farm Spring Festival, featuring plant sales, workshops and a wide variety of vendors, educational displays and exhibits, will be held Saturday, May 10 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at URI’s East Farm.

The event, started in 2002 by a group of URI Master Gardeners who volunteered at the farm, annually draws thousands of visitors to the 79-acre research facility. It is sponsored by the URI Outreach Center and the URI Master Gardeners.

VIDEO: Mitt Romney with a Rhode Island accent?

Ernie Almonte embraces Colleen Conley, and other signs he’s a DINO

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

No Democrat would ever dream of saying the things Ernie Almonte says on this video about Social Security, Medicare, taxes, the 1%, the 47%, taxing employer-provided health insurance, etc. The amazing thing is that he made these remarks in September 2012 at the same time Mitt Romney was using the same pitch to LOSE the 2012 Presidential election. Stick a fork in this guy's primary chances. He's done! If you have any trouble viewing this video, try this link.  

There are plenty of reasons to assume Ernie Almonte is the conservative in the campaign for general treasurer that features three Democrat and no Republicans. One is that I saw him meeting with Colleen Conley, a tea party activist, in Wickford recently.

They hugged, Almonte gave her a campaign bumper sticker and she put it on her Ford Mustang, which already had a “Don’t Tread On Me” tea party bumper sticker on it.

In Almonte’s defense, he meets with everyone. He also attended the governor’s forum sponsored by the left-leaning Economic Progress Institute and was endorsed last week by the North Kingstown Democratic Party.

But there’s more…

Wal-Mart money drives the charter school movement

NY Times: Walton Family Foundation Funds Charter Movement

By Diane Ravitch

Readers of the Diane Ravitch's blog have long known that the Billionaires Boys Club has pledged its allegiance to the privatization of American public education. 

Among the Billionaires Boys Club, we include the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and hedge fund managers. 

They are allied with ALEC and other rightwing “think” tanks, all of which are in love with charters and vouchers.

UPDATED: Charlestown Budget Meeting Monday Night

If approved, new budget will raise taxes again

By Will Collette

Tax rates in Charlestown under CCA Party control. Now add $9.87 for
2014 (from the Charlestown Tax Assessor webpage)

UPDATE #2: The CCA Party sent out one of its e-bleats tonight where they seem  a little bit nervous about yet another consecutive tax hike on their watch. They try to blame it all on revaluation - which isn't true. 

Plus, they repeat the claim that Charlestown still has a low tax rate, which is true only if you ignore the lack of services and the separate tax we pay for fire protection. And we're not nearly so low as we used to be, like before the CCA Party took office.

UPDATE: Town Treasurer Pat Anderson e-mailed me from vacation with answers to two questions I had about the budget (large amounts transferred among accounts and what seemed to be a dangerously small fund balance. I have added her responses in the appropriate sections below.

Charlestown’s annual town budget is a challenging document for most taxpayers to read and understand. It is worth a try, though, since this budget will determine what you will pay for town government and what you will get for your money. Click here to read the entire 134-page $26.5 million budget. 

I have reproduced the grossly simplified version the town ran in the Westerly Sun to advertise the budget and the budget meeting that will take place at 7 PM on Monday, May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) at Town Hall.

This budget plus two additional expenditure items listed as separate “Warrants” will be debated on Monday but the final vote on the Budget and Warrant Items belongs to the residents who turn out to vote at a special Town Financial Referendum on June 2.

I think most voters will be thinking a lot about the fact that Charlestown intends to raise the tax rate from $9.46 per $1000 in assessed value to $9.87 per thousand. That 41 cent increase amounts to a 4.33% jump. Charlestown also intends to collect $478,078 more in tax revenue, a gross increase of 1.85%.

Taxes are going up because raising taxes seems to be the general policy of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) which has controlled the Charlestown budget since 2009 and has raised taxes every year, whether we needed to or not.

Let’s look at some of the key factors in this budget:

Consumer guide to insurance

Insurance You Need

Shannon Wheeler in The Nib 

Click here to find the right coverage for the times.

The Pentagon’s Great Pizza Victory

A triumph of science over nature is delivering battle-ready slices.

By Jim Hightower

From the Gatling gun to the nuclear bomb, from hot air balloons to drones, the military has enlisted scientists to develop ever-more effective war technologies. 

Now comes a long-sought scientific breakthrough that the military brass consider the ultimate advantage for battlefield effectiveness: ready-to-eat pizza.

With the spare-no-expense determination usually associated with something like the Manhattan Project, teams of the best scientific minds at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center have focused intently on this pizza project. It seems that the combat troops have been asking, even begging, that the individual field rations they get — called Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) — include pizza.

Does smoking dope really make you stupid? A scientific retort

Does researching casual marijuana use cause brain abnormalities?

By Lior Pachter

In reading the news I came across multiple reports claiming that even casually smoking marijuana can change your brain. I usually don’t pay much attention to such articles; I’ve never smoked a joint in my life. In fact, I’ve never even smoked a cigarette. 

So even though as a scientist I’ve been interested in cannabis from the molecular biology point of view, and as a citizen from a legal point of view, the issues have not been personal. However reading a USA Today article about the paper, I noticed that the principal investigator Hans Breiter was claiming to be a psychiatrist and mathematician.

That is an unusual combination so I decided to take a closer look. I immediately found out the claim was a lie. In fact, the totality of math credentials of Hans Breiter consist of some logic/philosophy courses during a year abroad at St. Andrews while he was a pre-med student at Northwestern. Even being an undergraduate major in mathematics does not make one a mathematician, just as being an undergraduate major in biology does not makes one a doctor.

Thus, with his outlandish claim, Hans Breiter had succeeded in personally offending me! So, I decided to take a look at his paper underlying the multiple news reports:

Worms are us!

Worm Season 2014 Is Here It is time to refurbish and/or harvest your worm bins The Worm Ladies of Charlestown will be participating in the Master Composting Program and the East Farm Spring Festival. The Worm Ladies are still interested in finding more worm growers!  There is also a need to find "free" worms for non profit groups and also for people to present programs to non profit organizations.   MAST MASTER COMPOSTING PROGRAM Interested in becoming a Master Composter? The program begins on May 31st and includes a field trip to Charlestown to visit Earth Care Farm and The Worm ladies of Charlestown, Inc.  URI MASTER COMPOSTING PROGRAM URI EAST FARM SPRING FESTIVAL BUY YOUR MOM WORMS FOR MOTHERS' DAY at the URI East Farm Festival May 10th between 9am ad 2pm.  URI EAST FARM SPRING FESTIVAL DO YOU HAVE WORMS TO DONATE TO A NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION?   Nancy's email address DO YOU HAVE WORMS TO SELL TO THE WORM LADIES? Nancy's email address ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SPEAKING TO NON PROFIT GROUPS AS A VOLUNTEER? Nancy's email address Quick Links The Worm Ladies products Harvesting the castings Check out our new worm bins on the Shop page of our website--A Designer Worm Bin, The Worm Inn. Sincerely, The Worm Ladies of Charlestown, Inc. | 401-322-7675 wormladies@verizon.net  | http://wormladies.com 161 East Beach Rd. Charlestown, RI 02813

Just the beginning

Republicans In A State Of Shock As Obamacare Enrollment Surpasses 8 Million

By Ryan Denson, Addicting Info

Republicans can continue to cower, now. Their biggest fear has happened yet again: Obamacare enrollment reaches over eight million, surpassing its already-reached goal of seven million. So far, approximately 35 percent of those enrolled are people under the age of 35.

Young people are crucial to the law’s success. With numbers surging everyday, the GOP might want to re-think running on their anti-Obamacare platform. Democrats, who fear the anti-ACA rhetoric from the right might cost them the Senate, can now flex their arms and proclaim that the healthcare exchanges are working, and working well.

Time to pay up

Raising Taxes on Corporations that Pay Their CEOs Royally and Treat Their Workers Like Serfs

By Robert B. Reich

Until the 1980s, corporate CEOs were paid, on average, 30 times what their typical worker was paid. Since then, CEO pay has skyrocketed to 280 times the pay of a typical worker; in big companies, to 354 times.

Meanwhile, over the same thirty-year time span the median American worker has seen no pay increase at all, adjusted for inflation. Even though the pay of male workers continues to outpace that of females, the typical male worker between the ages of 25 and 44 peaked in 1973 and has been dropping ever since. Since 2000, wages of the median male worker across all age brackets has dropped 10 percent, after inflation.

This growing divergence between CEO pay and that of the typical American worker isn’t just wildly unfair. It’s also bad for the economy. It means most workers these days lack the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing — contributing to the slowest recovery on record. Meanwhile, CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts.

Anyone who believes CEOs deserve this astronomical pay hasn’t been paying attention. The entire stock market has risen to record highs. Most CEOs have done little more than ride the wave.

This should be a federal holiday