Gang rape is a spectator sport.

Watch almost any movie these days and you become the spectator in the sexual victimization of women. It ain't about the love, nor is it about honest sexual desire, it's all about objectification. 'Baby, You ain't come a long way, yet.'
This is a cultural phenomena we all play a role in creating. This attack was not sexual in nature, this was a violent hate-crime using female sexuality as a weapon to dehumanize a 'representative' of an oppressed class.

The first step is to addressing this issue is to acknowledge the underlying value choices we all make. The more folks talk about the commodification of sexuality, the more we will be able to consciously decide whether this is what we most value.
I carefully use the words 'commodification of sexuality' rather than 'objectification of women' because people of all genders suffer when we deny our humanity to focus so intensely on our sexuality. Make-up, 'fashion', 'sexy' lingerie are simply the American/Western version of the burka -- sexual signifiers that overwhelm the power and integrity of the person within.

tell me a story? Pleasssssssssssse!!!!

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a big city far away. No matter how she tried, love was hard to find. She would see someone that was fun to look at but when she got close their feet were too big, or hair grew out of their noses, or their mommy's were too close or too far away. The worst that might happen is she would love them but then they would discover that her feet were too small, or there were two hairs that grew out of her belly button, or that they didn't like the color of her eyes as much as they thought they should have.

She was certain she would never find love and if she didn't find love she would never be happy. She didn't understand that being happy would make her irresistible to love. She didn't understand that Father Time had a plan and that what she thought she wanted wasn't what she wanted at all. Life is about swimming in the waters of time but not drowning.

Every fish is perfect for the purpose it was made. Every person lovable to just the right person at just the right time. And what's really funny it that there are soooo many 'just the right persons,' if you give yourself time. It's easy to want what's not available, it's hard to be happy right now, especially when everyone else seems so happy.

It didn't seem fair to the little girl but Father Time smiled at her just the same and told her everything was working out just as it should. If only she would let herself be happy, nothing else would really matter, and all that she wanted, and especially all that she needed, would come her way at just the right time.
love and kisses.
the end

Local Racism, 2004

This was spray-painted on the front windows of the newspaper office after word spread through the community that reporters from the Contra Costa Exclusive were covering incidents of racism in Martinez, California, in 2004.


Race Haters: A small and ordinary city confronts the great American problem.
By Fred Dodsworth (This originally ran in the Contra Costa Exclusive, now defunct, June, 2004)

Painter Dan was troubled. Well past mid-life, with gray hair and a tan, worn face that traced the roads he’d traveled around the U.S. Daniel Johnson came home to Martinez having seen the larger world. These days he was quick to tell even strangers his hometown wasn’t well. It was too small. He didn’t like the new people. He wasn’t so sure about his old friends.

Sitting out on the plaza between Starbucks and Bank of America, sipping a cup of coffee, Dan was man who had a need to talk. On one sunny day he decided to talk about his good and old friend Dennis Davis. Davis owned J&D Embroidery, a small shop on the edge of town that had contracts with both the City of Martinez and the Martinez Unified School District. Davis also taught girl’s golf at Alhambra High School, and had done so for years. Among other logos, for a small fee J&D embroidered Nazi symbols on baseball hats: SS Boys, with Hitler’s Storm Trooper’s twin lightening bolts substituting for the SS. It seemed incongruous to Johnson that the local high school golf coach would sell such a hateful symbol, even to kids.

Skateboarding by as Johnson spoke was a tall, thin, powerfully built man of indeterminate age. CoCoNut, as Stephen Payne called himself, wore no more than a pair of raggedy shorts and a sleeveless, open front vest that fluttered behind him. He was stained with dirt that hadn’t seen soap in days. He could have been 20. He could have been 45. His eyes were pinpoints and his lips stretched in a smiling grimace tight across his teeth. Tattoos covered his chiseled chest and drum-tight belly. In a large curve over his left breast was the word ‘Contra,” over his right “Costa.’ His abdomen said ‘County.’ The back of his left arm featured “Wermacht” in old German script. The back of his left arm, “Weiss.” White Power.



CoCoNut raced up and down Main Street Martinez on his skateboard, pirouetting between cars, leaping curbs and skittering sideways in loud, grand sweeping arcs. Stopping to chat with high school kids and tattered, burned-out human wreckage alike, he would infrequently reach inside his vest and from a small pocket extract something and hand it over discreetly. The fragile old lady’s who strolled Main Street with canes for support gave CoCoNut wide berth.

White Power, White Pride, White Race, Peckerwood, Woodpeckers.
Scattered widely about Contra Costa County are such tattoos, and more. Martinez, as county seat, home of the County Jail and the County’s Superior Court, had more than its fair share of such tattooed lost souls. Alhambra High School students speak about the young athlete with a Nazi Swastika visible on his arm. During this year’s Opening Night at Alhambra, an origami display featured swastikas. Kids sign their yearbooks with swastikas. The Assistant Principal and the Superintendent of Schools separately admit that occasionally swastikas get scrawled on school property along with Jewish student’s names. And baseball hats with such hateful symbols are confiscated, the administration says.



Made to order by J&D Embroidery Shop in Martinez, the SS-Boys logo refers to Adolf Hitler’s hated and feared secret police. The Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of over 25 million people during WWII, including an estimated 12 million European Jews. Today, American neo-Nazis use such symbols to intimidate ethnic minorities. The owner of the shop taught golf classes at the high school.

“You should have been here last week,” said an administrator who didn’t want her name in the paper. “I threw out a huge box full of hats with much worse stuff than that.”

Nicole Bristol, 15, knows the pain such symbols cause. A cute short young lady with a shy demeanor and reddish hair, Bristow attended Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill. After being subjected to hate-language from kids in her seventh and eight grade classes simply because she’s Jewish she decided to home-school.

"I was really isolated,” Bristow said. “I had one friend, and she was teased too. They called us dykes and Jews. We were scared."

Alicia Kane, Jenny Jorgensen, Angelina Martinez, Ashley Greene, Jessica Ellingson have known each other “since we were babies.” The young ladies attend Alhambra where they say pernicious racism is a pervasive and on-going problem.

“The school really did try to stop it, because you can't wear Confederate flags. You can't wear symbols or colors or bandannas. But some teachers they don't even try because it's like, ‘What's the use?’ ”

The young women believe teachers should educate students about different cultures, and lead class discussions about racism. But in the end they’re not sure how much difference teachers can make when so many children are imbued with racist beliefs by their parents.

“I don't believe in tolerance because tolerance is acceptance. You can't accept hate,” said Martinez Police Chief David Cataia. “Parents need to educate their children, and children need to understand, hate is not accepted.”

In early May a fight broke out at the Martinez Marina Park. Rumors of the impending violence had run rampant throughout the community all day. A group of Black teens and young adults and a group of White teens and young adults gathered in the late afternoon, trading insults, some of a racial nature. The Martinez Police stood by until the law was broken when the two men came to blows. The fistfight was very short. The first punch that connected took out 21-year-old Jesse Lucero’s three front teeth.

The young black man responsible was arrested and Jesse was carted off to the hospital.
Jesse and his mother Kim Lucero insisted they were only at the park for a late afternoon family picnic, but Jesse changed his story several times. After saying he was just there for a family picnic, he said he was there to defend the honor of a neighborhood girl (who is White) from disrespect by a young Black man. Later he said the fight was actually a battle between two towns: Pittsburg and Martinez. Despite the obvious inference that Martinez was a White Town and Pittsburg was a Black Town, Jesse insisted the fight was not racially motivated.

“These kids are not realizing what they're getting into,” said Jesse’s mother, Kim. “What they don't realize is Pittsburg's down here to show up for a fight. Nobody from Martinez showed up. Pittsburg's got big balls right now. They got guts. Think about it. They came here. Nobody from Martinez can even support their own town. So they had free run of Martinez.” She chuckles mirthlessly.

“And who did the police go after? The Martinez kids. So you know, Pittsburg's like, ‘Hey, we can go and do whatever the hell we want now.’ ”




Alhambra High School students pose giving a Nazi salute while congregating in the parking lot of a nearby convenience store.

An old Claudia Shear interview, for Kimberly Vergez

Dirty Blonde, playing Mae West
By Fred Dodsworth, special to the SF Examiner
May 13, 2001

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers, femme fatales and mamma mia's in our lives. Today's Q&A is Claudia Shear who wrote and stars in Dirty Blonde -- a tale of adulation, adoration and self-acceptance featuring iconographic proto-femme Mae West. Dirty Blonde plays at Theatre on the Square through June 17th.

Fred Dodsworth: We live in a world in which women are expected to behave in certain ways and…
Claudia Shear: Do you think that’s true? It’s certainly less true then when Mae West was alive. There’s no question with things like divorce and child custody and salaries and discrimination that it isn’t a little better now. As far as the way women behave… (pause) it’s not like women aren’t able to do what they want. Women are able to be shocking now in a way Mae West couldn’t have done. It’s just that Mae West was more shocking because there were stronger rules, it was a more Puritanical time.
You know William Randolph Hearst helped destroy her career. His papers refused to take advertisements for her pictures. One of his editorials asked, “When will Congress do something about Mae West?” He was very influential in creating a backlash against her and of course he was part of the whole thing with the Hayes Commission and the decency code. They cut her scripts to shreds. They weren’t letting her be funny anymore.

Dodsworth: What do you mean by funny?
Shear: Dirty! Funny! Raunchy! Bawdy! Suggestive!
By the time she got to “Belle of the 90s,” she had a line like “I wouldn’t touch him with a 10-foot pole” and they made her cut it. They were so afraid of what people were going to say. This is a woman who was arrested and sent to jail, who did a play called “Sex,” did a play with gay men. Her films were wildly successful but there were a lot of people who were very shocked.

Dodsworth: Shocked by what?
Shear: She has sex all the time. She is clearly a prostitute. She ends up with a guy. The Hayes Censorship Act says a life of crime must always be punished but she kills somebody in “She Done Him Wrong.” In “I’m No Angel,” she’s hustling guys but she ends up as a rich socialite. Married, happy ever after? This is not the message they wanted to send.
And she’s clearly a woman who’s not a virgin, who’s having sex all the time, who likes it a lot, who is aggressive about it, assertive about it. You can understand why this was upsetting people.

Dodsworth: But that was before the “Decency Act.”
Shear: It was Mae West movies and the Fatty Arbuckle case that shocked people and they cracked down.

Dodsworth: The Fatty Arbuckle case happened here in San Francisco.
Shear: One of the greatest travesties of justice in the history and who did it? William Randolph Hearst. Fatty Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials and the jury gave him an apology! But by then he was destroyed. Nobody would hire him. There was no question he never killed the girl. It was a salacious news item. Hearst saying look at these disgusting people, look at their disgusting orgies. Hearst was one of the greatest hypocrites that ever walked this planet.

Dodsworth: I don’t actually think that our times are that different.
Shear: I agree with you actually. “A plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.”

Dodsworth: But to me the more interesting issue is how women are demonized.
Shear: Mae West was definitely demonized by Hearst but the thing is that she liked being shocking. She knew that she was shocking. She liked that.
There's the whole other question, which is homosexuality and how people deal with that. Mae West showed gay men actually talking to each other, that they existed. It wasn’t like there was a gay subculture. You know what I mean? There was the eternal bachelor. The whole thing of homosexual culture was totally different. So she was really in the forefront of that.
There were men who had acts where they would come out in gowns and be female impersonators but it was considered family entertainment. You would take mom and the kids to see this. But it wasn’t really attached to having sex with other men. Then she did “The Drag” and things like that and suddenly people were like “Do you mean these guys in dresses actually want to be girls? They want to have sex with men? Whoa, wait a minute!”
These guys were wiped out. There was this really famous drag performer. Julian Eltinge was his name. He was reduced to bringing out a rack of dresses, pointing to them and trying to do his act! He died in penury.

Dodsworth: Today that would be performance art.
Shear: They wanted to see him dressed up as a girl doing his campy thing!

Dodsworth: Do you think there’s a misogyny in that? Is it making fun of women?
Shear: I think that there’s a flavor of that sometimes. It’s such a fine line. It’s not that I would accuse anyone of misogyny but Marlene Dietrich, when she dresses as a man, is not the object of ridicule. It’s the sexiest thing in the world.
You know the world is a big place, lots of things are allowed. But a woman dressed as a man is taking on power. Look at Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry,” there’s something really powerful about her because she has suppressed her secondary sex characteristics as a woman and therefore she is a man in the world. You take on a certain power if you dress as a man.
If you dress as a woman on some level you’re also taking on a power. A man who comes on stage dressed as Joan Crawford or Lipsinka! Lipsinka comes out on stage and this is a person of power.

Dodsworth: What is the root of that power?
Shear: The root of the power is when people transform themselves into what they feel they are, into what they feel they should be.

Dodsworth: So it’s transformation into true self?
Shear: Into what you imagine yourself to be. It’s why brides are always beautiful. The dumpiest girl in the whole world, bless her, the day of her wedding she will be beautiful. Because for most people it’s the one time in their lives where they wear a custom-made gown, where someone does their hair and their make-up, where everybody looks at them. They glow as a result of it and that runs through to everything.
I’m a big dresser-upper and how that transforms you. A lot of the time I’m in my sneakers, I’m in my T-shirt, I’m going to work out and yet when I transform and I’m in Manolo Blahniks and the Florentine cocktail dress, it’s a whole different persona that comes out. You know what I mean? When I go to Paris, for example, where I spend most of the time in a cocktail dress or out of the cocktail dress (half-laughs), it’s like I’m a different person.
But you know the thing was that Mae is really actually complex which is a thing that many people flatter themselves thinking they are...

Dodsworth: Everybody’s complex!
Shear: Everybody’s complex, but it’s not manifested in quite the same way. They’re just not simply as interesting. I don’t think Sandra Dee is as interesting as Mae West. It’s not the same conflict. Which is one of the things about drag that makes it so powerful is that underneath there’s this profound conflict (pause) between what we’re seeing and what we know to be true.

An old Mark Morris interview, for Mare Earley

Mark Morris Speaks
By Fred Dodsworth, special to the Berkeley Daily Planet
Sept 28, 2003
Mark Morris and his eponymously named Dance Group regularly perform for Cal Performances at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall — so much so that some claim the globally renown dancer/choreographer as an honorary citizen of the People's Republic of Berkeley. Certainly Morris is a member in good standing in the 'cultural revolution,' as his footprints are stomped all over what is modern in today's dance world. In addition to founding the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, Morris was one of the founders of the White Oaks Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The Mark Morris Dance Group opened the Cal Performances season with L'Allegro il Penseroso ed il Moderato on September 4th and returns to Zellerbach Hall September 12 through the 14th with a 'Repertory Program' of dance featuring the music of the late West Coast composer Lou Harrison, a world premiere of dance to the music of Béla Bartók, and a nine-song dance-cycle to the recorded music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
As we spoke Morris, dressed in shorts and a plain tee-shirt, laughed easily. Unexpectedly pudgy for a dancer, and with longish, straggling gray hair, the 40-something Morris had just spent the afternoon wandering unnoticed around Berkeley.

Fred Dodsworth: Your music is rhythmically challenging. How do you teach dancers to work with complex rhythms?
Mark Morris: How do I teach rhythm? I'm good at it and smart and my dancers are brilliant and we practice. You have to have something to start with though. If you're interested in something you work on it. If need it for what you do, if you have an interest in it then it can come true. If you don't need it and you're not interested, you'll never learn it. (laughs)

Dodsworth: You're in your 40s, as we age our bodies change, how does that effect you, as a dancer?
Morris: Well, I don’t know. I'm going to dance a little bit longer, not a whole lot longer. I'll keep performing some but not forever. Because it's less… it's more… it's more trouble than it's worth at a certain point — to warm up for two hours to dance for five minutes when it used to be the other way. It takes longer to recover from injuries. Of course I'm way smarter about certain things, I'd be much better at some things, if I could [just] do those things but that's always how it works. That's normal.
You know I'm a lovely dancer and I continue to be and when I don't want to I won't. But I'm a very good teacher and I can still choreograph and I'd rather watch other people than watch me. (laughs)

Dodsworth:Can you envision doing dance for older bodies?
Morris: I already do. The youngest man in my company is 28, which doesn't seem like much but in dance or in other things that require that sort of work, you know, like athletics or something, that's very late in your career. So it's different if you're an instrumentalist or a writer or a painter or a choreographer, of course that's different. But I work with… they are already older dancers, they're in their 40s and that's old for dancers and that's great but you have to have been a good dancer and then stay a good dancer. You know just cause you've made it, you're old and you're still dancing doesn't mean you're good. It just means you're old. It doesn't mean you're wise. It means you're old.
I was co-founder of the White Oaks Dance Project, which was originally 'older' people, but it changed as it went along so that just Misha was an old 'thang'. It's fine. It's a possibility. I don't think it's the future of dancing, is everybody getting old. If you can still dance when you're old and you make stuff up and there's still good work to do than it's great but it's not like a mission. (laughs)
I don't work with little teenagers, I mean they're great and they're fun sometimes. At the San Francisco Ballet I'm working with much younger people and that's fine but to tour and work and live with these people… I don't want them to be 17? There aren't very many good dancers anyway, old or young. But also that's… if you're 20… I mean, come on, who wants to see a naked old person? And that's the market.

Dodsworth:Is that you're market, kids in their 20s?
Morris: They're all over the place. It's mixed but there's a certain demographic that spends the most money on certain things. It's not necessarily what I want to watch. I don't like contemporary, popular music very much but I never have. It's not like I’m now old and there's nothing like the Beatles were. I never really liked the Beatles that much. I mean for a minute I did, but it's never been a big interest of mine. It's not like I'm an old curmudgeon, it's just like I don't really spend the time doing things that I don't like to do very much.

Dodsworth:Bob Wills was once popular music.
Morris: Yeah, in the ’30s and ’40s. Absolutely. I like lots of popular music. I just don't like contemporary popular music. I like music from the ’20s. It's not a rule, it's just a preference. It's not like, 'oh, this is from the’50s therefore I don't like that.' I don't think that way at all. It's, 'oh. I like that song, what's that?' There are exceptions. But I don't buy that music. It's not interesting to me.

Dodsworth:What is the story behind your Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys dances?
Morris: I work with live music but this particular piece is one that's not. It's to recorded music because it's a particular recording session that I like. I could hire a cover band but this is them [Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys] very, very old. He died sort of the next day. This is from the early-middle ’70s, they'd been a band for 40 years. It's them… they're all very old on this recording. That's what I like. It's not a period recording from the ’30s. It's fantastic. If you listen to their music from the ’30s and the ’40s and then from the ’70s, they're relaxed and they don't have to pay any attention to each other and they know each other and they read each other's minds and they play fabulously and their rhythm is perfect and it's great. It's wonderful.

New CBO estimate says Public Plan lowers costs & covers more

A couple of weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by "only" one-third. As many informed observers noted at the time, the cost estimate was incomplete because the legislation that the CBO reviewed did not contain language about a public health insurance plan or an employer mandate. Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the opportunity to engage in merciless political attacks, citing the incomplete CBO score as proof that health care reform is not worth doing: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said "the CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan," and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said "[the CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion." But the proposal lacked a public health insurance option or an employer mandate, provisions that would drastically change the size, scope and estimate. Now the HELP committee has submitted a full bill -- and the result is drastically different. The "plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage." In addition, "the [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals." Additionally, the incoming president of the American Medical Association, Dr. J. James Rohack, said his organization now supports a public plan, after initially indicating its opposition, adding that the AMA supports an "American model" that includes both "a private system and a public system, working together."

Reasons to stop Single Payer Health Care!

for Father's Day

Let him know you care, he won't always be there.

Bill Maher nails Obama

Three very interesting views of the growing Right Wing fanatic threat facing our country

Watch and tremble

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200906100041

http://tinyurl.com/moqsp5

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2706277&ref=fpblg

Fred Dodsworth sez my news junkie pals will enjoy this:
Now Wikipedia is the News! http://tinyurl.com/lbbw9e
Wikipedia Articles Appear in Google News Results
Google News has built a strong reputation on its ability to quickly find, sort and deliver news information and sources. It takes information from news...


Fred Dodsworth sez evolutionary science is just too much fun for normal folk. http://tinyurl.com/l4uceh

from my Twitter and Facebook accounts

Why California & the Newspaper biz is bankrupt

This is a perfect example of why both the state of California and the news media are failing. This buried story should have been on the front page of every newspaper in California, but instead it was hidden deep inside the paper. The story was printed on page 7 of the Oakland Tribune, owned by MediaNews Group, (ie: Dean Singleton who is also CEO of Associated Press) one of the largest consolidated newspaper groups in America.

While Programs For Poor Get The Knife,
Corporations Prepare For Tax Windfall
By Steven Harmon, MediaNews Sacramento Bureau
Posted: 06/03/2009 01:02:05 PM PDT, Updated: 06/04/2009 05:55:55 AM PDT

SACRAMENTO — Corporate tax giveaways from dead-of-night budget agreements in September and February will cost the state as much as $2.5 billion in revenues at a time when lawmakers are contemplating eliminating programs for the poor, a budget analyst said Wednesday.

The tax loopholes made it through the Legislature with no public hearings and little analysis of the effect, said Jean Ross, executive director for the California Budget Project, a research group that studies the effects of policies on the poor.

"The problem with dark-of-night deals is that you never get a chance to get a debate over value choices," she said. "These three tax breaks represent a reduction of one-third the income taxes paid by California corporations.... They really represent a stark contrast in values and what kind of future we want to see for Californians."

The tax breaks will cost the state $640 million for the rest of this fiscal year and for the 2010-11 budget year as lawmakers search for ways to close a $24.3 billion deficit, according to Ross's report, "To Have and Have Not." By the time they are fully implemented in 2014-15, the tax breaks could cost nearly $2.5 billion a year, she said.

In marathon, private negotiations in February, Democratic leaders seeking support for a broad tax increase reached an agreement with Republican leaders to approve the single sales factor tax break, which allows multistate corporations to choose whether they want to be taxed solely for their sales in California rather than have their taxes based on property, payroll and sales in the state.

Schwarzenegger touts the single sales factor as a policy that will strengthen small businesses and keep jobs in California.

"There's never been a more important time to create an attractive employment climate in California so that businesses stay home and create jobs," said Aaron McLear, the governor's spokesman.

In a memo supporting the tax change, California Competes, a coalition of business, technology and education leaders, said that under the old three-factor formula, California created a "competitive disadvantage for companies with a significant presence in the state, burdening them with higher income taxes because of their property and payroll investments here."

The single sales factor, the memo said, spurs job creation by eliminating the tax penalty for increasing the number of employees on payroll.

A 2005 study contradicted those arguments. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research institute in Washington, D.C., found that while most states have lost manufacturing jobs since 1995, states that went to the single sales tax formula did not fare much better.

Ross said the benefits are overwhelmingly concentrated among "a very few, very large corporations."

According to estimates prepared by the Franchise Tax Board, nine corporations will receive tax cuts averaging $33.1 million each in 2013-14 under the single sales factor. And 80 percent of the benefits will go to the largest corporations — those with gross receipts of more than $1 billion.

"One of the things so striking about the provisions is the benefits are overwhelmingly concentrated among a very few, very large corporations," she said.

Another tax loophole allows corporations that have maxed out on their tax credits to share them with a family of related corporations. Six corporations will receive tax cuts averaging $23.5 million each in 2013-14 under the credit sharing loophole.

The third loophole, called net operating loss carrybacks, allows corporations to claim refunds on taxes already paid.

Ross said these tax breaks at full implementation would be enough to pay for the entire cost of three programs Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to eliminate: CalWORKS, the welfare-to-work program; Healthy Families, the health insurance program for poor children; and cash assistance payments to low-income elderly and those with severe disabilities.

"The dollars we're talking about are significant," she said. "So, when we're talking two, three, five years from now about why California has budget problems, it'll be important to look at the revenues that have been given away by the Legislature at the depth of our budget crisis."

The report, which is based on analysis prepared by the California Franchise Tax Board completed in May, was handed over Wednesday to Democratic leaders of the legislative conference committee on budgets.

While the Franchise Tax Board is not authorized to release the names of taxpayers, Ross noted that a handful have aggressively pushed the single sales factor legislation in previous efforts, including Apple, Genentech, Paramount Theaters, Disney, Intel and Warner Brothers.

Repealing the loopholes would require a two-thirds vote because it would be considered a tax increase.

Reach Steven Harmon at 916-441-2101 or sharmon@bayareanewsgroup.com.

Tiny spheres of fear scare the Bushians.

A jaunty tune for Yes on h8 supporters

Senator Bribe-Us Baucus sells out U.S.

The Shocking Doctrine that's killing U.S.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Extend immunosuppressive drug coverage for kidney transplant patients!

Help people with kidney transplants! Ask your Representative to co-sponsor HR 1458, legislation that would extend Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive drugs beyond the first 36 month after transplant. Since this alert was launched last week, 400 messages have been sent to Congress, and health care reform is building momentum, and we need you to act now by telling your Representative to act today.

This legislation is one of the key provisions in the NKF End the Wait! campaign. The bill will help transplant recipients maintain their kidney function, and will allow others to consider a transplant because they know the expensive drugs they need will be available without a time limitation.

Organ transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs for the life of the transplant to help prevent the body from rejecting the organ. Currently, Medicare pays for most kidney transplants but covers drugs for only 36 months post-transplant as part of the Medicare ESRD benefit. After that, kidney recipients must pay for immunosuppressive drugs through private insurance, public or pharmaceutical programs or pay out-of-pocket. (Medicare covers drugs without a time limit if the patient qualifies because of age or disability status.)

Immunosuppressive drugs are expensive, but the alternative is even more costly.

A kidney transplant recipient costs Medicare $17,000 annually. If the kidney transplant fails, the person returns to dialysis at which point, Medicare spends an average of $71,000 per year on a dialysis patient. And quality of life often suffers too.

Please take a moment to write your Representative today and ask him or her to co-sponsor HR 1458. Share your story, or the story of a loved one, about the experience with immunosuppressive drug coverage.

More info can be found at Kidney Foundation's End the Wait! http://www.kidney.org/news/end_the_wait/recommendations.cfm

News is dying 'cuz reporters & editors are crap mongers

"American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances. -- By Walter Pincus in the Columbia Journalism Review.

read it all here.
http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all

War 'tween boys & girls -- femme it!

This is even better if you double click it to make two videos play at once! Very tasty echo effect.

Books are dead, long live Books!

Books are dead, long live Books! Publishing-wise, I believe we're going forwards (four-words?) into the future by heading rapidly into the past. It's going to be Small Press Realities vs MegaCorp McCrap Books Unlimited, and who gives a shit about 'Beach Books' anyways? Like locavores, we'll be reading esoteric art press books by folks we love, from our own little personal worlds from all over the real world.
In the future, like in the past, a 'library', full of excellent, well-handled tomes, will be cherished, special and small, not walls of books we'll never read that fill so many rooms today.
Whether it's the Expresso/Barista Publishing Gizmo,
or Electro-On-Line-Kinda-Kindlie,
or Set-It-Yourself Type in the Basement Bookies,
Books aren't dead.
Books live forever!



News, too.