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MoJo Articles (10 unread)

September 06, 2010
6:00
Confessions of a DC Teacher
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She welcomed me to the classroom with the coldest of stares, piercing my eyes with hers, saying "Fuck you" without even opening her mouth. When I placed the worksheet on her desk and offered a "Hello, what's your name?" she quickly stood up, snatched the paper, held it a foot from my face, ripped it into 100 pieces, and sat back down, fuming as the shreds of white dropped harmlessly to the floor.

This happened on Day 1 for me as a first-year English teacher in the Washington, DC, public school system. I had never been treated in this fashion by anyone, much less a 15-year-old girl. My face reddened. The other 10 girls in the classroom sat giggling, pointing, awaiting a reaction. "Show them I'm not intimidated," I thought. So I went back to my stack of papers, returned to the steaming student, and put another worksheet—filled with 15 simple yet personal questions—in front of her. If her first greeting was angry, her second was apoplectic. "Who the fuck are you, nigga? Get the fuck out my face!" The words flew out with unchecked fury as she sprang out of her seat, and this time, she did not sit down. Instead, she demanded an answer. "You don't want to participate today?" I whispered, my voice cracking. She widened her stare and held it a moment. "Man, get the fuck out my face!" She then sat down, burying her head in her forearms, disappearing for the remainder of class. And that was that.
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6:00
An Altar Boy With a Gun
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Adapted from the forthcoming book Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists, by Courtney E. Martin. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.

Raul Diaz is crushing flowers underfoot as he runs. Though he doesn't have the stamina of his teenage years, he's grateful that his legs can still take him up a hill at thirty-four. He pauses at the top of a slope in Elysian Park, puts his hands on his hips, and looks out at Los Angeles, the city that has formed him in all of its beauty and violence. He can almost make out the outlines of Boyle Heights, his courageous little neighborhood—just east of downtown L.A. and the Los Angeles River, César E. Chávez Avenue rolling boldly through.

Up here Raul can get a break from life down there—the way the boys drag their feet as they head back to their cells in Chino when his visits with them are over, the sadly predictable swollen bellies on teenage girls hanging out in the project playground, the incessant needs of his clients (housing, jobs, work clothes, car insurance, food), unmet unless he figures out a way to meet them. He runs up here because it's a way to leave all that behind. But even more, he runs up here because he has never figured out any other way of staving off the sadness.

The youngest of eight brothers, Raul was raised by one firecracker mom who fled an abusive husband, the father of her six initial sons, in Texas and relocated to the Pico projects of Boyle Heights without a single friend in 1968. In the early seventies, she met Raul's father—a Vietnam vet—who would end up shirking responsibility for his two kids. By the time Raul was five years old, his father was mostly absent, with the exception of a few random Saturdays when he would pull into the parking lot of the projects and start drinking. On those days he might show one of the boys how to fix a car or give them advice about girls, but Raul mostly stayed away.

"Don't get me wrong," he says. "I wanted a dad, but I realized that not having a dad at all was sometimes better than having one that abused you."
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September 03, 2010
17:25
Glenn Beck's Ten Commandments
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This cartoon requires Macromedia's Flash Player. If you don't see the cartoon above, download the player here.

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.
6:00
Pat Tillman's War
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Pat Tillman's family says "fuck" a lot. And who can blame them? Pat's youngest brother, at the memorial service for the fallen NFL-star-turned-soldier, follows Maria Shriver's "Pat is with God now" rhetoric with, "Pat would want me to say this: He's not with God, he's fucking dead." A year later, Pat Tillman Sr. writes a blistering letter to the military brass who continued to stonewall the investigation into his son's death signed, "Fuck you…and yours." Such is the seething flavor of director Amir Bar-Lev's The Tillman Story (open today at select theaters), which paints a striking portrait of Pat Tillman's devoted and outraged family's search for the truth behind his death in eastern Afghanistan in April 2004.

The footage and documentation do perhaps more than either Tillman book (one by his mother, the other by Jon Krakauer, telling Tillman's wife's story) to walk through the life and death of the country's highest profile war-fighter. For not only do we get the emotions and efforts of the entire clan (Krakauer didn't speak with his mom, for example) but we see what unfolded in pictures, whether it's home video of Pat's Ranger outfit, rugged footage taken the day after he was killed, or evidence of the reams of redacted documents his mother pored over for years—only to be served up an anemic congressional oversight hearing.
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6:00
Tony Blair's Big Lie of Omission
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In his new (self-serving, of course) memoir, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair praises George W. Bush as a man of "genuine integrity and as much political courage as any leader I have ever met." Yet Blair leaves out of the 700-page tome any mention of a meeting he had with Bush in which the US president proposed a plan to trigger the Iraq war through outright deceit.

The early media coverage of Blair's book, A Journey: My Political Life, has zeroed in on his complex and dramatic relationship with Gordon Brown, his onetime political soulmate. (Blair writes about him as one would an ex-lover.) Yet Blair devotes a serious chunk to defending his decision to partner up with Bush for the Iraq war. "I can't regret the decision to go to war," he writes. "…I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded." He adds, "I have often reflected as to whether I was wrong. I ask you to reflect as to whether I may have been right."
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September 02, 2010
6:00
Astroturf U: Goldman's For-Profit College Battles Obama Crackdown
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It's a classic move by an industry player feeling the squeeze of pending regulation: Hire a lobbying firm to create the appearance of widespread opposition via a carefully stage-managed astroturf campaign. One of the latest outfits to give this strategy a try: Education Management Corporation (EDMC), a multibillion-dollar heavyweight in the for-profit higher education industry that's the subject of multiple lawsuits and ample criticism from investors, lawmakers, and government officials who accuse the company of a range of deceptive business practices. The company, whose majority stockholder is Goldman Sachs, recently hired a GOP-linked lobbying shop known for its astroturfing prowess to fight a proposed federal rule that has the entire industry fretting about its future.

Education Management Corporation operates Argosy University, Brown Mackie College, South University, and various Art Institutes. On August 24, EDMC CEO Todd Nelson blasted out an internal email, first reported on by the New America Foundation's Higher Ed Watch blog, saying that the company had hired DCI Group, a Washington-based lobbying and public relations firm with a controversial history, to coordinate a campaign against the Education Department's proposed "gainful employment" rule. The rule would establish metrics for assessing graduates' ability to repay their student loans as a way of judging whether an academic program is truly fulfilling its mandate: preparing graduates for "gainful employment."

For-profit colleges have made no secret of their opposition to this rule; Harris Miller, president of the Career College Association, the industry's top trade group, described it as "unwise, unnecessary, unproven." And for-profit colleges have let the Education Department know their displeasure in a major way. Little wonder why: Education Department officials say the new rule would disqualify 5 percent of programs from receiving federal student aid money, and 55 percent would face limits on growth and mandates to warn students about the risks of excessive borrowing.
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6:00
What's Killing the Babies of Kettleman City?
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[Editor's Note: See a related photo essay here.]

THE FIRST BABY'S NAME was America. She was born in September 2007, with Down syndrome, two heart murmurs, and part of her upper lip missing. She couldn't suck from a nipple, so her mother, Magdalena Romero, would stay up through the night to feed her with a special tube. America showed pleasure in music and delighted in being held by her four siblings. Magdalena thinks they felt a special tenderness for her because of her vulnerability.

Hospital officials told Magdalena that the baby wouldn't live a year, but she didn't want to believe it. Then, one morning when America was nearly five months old, her lips turned purple. Concluding that paramedics would consider a rescue futile, Magdalena drove the baby to the hospital herself and insisted that all efforts be made to save her. For a few days, America survived, tethered to machines. Then she died in her mother's arms.
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Permalink for 'MoJo_Articles/2010/09/02/Kettleman_City_s_Toxic_Web'

6:00

Kettleman City's Toxic Web

In the small Latino farmworker community of Kettleman City, California, at least 11 babies in the past three years have been born with serious birth defects, and several infants have died. Residents blame the recent spate of tragedy on the vast hazardous-waste dump three miles from town. But Kettleman City has numerous environmental villains, including contaminated tap water, heavy air pollution, and daily toxic pesticide exposure. In fact, residents' health is compromised in so many ways that Rachel Morello-Frosch, an environmental health researcher at UC-Berkeley, calls Kettleman City "a poster child for cumulative impacts." You can read the full story here, or view a photo essay exploring the tragic impact of cumulative pollutants on Kettleman City families.

Interstate 5 and State Route 41 Each day up to 400 semitrucks pass within 4 miles of residential homes in Kettleman City. Nearly 100 trucks, some of them bearing toxic waste, roll directly through town on State Route 41.

Farms The state of California is investigating possible links between pesticide exposure and Kettleman City's birth defects.

Waste Management landfill The largest hazardous-waste dump west of the Mississippi stores asbestos, pesticides, and petroleum products, as well as PCB-contaminated wastes, which the EPA suspects may be linked to birth defects. A recent EPA investigation found PCBs in the soil (PDF) outside a storage building and concluded that Waste Management had improperly disposed (PDF) of waste.

Gas fumes The California EPA says pollution from gas stations—there are 5 in the town of 1,500—could be linked to the birth defects.

Petroleum deposits Potential contamination from oil and gas drilling in the Kettleman Hills includes toluene, which has been linked to birth defects.

Food desert Cleft palates and neural tube defects are associated with deficiency in the vitamin folic acid, which is found in leafy green vegetables as well as fortified baked goods and cereals. Some researchers suspect diet might be a factor in the Kettleman City mystery.

Contaminated tap water Kettleman City's two municipal wells contain what the California EPA calls "elevated levels" of arsenic and benzene, both carcinogens that are also suspected of causing birth defects.

California Aqueduct The state Department of Toxic Substances Control is testing the aqueduct for toxic chemicals; some Kettleman residents eat fish (PDF) from the waterway.

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September 01, 2010
6:00
Glenn Beck's George Washington Whopper
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During his much-ballyhooed "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday, Glenn Beck told a whopper involving the founding father who was supposedly unable to tell a lie: George Washington.

Speechifying at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, the controversial Fox News host highlighted the legacy of the nation's first president to drive home his claim that encouraging honesty and integrity was a main aim of the event. Beck even told attendees that "the next George Washington" was "in this crowd. He may be 8 years old, but this is the moment. This is the moment that he dedicates his life, that he sees giants around him. And 25 years from now, he will come not to this stair, but to those stairs. And he can proclaim, 'I have a new dream.'"

Beck also invoked Washington while describing the inspiring experience of visiting famous tourist destinations around the nation's capital. "I have been going to Mt. Vernon," he explained. Holding out his hands for emphasis, he declared with emotion, "I went to the National Archives, and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington."
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6:00
Are Swing District Dems Toast?
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As he walks the quiet Main Street of Farmville, Virginia, Rep. Tom Perriello has his work cut out for him. Wearing khakis, brown boots, and an open-collar shirt in the 100-degree heat, the freshman Democrat pops into stores and offices—he's not always recognized—and asks how business is going and what he can do to help. He tells his constituents that America needs to "make things," and "the elites" in Washington don't get this. At Key Office Supply, owner Jim Ailsworth thanks Perriello for his health care reform vote, noting that he plans to use the law's small-business tax credit for his staff. At Davenport & Company, an independent stock brokerage, manager Brad Watson says he's worried that the stimulus (which Perriello also supported) won't yield long-lasting public works. Perriello points out that he argued "for a stimulus that is focused on 10 years—not 18 months." After Perriello leaves, Watson points to campaign literature on his desk for state Sen. Robert Hurt, who vanquished several tea party candidates to become Perriello's Republican challenger. "Hurt's a nice, moderate Republican," Watson says; he intends to vote for him.

Some 175 miles away in Washington, Republican strategists would be heartened to hear Watson talk. Defeating Perriello is one of the GOP's top priorities as the party fights to gain the 39 seats it needs to seize control of the House and create an anti-Obama fire wall. These few sleepy blocks in central Virginia constitute one of the front lines in this fight. (Before the campaign even began, Perriello was already the target of $1 million in attack ads.) Given that political handicappers estimate the GOP is likely to bag at least 30 House seats, the Dems' fate could depend on whether Perriello manages to hold on.
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MoJo Articles (10 unread)