Undaunted by the barrage of criticism directed his way after his disastrous coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, New York Post editor Col Allan announced today that the paper is already hard at work on its next “total bullshit” story.

“The world is full of great stories,” Allan said. “And there is plenty of pure bullshit we can add to those stories if we keep our heads down and remain focused.”

Allan said that the New York Post newsroom is currently conducting an active search for residents of West Texas they might be able to blame for the tragic explosions in the area.

“If there’s an opportunity for adding in some bullshit, we’ll do whatever it takes to sniff it out,” Allan said.

“Get it?” Allan continued. “Sniff bullshit…. Because it smells…” Frustrated that no one was laughing at his joke, Allan promised to run a cover story blaming 9/11 on the reporters in the room.

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“Let’s face it,” DesLauriers said, “The Redditors are going to spend a hell of a lot more time looking over the clues than we are.” Added DesLauriers, “We should probably just let them take over the whole damn agency.

The FBI said the transfer of the Boston Marthon files to Reddit would begin immediately. President Obama, who once took part in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) chat, said that he supported the decision. “No one spends more time thinking about seemingly insignificant details than Redditors,” Obama said.

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Started as a weekly meeting of some friends who met at “a bar that Jeff used to work at,” this previous utopia of social gameplaying has become riddled with systemic problems that manifest in a consistent gap in victory points between the Lord of Catan and the rest of the Catanese. After Richard Appelbaum discovered that the original rules clearly state that that after one wins a game of Catan one must be referred to as “Lord of Catan” until unseated, he suggested a fun twist to the game where the Lord of Catan also gets to add a new rule each time they play.

“He didn’t even come up with that idea until he had 7 victory points and a road building card in his hand which was easily going to give him longest road,” Jeff told The Faster Times. “And since he won that first game he’s been making the shittiest rules that just keep him in power.”

Rules have included “7’s don’t affect me,” “I start with two cities instead of two settlements,” “I don’t have to pay for beer,” “My roads can go through other people’s roads,” and lately “I start with five bonus victory points.” Unfortunately for Richard, the ease with which he’s been winning has caused lax gameplay and his streak of 14 wins is looking like it might fall unless someone rolls a 7 before Sandy’s turn.

“All I need is a 6, 8, or a 10 to get rolled, and then I can trade in for a development card, which is all we can buy now that the Lord of Catan made it so that ‘no more things can be put on the board,” Sandy explained during a brief respite from her Seafarers Expansion Pack Breakout Group – a collective of Occupy Catan members dedicated to raising awareness that “we haven’t been playing Seafarers at all and we bought it 4 months ago.”

Though it seems as if the Occupy Catan movement is an unorganized set of idealistic gamers with a wideranging set of goals, they agree that the “game has gotten real shitty since Richard started making the rules” – a sentiment echoed by many out here on the settlement though repeated by few, as referring to the Lord of Catan as “Richard” caused Sandy to lose two turns, and probably the game.

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“Look, I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman,” said Larter. “But there is no getting around the fact that a grown man picking out adorable cake toppers is pretty gay.” Added Larter, “The fact that after my own wedding I knew what table runners were certainly did not make me any less gay.”

Larter said that there is not much that can be done to make weddings more heterosexual. Asked if he himself might be a closeted homosexual, Larter said, “No way, man.”

Asked how else he could explain that he was sporting a huge pants tent during an interview this a male reporter, Larter said, “This bird’s gonna fly,” and ran to the backdoor of his office, which turned out to be locked. Larter then shouted, “This never happened,” and dove headfirst out of the third-story window. He was buried with the gay cake topper in his casket.

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Benedict stressed that he meant no offense to the Jewish people. He simply couldn’t deal with the yarmulke anymore. “The Jews have those nice little knitted yarmulkes now,” Benedict said. “I would have killed for something like that. But no, I had to wear one of those giant ones that they give out at the bar mitzvahs.”

Mark Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation league, said that the ADL had no problem with Benedict’s comments. “If I had to wear that monster yarmulke all day, I’d be upset too,” Rubenstein said.

Asked by a reporter what he intended to do with the yarmulke after stepping down, Benedict shouted, “Look alive,” and threw it at the reporter’s face Frisbee style.

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Since 2008, an Ohio-based company, White Hat Management, has collected around $230 million to run charter schools in that state. The company has grown into a national chain and reports that it has about 20,000 students across the country. But now 10 of its own schools and the state of Ohio are suing, complaining that many White Hat students are failing, and that the company has refused to account for how it has spent the money.

The dispute between White Hat and Ohio, which is unfolding in state court in Franklin County, provides a glimpse at a larger trend: the growing role of private management companies in publicly funded charter schools.

To say that this was a predictable outcome is, sadly, a tremendous understatement. For years well intentioned liberals have found common cause with the right on the idea of Charter schools as the saviors of the American public education system. Many of us on the left, myself included, argued that the right-wing never actually cared about saving public education and it appears that we’re finally beginning to see the unvarnished truth. The Republican Party looks at public education just like they look at our military, Social Security, Medicare, transportation infrastructure and our utility systems – a giant pool of money that can be shoveled to well connected business interests.

The concern for the quality of our public education system is little more than a fig-leaf, the real concern has been finding a politically palatable mechanism to transfer public money into private hands with the least amount of accountability possible.

If you think this is hyperbole I would simply point you to Ohio where the GOP controlled legislature and Tea-Billy Governor John Kasich are laying it all out there for you to see. Here’s what the GOP backed annual budget proposal has to say about Charters,

Empowers for-profit corporations to start up and run charter schools – without the oversight of a sponsor, which is required for all charter schools now.

Permits a charter school’s board to give up all its rights and responsibilities to a for-profit or nonprofit operator, who would employ the teachers and other staffers.

Provides that once taxpayer money is given to a charter school operator, it is no longer considered public money and anything the operator buys with it becomes the operator’s property.

Got that? Enterprising individuals will be able to operate a Charter without oversight and all of the tax dollars they receive will be converted to private property.

What could possibly go wrong? We need simply to look at the experience with privatization of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,

Contractors are nothing new to the military, however. They’ve been around since the days of the American Revolution. The combat services have always required them for their expertise, “bending metal,” as the Pentagon describes it: manufacturing tanks, planes and ships. Until the Iraq war, however, there was no doubt as to who called the shots, or who fired them. Over the Iraq decade, that distinction has blurred.

Congressional attempts to rein in contractors have met with mixed and sometimes bitter results. At a hearing in late February, former Congressman Chris Shays voiced his frustration. “For the 200,000 people employed by contractors to provide support and capability in Iraq and Afghanistan, accountability is too often absent, diluted, delayed or avoided.”…

And many contractors resemble war profiteers: From 2007 to 2009, more than 200 contractors had made settlements over fraud charges while still being awarded $280 billion in new DOD contracts. To put that sum into perspective: $280 billion is roughly equal to the national gross domestic product of Denmark, and just behind that of Saudi Arabia…

What most rankles the colonels is that contractors have only one obligation: to fulfill their contract. They answer to no chain of command; they are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; they are not required to have U.S. military training; and they are not subject to the Law of Land Warfare or the Geneva Conventions. Contractors decide on their own rules of engagement. Those security contractors who work for “U.S. agencies” or the State Department, which will soon be taking over control of security in Iraq, are immunized from Iraqi laws, and potentially U.S. law as well. Put another way, they have license to kill.

[Shays] charged that 90 percent of the private contracts awarded by the Pentagon had gone ahead without scrutiny. At a minimum, the Pentagon had failed to inquire about the capabilities and performance of the contractors it was hiring.

Military policy and education policy are worlds apart on a policy level but the interests who support the privatization of the military and public education aren’t concerned with policy at all. They are simply seeking the next pool of capital, conveniently collected by the civilian government with all losses and liability to be absorbed by the taxpayers.

The post Public Schools: From the People Who Brought You Blackwater appeared first on The Faster Times.

Do you go by Benjamin, or Ben Laden? Benny Laden? Did you ever consider changing your name?

When I was little I was called Jamey, taken from the last few letters of Benjamin. In 2nd grade my parents told me they wanted to call me Jamey when I was a baby but now that I was a ‘big boy’ I could try changing to a more grownup-sounding variation of the name. They suggested ‘Benji’. That sounded as childish as Jamey to me. So I went with Ben.

In the 90’s I formed my band called Benny and The Vildachayas. Since then a number of people have started calling me Benny, and I sometimes use it when writing to someone about the band or music.

You seem to have taken this bizarre coincidence with good humor. Has that been hard to come by? Have there been some difficult moments?

In 2001, I was working at a job that had me on airplanes almost every week. I was shocked that during the period when there were armed soldiers in the terminals, I was not stopped a single time going through security. It was almost to the point where I wanted to go up to them and say, “Do you realize who you just let through security?”

I took my family on a trip to Disneyworld in December 2001. We had to catch a very early flight and arrived at the airport with what is usually the normal amount of time required to get through security. This time I got stopped when I tried to get our boarding passes. There was a security block on my ticket. Nobody at the airport knew what to do about it. I was with my four kids, my wife. We were going to miss the flight. They took my identification and disappeared with it for about 20 minutes. Nobody would tell me what was happening. We did catch the flight in the nick of time.

Right after 911 I received many crank calls to my home. Most were obviously people fooling around, and I fooled around right back at them. I’d say stuff like, “Do you really think it is wise to make crank calls to a terrorist?” But there were several calls that were scary and threatening, including one threatening to fire bomb my house at a certain day and time. I called the police and told them what was happening. They would not take me seriously. I pleaded for them to have a cruiser in front of my house at the specified time. They laughed me off. No police ever came. I kept my family in the back of the house away from the windows in that night.

At that time the FBI had solicited anyone getting harassed over having an Arab-sounding name to contact them. I called the FBI office in Philly to tell them about the threats I was receiving. I could not get the guy on the phone to believe that I wasn’t another FBI agent pulling a practical joke. He just would not take my call seriously fearing some other agents were just waiting to laugh at him. That was pretty frustrating.

What was your first reaction after 9/11, when you found out that the mastermind terrorist shared a variation of your name? What was your initial emotional response? Has that changed over the past ten years?

I knew about Bin Laden before most Americans. When I did the rather vain act of putting my name in an Internet search engine, a bunch of stuff about a music festival I organized and my bands came up at the top of the list. About halfway down the page were some links about Bin Laden who at that point was called an International Weapons Dealer. When 9/11 happened, that all changed. Now if you Google “Ben Laden” you won’t find my information because it’s all Osama. However I did wonder if Osama ever Googled his name and saw all the stuff about my music. If so, he never called to book us for a gig.

During the first weeks many reporters as well as Rumsfeld were calling him Ben Laden, pronounced exactly as I pronounce my name with a long “A” in Laden, not Bin Laden with a short “A,” which became the standard pronunciation of his name a little later on. It was very weird to hear all these people saying my name, in such a negative connotation. I knew it wasn’t gonna be good. I wondered how many Adolph Hitlers there must have been who went through a similar experience. I recalled an old colleague whose last name was “Hettler”and realized they probably changed it from Hitler.

Were your parents concerned? Was it awkward making dinner reservations?

Everyone in my family got some razzing for having the last name “Laden.” But they all easily deflected it by saying, ‘You think that’s bad, you should meet my son, his name is friggin’ Ben Laden.’

I don’t make reservations…I just show up and say, “Table for Ben Laden, please.” People scurry.

I assume it’s been difficult to get through airport security. What’s that experience been like? Any interesting anecdotes?

At the one year anniversary of 911 the TSA stepped up security and all of a sudden I was being stopped every time I needed to get on a plane. Once I knew what to expect I used it to my advantage. If there were long lines at the ticket counters, I just walked right up to the counter and said to whoever was working there, “I need to see a manager, I am Bin Laden” (Intentionally using the wrong pronunciation of my name). There’d be a flurry of activity, a manager would appear from the back office, I’d show my ID and tell them we would need to override the stop on my ticket. They had to call the FBI, who did some magical thing in the background that allowed me to get on the plane. And I didn’t wait in the line…Ha!

Could you talk us through the general experience of spending the last ten years as Ben Laden? Highs? Lows?

Until 2007, my job involved traveling all over to teach classes to adults. I had to introduce myself to a new group of students each week. I started using Benjamin instead of Ben more often. I stopped putting my name as a return address on mail and started using my initials instead. I went through the Internet and changed every reference to me that I could find from Ben Laden to Benjamin Laden.

A few weeks after 9/11, I got calls from several news stations. I was a Howard Stern fan and gave him the first interview. He asked “Are Arabs calling you and asking what they’re supposed to do next?” He suggested I should change my name. “No good can come from being named Ben Laden,” he said.

I did a phone interview for Fox News and asked them to send me a copy. When a video was sent to me I was dismayed to see that throughout the phone interview they showed footage of the real Osama. It was those jerks on the Fox News show in the morning. The one guy ended by saying something like, “Well I guess this is your 15 minutes of fame.” I responded, “Maybe, and hopefully one day you’ll get yours.” Touché!

I was called by someone from the David Letterman show about reading the top 10 list. I agreed to do it but they called a few days later saying they realized there was no ‘joke’ there. After the initial “Really? Your name is Ben Laden?”– there’s nowhere to go.

Has the name affected your career at all? You’re a pretty tough guy to Google, no?

I did try to think of a way to capitalize on this…maybe putting out a CD called ‘The Music of Ben Laden” or some such thing, but I never came up with a way this could lead to money in my pocket.

What was your reaction upon hearing that Bin Laden had been killed?

I was at home and was watching reruns of Sanford and Son and during a commercial flipped through the channels and saw they were speculating and that the President was due to speak. In all honesty, I felt a sadness when I heard he was killed. It is a sadness that I feel about our human condition where we have to live with and even accept violence. I knew his death would not lead to a safer world in the near term and really don’t know what it means in the long term. What he did was awful. But I can’t help but think of the parent who hits their child for hitting. Violence begets violence. I came up in a time where we thought we could change the world into a peaceful, just habitat for all living things. Accepting that it can’t be that way is not easy for me. I’ve also been dismayed at the chest thumping and cheering that took place. It is not something to cheer about, it isn’t like we won a ballgame.

You lead a Klezmer band. Do you feel that you’re balancing out the universe by spreading joyful music, sort of a yin to Bin Laden’s yang?

I play a lot of fun music. Besides Klezmer music, I’ve played in a Mardi Gras band called The Wild Bohemians for 27 years. I’ve played at many weddings and other fun-filled events. I like to make a fun time for others and in general reach peak moments of joy with the crowd I am entertaining. That said, I have a lot of Ying, in me….but I also know I have my own more private Yang moments as well. We can look at people like Osama and ask what is wrong with them…or we can ask what is wrong with our human condition that allows people to develop such horrifying beliefs? I believe we can only really progress when we stop asking what is wrong with them, and start asking what is wrong with us, the us that includes both them and us. Why do we humans act in a violent way towards one another? What is in each of us that can cause one of us to do this?

What’s next for Ben Laden? Do you feel a sense of closure?

I do sense that the Bin Laden name fiasco has probably seen its last flurry of news stories — that is, until we hear someone has spotted Osama in Vegas.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEpE7wOqBg

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxG7BtOyTLY

The post Ben Laden is Alive — And Playing Klezmer appeared first on The Faster Times.

The trap was really sprung when Paul Ryan, through some combination of naivete and hubris, actually laid out his budget plan last week. I suppose we should applaud Ryan for his honesty – he wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans while slashing away at Medicare and Medicaid, and he makes no no attempt to hide his priorities.

These are the sorts of ideas that Republicans in years past didn’t talk about so explicitly – at least not in mixed company. Tax cuts for the rich were paired with middle-class cuts – thus hiding the out and out class warfare behind a polite facade. And in 2010 Congressional Republicans ran as the protectors of Medicare. But now it is 2011 and the mask has slipped from their face. Trying to ride the Tea Party tiger has led Congressional Republicans to put out there for all to see what their priorities are – handouts for the rich and a kick in the teeth for everyone else.

Conservative writer David Frum agrees that Republicans have given Obama exactly what he wanted,

Here’s a basic fact of American politics. The American people like Medicare. They are not so enthusiastic about tax cuts for the rich.

Those of us on the political right have different preferences. We believe that low rates for high earners accelerate economic growth. We believe that the cost of Medicare must be restrained. And I think we have a lot of good arguments on our side.

But we must never deceive ourselves: We are arguing for policies with a lot of political negatives attached to them. Which means we have to take some basic political precautions.

In the current Republican mood, however, precautions are for girlie-men. Republicans have succumbed to a strange mood of simultaneous euphoria and paranoia. Republicans have convinced themselves both that: (1) American freedom stands in imminent danger of disappearing into totalitarian night; and (2) that the vast majority of the great and good American people are yearning for a mighty rollback of big government, even at considerable personal sacrifice.

And so Republicans have united around Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal that for the first time in modern conservative history explicitly joins a big tax cut for the rich to big cuts in health care spending for virtually everybody else.

The Ryan plan has presented an opportunity for Obama to debate openly with Republicans about our national priorities. There are now actual contrasting proposals to debate. On the one hand the President wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, trim the defense budget and protect Medicare and Medicaid. On the other hand Republicans want more tax cuts for the rich and the dismantling of two very popular programs (among the other burden shifting to the proles that are found in the Ryan plan).

Obama and every Democrat in the country relishes the opportunity to publicly debate these issues. The Obama plan is right on the economics and right on the politics.

And with the dearth of viable GOP Presidential candidates and the subsequent void that has been created, the Ryan plan has just boxed in every GOP candidate from now until November 2012. The candidates themselves will not get to define their positions on spending, taxes and social programs. Rather they will be asked to either endorse the Ryan plan, which will be wildly unpopular with the general public, or reject the Ryan plan, which will be wildly unpopular with the increasingly delusional GOP base.

If Republicans had merely waited for the President to go first they could have avoided this obvious trap. But their arrogance led them to over-reach and to put their wildly unpopular and transparently plutocratic vision out there for the whole nation to see.

The post Republicans Fall into Obama’s Budget Trap appeared first on The Faster Times.

Obama’s cabinet: who are the winners so far? Losers? Who do you hope will move up to a bigger job? Who do you hope will disappear and never be heard from again? Biggest disappointment? Biggest (positive) surprise?



The post Answering the Sunday Question… Where do the Obama Cabinet Members Rank? appeared first on The Faster Times.

The bill includes a provision that would allow the state to sell or contract out the operation of heating and cooling power plants without a bidding process and without consulting the state’s independent utility regulator. Democratic legislators worried aloud that the process would attract abuse, and Jon Peacock, director of the Wisconsin Budget Project, called the no-bid approach a “red flag.”

The bill also employs “emergency” powers that would allow the governor’s appointed health secretary to redefine the foundations of the state’s Medicaid program, Badgercare, ranging from eligibility to premiums, with only passive legislative review. The attorney in the legislature’s nonpartisan reference bureau who prepared the bill warned that a court could invalidate the statute for violating separation of powers doctrine.

The legislation, the lawyer wrote in a “drafter’s note” about the bill, would allow the state Department of Health Services to “change any Medical Assistance law, for any reason, at any time, and potentially without notice or public hearing… in addition to eliminating notice and publication requirements, [the changes] would leave the emergency rules in effect without any requirement to make permanent rules and without any time limit.”

So Governor Walker hopes to destroy one of the only countervailing forces against corporate cronyism and advocates for public health. And then he’ll start throwing poor people off of Medicaid handing out no-bid contracts to well-connected companies. Like maybe to his friends the Koch brothers? I’m sure it is simply a coincidence that the Koch brothers have just opened a lobbying shop in Madison.

Here is Mike Konzcal on who and what are driving this assault on Medicaid,

From the CBPP: “[Walker's] bill would strip the legislature of practically all of its authority to set the guidelines for the program (known as BadgerCare), leaving the power to do so almost solely in the governor’s hands.”…

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is currently being run by Heritage Senior Fellow Dennis Smith, who has been making his right-wing think tanker bones arguing that states should drop out of Medicaid, the long-time dream of the extreme right. It is telling that “Smith wouldn’t discuss Medicaid provisions in the upcoming budget bill” even though it’s all he’s been writing about for years.

Specifically, one of the last things he wrote had this talking point: “Congress and the Administration have enacted a sweeping overhaul of one-sixth of the American economy, dramatically expanding the scope of federal power….When governors and state legislators realize that they have been reduced to mere agents of and tax collectors for the federal government, bipartisan opposition from the states will be inevitable.”

This power grab by the Governor will be the beachhead for slashing medicaid rolls to record lows and planning the conservative opposition against health care reform more broadly.

Felix Salmon explores the privatization scheme,

The advantage of privatization in cases like the Chicago parking meters is that it removes the utility from political meddling — in that case, from local aldermen who would always agitate for parking rates well below the optimal level. (Relatedly, if you haven’t read it yet, go read Ed Glaeser’s Atlantic essay on the massive economic cost of urban zoning regulations.)

But in the case of Wisconsin-owned energy plants, such considerations don’t come into play. There’s no reason to believe that the private sector will run those plants in a way that is better for the public, and every reason to believe that they will run the plants in a way that is worse (ie, more expensive) for the public. If the state wants to cut such a deal in return for a one-time check, that check had better be enormous. And there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it will be.

Of course it won’t be. Scott Walker isn’t working in the public interest at all. His interest lies solely in advancing his rigid Gilded-age ideology and in funneling public monies and public property to his corporate benefactors. Ed from Gin and Tacos closes the circle on the Koch brothers influence here,

In case it isn’t clear where the naked cronyism comes in, remember which large, politically active private interest loves buying up power plants and already has considerable interests in Wisconsin. Then consider their demonstrated eagerness to help Mr. Walker get elected and bus in carpetbaggers to have a sad little pro-Mubarak style “rally” in his honor. There are dots to be connected here, but doing so might not be in the public interest.

We have a Tea Party Governor, bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, with Heritage Foundation fellows in the cabinet. Here we have it on full display for the entire country to see, the conservative id – crush workers, attack the poor and let the corporations plunder the public treasury. All under the fig leaf of a self-inflicted “budget crisis.”

More Faster News:

Julian Assange Set to be Extradited to “Saudi Arabia of Feminism”

British Tolerance: Anti-Islam or Common Sense?

Ceasefire Ends in Ivory Coast as Post-Election Violence Escalates

The post Scott Walker: How One Corporate Crony Governor Will Destroy His State appeared first on The Faster Times.