Clarion Content

The Clarion Content has high hopes for Durham's future. We were planning a series on development and Durham this week. We are hoping we didn't wait so long that the debate is over before it started.

We will give you, dear readers, our take anyway, for what it is worth. The new county courthouse and associated parking, for the record, cost over $119 million dollars.

What does it say about the County's and the City's priorities that they built this while Durham remains in the top five metropolitan areas for income inequality? Is this their solution? Is this a better investment, a higher priority, than in the schools?

Or even than community policing? This is enforcement. What of deterrence?

Labels: cop stories, Durham, economics, Politics

from David Horsey in the Los Angeles Times

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Politics

The Clarion Content is a dedicated and loyal follower of Nate Silver's statistical analysis of elections in his blog the 538.¹ Long time readers find great irony in this, because as a baseball analyst the Clarion Content's editor is likely to be the first one jumping up and down screaming if Mike Trout somehow steals Miguel Cabrerra's Most Valuable Player Award. Silver, the creator of PECOTA, is renown in baseball circles as a statistical guru only slightly below Bill James on pantheon.

Statistics aren't everything. Math isn't religion. It is a language, descriptive, but limited by its own conceits and structures.²

The problem is that the average moron in the media doesn't speak math. In 2008, Silver correctly predicted the Obama vs. McCain results in 49 of 50 states. He predicted every Senate race correctly. In 2010, he did pretty well too, nailing 36 out of 37 gubernatorial races, although missing on some individual House and Senate races.

This year, using his rigorous statistical analysis and as many polls as he can lay hands on, he has been predicting an Obama victory for some time. His model did show Romney making gains after the first debate, but it was from getting beat handily in the Electoral College to getting beat barely. In the weeks since, the model has drifted back up to an 86% chance of Obama winning, with the two most likely outcomes being the President gets 300 electoral votes, rated a 14% chance, and the President gets 330 electoral votes, rated a 17% chance.

Rocket scientists, like MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, laughably conflate polling and statistics to understand the President and Romney each have a 50% chance of winning. Ah, the dim.³

In fact, Silver predicts that Obama will win only 50.6% of the popular vote. But as those of you who are old enough to remember the 2000 Presidential Election know, the popular vote is not the deciding factor for presidential elections in the good ol' U.S. of A. We have this rigamorole known as the Electoral College.⁴

Silver has done the legwork and the math. He is convinced Obama is going to win. One reason he cited as an example on the 538, in twenty-two polls of swing states Friday, not national polls, individual state polls, Obama led in nineteen, two showed a tie and Romney led in one. This is not what one would call a dead heat, regardless of the national aggregate numbers.

Silver is not alone in his quantitative analysis, Deadspin notes, "the criminally underrated Princeton Election Consortium... [which] nailed the electoral vote count in 2004, and missed it in 2008 by just one... [forecasts] Obama's re-election chances at 98%."

Vote! The Clarion Content's article is not a reason, not to vote. It is about math and bias. Please, please, please go vote! North Carolina is going to be razor close for the distribution of its electoral college votes. There are also a bevy of important state races which will effect everything from schools and state taxes, to energy policy and the environment.⁵


Notes
¹The 538 sadly now belongs to the New York Times, meaning we can read it no more than ten times per month.
²Show us past the Godel theorem, "For every consistent formalization of arithmetic, there exist arithmetic truths that are not provable within that formal system." And furthermore, almost all statisticians concede, small sample sizes can yield lots of surprising results, often called "noise." See the Central Limit Theorem.
³Deadspin notes in its article about Silver, just like math class in high school, some of the bullies use Silver's ostensible nerdiness and high-pitched voice to accuse him of one of their greatest sins, homosexuality. Of course, if he is smart and effeminate, he must be queer. Ahhhh, the sophistication of the narrative that comes from certain parts of the Right Wing.
⁴Interestingly, one might wonder if this will bring the Republicans behind a proportional distribution of states' electoral college votes, rather the winner take all model used everywhere but Maine and Nebraska.
⁴The era of fracking in North Carolina is about to begin.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Politics, Predictions

The Clarion Content detests the foreign policy debate. It is the debate that feels most like both candidates are consistently posturing. In the other debates, one or the other side squirms, and offers the politically correct response, sidling toward the middle, saying what they think the country wants to hear, but differences are at least discernible. When the candidates start talking about American policy towards Egypt, Libya, Israel or China our head starts to spin around with self-propelled vitriol.

When CBS News continually ran this split screen during the foreign policy debate we couldn't resist the Robamney line, original credit to Storey Clayton and the Blue Pyramid.


Siamese twins? But hopefully not two sides of the same coin?

Our foreign policy cherry picking incorporates elements from to Chomsky and Ron Paul. The bottom-line is neither party has a coherent explanation for why America has sided with and continues to side with the dictators and the oppressors from Egypt to Pakistan. Political stability and its economic consequences are trump, time and again, regardless of which party rules the White House.

Nevertheless, elections matter. Supreme Court justices are selected, and henceforth, our own freedoms ride on these elections.

We overheard two middle-age joggers talking on the Al Buehler Cross-Country trail the other day as we passed them, caught just a bit of what one said to the other, "...only way to change it is to vote for Gary Johnson." The reply was immediate, "Well, you can't do that," and then, we had jogged by them.

A friend's Dad got so mad last week, he was sputtering that Michelle Obama wasn't born in this country.

We do not try to tell you who to vote for here at the Clarion Content. We might tell you whom we support and why.

We simply want you to vote.

We don't believe this election is necessarily the most important in ages or in our lifetime. We believe active and engaged citizenry is always important. It has an essential watchdog function that democracy needs. Power corrupts, voting is the first check on that power.

If you want to vote for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein,¹ Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney... just vote.

And vote up and down the ticket, here in North Carolina, you will be deciding everything from tax policy to fracking rules with your vote.

What do you want government to be? Get involved and decide.

Are you glass half-full or half-empty?

For the half-fullers, one of our buddies from California, he dreams of a Ron Paul Presidency accompanied with a Democratic Congress so that Paul can "gut the military, but can't touch social policy."

For the half-empty crew, as Churchill put, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried thus far."


Notes
¹If you haven't heard of either of these two candidates, that is exactly what the two dominant parties are hoping.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, political quips-n-quotes, Politics

The script has been flipped on President Obama, and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is attempting to fall on the royal scepter to save the President.

Likely, you will hear soundbites about this drama in tonight's town hall debate.



This is the bizzaro world of modern political theater where blame must be securely affixed. Clinton made this statement to CNN yesterday,

"I take responsibility. I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world -- 275 posts...The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals."

Rest assured this has only fed the bellies and the fury of the red meat eaters on Capital Hill. Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. They are now pawns on the table for political gamesmanship.

The jackals have the taste of blood and are in full attack mode, this despite the meme of the "I don't remember. I didn't know the details," being developed by their very own political godfather, Ronald Reagan, who's aides darn near copyrighted the strategy during the Iran-Contra affair.

The bitter irony for the President and the Secretary of State is that they are only reaping the blowback of King George the II's wars. Yet the narrative has been flipped on them. Libya was supposed to be near the epicenter of their successes.

The dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, is gone. The Arab Spring started right next door in Tunisia.¹

But the problem is Obama and Clinton missed the opportunity by cozying up to a strategy that said anonymous death from the skies is better than dialogue on the ground. Why was America with the generals and the dictators in Egypt?

Well, if you are asking about the origins of that policy, they are deeply rooted and haven't been ideologically divided along Red-Blue lines for decades. Obama simply kept running the program.² Political stability trumped human rights.

Now, the Muslim Brotherhood is in charge in Egypt and America's influence dwindles daily as the prospects for radicalization increase.

Libya's extremists and the failure of the West to be able to fiat political stability there, any better than it could in Iraq or Afghanistan,³ is ultimately what this is about and why the narrative has been turned on its head. Libya was supposed to reflect the utility, rather than the futility of limited power projection.

President Obama will surely need a better answer than, it's the Secretary of State's fault, should the question arise at tonight's debate.


Notes
¹How America can possibly still be on the wrong side of fight between the dictators and the people begging for freedom, fifty years after Vietnam, is a national debate we need to be having.
²As Mrs. Clinton would have if she had won the presidency.
³Or in Syria, where we are trying out a tacitly "non-interventionist" approach.

Labels: 2008's President, 2012 presidential election, Africa, Politics, war

The Clarion Content broke the Durham ABC Board scandal a couple weeks back. The pace of the investigations appear to have picked up with coverage appearing in the Durham Herald Sun, the Triangle Business Journal, and on NBC-17. The Durham ABC Board is being investigated by the State Board and the public knows it. The Durham ABC Board has until October 28th to respond to state investigators.

In a classic case of slamming the barn door shut after the horses have dashed away, the Clarion Content's sources tell us the Durham ABC Board is holding meetings to hear employee complaints and grievances. Of course, the Durham ABC Board is not about to open those meetings to the public.

The Board is assuring Durham ABC employees that they have full protection under "state and federal" whistleblower laws. The Board's memo to employees about the opportunity to "speak freely" makes no mention of what those statutes might be.

Long time readers know the Clarion Content's feelings about how these things usually go for the whistleblower.

Stay tuned.

Labels: corruption, Durham, Ethically questionable, Politics

The Clarion Content broke the story eight short days ago. It has gone viral now.

Yesterday the Triangle Business Journal reported yesterday that the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has called for an investigation into the Durham County ABC Board.



Today, it is the front page of the Durham Herald-Sun.

"State officials have launched an investigation into the Durham County ABC Board, looking, among other things, at whether its still-new general manager has been steering contracts to friends of board members."

The way we attempted to bring you the story line to begin with was, where there is smoke, it seems unlikely there isn't fire too. We had sources that were bellowing and belching smoky details. Now to read the allegations in the Triangle Business Journal or the Durham Herald-Sun, the dealings are sordid. The allegations as originally reported by the Clarion Content last Wednesday, minutes of meetings altered, meetings conducted without traditional recording, violations of policy and state law.

And if you read the comment section on our original post, albeit some of the comments are anonymous, there are further allegations of missing minutes, of altered minutes in different font types and formats. There is a report that there is no job application in General Manager Emily Page's personnel file.

The Herald-Sun notes that Page, who was Board Chairwoman when she accepted the $100,000/yr. General Manager position, does not list any retail management experience on her Linked-in page. This, for a position that has her running eight busy retail liquor stores, the fishiness factor is self-evident. Down right sloppy.

In that vein, a final detail that caught our eye in the Triangle Business Journal's article, the Durham ABC Board, like all ABC Boards is supposed to distribute a proportion of its profits to city and local governments. The Durham ABC Board turned over $909,000 to the county and $101,000 to the city.

Those look like some awfully round numbers for a place that does as many transactions as your friendly, neighborhood, eight Durham ABC stores. Their revenue last year was nearly $25 million dollars.

As shady as some of their other dealings appear to be, let's hope the state is going over Durham ABC's books with a fine tooth comb.

Labels: Durham, Ethically questionable, Politics

You know how they say where there is smoke there is fire? Well... the Durham County ABC is smoking.



The last time the Clarion Content broke a story with this much heat, D.R. Horton was fixing to drill under Durham County homeowner's houses who had (allegedly) unwittingly signed off on deeds giving the company and its energy partners fracking rights.

The Clarion Content has reports from multiple sources within Durham ABC that the state is investigating The Durham County ABC. The Clarion Content's sources say the state's concerns range from improper use of Frontier-Visa gift cards as employee incentives, to irregularities in the selection process of current General Manager, Emily Page. Ms. Page served as the Chairwoman of the Durham County ABC Board before becoming Durham ABC's General Manager, a position that carries with it a salary in excess of $95,000 and a company car.

Employees within the Durham ABC report that minutes of board meetings have been substantially altered after the fact and original tape recordings of meetings have been destroyed. In concert with local Durham attorney, Carey Ewing, the Clarion Content inquiry has turned up strange inconsistencies. Minutes that were months old and supposed to be available to the public were not on the Durham County ABC Board's website, nor in the Clerk of the County Commissioner's office. Suddenly after questions about availability by Attorney Ewing, they were back on the website, and available to the public, if a written request was filed and a photocopying fee paid.

The Clarion Content has also heard from Durham County ABC store managers that employees have been allowed to work and sell alcohol without completing the mandatory Responsible Alcohol Selling Program part of their training, this despite the protests of Chief of ABC Law Enforcement, Derrick McMillan.

Employees also report that numerous "unofficial" directives in contradiction of Durham ABC policies have come from the General Manager's office; including new restrictions on leave and employee vacation, directives about the hiring of certain specific contractors, changes in the conduct of criminal background checks for new hires, and how ABC Board foundation money is allocated.

Shortly after Ms. Page took over as General Manager, she removed the ABC's recording secretary from General Manager's meetings and discontinued the process of taking minutes of those meetings.

Employees also allege Ms. Page has made use of office resources for her personal coaching and consulting business, and claimed to be working from home on days where she has been spotted biking the Tobacco Trail.

There have also been questions raised about Durham County ABC Board member Erroll Reese's use of County resources for personal causes.

We have spoken to as many as six Durham County ABC employees and Attorney Ewing has spoken to a handful more. All are concerned. All feel the new leadership has created a hostile, uncomfortable work environment. Some fear whistleblower retaliation for having hired a lawyer or spoken to the press, but they uniformly state that did not know what else they could do.

Just before publishing this article the Clarion Content was able to speak with Ms. Kimberly Shaw, Durham County ABC Board Chairwoman. While Ms. Shaw did not have direct knowledge and could not comment on all the allegations herein, she did clarify a few points. Ms. Shaw said that the gift cards in question were not received nor treated as gifts by Durham County ABC. Rather they were considered discount cards which are acceptable under state guidelines. Ms. Shaw had not heard about any irregularities concerning board meeting minutes.

She also noted concerning scheduling and leave policy that the General Manager, Ms. Page, has a certain amount of leeway. She said that the goal is maximum "operational efficiency" and that it was Shaw's understanding that the changes would save the ABC from having to hire additional employees at a greater fiscal cost. She noted, it is always the Board's goal to try to save funds where possible, so that as much money as can be is directed back to the City and County of Durham.

Ms. Shaw also mentioned that sometimes fresh eyes and new policies from leadership are met with disdain and gripes by employees, but are ultimately for the greater good of the organization.

Regarding the use of Durham ABC resources for Ms. Page's personal coaching and consulting business, Ms. Shaw said that the Board takes those kind of allegations very seriously, this was the first she had heard of it and they would look into it. The same goes for violation of the Board policies regarding the Responsible Alcohol Selling Program, this was the first she had heard of it, they take these issues very seriously and she would investigate.

Bottom line, Durham, stay tuned.

Labels: Durham, Ethically questionable, Politics

Sometimes the old saws are true. A picture says 1,000 words.

Ladies, young and old, know what this election is about; here is the story, in pictures.


For real.




Simple, eloquent, obvious.



Speaking truth to power.




Our libertarian, small "c" conservative hearts are right with you. The government in a free society should have no legislative control over our bodies.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, photos, political quips-n-quotes, Politics

It is the return of an old school Clarion Content feature, Interesting Links and Links of Interest. You know, just in case you had not found enough ways to waste time on the inter-webs yourself. We have a few more places to kick it, read something you did not know, see something you had not seen, maybe get a laugh.

To see old Interesting Links posts click here and scroll down past this one.

Our first two links are about transit. We were going to go with a good news/bad news dichotomy. So what do you want first? The good news or the bad news?

Presuming in favor of your innate optimism, we are going to go with the good news first. India’s Tata Motors is working on a revolutionary new car, the Airpod. It runs on air. No kidding. It is part of Tata's line of super cheap nano cars that they hope to market and sell all over the less developed parts of the globe. They are built with pneumatic motors that use pressurized air to drive pistons. In May, the motor giant announced that it had completed the “first phase” of the Airpod cars, successfully testing out the engines in two vehicles. Its tank can hold 175 liters of air. Filling it up will cost about a dollar and get you 125 miles. Awesome!

Read the whole story here. Special thanks to a young reader from Pennsylvania for sending this our way.

The next transportation story is not such a happy one. But, it is important, especially if you are wondering why America doesn't have diddly for high speed rail, while all kinds of other countries do.¹

It is the same corruption, bureaucratic raj and systemic morass that is dragging down the rest of our economy. Stephen Smith offers up a fabulous expose in Bloomberg News. Here are a few of the nuggets. If the first segment of Manhattan’s Second Avenue subway opens on the current schedule in 2016, it will have only taken seventy-five years to get'er done. (Not a typo.) Smith says on average American mass transit projects cost as much as five times as much as similar work in Europe and Asia.²

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is spending $3.8 billion on a single subway station at the World Trade Center designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his costly projects. If New York could build subways at the prices that Paris and Tokyo pay, $3.8 billion would be enough to build the entire Second Avenue subway, from Harlem to the Financial District.---Bloomberg

Our next link falls more into the "What's grosser than gross category?"

Answer? Winning one of those storage wars, bidding on abandoned, rent unpaid storage units, and finding a stash of crudely preserved human organs inside, including hearts, brains and lungs, as a guy did in Pensacola, Florida last week. Most of the body parts found were not labeled, including a heart found in 32oz convenience store cup filled with formaldehyde. The AP reports the previous owner of the storage unit was Dr. Michael Berkland who worked for the state of Florida as a medical examiner. Find the rest of the story here. (Icky.)

The next one is actually an NPR story featuring a regular Clarion Content contributor, Storey Clayton, author and illustrator of Duck and Cover, director of the website The Blue Pyramid and in his day job, the Rutgers University debate coach.

In this article, he and Cornell University director of forensics, Sam Nelson break down the five most common argumentative fallacies likely to be seen this campaign season: Argumentum ad verecundiam, the appeal to authority, post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning "After this, therefore because of this..." the familiar, argumentum ad hominem, "name-calling," and the rest of the lot.

In each case, they include explanations of what they mean, why they often work and an example from both presidential candidates. It is funny and an eye-opener. Read the whole story here.

One final one to blow you away. In case the military-industrial complex had drifted out of your subconscious; this will snap you back. Check out this article about the newest nano-drones from Lockheed Martin.



Notes
¹No, you can't simply keep blaming President Obama. It is more nuanced than that.

²The French rail operator SNCF told the California High-Speed Rail Authority that it could cut $30 billion off the project’s $68 billion estimated price tag!!! Repeat, the French.

Labels: Ethically questionable, infrastructure, interesting links, Politics, Pop Culture, technology

Long time readers know, the Clarion Content always has our radar on for any signs of police malfeasance. This is because the police in many places continue to espouse an ethic that is less "protect and serve" and more "enforcement." This combined with our philosophical distrust for government and the terrible imbalance in the power dynamic between cops and citizens makes us hyper-alert.



One such story crossed our scopes this weekend and the peripherals stink to high heaven. There is as yet no evidence of police wrongdoing, just a lot of smoke and suspicions. Here is the lowdown.

Chavis Carter, a twenty-one year-old African-American male was in a car stopped by police in Jonesboro, Arkansas on suspicion of smoking marijuana.¹ He was with with two other people. Cops released both of the other folks and detained Carter after discovering weed on his person and that he had an arrest warrant in Mississippi.²

Police searched Carter twice to find the pot, but did not find a gun. A police car's videotape of the events shows Carter lead toward the patrol cars and then out of the frame. A police report says Carter was placed in the second patrol car without handcuffs, though the video doesn't show that.

As NPR notes, "the other officer searches the driver and remaining passenger, who then stand in front of the first patrol car. The officer who searched Carter asked them where the rest of the marijuana was because he found some on Carter. The driver and other passenger are handcuffed and led out of the frame, too. Eventually, they appear without handcuffs and the officers let them leave."

The patrol car's video cuts off at that point.

Police reports indicate that Carter subsequently had his hands cuffed behind his back and was stuffed into a Jonesboro Police crusier.

A second batch of police video begins as police light flickers on an empty stretch of road. A dog barks and a white SUV turns around a ways down the street.

Suddenly, an unseen man curses and shortly after he says, "He was breathing a second ago." An ambulance pulls up and someone, perhaps the same man, says, "I patted him down. I don't know where he had it hidden."

Later, someone instructs the others to leave everything as it is.

The video goes on to show an officer cordoning off the area with police tape. Two people can be seen looking on, but they leave after interacting briefly with an officer.

Carter is not shown in that video.

Carter was quite likely already dead. The cops story, he concealed a gun from them, despite being searched twice, and shot himself in the head in the back of the car, despite his hands being cuffed behind his back.³

CBS News reports, "Carter's family and others have questioned the police story, claiming that Carter was not suicidal."

CBS News also notes the autopsy report released after the incident indicated that Carter tested positive for methamphetamine use and a trace amounts of oxycodone.

Clearly there were a lot of issues in play. The police have a difficult and dangerous job. One has to wonder how much the psychology that places "enforcement" on a higher plane than "protect and serve" had to do with the death of this young man.

The cops later released a reenactment video that shows an officer being cuffed, then sitting in the back seat of a police cruiser, retrieving a fake gun from his pants, and bringing the barrel to his right temple.

In a society where Abner Louima was brutally sodomized with a stick while inside a Brooklyn police station, Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by police while reaching for his wallet in a doorway in the Bronx, and Arthur McDuffie⁴ died of police-administered skull fractures at a hospital in Miami after a traffic stop showed him driving with a suspended license, we worry.

We do not have the answers, but we surely hope they come to light.


Notes
¹Can we decriminalize already?? How many more young men have to die or rot in prison over weed?!?

²Of course, need we even note, it was drug related...

³Did you know, despite being left-handed and handcuffed, Carter managed to shoot himself in the right temple?

⁴Five white cops, one black man. Ask Rodney King. And the list goes on and on. Read more examples here in the Baltimore-Sun.

Labels: cop stories, Ethically questionable, facing race, Politics

There are those it makes awful mad to hear the Clarion Content excoriate Barak Obama¹ for the lack of change we have seen in the last four years. This video clip is a reminder, that it is not so much President Obama as it is the institutional barriers, blockades and outright resistance from The Establishment² that makes real change so difficult.³

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Representative Alan Grayson of Florida and the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve, on where your tax dollars have gone.





Notes
¹Fortunately, Representative Akin is out there in Missouri to remind our editors, no matter how tempting some of their minimalist vision of government might be, their social mores haven’t changed since the Inquisition. Romney’s V.P. nominee, Paul Ryan, co-sponsored a bill with Akin last year, that would have banned abortion except in cases of forcible rape, incest or the mother’s life was in-danger. Making the all important Evangelical Republican distinction between rapes where the victim invited it and “true” rapes. Unclear on where that slippery slope leads? Watch “The Accused,” starring Jodie Foster.

²The Man, the lifers in unelected positions of power, the holders and controllers of great and institutional wealth. Not that their secretive or unresponsive, but on Federal Reserve dot gov, one notes they have not revised the section headed "Purposes and Functions" since 2005, since ya know, like nothing of note has happened since then.

³Incidentally, The Man was who the Fed bailed out while the rest of us sucked on the carbon-monoxide filled tail pipe of The Great Recession. The bankers sure are taking it hard.

Labels: economics, Economy, Ethically questionable, political quips-n-quotes, Politics

Does this guy bring enough of...

this to the table for Romney to win?

The Clarion Content agrees with the Washington Post that the 2012 Presidential Election winner will be the candidate that does a better job turning out the party base. It is ironic because President Obama's win in 2008 was carried by first time voters and folks who have not always voted in the past.

We agree with the Post that so much of the country already has their mind made up, be it, for or against Obama, that this means there are very few undecided voters for either campaign to win. The nation has been polarized since the middle of the Clinton presidency; and if anything it has been getting increasing polarized.

It is for precisely this reason that Mitt Romney's selection of Wisconsin Representative, Paul Ryan, as his Vice-Presidential nominee was so worrying.¹ Romney is a pantywaist who will say and do anything to win an election. He has been on both sides of the abortion debate, both sides of the gay marriage debate, both sides of the bank bailout, and enacted the law that Obama-care is based on, that he is now campaigning against.²

Ryan, on the other hand, is a red meat eater, who makes no bones about his intention to gut the government like a fish.³ While he isn't a Tea Partier, the budget he wrote reads like one. He is running the Barry Goldwater playbook that dictates the easiest way to decrease the size of the government is to starve it of funding.

Ryan may energize a conservative Republican base that has been, at best lukewarm, and at worst ready for insurrection, over the Romney nomination. Earlier in the campaign season, leading conservative voice,⁴ Bill Kristol, compared the Romney campaign to the trainwrecks led by Michael Dukakis in 1988, and John Kerry in 2004.

Can Ryan get the train back on the tracks?⁵


Notes
¹We did find it interesting that Ryan, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, is also still running for his Wisconsin seat.

²We would never endorse such a soulless strawman. One reason we opposed King George the II from before he is first day in office, was he was far too vacuous to have any idea what policies he supported. The Clarion Content fears the strawman and the pawn far more than the true ideologue. The true ideologue can be opposed on policy and shown to be what he or she is. The shapeshifter, the moving target, or the puppet run by his handlers can be harder to fight. Note, all this is in reference to after the president is elected.

³Ironically, if he had the balls and the intellectual consistency to oppose the bloated military industrial complex the government is handing our tax dollars over to, the Clarion Content agrees with him in other places. For example, America must gradually raise the age requirements for Social Security. Medicare must be reformed. Government waste is massive and maddening (and greatest in the DOD). However, his opposition to Pell Grants and Food Stamps could be described as somewhere between short-sighted and cruel (especially, while supporting continued tax breaks for the very richest Americans).

⁴Kristol is far less influential with the average conservative voter than say Rush Limbaugh, but he is major power broker at 31337 level. He had the Dick's ear throughout the reign of King George the II.

⁵Our view has been unchanged for several months; while it might be close-ish in the popular vote, President Obama will win the electoral college comfortably. Of course, a European bank run, an act of terror or $4/gallon gasoline could change the equation. The coming shock to food prices won't kick in until Obama's second term.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Economy, Politics

No pun intended.¹ Get your mind out of the gutter.

The Clarion Content, like our friends at the Blue Pyramid, has been frustrated with the level of discourse in the 2012 Presidential campaign. Ad hominem attacks have dominated. Despite some significant policy differences between the two major party candidates, the focus has been on personal and side issues, Romney's taxes and his dog, Obama Chicago cronies and his wife's fashion choices.



Neither candidate is willing to take responsibility for this continued debasing of American political discourse. The White House press corps, an inside baseball organization, if there ever was one, feels that part of this lack of substantial dialogue can be blamed on President Obama's predilection for seeking out softball interviews.

Politico notes, the last time the President gave a press conference, "Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were together, and Lebron James had still not won an NBA Championship." Both King George the II and President Clinton had given more than twice as many press conferences by this point in the election cycle as Obama has.

However, as the White House press corps has noted, this isn't because President Obama refuses to talk to the media. Last week, President Obama spoke with Carlos, Kiki and Danny on KOB-FM, Big Ken and Colleen on Star 102.5, People magazine, and "Entertainment Tonight." He weighed on such heavy topics as his favorite work-out songs and his ideal super power.²

Inane? Perhaps. But even Republican strategists concede it may be effective. Politico quotes former George W. Bush spokesman, Trent Duffy, "I think just think it comes down to their overall strategy, which is to be low risk, to play it safe. They feel like they’re ahead and there’s no need to put the president in a position where he makes a mistake.

President Obama defended himself, telling ET, "What the American people hear and what the press corps want to focus on are two very different things."

His campaign spokesperson was equally blunt, "People get their news in many different ways. Sometimes it’s turning on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and seeing what the latest news is out there."

So much for elevated discourse. Read the full story here.


Notes
¹Come on, have a little respect. Besides soft balls would be two words.

²He chose speaking any foreign language, although he noted, "the whole flying thing is pretty good."

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Politics

The Clarion Content had a fabulous time on the bus yesterday. We cannot overemphasize what a good deal a free bus that runs down Main Street is for Durham.¹

Want to see something at the Nasher?

What about an event at Goldenbelt?

Perhaps get a drink and listen to some tight grooves at the Pinhook?

Or have a $1 PBR on Monday at the James Joyce?

Or anywhere and everywhere in between and then some. Free. Pull the cord, the Bull City Connector will drop you off where ever you want.²

Yesterday, they let the Clarion Content team, photographer, Jessica Arden,³ and Creative Director, Cady Childs⁴ hop aboard the bus to photograph a fashion shoot, the latest of our Durham Fashion Drive-by series. We mingled with the public.⁵ The drivers, especially our pal Medoza, were amazingly accommodating, able to get their passengers to their appointed destinations on time and keep up with our photographic needs and desires.


We can't wait to show you the whole thing...but in the meantime can we whet your appetite with a preview?


Models from left to right, Cody Tyler of Totes Codes parties and events, director, Ned Phillips, aka the Cozmik Gangsta of the ODD crew, and musician Joe Hall of Hammer no More the Fingers and Blanko Basnet…


Amazing men's clothes from Vert & Vogue.

Special thanks to the stylists at Rock, Paper, Scissors Salon and Gallery for their work with the model's hair.


Notes
¹It is our contention that the bus is an important public good and a social justice issue. In this day of modern transportation and therefore distance, people need cheap options to travel to work.

²Seriously, for more than fifty Durham restaurants, bars, clubs, art spaces and more, the Bull City Connector's service is just about door-to-door.

³This was a physical shoot, can't wait for the behind the scenes footage. Ms. Arden must be doing her pilates, because it was circus act to keep a steady base to shoot from while winging around corners, stopping at traffic lights and otherwise having the floor move beneath her feet, as the wheels on the bus went round and round.

⁴Managing three models, nine outfits, in the drizzle on a moving public bus while coordinating with three PR people, two videographers and three photographers; a veritable whirlwind, Ms. Childs was unbelievable. This all after coming off of working the fabulous soft opening at Durham's newest hot spot, Mateo Tapas.

⁵It wasn't quite this packed.

Labels: Duke, Durham, ecology, economics, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, Politics

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported on Wednesday that July was the hottest month on record since the United States began keeping temperature records in 1895. This hot July also closed out the warmest twelve month period ever recorded in the United States.

Wondering about the practical impact of all this hot weather?



Climatologists at the NOAA noted that by the end of the month, about 63% of the country was experiencing drought conditions. Not surprisingly, corn prices¹ have surged up by over 60% in response according to Bloomberg News. And even if the drought eases in America, it may be too little too late after the blazing hot Summer here, and globally dry weather limiting agricultural output in India, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.

It is worth remembering that a global spike in food prices was part of the catalyst of the Arab Spring.²


Notes
¹Corn, thanks to a very effective lobby, goes into everything, even gasoline, and equally critically animal feed, threatening food security for millions in the less-developed regions of our world.
²Like so many the Clarion Content had tremendous hopes for the Arab Spring revolutions when they began in Tunisia. Sadly the Obama Administration squandered the opportunity. In Egypt, they treated the Muslim Brotherhood backed President as if Dick Cheney were still running the White House. The direct blowback from that failure, notably under Hillary Clinton's watch as Secretary of State, has pushed Egypt into Iran's arms.
It would not be hard to argue too, that the Obama administration's failure to give decisive early backing to Syrian rebels has contributed to thousands of deaths there. The dithering will produce a new administration which will hate Americans no matter which side wins their civil war.
At least, we are still effectively killing civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere with the Obama administration's favorite technology, (f*ck high speed trains) the pilotless drone.

Labels: ecology, Economy, Politics, weather

As our friend and political analyst Storey Clayton noted in these pages last month, "[our] society is manufacturing anger and despair at an incredible rate."

The pervading sense of helplessness among American youth, having been jaded by four years of more of the same pre-packaged as "change," is as great as it has ever been.

The centralization of power and the consolidation of wealth are going faster in America than they ever have previously. American youth can feel that lack of control.

Perhaps a few visual aids...





More on the illusion of choice and reality of the centralization of power and the consolidation of wealth...





That's nine companies controlling every brand shown in the diagram.



More on the illusion of choice and reality of the centralization of power and the consolidation of wealth...


"The four most complex U.S. financial holding companies -- JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America -- each contain more than 2,000 subsidiaries, with two of those controlling more than 3,000 subsidiaries, according to a research paper published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Citigroup has 1,645. In 1991, just one firm exceeded 500 subsidiaries..."---source: Bloomberg News

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Economy, George Carlin, Politics, public protest, thought, war

The Clarion Content is stoked to support the bus.

We are delighted to live in the kind of city that supports the bus. Free municipal bus routes are a fantastic public service. The bus is an old, school kind of throwback idea. It hearkens to an era when people knew their neighbors and front porch culture dominated.

The practical personal benefits of taking the bus are legion, from decreasing the propensity to drive drunk, to saving on gas, to safety. The societal benefits of taking the bus are extensive, too. The list includes decreased pollution and traffic congestion, less need for public parking and hence more open space. The bus encourages a pedestrian culture that helps local business. People walk when they get off the bus.





You should take advantage of the wonderful, free, Bull City Connector bus any and every chance you have. It hits all the spots on Main Street, it is a great way to get out to the Scrap Exchange, Liberty Arts, the Cordoba Center for the Arts, Goldenbelt, American Tobacco and more.

And while the bus makes sense every day, tonight we have a special opportunity for you. Do you want to be an extra in a fashion shoot? Would you like to highlight how easy it is to get to your place of business by Durham's free bus?

Then join the Clarion Content and our fabulous Fashion Drive-by team, photographer, Jessica Arden, and Creative Director, Cady Childs tonight at 6pm along the Bull City Connector route.

We are shooting our latest Fashion Drive-by. We will be photographing on the bus with the amazing fashions of the Independent's Men clothier of the year, Vert & Vogue.

We will be highlighting business along the route. Hoping off at stops to take pictures. There will plenty of opportunity for by-standers and patrons of your establishments to become extras. Wave at us through the windows of the bus and you may end up in the background of a high fashion shoot.


We would like to offer our special thanks to the good folks at the Bull City Connector and the Durham Convention and Visitor's Bureau who reached out to the Clarion Content about making this happen.

Labels: Duke, Durham, ecology, energy policy, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, infrastructure, Politics

The Clarion Content is delighted to announce, as some of you have already heard, that we are partnering with the Bull City Connector for our next Fashion Drive-by, Fashion in Transit. The clothes will be provided by the Independent's Men clothier of the year, Vert & Vogue.

We will have our usual superlative Fashion Drive-by team, photographer, Jessica Arden, and Creative Director, Cady Childs.



The Clarion Content is stoked to support the bus.

We are big believers in the ecological and communal returns of mass transit. The bus has so many rewards. There are obvious benefits; saving on gas, no parking issues, being able to knock back a tipple or two without driving. And there are subtler benefits; meeting your neighbors, understanding the geography of our community, the positive feeling of having played a part in reducing pollution and waste, helping push the mass transit mindset.

The Clarion Content is proud to be in and of Durham. We make a concerted effort to support the green¹ in our community and we believe Durham does the same.


Notes
¹We like green initiatives, ideas and projects of all ilks. If we are missing out on yours, please send it our way! Info@ClarionContent dot com. All one word dot is the symbol "."

Labels: Durham, ecology, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, infrastructure, Politics, Practical Advice, vehicles

Resident New Bruinswick philosopher, Storey Clayton, last seen in this space writing about the Occupy Movement faces the harsh realities of his reaction to the Colorado movie theater shooting. In a piece that challenges, provokes and doesn't apologize, he makes you think about modern society.

It is long, but well worth it. All links in the body inserted by author.---Ed.

Read more of Storey Clayton's work here at the Blue Pyramid. Check out the insights of his famous cartoon Duck and Cover, here on the Clarion Content. See and take the Blue Pyramid's legendary Book Poll here.




**************************************************


Object Lesson
by:Storey Clayton

I have learned a lot about myself in the past week. This is good. Learning is fun!

One of the things I have learned, or relearned perhaps, is how little I am surprised by things. Most people like surprises. I kind of miss them, I guess. Which is not intended as a way of tempting the fates. But if anything, I think I'm surprised that there aren't more mass-shootings in America. About one a day is probably what I'd expect. Maybe we'll get there soon. This is not a desire or a hope. It would be nice to have no mass-shootings in a year. But there would have to be a lot of changes to make that happen.

No, not increased security measures.

I wrote at length about the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon last October, how I saw it as a harbinger not of a revolutionary protest movement in our society, but as a reflection of how many people were left with nothing to do in our society. It would be nice if it were a revolutionary protest movement that was burgeoning in our society. Unfortunately, we have all seen too many revolutionary protest movements. We are watching several of them now! Look at Libya, Egypt, Syria. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A bunch of people get themselves killed and do some killing and you end up with a society that looks a lot like it did before. But the leaders are slightly different and maybe this race or religion or sect has the advantages to lord over the prior victors. There is much to deter a young revolutionary in society today.

To believe in revolution, you have to believe in the future. You have to believe that there is a future worth fighting for. We are getting little stark illustrations all over the place that this is a foolish perspective. There will be a future, surely, in the sense of days that follow this one. No matter how much caves in or how much I lose, that is inevitably clear. But the idea that the right people can be in control, nay, that there even are right people, seems unlikely. And the more people who were raised and brought up to believe in an American dream and a future that was better than their parents' and the mass accumulation of growth and so on and awaken to find the piles of debt and futurelessness waiting for them, the more people they are likely to go out and shoot.

I probably shouldn't put in print that I understand that frustration and powerlessness of mass-shooters. I am a pacifist, of course, and abhor violence of all kinds, and am in no way trying to justify or vindicate the actions of James Holmes or anyone like him. But I get the idea of the world being so backwards and upside-down that only an absurdist and horrific reaction seems fair or justified. I have felt this way in my life sometimes and am very grateful to my pacifism for keeping me from stockpiling weapons. I know that some of you are probably surprised (there it is again!) to see me writing this, but I think you are not necessarily checking in with yourself sufficiently if so. Look inward, my friend. Have you never felt that kind of anger and despair?

This society is manufacturing anger and despair at an incredible rate right now. We've been over why, this worship of the magical "Economy", and we've even been over how it manifests when people only turn the proverbial gun on themselves, most recently. As my friend and debater Kurt Falk often tells me, I should be the entertainment at children's birthday parties. His idea for fixing all this is in his most recent post, where he joins Kurt Vonnegut (in Palm Sunday, just finished today, certainly influencing the style of this post) in advocating that we have new rites of passage for American youth, bar mitzvahs or quinceañeras for a culture unmoored. It's a good idea. It used to be that graduating from high school was our culture's adulthood commemoration ceremony. But now there is no real adulthood to be reached. In the sense of independence, of self-sufficiency, of freedom to make informed decisions, our newly minted adults are as bankrupt as someone with six figures of student loan debt. And just like those folks, they can't file it and start over.

So they shoot people, don't they? I guess that's a little oversimplified, but that looks to be the size of it. Apparently Mr. Holmes is walking down the corridors pretending to be the Joker or some other masked movie villain (get it?), but I'm sure he was perfectly sane when he spent meticulous hours buying guns on the Internet or laying tripwires across his apartment. He did the math. He was good at it. He realized that he had no future, that the people of America who were being distracted to death had no future, and he tried to illustrate that. All the way down to the six-month-old and the six-year-old who were apparently watching one of the most violent franchises in movie history after midnight.

I am not trying to glorify this scumbag or turn him into some sort of dark anti-hero (I'll leave that to Hollywood). But I am trying to dissent from the media chorus singing about the senseless unpredictable shock of all this. It's perfectly predictable and it has a kind of logic. Michael Moore did much the same treatment of Columbine in his masterpiece movie Bowling for Columbine, which we should all probably go rewatch. Part of his thesis was that kids growing up in the shadow of defense contracting, preached to about how the country they're supposed to love solves all its problems through violence, will occasionally take this environment seriously. And respond in kind. People are all agog about what's wrong with Colorado when Michael Moore already told you. To be fair, Holmes did hail from San Diego, one of the biggest military cities in the country aside from those found in Colorado. When we have a society filled with people who play a little video game attached to real drones that blow up real people, how shocked can we be that disgruntled broke teens or twenty-somethings from the new Lost Generation walk into a movie and emulate the solutions found on-screen and in real life?

What no one seems to realize is that you need to do something with these people. I don't mean to sound pejorative when I say "these people" - many of them are my closest friends and confidants. I coach them, I talk with them, I worry about the very concept of a future around them. They need things to do. They have active minds and have been raised on poisonous dreams about growth and accumulation. They need to put their mind to something other than disappointment, despair, and the soulless thresher we call "The Economy".

Many would suggest a war. I have no doubt that's one plan being hatched in the corporations funding the Obama/Romney campaign. A nice big war to sweep everyone into the old employer of last resort. You wouldn't even need a draft, you'd just have it de facto. I'm sure a land invasion of Iran or North Korea would keep many hundred-thousands of a Lost Generation occupied and out of the way. The legend is that this is what saved America from the Depression, what saved the Baby Boomers from totally overwhelming the system in the sixties. There's little doubt that part of the lack of enthusiasm to really make jobs and work for the youth of our society has to do with making the incredibly unappealing military look a little more enticing.

I, of course, would never suggest a war, any more than I would advocate you going down to your local movie theater and shooting up six-year-olds. They are the same thing. Only in a war, more six-year-olds die. Usually more horribly, more painfully.

I would suggest make-work programs. We certainly have things that need fixing. Let's build a free wireless Internet network for the whole nation. Yes, even rural North Dakota and Alaska. That would require some people, wouldn't it? Give them room and board and a college-like camaraderie, a little spending cash (so they can - gulp - see a movie), maybe access to a shared fleet of cars on weekends. Let's build some high-speed rails so we can take all these dangerous overpriced gas-guzzling trucks off the road. Let's build some solar and wind plants. I know, I know, it would require a total resignation from the very concept of The Economy. It would mean government was actively putting corporations out of work, and some of their employees too, and treating the youth of America with dignity and respect and like they're people who can do things. Heaven forbid.

But what are your alternatives? These people are going to be on the dole one way or the other. There aren't jobs, there aren't opportunities, and everyone in The Economy is doing their damnedest to make sure there are fewer jobs and fewer opportunities to come. I guess you can repeal minimum wage and make everyone punch each other in the nose for a scrap of bread you throw from the tower at midnight, but these people are increasingly going to leverage their debt and take matters into their own hands. And they'd have to believe in a future to make a revolution. If all they believe in is despair, then you get Aurora or Columbine or Virginia Tech. You get little dark knights everywhere, believing they are extolling some kind of neo-nihilism with every bullet, not realizing governments cornered that market with wars centuries ago.

I envisioned this post a long time before there was a movie theater shooting, and it was going to be about another kind of object lesson, back to the theme of learning about myself. It was about the fact that I bought a new coffee maker I didn't need a few months ago and haven't had the heart to set it up and replace the old one.

The old one looks like this:



I won it at the Yale tournament in the spring of 2002. They gave out useful or fun objects like rice cookers and Gameboys and coffee makers with the budget they would have spent on shiny trophies. I actually initially took the rice cooker at Emily's behest, but quickly swapped it for a more practical (for me) coffee maker with Steph Tatham, who'd won some lower award. The thing has worked perfectly for a decade. It's a relic of an American era of making machines that lasted, even though it didn't come from that era at all. I've probably had six-thousand or so cups of coffee out of this thing. It still worked perfectly this morning.

My intent was to replace it with this model that I got at Target for like twenty bucks:



It shouldn't take much imagination to see why I picked this out. The color is like the font of this page, the color I would pick for nearly all objects out of a pantheon of a thousand hues. It has a timer so that it will brew the coffee for me and have it ready when I blearily awaken at six in the morning to go to a tournament or fulfill some other wakeful task of existence. It is in every way perfect. Whereas the old one is dingy, off-white, wearing the stains of thousands of brews, incredibly simple in its design. It doesn't even have digital numbers! In an era where you can't dry your hands in public without interfacing with a motion-sensor, holding on to this thing is as old-fashioned as not having a cell-phone (I'm coming up on two years with a cell-phone!).

And yet I can't seem to make the transition, to get rid of the old thing. It was free. It has served me so loyally for so long. It still works.

I am such a bad capitalist.

Or maybe, to borrow a phrase, I'm just committed to commitment.

Maybe we just need to take everyone in the Lost Generation and have them paint our coffee makers. Have them fan out in the neighborhoods, house by house, and ask what everyone would like updated or changed or painted or retooled so that life feels new and fresh again. So that it feels like there's a future that's not just austerity and decline. So that people can feel like a rich person without actually being decadent or aspiring to buy and sell people.

That kind of house-by-house work sure beats the hell out of what that phrase is being used for in Afghanistan right now.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, Economy, Guest columns, Politics, public protest, thought