Freedom

Today's Court Ruling on Heath Care and What It Means

UPDATE: Much surprise that the Supreme Court has upheld that the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice Roberts and the majority of the court agrees that the law is indeed constitutional - much to the surprise of many court followers and those who have opposed President Obama, it's a clear win for his policies -- from the SCOTUS blog:
"In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."
 
 original post follows below ...
---

Today, some people are hoping the Supreme Court effectively ends the presidency of Barack Obama by ruling his health care law unconstitutional and thus rejecting a centerpiece of his first term in office. It's the culmination of a fierce and dedicated attempt to discredit and dismiss Obama from the political world, and this effort really has no concern about that status of health care in America.

Some have framed the entire discussion about reforming the way we pay for and receive health care as a debate over President Obama's worth as the nation's leader. They have worked so very, very hard to disguise the decades-old problems of affordable health care as some horrible governmental monster.

Court watchers all claim there are four key issues on which the court today will issue it's decision - the media meanwhile has bought into the narrative that this is a do-or-die game akin to a run for the final playoffs in the upcoming presidential election.

What I deeply dislike is the eagerness to ignore the realities of a for-profit health care system, a fatally flawed system where so many simply cannot afford basic medical care. There is little interest in providing such care to those who need it, even though we claim to have the finest medical care in the world ... if you can pay for it. Indeed, such folks who oppose reform laws embrace the notion that if you cannot afford it, that also proves something about your worth (or lack of it) as a citizen.

I don't expect the court will back the president today - Conservatives would knock anything and anyone down in their blind ambition to prevent any change to the status quo and to marginalize any idea from this president. In the eyes of some, the issue is not that our nation has citizens who can't receive medical care - and the cure for that delusion remains elusive.

A Zombies Summertime

Thousands Support The Weight of One

Endless studies and statistics and graphs would easily tell the story of how the top 1% of our modern world overwhelm and stunt the remaining 99%, but this simple artistic display by Korean artist Do-Ho Suh tells the story even better.

As shown in photos above and below (via this website) thousands and thousands of tiny plastic figures hold up the very floor people can stand on. And yes, one could view the metaphor as showing how it is that many support one and how that might work for or against you.

Artists sure are tricky.

Martian Memories With Ray Bradbury

One of the best aspects of people is the way we make writers and artists part of our lives. This week, we lost a great friend and a member of our human family, a person who helped make imagination into reality, who urged us all to make dreams possible.

Writer Ray Bradbury, who died this week at age 91, told tales in such a unique voice and with such simple grace. As I was reading about his life and works this week, I learned that a digital copy of his book, "The Martian Chronicles". was sent to Mars in 2007 aboard the Phoenix spacecraft which landed near the Martian North Pole. And in August of this year, a robotic mission to Mars by a craft named Curiosity will land and many have already suggested the landing site should be called the Ray Bradbury Memorial Station.

His awards and achievements are many. President Obama expressed what many of us thought this week about Ray Bradbury:

"For many Americans, the news of Ray Bradbury's death immediately brought to mind images from his work, imprinted in our minds, often from a young age. His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values. There is no doubt that Ray will continue to inspire many more generations with his writing, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends."

Back in 2005 when I first began writing this blog, I wrote about my own thoughts about Mars as images of dust devils were filmed by a robotic platform sitting on the planet. I've always liked that post, and in many ways it was my attempt to create something Ray Bradbury would like to read. So, what follows below is a reprint of that post -- and thank you Ray for making our world and our endless sea of stars feel like home.

----

Aug. 23, 2005

MARTIAN

I sit at my computer and I can watch Martian movies, real ones, filmed on location by the first robotic astronauts, mechanical twins roving the desolate reddish landscape for the last year and a half. NASA revealed these images in a short film of just a few seconds, in black and white, robotic cinema verite. I'm pecking at this keyboard on this computer and some 45 million miles away -- Mars will be getting a bit closer these next few months -- and many will mark how this other planet, smaller than the one I call home, takes a slow circular dance around the Sun.

There are no people to see in the short movie, no mulit-limbed invasion squads. The camera filmed in some 12 minutes this passing of "dust devils" across the rocky expanse of Mars which I have sat and watched for maybe a half an hour. It is odd, really, here at this far technological beginning point, this moment and place where I can see what a camera on a remote control cart sees. How long, I wonder, will we Earth-folk take to build and then send other robots to Mars or beyond? In a hundred years, will some other inhabitant of this valley in eastern Tennessee watch robots taking clunky steps to build some empty metal shells that might house fuel or food or other robots? Will it take fifty years or maybe two hundred and fifty?

There have been recent discussions here on this planet about Science and Space and what Science is or should be. Some theories put forth that millions of years ticked past here on this world -- hundreds of millions -- and lifeforms bubbled and swam and clumped together, thanks to the water and the dirt and the air and the fire, and caught hold and started growing. Some theories put forth that a Creator, a Prime Force, made all there is on this planet in six days and rested on the seventh day from that labor. And not only what is on this planet, but everything out in this solar system and beyond it, millions and millions of other galaxies made of planets with fire and ice and gas and shattered meteor bits, and all in six days. It has taken a very very short span of some forty years, 1965 to 2005, for the inhabitants here to begin accept the ideas that inhabitants of other colors or gender might all have the same basic freedoms, another beginning point that is still revolutionary in terms of how we live with each other.

And here I sit, staring at the 17 second movie of dusty twists of wind, ragged white whips that lash back and forth across a desolate world.

Some even more primitive robots have, in less than 30 years, been shot out into the inky blackness which surrounds us, and other planets are photographed -- planets that are thick with heat and pressure, enormous swirling clouds of gas and storms that bring acids and liquid metals in a hazy sheet across a surface whose contents I can barely imagine or conceive. The robot cameras explode or dissolve into nothingness long before they can attain anything even remotely considered a "landing"..

I ponder the Martian landscapes and wonder about it's design -- why create such a place? What purpose does it hold? Were the robotic twins on the scene too soon or too late to catch a sight of intelligent, conscious creatures?

Why make a world of dust? Of ice? 

Perhaps those winds are scattering particles of sand as part of a ten billion year planet renovation plan, and if so I doubt anything left in this valley on my home planet will know about it, even if I wish or hope that someone will be here to see a transformed world.

The Martian world today has little robots staring intently at rocks and dust devils, and people here, too, see it -- observing the location. I seem to understand so little of stars and atoms, I don't understand why the inhabitants here are so contentious and vile, or loving and compassionate in the face of such an enormous collection of galaxies filled with random winds and rotations. I am surprised we have not all stayed hidden in caves, full of fear from moment to moment, like we see it in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's movie of space travel, "2001: A Space Odyssey". 

But what always excited me watching that movie was that slow, rhythmic rolling dance of men and machines and planets all moving to the Blue Danube Waltz, and how thrilled I was just to see it, to observe this quiet emptiness of space and stars and galaxies whose movements I cannot comprehend. And at the end of "2001" (a title whose name once resonated with an implausible future and now is just part of our past), at the end of the movie the astronaut has been moved from the caves to the stars and Kubrick leaves me to make up my own mind about what I have seen, what it all might mean.

My niece told me some years ago she fell asleep when she watched the movie it was so boring to her. I could hardly believe it. How could anyone watch those images and not feel some kind of un-nameable connection. some sense of endless wonder, some urge to search among the stars?

Filming geologic time will not bring box office dollars.

Mars has been in our books and our imaginations for thousands of years. Once on a Halloween night it escaped from the radio and terrified thousands of radio listeners, and Mars landed on top of actor Tom Cruise this summer. TV gave us "My Favorite Martian", and in ancient days it was the home of Gods and myths barely remembered, and today I sit and watch the dust devils filmed on location, on Mars, with no laugh tracks, no panic in the streets.

Maybe the best way to think of it is as development property -- a slow development, true. But I can almost see it all as part of the view of Our backyard. I have to use my imagination, to consider time and distance and what Life requires or how Life must adapt. I have to be willing to consider so many theories, and if I dismiss the possibilities, then I limit my view and I might as well stay in the caves.

Congratulations You Graduated, Now Get To Work

It's the season for Advice to the Graduate. We live in a time when those old and reliable models for careers don't work so well (if they ever did) and few will admit that just about everyone who has both failure and success are simply making up their plans as they go along. 

I found a good commencement speech for 2012, from author Neil Gaiman, given to the University of  the Arts in Philadelphia. I liked is because I too have been for decades trying to do what Gaiman encourages: make good art.

I'm unsure if our society wants good art. That's a question I constantly struggle to resolve and really haven't. But like so many others, I keep at it because making art is what I want to do, right down to my bones. I also like Gaiman's thoughts since I too realized a long time ago that their really are no rules, other than the ones we make up, to guide the artist.

The entire transcript and video are here, and you should read all of it. Here are some selections to entice you. (And congratulations to the many classes of 2012 graduates - now go do something.)

"When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.

If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again."

---

"I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."

---

"Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too."

---

"We're in a transitional world right now, if you're in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.

Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

So make up your own rules."

Camera Obscura: Headed To Cannes Film Fest; And A Summer Movie Guide

I'm happy to announce that a longtime friend and colleague, Michael Abbott Jr., has his most recent movie closing this year's Cannes Film Festival. The movie is called "Mud", set in rural Mississippi, and is directed by Jeff Nichols, and stars Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey.

Michael is an East TN native, and he's not only a great actor, he's a rare person who will go more than the extra mile to help folks in all walks of life. "Mud" is his second feature with director Nichols, the first was the acclaimed "Shotgun Stories", which won high praise from critics like Roger Ebert as being one of the best movies of 2007.

"Mud" will be the closing film at Cannes and is a contender for the festival's highest prizes. More on the movie here.

Michael is also co-producer for a powerful new documentary set for release this year about the grim reality of living with toxic pollution from nuclear fuel in Erwin, TN, titled "Acceptable Limits". The website for the movie is here.

So kudos and much continued success to Michael!

---

This weekend brings the onslaught of the Summer Movie Season, so a handy Summer Movie Guide is a must hae for movie-holics like me.

A few I'm curious about - Ridley Scott's "Prometheus", and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and a new version of "The Great Gatsby" too. Find out about all of them via this Guide.

Saluting A Tennessee Pioneer: Evelyn Bryan Johnson

Evelyn Bryan Johnson, who passed away last week at the age of 102, was more than the most famous person in the Morristown-Jefferson City community - she was an aviation pioneer, and will forever remain so.

Over the years, I met and spoke with her many times. She was always most friendly and she held a quiet authority which barely told of her incredible life and many adventures. Her influence will be felt for many, many years to come.

 The LA Times obituary offers a powerful glimpse of her accomplishments:

"She was 34 when she took that first flight and continued flying until glaucoma restricted her vision and caused her to quit in 2006, the year she turned 97.

Johnson, who died May 10 at 102 in an assisted living facility in Jefferson City, Tenn., held the Guinness World Record for logging the most hours in the air for a female pilot. By the time she stopped flying, she had logged 57,635.4 hours, or more than 6 1/2 years in the air.

At the time of her death, Johnson had flown an airplane more hours than any living pilot."

---

"Affectionately nicknamed "Mama Bird," because she treated her flying students as a mother bird does her babies, Johnson said she trained more than 5,000 student pilots and administered more than 9,000 flight checks for the FAA.

Johnson was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007. She also was an inductee in the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame, the Flight Instructor Hall of Fame and aviation halls of fame in Tennessee and Kentucky.

"Evelyn loved flying, and she loved teaching," said Bob Minter, founder and chairman emeritus of the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame. "There are airline pilots today flying around the world that Evelyn trained, both men and women."

Is Everything OK?

Is everything OK?

No?

Would you like to make sure that everything is OK? A simple one-step way to making everything OK .

I Have A Signed Excuse for Absence

I essentially lost an entire week of writing, dear readers, and I do apologize. For the past week I was presented the opportunity to experience life under the relentless authority of  food poisoning.

Said experience left me weaker than a one-legged kitten, and thus, as I could neither read much nor write since the computer screen (as well as most all my faculties) was an infinite roiling Hell, and I was forced to halt my daily reading and writing habits.

Healthy days have mercifully returned.

So I'm now tasked with accumulating the properly suitable ingredients to once again start serving up your fresh, hot Cup o' Joe. I thank you for your patience and normal service will shortly resume.

The Political Illiterate

Governor Haslam OKs Dress Code for Pants In Schools Which Already Have Dress Codes For Pants

Our state will now police your pants - and pretty much all clothes worn by students in Tennessee thanks to a new law our governor has signed.

See, even though every school in the state has dress code policies, now the state is ordering them to have - you guessed it - dress code policies.

Our ever-watchful state officials this year have decided junk science must be allowed in schools and that hand-holding leads to making babies, not to mention that boys and girls making eye contact might need to be banned as well.

TN Legislators Back Sweeping Changes to Internet Privacy via CISPA Bill

In stark contrast to the widespread awareness and opposition to the recently failed PIPA and SOPA bills, awareness of the vast and fundamental changes to internet privacy created in a new bill, called CISPA, is very low.

Part of the reason for this is that this new bill is framed as a must-have tool to protect vital computer operations from attack, a tactic Tennessee's legislative coalition is pushing, as presented in this article from the Tennessean, headlined "TN Seen As Likely Cyber Target":

"Tennessee Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper and Republican Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Chuck Fleischmann and Phil Roe have signed on to legislation that would encourage the intelligence community and private sector to share certain information to better protect computer networks from cyberthreats.

"The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act would allow private companies and the government to share any information “directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to,” a computer network. Currently, the government can’t share classified intelligence on cyberthreats with the private sector.

“Because our Pentagon and other government agencies are attacked thousands of times a day, we have learned ways to help American business and individuals guard against identity theft of their customers, disruption of electricity and water service, and other threats to daily living,” he said."

But  there is far more is at stake here, and private businesses already are further ahead when it comes to security measures, since their businesses depend of secure operations.

Opposition to the legislation and the wide range of powers it creates gets a presentation here, noting that this legislation creates several problems:

• An overly broad, almost unlimited definition of the information can be shared with government agencies. And because that info is shared “notwithstanding any law,” CISPA trumps any federal or state privacy law that currently prohibits disclosure.
• Enactment is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications.
• It could shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the NSA.
• It creates a backdoor wiretap program because the information shared with the government isn’t limited to just cybersecurity, but could also be used for other purposes, such as law enforcement or by intelligence agencies.

Pages and pages of rules and regulations such as this are akin to the long and confusing paragraphs for the average Terms of Service Agreements which the average internet user encounters and OKs without really reading. Forcing private business to give their information about you to an intelligence agency may well be the norm if this bill passes - and most internet users will never even know it's happening.

Camera Obscura: RIP Jonathan Frid, aka Barnabas Collins

I was sad to read of the passing of actor Jonathan Frid, best known to TV audiences as Barnabas Collins, the vampire soap opera so popular for many years and now about to launch again as a movie, with Johnny Depp playing Frid's character.

That menacing wolf's-head cane (get yours today!) he carried and his near-alien voice and looks made him one of the coolest characters on TV in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a commanding performer onscreen and on the stage too. A friend of mine had the great opportunity to work on a Shakespearean show with Frid some years back, an envious task.

Growing up, just about everyone I knew fled schools in the afternoon to race home and catch the newest daily episodes of the vamp tales, and like many, I had a sort of crush on one of the actresses, Lara Parker, who played Angelique. I discovered a few years ago she was a native of Knoxville and grew up in Memphis before tackling television. Her website today boasts a warm regard for the late Jonathan Frid:

"He was a warm-hearted and compassionate man with a lovely sense of humor, and he was a staggeringly charismatic actor, who is personally responsible for the lasting success of the Dark Shadows TV show in so many ways,

His introduction on the soap opera saved it from cancellation and initiated five years of wonderful stories, of which his character of the reluctant vampire was most often the centerpiece. It was his choice to make the vampire terrifying but also tortured by guilt, and in doing this he became the heartthrob of thousands of housewives across the country watching him over their ironing. They longed to be bitten!

My personal association with Jonathan was life changing. I had been in New York just over a week when I auditioned for the part of Angelique on camera with Jonathan, doing the scene in which I tearfully entreated him to love me and not my mistress Josette Of course my head was spinning but he leaned in before the red light went on and said, “You know, she’s a witch.” Without that bit of information, I might never have put the evil spin on the moment that snagged me the role. How fortunate for me that he was there! He also whispered in my ear, “I hope you get it,” which sent my confidence soaring."

She goes on to write how frail Frid had been as they filmed their cameo scenes for the new film, and mourns that he will now miss the relaunch of the mythic show.

While the series, in retrospect, are but brief jaunts into the supernatural made on minuscule budgets, I always thought the duo of Parker and Frid were terrific onscreen. Doomed villains trapped by their fates, they brought the characters into vivid life - and afterlife.

The original show was a mass of terrors - werewolves, witches, warlocks, ghosts, time-traveling, vampires, telepaths, mausoleums, gothic homes and endless shadows almost always underscored with a most haunting theme music (with plenty of theremin music). It was a true television original and the template producer Dan Curtis made still thrives on shows like True Blood today. New books, fan conventions and radio podcasts continue to tell the tales of Dark Shadows.

Thanks for all the fine afternoons of vampire madness, Jonathan. Hope that this time, they let you rest in peace.

Kraftwerk Retrospective - The Art of Computers

We are driving on the Autobahn

In front of us is a wide valley

The sun is shining with glittering rays

The driving strip is a grey track

White stripes, green edge

We are switching the radio on

From the speaker it sounds:

We are driving on the Autobahn

Celebrating the works of a unique group of musicians, Kraftwerk, the Museum of Modern Art provided 8 nights of concerts from the German band, whose creations of minimalist techno tunes signaled  the beginnings of our digital age.

I latched onto their album Autobahn as a Christmas gift to myself in 1974 and absolutely loved it and still do. When I shared the music with some friends in my small town back then, they grimaced listening to the vocoders, looped tracks and computerized rhythms as if fingernails were scraping a blackboard and I told them, just like a time-traveling Marty McFly, "Your kids are gonna love this."

As much as I enjoyed the simple, hypnotic sounds (check out a sample from Autobahn or from Trans-Europe Express) I also marveled at what their work implied - music generated by computers and technology offered a glimpse of what was ahead for the world, which would soon be transformed by technology. It was a science-fiction soundtrack for this emerging force. So I'm not surprised, decades later, to see these musicians show off their work at the MOMA. Seems the most appropriate place for them:

"Kraftwerk anticipated the impact of technology on art and everyday life, creating sounds and visuals that capture the human condition in the age of mobility and telecommunication. Their innovative looping techniques and computerized rhythms, which had a major influence on the early development of hip-hop and electronic dance music, remain among the most commonly sampled sounds across a wide range of music genres. Furthermore, the use of robotics and other technical innovations in their live performances illustrates Kraftwerk’s belief in the respective contributions of both people and machines in creating art."

This past week audience members could capture the performance on hand-held devices we all think of as commonplace and ordinary.

Does The Internet Have A Future?

Technology leaps ahead thanks to computer usage and internet access - though some innovators fear the strongest threat yet to all-access open internet is here today, thanks to governements, businesses and even Facebook and Apple.

At least, that's the opinion of Google's co-founder Sergey Brin in this interview, part of a series of reports by the Guardian on the internet, as both support and opposition worldwide grows for the current round of new internet restricion legislation, CISPA, a new 'cyber-security act'.

"He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive," he said. "The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."

Both Google and Oakley are working hard on new tech/internet delivery systems in the form of glasses which would project images and info right into your eyes, combining smartphone and, I suppose EyePhones. Actually it's called Google Glass, and here's a video of how it might be used ... funny, you'll notice in the video that a meeting at a 'bookstore" is featured. Is that supposed to be ironic?

Oakley's CEO says: 

 

"Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform."

Google is busy in court these days too facing fines and lawsuits.

'Needs More Cowbell' World Record

Some 1,600 people gathered in Burlington, VT this weekend to play some cowbell. You can never have too much cowbell - you need more cowbell. That was the advice actor Chris Walken had for Will Ferrell in a Saturday Night Live Skit in April 2000 - it's a phrase which made the Swiss set a world record for public cowbell playing in 2009. Now Burlington has the record.

Members of the band Phish put the world record effort together and raised money for charity at the same time. The result - loudness!!

Needs more cowbell - the catchphrase of a generation.

You Get A Quarter For A Tax Break, 1,000 Others Will Get 20 Grand

There were some eager press reports this week proclaiming that the state legislature had just voted to lower taxes in Tennessee. The truth of the matter is nothing to cheer about. R. Neal lays out the math:

"... to summarize, the 0.1% get a $20,000 tax break and everybody else gets a $3.50 tax break. How very Republican!"

Just watch - this legislature will send out re-election campaign shouts of "We Lowered Taxes!"

Meanwhile, expect more cuts to education, more invasion of your personal lives, zero accountability for campaign donors, etc etc. It's the Conservative state of Tennessee where the state works to conserve money and influence into the smallest number of hands.

ALEC's Grip on Government Slipping

I'd been reading about several giant corporate backers of a private nationwide organization - ALEC - which has been steadily writing legislation and getting states to pass them by having members of state legislators become 'board members' of ALEC - and that recently these huge companies are dropping their support for ALEC.

For one reason, thanks to online writers, the dirty details of what ALEC has been doing got told. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation dropped away from supporting ALEC, mainly due to Voter ID laws and the now-notorious Stand Your Ground law.

And the Foundation isn't alone - Kraft Foods, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Intuit, McDonald's, Wendy's -- all have stopped the support and made sure the press and the online world knows it. It's good news, but it's quite telling that for many years, these companies have been working hard to increase their control of our cities and towns and our nation as a whole. Two of the best blog writers in Tennessee took up the story today:

R. Neal at KnoxViews: "State Reps. Curry Todd and Steve McDaniel are members of the illustrious ALEC Board of Directors, and Todd is ALEC's Tennessee state chairman. You may recall that Rep. Todd recently helped kill the "Influence Disclosure Act" that would would have required disclosing the source of astroturf legislation such as ALEC's."

Southern Beale: "But as ALEC and the Chamber wade into the weeds of extremist ideology, they’re alienating some of their biggest corporate supporters, whose profits depend on being a little less reactionary and appealing to a broad range of consumers."

ALEC, The American Legislative Exchange Council, is a hardcore conservative group, with more than 2,000 state legislators from all 50 states (about  one-third of all existing legislators), some 85 members of Congress and 14 sitting or previous governors. They've been steadily cranking out what they innocently call "model legislation". Pre-written and crafted for easy passage, these bills touch nearly every aspect of your life and of government and get handed out to members and they file the bills in state after state. As Neal pointed out, Rep. Curry killed a law to require legislators disclose how and who funds or writes legislation they present. ALEC demands secrecy, but the secret is finally out.

Repairing the damage done by a national, self-serving and deceptive campaign meant to erase each state's government will take too many years and hours -- and electing new legislators not yet addicted to the corporate trough. As of now, ALEC will fight to keep the power they've taken - and they'll seek other ways to move and act in secret by forming new groups with new names not yet tarnished with deception.

Gov. Haslam Allows Anti-Science Bill to Become Law

Gov. Haslam took the stand of not taking a stand on science education in Tennessee and has allowed a new law to go into effect which devalues science, education and apparently, the role of Tennessee's governor in the state's politics.

Here's his press release on the new law:

"NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam today issued the following statement on HB 368/SB 893:

“I have reviewed the final language of HB 368/SB 893 and assessed the legislation’s impact. I have also evaluated the concerns that have been raised by the bill. I do not believe that this legislation changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools or the curriculum that is used by our teachers. However, I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything that isn’t already acceptable in our schools.

“The bill received strong bipartisan support, passing the House and Senate by a three-to-one margin, but good legislation should bring clarity and not confusion. My concern is that this bill has not met this objective. For that reason, I will not sign the bill but will allow it to become law without my signature.”

So he won't defend science, he won't demand the legislature be more accurate, he won't fight for the highest levels of educational achievement. He just gave up on all of it.

Just over one year ago, Lt. Gov Ron Ramsey, clearly told Tennesseans that he's running the state and that he was "focused like a laser on the economy and education". True to his word, this one new law alone will stand as proof that our state is behind economically and educationally. (As for the science which allowed for the creation of "lasers", the Lt. Governor is silent.)

Also at that same time, Rep. Bill Dunn of Knoxville, who brought this legislation forward first, this was how he described providing students with discussion of alternatives to factual science education:

"There are things that are possible, and maybe that’s what’s alarming you,” he told his critics during one subcommittee meeting. “There are things that are probable. It is possible that Elvis Presley is alive. It’s not very probable.”  

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey blames criticism of the legislature on the news media, which he says focuses on the weird and controversial."

That's the same ''blame the media" nonsense Gov. Haslam continues to use to avoid the consequences of his actions and in-actions.  

It is inevitable now that some Tennessee school system will have to fight in court over this law - an expensive battle which is likely to find the law at fault. It's happened quite recently -

"A useful reference work would be a 2005 decision by a federal judge in Pennsylvania striking down a school board policy requiring that students be made aware of "gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design." In that case, Judge John E. Jones concluded that intelligent design and teaching about "gaps" and "problems" in evolutionary theory are "creationist, religious strategies that evolved from earlier forms of creationism."

Religious motives aside, the Tennessee bill reflects the view that there is a significant scientific controversy about the basic accuracy of Darwinian theory. There isn't. But what of the "dissenting scientific views" the Discovery Institute cites? It is true that a tiny minority of scientists embrace some version of creationism or intelligent design (an even smaller cohort than the minority of scientists who question human contribution to global warming). There's nothing wrong with a biology teacher acknowledging that fact as long as she makes it clear that evolutionary theory is the linchpin of the biological sciences, including medicine. It isn't censoring a point of view to inform students that it is subscribed to by a tiny fringe.

Like such measures in other states, the Tennessee bill contains beguiling language about the importance of helping students to develop critical thinking skills. That is a vital part of education, especially in the more interactive atmosphere of a high school (though it is often opposed by religious conservatives who decry "relativism" in the classroom). But even in high school, and especially in science class, teachers have an obligation to the truth. The truth in this case, discomfiting as it may be to some Tennesseans, is that evolution is not "just a theory."