By Karen Tumulty (Washington Post) Newt Gingrich thinks today’s youths have it way too easy. Gingrich said. “I would tell students: ‘Get through as quick as you can. Borrow as little as you can. Have a part-time job.’
In a 1995 profile for Vanity Fair, author Gail Sheehy discovered that Gingrich financed his own education largely via the hard work of this then-wife, Jackie. Sheehy wrote that Gingrich turned first to his adoptive father for help, and then to his biological one:
His stepmother, Marcella McPherson, can still hear his exact words: ‘I do not want to go to work. I want all my time for my studies. .?.?. Bob Gingrich told me he will not help me one bit. So I wondered, would you people help me?’ Big Newt began sending him monthly checks.
via Gingrich urges students to get jobs, apparently unlike himself | syracuse.com.
By Paul Krassner (Huffington Post) Jim Jones, founder of the 8,000-member People’s Temple in San Francisco, once asked Margo St. James, founder of the prostitutes’ rights group, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), how he could obtain political power.
She answered, sardonically, “Arrange for some of your women to have sex with the bigwigs.”
It was well known around City Hall that Moscone had a predilection for black women. Police almost arrested him once with a black prostitute in a car at a supermarket parking lot.
Soon after the Dan White trial, Lee Cole, an ex-Scientologist I had met in Chicago while researching the Charles Manson case, took me to see Lowell Streiker, author of The Cults Are Coming! and a deprogrammer who had counseled one-third of the Jonestown survivors. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned my theory that Jim Jones had served as a pimp at City Hall and maintained power by implied blackmail.
Dr. Streiker told me of his friend — a member of Jones’ planning commission — who had told him about the technique that People’s Temple had used on Mayor Moscone. They sent a young black female member to service him, as a gift, then called the next week about a serious problem — she had lied, said she was eighteen, when in fact she was underage, but don’t worry, we have it under control — just the way J. Edgar Hoover used to manipulate top politicians with his juicy FBI files.
So Jim Jones had taken Margo St. James’ sardonic advice after all, on how to achieve political power: “Arrange for some of your women to have sex with the bigwigs.” And he had taken it all the way to a mass suicide-murder — which occurred simultaneously with a mass demonstration by the women’s movement in San Francisco, called “Take Back the Night!”
Paul Krassner’s dialogue with Andrew Breitbart appears in the December issue of Playboy.
via Paul Krassner: Sex, Corruption and the Kool-Aid Massacre.
By George Monbiot (The Guardian UK) The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin.
By Joe Nocera (NY Times) On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes.
A former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding. Most of the other pictures show either mock homeless camps or mock foreclosure signs — or both.
By Bob Tourtellotte (Reuters) A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday shows 57 percent of Mexicans would be either very likely or somewhat likely to tolerate the sexual indiscretions of stars and politicians.
They were followed by Belgians at 55 percent. In the United States, the tolerance factor was 48 percent. France, in fact, was way down the list at only 33 percent, while Japan was the least forgiving country at only 28 percent.
In total, 44 percent of some 18,700 respondents in more than 20 countries said they would likely tolerate a scandal.
via And the most tolerant nation for sex scandals is.. – Yahoo! News.
(Wikipedia) Ruhnama (The Book of the Soul), is a book written by Saparmurat Niyazov, late President for Life of Turkmenistan, combining spiritual/moral guidance, autobiography and revisionist history, much of it of dubious or disputed factuality and accuracy. The text includes many stories and poems, including those by Sufi poet Magtymguly Pyragy. It was intended as the “spiritual guidance of the nation” and the basis of the nation’s arts and literature, by creating a positive image of the Turkmen people, a heroic interpretation of its history, the review of Turkmen customs and the definition of “moral, family, social and religious norms for modern Turkmens”.
The Ruhnama was introduced to Turkmen culture in a gradual but eventually pervasive way. Niyazov first placed copies in the nation’s schools and libraries but eventually went as far as to make an exam on its teachings an element of the driving test. It was mandatory to read Ruhnama in schools, universities and governmental organizations. New governmental employees were tested on the book at job interviews.
In March 2006, Niyazov was recorded as saying that he had interceded with God to ensure that any student who read the book three times would automatically get into heaven. After the death of Niyazov, it didn’t lose its popularity. In December 2009, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov still strongly recommended the government to use Ruhnama as an instrument of youth education.
Knowledge of the Ruhnama is compulsory, imposed on religious communities and society generally. The work is the main component of education from primary school to university. Knowledge of the text (up to the ability to recite passages from it exactly) is required for passing education exams, holding any state employment and to qualify for a driving license. Official ceremonies have featured hundreds of singing Turkmens holding and performing choreography with the book.
Public criticism of or even insufficient reverence to the text was seen as the equivalent to showing disrespect to the former President himself, and harshly punished by dispossession, imprisonment or torture of the offender or the offender’s whole family if the violation were grave enough. Since the passing of Niyazov, punishment for disrespect of the book is in a questionable status.
There is an enormous mechanical statue of the book in Ashgabat, the country’s capital. Each evening at 8:00 pm, the cover opens and a recording of a passage from the book is played with accompanying video.
via Enormous copy of the Ruhnama in Independence park | Ashgabat | Turkmenistan.
By (ThinkProgress) New data released by the IRS reveals that, over a period of 12 years, tax rates for the richest 400 Americans were effectively cut in half. In 1995, the richest 400 Americans paid, on average, 29.93% of their income in federal taxes. In 2007, the last year for which the IRS has released data, the richest 400 Americans paid just 16.63%.
As their tax rates plummeted, the total income of the richest 400 Americans skyrocketed. In 1995, the combined income of the richest 400 was just over $6 billion. By 2007, the combined income of the richest 400 was almost $23 billion.
By Michael Doyle (Bee) Freshman Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, made a big splash but barely broke even at a glitzy and controversial January fundraiser.
Between assorted fees, flowers, catering and other costs, Denham’s special fundraising committee reported spending $212,250 on the Rimes event. The committee, meanwhile, raised only $212,900 from outside contributors.
Denham’s committee spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars in order to net $650 in outside contributions.
