Clinton Global Initiative

For whatever reason, Bill Clinton's Global Initiative Summit didn't seem to get much press coverage this year, so for those who missed out or, for that matter, anyone who asks "where is the good news?" or "how can I make a difference?" just take a look at some of the highlights of the wonderful, philanthropic and forward-looking endeavors and commitments put forth over the last week:

From the official organization website:
"I'm ecstatic about the work that's been done here over the past three days. We have seen firsthand that one commitment of action inspires a myriad of others," President Bill Clinton said. "The quality and level of commitments that we have seen this year are a testament to the positive impact our CGI members and initiatives are having around the world."

Examples of the impact this year's commitments will potentially have around the world, include:

8.5 million out-of-school children will be enabled to enroll in school for the first time.
50 million people will have access to treatment of neglected tropical diseases.
170,031,331 acres of forest will be protected or restored.
11.2 million people will be empowered with increased access to sustainable incomes

In addition to the long list of new commitments made at this year's meeting, hundreds of commitments were made by more than 40,000 people who visited the newly launched MyCommitment.org. Through this online tool, nearly 200,000 hours of volunteer time and close to $130,000 were committed.

To help further cultivate a new generation of philanthropists and citizen-servants, President Clinton announced that CGI is launching CGI-U, an effort to expand CGI to college campuses.

"I believe the world has never needed a community of givers more than it does today. CGI-U will serve as a catalyst for commitments of action by young people around the country to make a difference in their world," Clinton said.

Several celebrites got involved:
"Actor Brad Pitt is expanding his commitment to New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward with his Make it Right project to create a community of 150 affordable and sustainable homes in one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Pitt and his partner Steve Bing are challenging members of the Clinton Global Initiative to join them in rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward by each pledging to match $5 million in contributions to the Make it Right project, for a total of $10 million.

"The heart and soul of New Orleans, specifically the people of the Lower 9th Ward, are paramount to this project," said Pitt. "The words of one elderly man who is determined to return to New Orleans led to the name of our organization: he asked us, directly simply and profoundly, to help make it right. So that's what we're doing. We're going to help to make it right with 150 sustainable, affordable houses - houses that stand out for their design both aesthetically and structurally, so that these people can live in beautiful safe structures that respect their spirit and provide a good quality of life."

Jessica Biel and her father Jon Biel founded the Make the Difference Network to allow everyone to be a "grassroots philanthropist" by creating a social networking site that brings thousands of small- to medium-sized non-profits together with millions of potential donors. Users will be able to search a list of specific "wishes" posted by non-profits and then fund those wishes. After the first year, $30 million will be donated to 5,000 non-profits at an average of $500 per month. The second year should see those numbers rise to 10,000 non-profits and $60 million donated, with a two-year total of $90 million.

"Shakira, known for her provocative outfits and sex-infused songs, looked downright prim and proper as she shook former President Bill Clinton’s hand--a gesture which brought Clinton out from behind the podium--as he announced her organization's $40 million commitment to help relieve the effects of natural disasters in Peru and Nicaragua through investment in education, sanitation and water systems."


Other commitments include:
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wal-Mart commits to reducing the water, plastic and cardboard used in laundry detergents, both by committing to stock only concentrated detergents, and by creating conditions that encourage other retailers to follow. By May, Wal-Mart will sell only concentrated detergent in all of its US stores. The impact of this effort will save more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic resin and 125 million pounds of cardboard.

Starbucks Coffee Co.
To aid the emerging African coffee industry, Starbucks will increase its regional coffee imports, and set up an on-site Farmer Support Center to provide technical assistance and credit access to aspiring coffee growers. Over this two year commitment, Starbucks will double the amount of coffee it purchases from East Africa and provide $1 million of credit to farmers.

H.J. Heinz Company Foundation & Helen Keller International (HKI): Sprinkles® for Rural India
HKI and the H.J. Heinz Company Foundation are making a $300,000 commitment to distribute Sprinkles, a vitamin and mineral supplement to 6.5 million children in India, providing the necessary iron, iodine and vitamin A for a healthy diet.

Mexican Reforestation by Coca-Cola Company
The $6.2 million Mexican program will plant 30 million trees to restore 25,000 hectares of important natural habitat with native species, helping to reduce greenhouse gases and remove more than 350,000 tons of CO2 over five years. Coca-Cola has also made a reforestation commitment in Brazil.

Princeton-Brown-Dillard Partnership
This commitment is the first example of a high-level partnership formed between relatively wealthy educational institutions and a relatively poor one. Brown University, in partnership with Princeton University, will give much needed academic, administrative, technical and consulting assistance to support Dillard University in New Orleans. Dillard University, a historically black institution, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This commitment will directly impact Dillard's 100 person faculty, as well as the more than 1,100 students currently enrolled.

Room to Read: Scaling Success: 10,000 bi-lingual libraries by 2010
By 2010, Room to Read aims to extend its geographic reach to 15 countries, including a launch in Latin America. As part of this $25 million commitment, Room to Read will expand its flagship Reading Room program to open 5,000 additional libraries, bringing the total to 10,000 libraries and self-publish more than 3.5 million children's books in local languages across three continents.

Harnessing Geothermal Energy in Africa
This $150m funded by the Geothermal Power Company of Iceland will help countries in the African Rift Valley to develop their geothermal energy resources helping them to develop sustainably. The project will invest in comprehensive research into the geothermal potential of Djibouti and if successful will build a large power plant driven on geothermal power.

Maternal and Infant Health Initiative
Maureen Mwanawasa, the First Lady of Zambia, made a 5 year, $2 million commitment with a number of partners to strengthen Zambia's maternal and infant healthcare system and improve the country's health statistics. The commitment will benefit more than 50,000 expectant mothers living in Zambia's Central Province annually.

Fighting Malaria with Bed Nets
The United Methodist Church commits to donating at least 150,000 insecticide-treated bed nets in the areas of the Côte d'Ivoire that are most affected by malaria. Because The United Methodist Church of Côte d'Ivoire is spread throughout the country, it has a "ready made" system for providing education and for distributing nets. In addition, members of the Texas Annual Conference and other US church leaders will help distribute the nets throughout the country. This action will affect the lives of 600,000 people.

Vehicle Leasing Program
The Skoll Foundation will provide credit support of $15.9 million to purchase 224 vehicles (motorcycles, double-cab pick-ups and ambulances) which will be leased to the Gambian Department of State for Health. These vehicles will be put into the established Riders for Health fleet management system in Gambia, allowing Riders to help Gambia to occupy a unique position as the first African country to have total health coverage for its entire population-every man, woman and child.

Micro-Land Ownership in India: Providing Economic and Social Opportunity for the Poorest
In this commitment that totals nearly $8 million, the Rural Development Institute together with nine partners will assist rural Indian families securing land rights for small plots of land. This will provide them not only with a place to live but an opportunity to produce food on their land from which they can make an income.

No, No, No, Laws Are For Criminals, Not Me

While everyone with a TV camera and a week's worth of 24-hour news cycles to fill was down in Jena last week covering protests and asking Al Sharpton his opinion on things, a tiny hamlet up in New Hampshire was also being plagued by a high school legal scandal of it's own.

It appears that at the end of last semester a group of up to dozens of students conspired to cheat on their finals to ensure good grades, and in the process broke into the school one night to steal the exams. Well, after an investigation the authorities decided to press misdemeanor charges against several students, dubbed "The Notorious Nine", with the threat of having them bumped up to felony charges if the parents insist on taking the case to trial.

Here, as in Jena, no is arguing what happened, the students and parents admit and accept that they unlawfully broke into the school to steal the tests and beat a kid unconscious, respectively, and in both cases, the supporters of the students feel the charges, any charges, are too severe for the offense; outrageous that their children are being treated as though they were criminals for a "schoolyard fight" or pulling a stupid prank. What is it with these so-called "pranks" recently, anyway? Breaking into school? Just a prank. Hanging nooses? What's not funny about that?. Robbing a bank? Haha, it was a joke.

Thankfully, there are people in the town that get why this was serious and inexcusable:
"The parents need to be reasonable," she said. "This is technically a Class B felony offense. How can you reduce that to a violation-level offense - which is for something like spitting on the sidewalk? Although you don't want to hammer them, you want them to know this is serious."

"We have never called the police for a cheating incident. But there is never a time when we would not call the police when someone breaks into our building," said Wayne Gersen, superintendent that oversees Hanover High School.

"They're cheating. They're breaking into the school. They deserve what they got," said Hannah Stone, a freshman.

There is talk that because this city is home to Dartmouth, the students feel added pressure to perform academically that led these students to commit these otherwise inexplicable crimes (one might argue there can't be too much pressure otherwise they'd have been well-prepared to take their tests already instead of cheating). I wonder how many of these parents and pundits pushing this excuse would allow for the same defense for crimes committed by kids from urban areas, that environmental pressures excuse illegal activity.

Is it just men, or does there seem to be a real push toward getting knee-jerk public revenge, a kind of politically correct mob justice, instead of finding the facts and applying the relevant law, even if it doesn't immediately right itself with our internal sense of the due punishment for the offender. Michael Vick got caught in dogfighting (technically, interstate gambling) and the animal rights folks want him locked away forever. Of course, according to typical sentencing, first-time offenders for his offense don't even go to jail, but don't tell that to PETA, they'll call you a soulless dog-hater and flood your e-mail inbox with pictures of mutilated dogs. The law doesn't serve their bloodlust and they clamored loud enough and so now Vick is more than likely going to prison for 12-18 months. Public pressure affecting the justice system in this way goes against the founding principles of our nation, designed to protect the few from the tyranny of the masses. (Not to mention, one might take a gander at the 14th amendment, time permitting)

Moreover, we are told the Jena case is about race relations, but what is anyone doing in Jena to foster the desired racial reconciliation by calling the town a haven for racist behavior? If anything, wouldn't that drive the wedge deeper? In Hanover, NH, is anyone actually working to round out the lives of students so academic pressure doesn't lead to further anti-social behavior? Or will we just point fingers and assign blame on somebody else, anybody else.

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In other news, the First Amendment Center released their annual "State of the First Amendment Survey" results last week -
This year’s survey, being released to mark both annual Constitution Day (Sept. 17) activities and the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, found:

** Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000.

**58% of Americans would prevent protests during a funeral procession, even on public streets and sidewalks; and 74% would prevent public school students from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that might offend others.

**34% (lowest since the survey first was done in 1997) think the press “has too much freedom,” but 60% of Americans disagree with the statement that the press tries to report the news without bias, and 62% believe the making up of stories is a widespread problem in the news media — down only slightly from 2006.

**25% said “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” well below the 49% recorded in the 2002 survey that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but up from 18% in 2006.

“Americans clearly have mixed views of what First Amendment freedoms are and to whom they should fully apply,” said Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center. “To me the results of this year’s survey endorse the idea of more and better education for young people — our nation’s future leaders — about our basic freedoms.”

The right to practice one’s own religion was deemed “essential” or “important” by nearly all Americans (97%); as was the right to “speak freely about whatever you want” (98%) and to “assemble, march, protest or petition the government (94%),” Policinski said. “Still, Americans are hard pressed to name the five freedoms included in the First Amendment,” he said. Speech is the only one named by a majority of respondents (64%), followed by religion (19%), press and assembly (each 16%) and petition (3%).

Kant & Petraeus & Bush & Escher

For anyone who has been living under a rock this week, the Commanding General of the Multinational Force Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress this past week. In the course of the various lengthy hearings, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) asked Petraeus if the current course of action in Iraq is "making America safer". The General responded that he believed the current course is the best way to achieve our objectives in Iraq. The senator asked again, but it is making us safer. Petraeus responded, "Sir, I don't know, actually. I haven't sat down and thought it through..." Many jumped on him for this, Joe Biden calling it "unconscionable", but ol 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant had his back....

Excerpted from Immanuel Kant's "What is Enlightenment':
"The enlightenment requires nothing but freedom: freedom to make public use of one's own reason in all matters....On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly restricted without especially hindering the progress of enlightenment. By 'public use of reason' I mean that use which man, as a scholar, makes of it before the reading public . I call 'private use' that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him...and where arguing is not permitted: one must obey....Thus it would be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders from his superiors should want to criticize the appropriateness or utility of his orders. He must obey....This is nothing that could burden his conscience. He speaks as one who is employed to speak in the name and under the orders of another."

In other news, unfortunately, it looks as though I may have been more correct than I cared to be about 2 months back when I wrote a post entitled "We Are Not Leaving Iraq", in which I laid out why I thought we are probably stuck there for the long haul, no matter how much grandstanding and fervor comes out of the left, ending with the prediction, "We aren't leaving Iraq. Not today. Not 6 months from now. Not January 20, 2009. Maybe not ever."

Then the president addressed the nation last night with just such a proposal for perpetual presence :
"This vision for a reduced American presence also has the support of Iraqi leaders from all communities. At the same time, they understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops."

So we stay there "until the job is done" or we stay there because the job is done? Looks like M.C. Escher somehow saw this coming too:


Back to Kant, Mr. President:
The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state; the natural state is one of war. This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war. A state of peace, therefore, must be established, for in order to be secured against hostility it is not sufficient that hostilities simply be not committed; and, unless this security is pledged to each by his neighbor (a thing that can occur only in a civil state), each may treat his neighbor, from whom he demands this security, as an enemy.

Bloomberg Is At It Again

After eliminating trans-fats and banning the N Word already this year, Lil Mikey B. is at it again in the Big Apple.

Excerpted from Newsweek:
Paying kids for good grades is a popular (if questionable) parenting tactic. But when school starts next week, New York City will try to use the same enticement to get parents in low-income neighborhoods more involved in their children's education and overall health. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has raised more than $40 million (much of it from his own money and the Rockefeller Foundation) to pay families a modest amount for small tasks—$50 for getting a library card or $100 to take a child to the dentist—that could make a big difference.

The experimental program, called Opportunity NYC, is modeled on a 10-year-old Mexican program called Oportunidades, which has been so successful in reducing poverty in rural areas that it has been adopted by more than 20 countries, including Argentina and Turkey. International studies have found that these programs raise school enrollment and vaccination rates and lower the number of sick days students take. Bringing this idea to Harlem and the South Bronx may not make a radical difference, concedes Linda Gibbs, the deputy mayor for Health and Human Services. But, she adds, "It makes these activities matter in a new way...A mother might demand an early-intervention evaluation [to look for developmental or learning disabilities] for a child" to get the $150 payment, Gibbs says. "If she can't find a doctor to do it, the cash incentive might make Mom more likely to ask why those services aren't available in her community."

The idea behind Opportunity NYC is called conditional cash transfer, and the program is the first of its kind in this country. It's also the exact opposite of traditional social services for the poor, which hand out money without demanding much in return. In order to find out whether this reversal works, the city is enlisting 5,000 families to take part in the social experiment. They are being chosen randomly from lists of people getting housing assistance from the city. Half will receive the incentive money and the other half won't but will function as a control group, similar to clinical trials where some patients get a drug and others get a placebo.

"At first blush, this offends every sensibility I have," says James Oddo, the Republican minority leader of the New York City Council. "But then the fiscal conservative in me takes over and I think maybe it will cost me less as a taxpayer to pay a little on the front end." At this point, taxpayers aren't being asked to pay anything. Bloomberg decided to roll out Opportunity NYC with private funds in order to evaluate the program for two years without having to endure what could have been a bruising political battle.

But if it can help families who live in the city's poorest neighborhoods, it may be a risk worth taking. Some of the Opportunity NYC participants will come from East New York, a predominantly black and Hispanic corner of Brooklyn where half of the residents live below the poverty level and only half of all adults are high-school graduates. The local high school was shut down in June after years of abysmal academic performance and a graduation rate hovering around 29 percent. "The lack of education and of significant wage earners are the biggest challenges," says Bill Wilkens, coordinator of East New York's Local Development Corporation. "This is the last frontier."

Kanye vs. 50 vs. Kenny...Who Ya Got?!?

From Entertainment Weekly:
"Whose new CD will sell more when they both drop on Sept. 11, 50 Cent or Kanye West? While those two rappers continue to busy themselves trading verbal jabs over that question, a third contender is now staking his claim to that week's hotly contested sales crown: country superstar Kenny Chesney.

''It's funny how with every record that comes out, we're aware of the urban [competition], and none of those acts acknowledge that I exist,'' Chesney tells EW via email. ''Until I have that No. 1 debut on the Top 200.''

Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates, Chesney's 11th studio album, goes on sale the same Tuesday morning as 50 Cent's Curtis and Kanye West's Graduation. Chesney's last four studio efforts have opened atop Billboard's albums chart — including his most recent effort, The Road and the Radio, which beat the original soundtrack to 50 Cent's film Get Rich or Die Tryin' when both debuted in November 2005.
50 Cent has said that he will retire from his recording career if West outsells him."


I think the odds on favorite has to be Kenny, he is the most popular artist of the decade thus far by record sales and concert sales, (as I reminded us last November), he's still on top of the country world right now and that's a large fanbase that almost certainly won't have any interest in either Kanye or 50 who will split each other's sales, but Kanye's been pushing himself out there early this week, bashing MTV again and again about having Britney open @ the VMA's instead of him, so maybe that'll help him out. Either way, as long as we can all agree that 50 Cent must lose this competition and thereby retire.

If their respective most recent videos (to my knowledge) are any indication of the quality of album, I think Kanye wins, although Kenny puts up decent competition with a tug at the heartstrings).


VS.



Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure 50 will outsell Kanye and we'll be stuck with this mumbling gibberish for years to come.

Summer Movie Season '07 Recap

August is over, and as a result so is summer movie season. Kids are back in school, football is back, and so on, so summer movie season is therefore over as well, at least as far as I'm concerned. There are still a few summer titles in theaters, but in my opinion September starts the weak, but brief 6-7 week fall movie season before the "prestige pictures" of Oscar season start to roll out in late October/early November. Ok? Great, on to the movies!

By my count and recollection I saw 20 films in theaters this summer and for the most part they were fairly enjoyable, (only Transformers was a real waste of time) which I think says at least 1 of 3 things: 1) I try pretty hard to find the good in everything, 2) I only watch movies I know I'm going to like, or 3) This was a good summer for movies.

I think they rank out fairly well. So here we go:

The Elite:
1. Stardust - Best movie of the summer. An sweeping adventure movie experience that reminded me of the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Princess Bride (though not quite on the level of those two), the way fantasy used to be made before it was hijacked and serialized by LOTR and Harry Potter. How this movie is not an absolute hit is beyond me.
2. Ratatouille: Best Pixar offering since their first (Toy Story). I had it pegged as the best of the summer, until I saw Stardust last week.

The Very Good:
3. Hot Fuzz
4. Hairspray
5. The Host
6. Waitress

The Good:
7. You Kill Me
8. The Simpsons Movie
9. Knocked Up
10. Superbad
11. Sicko
12. Mr. Bean's Holiday
13. Sunshine

The Respectable:
14. Becoming Jane
15. Oceans 13
16. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
17. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

The Forgettable:
18. Resurrecting the Champ
19. Spiderman 3
20. Transformers

WIth the 1st Pick in the 2008 United States Military Draft the Army Selects.....

Excerpted from a Newsweek.com editorial by a marine calling for the reinstatement of the draft:
The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001—something I certainly believed would happen after running down 61 flights of the South Tower, dodging the carnage as I made my way to the Hudson River [I worked at the World Trade Center as an investment adviser for Morgan Stanley at the time]. But President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not. Allow me to build a squad of the five brightest students from MIT and Caltech and promise them patrols on the highways connecting Baghdad and Fallujah, and I’ll bet that in six months they could render IED’s about as effective as a “Just Say No” campaign at a Grateful Dead show.

On a macro level, we are logistically weakened by the lack of a draft. It takes six to seven soldiers to support one infantryman in combat. So, you are basically asking 30,000 or so “grunts” to secure a nation of 26 million. I assure you, no matter who wins the 2008 election, we are staying in Iraq. But with the Marine Corps and the Army severely stressed after 3.5 years of desert and urban combat in Iraq—equipment needs replacing, recruitment efforts are coming up short—you tell me how we're going to sustain the current force structure without the draft? The president’s new war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, essentially said as much earlier this month, when he announced that considering the draft “makes sense.”

Of course, the outcry was swift and predictable. America has rejected selective service before, though always in the guise of antiwar movements. But they should really be viewed as antidraft movements, and they existed, en masse, when the wealthy could buy their way out of serving—as Teddy Roosevelt’s father and his ilk did during the Civil War, or as countless college kids did during the deferment-ridden Vietnam conflict. Not every draftee has to be a front-line Marine or soldier, but history shows us that most entrepreneurial young men, faced with a fair draft, almost always chose the front. A deferment draft, however, is a different story, and ultimately counterproductive because of the acrimony it breeds. By allowing the fortunate and, often, most talented to stay home, those who are drafted feel less important than what they are asked to die for. At the end of the day, it was this bitterness that helped fuel the massive antiwar movement that pushed Nixon to end the draft in ‘73.

I don’t favor a Vietnam-style draft, where men like the current vice president could get five deferments. I am talking about a World War II draft, with the brothers and sons of future and former presidents answering the call (and, unfortunately, dying, as a Roosevelt and a Kennedy once did) on the front line. That is when the war effort is maximized. Quite simply, the military cannot be a faceless horde to those pulling the purse strings of our great economy.

That last point is most interesting to me because I recall a few weeks back a reporter on one of these cable news shows or maybe Meet the Press said he had been talking, a few years back, to Korean War veterans who were still serving in Congress and asked them if they thought the coming generations of politicians who would never serve in the military would be more gun-shy about rolling out the Army. Almost to a man, he reported, they felt the exact opposite; that those who had never experienced combat and didn't really understand the military would be infinitely more willing to put troops into combat, thinking the military is simply a blunt instrument that can solve any and all problems around the world; unfortunately, to dare say there may be situations and problems the American military is incapable of solving is tantamount to treason in the eyes of many today.

So, is a draft the answer? Maybe, maybe not, but the calls for it are certainly getting louder, and as they do, so will the calls for us to simply end the current conflict instead.