L'Shanah Tovah - May You Have A Good Year!

Rosh HaShanah (ראש השנה) is the Jewish New Year. It falls once a year during the month of Tishrei and occurs ten days before Yom Kippur. For 2011, Rosh HaShanah begins at sunset September 28, 2011 and ends at nightfall on September 30, 2011. Together, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are known as the Yamim Nora’im, which means the Days of Awe in Hebrew, or more commonly, the High Holy Days.

Rosh HaShanah literally means “Head of the Year” in Hebrew. It falls in the month of Tishrei, which is the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar. The reason for this is because the Hebrew calendar begins with the month of Nissan (when it's believed the Jews were freed from slavery in Egypt) but the month of Tishrei is believed to be the month in which God created the world. Hence, another way to think about Rosh HaShanah is as the birthday of the world.

Rosh HaShanah is observed on the first two days of Tishrei. Jewish tradition teaches that during the High Holy Days God decides who will live and who will die during the coming year. As a result, during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur (and in the days leading up to them) Jews embark upon the serious task of examining their lives and repenting for any wrongs they have committed during the previous year. This process of repentance is called teshuvah. Jews are encouraged to make amends with anyone they have wronged and to make plans for improving during the coming year. In this way, Rosh HaShanah is all about making peace in the community and striving to be a better person.

Even though the theme of Rosh HaShanah is life and death, it is a holiday filled with hope for the New Year. Jews believe that God is compassionate and just, and that God will accept their prayers for forgiveness.

Happy New Year!

Challenge To Texas Voter Registrar Rules And Process

Last week Voting for America (Project Vote) sent a letter to the State of Texas, alleging that various parts of the state's voter registration rules and process violate the National Voter Registration Act.

The challenged areas include the geographical restrictions on where Texas voter registrars may operate, the lack of standards for training voter registrars, the lack of guidance about when an application is considered incomplete, and the requirement that green cards be returned in person within five days.

Project Vote (or Voting for America, Inc.) is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) that promotes voting in historically underrepresented communities, working to ensure that our constituencies can register, vote, and cast ballots that count. The organization was incorporated in 1994 as 'Voting for America,' and officially became 'Project Vote/Voting for America' in 1997. Project Vote is unrelated to Project VOTE!, for which President Obama worked in 1992.

Project Vote has been tied by the right wing messaging network to one of the right's favorite, and now defunct, punching bags, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). A sizable number of Republicans -- 25 percent -- still think ACORN (and by association, Project Vote) is plotting to steal the election for Obama in 2012.

The Voting for America letter to TX SOS Hope Andrade says,

Water Development Board Report Says Texas "Will Not Have Enough"

The Texas Water Development Board has published a draft of its five year 2012 water report for the state. The 295-page plan published last week in the midst of the worst-ever single-year drought Texas has ever experienced, is a sobering read.

This year just set the record for most Federal Emergency Management Agency declared disasters declared in the U.S. And we’ve still got 3 months to go. Most of those disasters are associated with record-shattering extreme weather events matching events climate scientists predict will occur as heat-trapping gases are pumped into the atmosphere fueling global warming and long term climate change.

Chart of Annual Federally Declared Disasters
h/t Tamino for the FEMA chart. FEMA’s data is here.

It is clear that the trendline of major disasters in this country is upward and likely will continue upward for the foreseeable future. And these disasters aren’t merely increasingly in number, but in ferocity.

For Texas the ongoing disaster of increasing ferocity will be that "In serious drought conditions, Texas does not and will not have enough water to meet the needs of its people, and its businesses, and its agricultural enterprises," according to the Texas Water Development Board's report.

According to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas will break another record for the driest 12-month period on record by the end of September. He said the drought has cost Texas $5.2 billion in agricultural losses alone, with at least another billion from drought-related wildfires, and the NCDC says this is already Texas' most costly drought in recorded history.

The Texas Water Development Board's report says that if Texas does not plan ahead, a drought as bad as that of the 1950s could cost Texans $116 billion a year by 2060, the report says, and cause the potential loss of more than one million jobs. Building new reservoirs and wastewater treatment plants and other water infrastructure is projected to cost $53 billion.

The report offered a number of recommendations to the Legislature. Texas lawmakers, it said, should get moving on three reservoir sites (Turkey Peak Reservoir, Millers Creek Reservoir Augmentation, and Coryell County Reservoir). Lawmakers should also make it easier to site other reservoirs, and to transfer surface water between different areas. They should require public water utilities to audit their water losses annually rather than every five years.

Whatever Happened To The American Left?

NYTimes: The left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions — unions, women’s groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press — in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.

Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.

A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.
Read the full story @ The NYTimes

Associated Press May Day celebration in Union Square, New York City, 1934.

Obama Draws More Confidence Than GOP Leaders On Deficit

A new Pew Center report finds that most support raising taxes on high incomes to reduce the deficit and that the public's confidence in congressional leaders, particularly Republican leaders in Congress, has plummeted as the nation prepares for another round of deficit reduction debates. Just 35% say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Republican leaders in Congress to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the federal budget deficit, down from 47% in May. Fully 62% say they have little or no confidence in the Republican leaders on this issue.

Public confidence in Barack Obama on the budget deficit, by comparison, has remained largely unchanged.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 22-25 among 1,000 adults finds that 52% express at least a fair amount of confidence in Obama to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the deficit, virtually unchanged from 55% earlier in the year.

Public trust in Democratic congressional leaders has also suffered - 43% say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Democratic leaders, down from 51% four months ago.

The survey also finds continued public support for raising the tax rate on high incomes as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit and the size of the national debt.

Read the full report to see comparisons of opinion among Republicans, Democrats and independents, as well as the views of Americans on specific proposals for reducing the nation's debt.

Texas Gov Deverting Public School Funds To Big Oil Tax Refunds

APNewsBreak: Texas Refineries May Get Back $135M

Three commissioners appointed by Gov. Rick Perry may grant some of the nation's largest refineries a tax refund of more than $135 million — money Texas' cash-strapped schools and other local governments have been counting on to help pay teachers and provide other public services. Full AP Story

On June 28, 2011 Gov. Perry signed a $172 billion budget passed by the super Republican majority Texas House and Senate. The budget signed by Gov. Perry cuts $15 billion from the level of spending last authorized in the 2009-11 state budget. The largest individual cut was to public education, which lost over $4 billion over the biennium. While public education received the deepest cuts, other agencies that saw their budgets reduced, too. Other agencies cut included public universities and community colleges (with the two largest universities in the state losing $100 million in funding) and state health and welfare programs, which saw Medicaid and food stamp funds slashed by up to $2 billion. [Full story on Texas debt growth and budget cuts]

The American Petroleum Institute argues that giving oil companies government handouts will create jobs. However, a new report by the House Natural Resources Democratic Staff finds that the major oil companies have actually shed employees while reaping record profits. From 2005 to 2010, Exxon, BP, Chevron, and Shell dumped 11,200 U.S. employees while raking in $546 billion in profits.

2011’s Off the Charts Weather and Climate Stats

Climate Central: This year is shaping up to be one of the most extreme — if not the most extreme — years in the United States since instrument records began in the late 19th century. Consider a few statistics from just this past June through August to get a better picture of what's been taking place.

Keep in mind that many studies show that certain types of extreme events, such as heavy rainfall events and heat waves, are already becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. However, none of these events listed below have been the subject of detailed climate change attribution studies yet, since those take several months to complete, so it would be premature to speculate how big of a role climate change played in their development and evolution.

Map showing the number of days with temperatures above 100 degrees F during summer 2011. Credit: NOAA/NCDC.

• This summer was the second-warmest on record in the United States, and the eighth-warmest globally.
  
• Of the Lower-48 states, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana had their hottest summers on record. Two states — Texas and Oklahoma — had average temperatures that were so high, they broke all-time summer heat records for any state in the country. In Texas, the average statewide temperature for the summer was a whopping 86.8°F. Both Texas and Oklahoma eclipsed a benchmark set during the Dust Bowl, when a multiyear drought and a series of withering heat waves transformed the Central states into an arid landscape, driving a mass migration westward.
• During the summer of 2011, every state in the Lower-48 except North Dakota and Vermont experienced at least one day with a temperature exceeding 100°F.
• As of today, nearly 88 percent of Texas is locked in the grips of "exceptional drought" conditions, which is the most severe category on the U.S. Drought Monitor. In order to climb out of the deep rainfall deficit, parts of Texas and Oklahoma would need nearly two feet of rainfall, yet new climate outlooks for the next several months show drier than average conditions are likely to continue through the winter.
• According to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, it is likely that Texas will soon break a record for the driest 12-month period on record, unless there is widespread heavy rain during the second half of September. He said the drought has cost Texas $5.2 billion in agricultural losses alone, with at least another billion from drought-related wildfires, and the NCDC says this is already Texas' most costly drought in recorded history.

Entitlement, My Foot, I Paid Cash For My Social Security Insurance!!!!

By Rob Tornoe - You can find more of his work here.

Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled a percentage of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your 49 year working life, that’s close to $220,500.

If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you would receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

Entitlement, my foot, I paid cash for my Social Security insurance!!!!

Just because congress invested $2.67 trillion of our Social Security Trust Fund in T-Bills, which is counted as 19 percent of our federal debt, doesn't make my Social Security payment benefit some kind of charity or handout!! (The TRUTH About Who Really Owns All Of America's Debt)

Congressional benefits include free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my retirement entitlements !!!!!!

Republicans call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it’s time for us to collect our paid up insurance benefit, Republicans demonize it as an "entitlement" because they want to privatize it to Wall Street to cut the massive debt they created with tax cuts for the rich. "Starving the Government Beast" through tax cuts is a fiscal-political strategy adopted by American conservatives in the 1970's to create or increase existing budget deficits via tax cuts to force future cuts and eventual privatization of Medicare, Social Security, Public Education and every other public government service. [Starving The Beast]

Cartoon by Jen Sorensen with hat tip to the Jobanger blog

Unnecessary Tax Cuts, Unnecessary Austerity

"We're broke!" Or so claim Tea Party governors and lawmakers all over the country. Our states and our nation can no longer afford, their plaint goes, the programs and services that Americans expect government to provide. We must do with less. We need "austerity."

But we're not broke. Not even close. The United States of America is awash in wealth. The richest 1% of Americans and our largest multinational corporations are hording a record treasure of several trillions of dollars in cash. The Federal Reserve reports corporate cash balances alone grew to $2.05 trillion in September 2011 on a quarter over quarter cash reserve growth rate of nearly 5 percent.

Doling out yet more tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans and our largest multinational corporations will not induce them to use their already huge treasure trove of cash to create new jobs or move the jobs they have already off shored back to the U.S.

Presidential Approval Ratings

Source:LiveScience

A recent Associated Press-GfK poll showed that nearly 8 in 10 people considered Obama a likable person, and slightly more than half said he understands the problems of ordinary people. Even among those who said the United States is headed in the wrong direction, 43 percent had a favorable opinion of the president, 10 points higher than his job approval rating among that group. Obama's advisers point to his favorability ratings as an asset when the eventual GOP nominee tries to make the case for change in the White House in 2012.