Journal Gazette | 06/23/2005 | PBS is investment in education By Pat Mitchell

The Public Broadcasting Service and our stations are the single largest educational institution in America. As a result of 35 years of putting children and education first, PBS is now the top choice of American teachers for video in the classroom. We’re a leading source of online lesson plans for schools and for parents home-schooling their children. We’re top providers of distance learning offered by colleges and a critical resource for adults to learn to read, pass the GED, learn English and develop new skills for the workplace.

Because of our economy of scale and local infrastructure, we are one of the most efficient ways Congress can invest in education. Every dollar spent on a PBS children’s TV show impacts tens of millions of children who will learn literacy skills and educational concepts by watching “Sesame Street,” “Arthur”? and our 25 other non-violent educational programs that are unique in the marketplace in their quality and effectiveness.

Studies of the PBS Kids show “Between the Lions” found that kindergarten children who watched the program outperformed those who did not by nearly 4-to-1 on a variety of measurements. It is penny wise and pound foolish for Congress to underutilize the massive power of media to educate Americans at a time when the efficiency and impact of PBS and our member stations have never been more needed. …

Congress has considered cutting funding to public television before, and every time, Americans have rallied to tell their representatives that public broadcasting isn?t an expendable luxury but a vital service.

Government funding for public television amounts to just $1 per person per year. A Roper survey recently showed that 82 percent of American citizens consider those dollars ?well spent,? ranking PBS second only to military activities in value for their tax dollars for the second consecutive year. And most favor more federal support for it, not less.
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Pat Mitchell has been president and CEO of PBS since 2000. She wrote this for the Baltimore Sun.
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Free Press : Put the Public Back in Public Broadcasting

Our public broadcasting system is once again under attack from reactionary forces in Washington. They’ve launched a two-fisted campaign that aims to muzzle dissenting voices on PBS and NPR and eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting altogether.
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Free Press denounces Patricia Harrison?s appointment as president of CPB

Statement by Josh Silver, Free Press executive director

WASHINGTON ? Patricia S. Harrison, former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, has been selected as president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On Monday, Free Press delivered nearly 100,000 petitions to CPB, calling for Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s resignation.

Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, made the following statement:

“Patricia Harrison’s selection as president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is an outrage. Her complete lack of experience and close ties to the leadership of the Republican Party represent a new low in public broadcasting history.

“CPB was created to shield public broadcasting from political interference. But under the direction of Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson ? and now his GOP comrade, Patricia Harrison ? CPB has betrayed its original mission to protect the independence of public broadcasting.

“Millions of citizens have demanded an end to the partisan manipulation of public broadcasting. But, once again, those in power have ignored the voices of the vast majority of the American public to pursue their personal political crusade.”

Mind Over Mathematics: Astronomy and Number

Don’t fall into the trap of collapsing geometry into arithmetic!

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

Ranchers Deserve a Say

NEW MEXICO RANCHERS are working harder than ever these days and are suffering numerous wolf problems? in contrast to whatever a full-time activist does sitting behind a desk to undermine our work. …

Ranchers are overworked, overstressed and uncompensated for their damages and their extra stress. Unfortunately for ranchers, they have to sleep sometime and wolves kill in the dark. So, baby calves? their paychecks at the end of a long year? are freebies unwillingly donated by the ranchers.

Ranchers are literally paying the feed bill for the Mexican wolf program. It is appalling that the general public apparently wants wolves, yet does nothing to support the people who have lives built in the recovery range and are forced to live with the animals or leave. …

LAURA SCHNEBERGER
President, Gila Livestock Growers Association
Winston

This is the first whining I’ve heard from these stalwart stewards of the land. Interesting that they recognize public opinion is turning away from them. Wolves belong in the forest — cows don’t.

I’m all for compensating these ranchers twice the market value. mjh

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In Defense of the Wolf

I WOULD LIKE to speak out in defense of the wolf, which has been taken to task by the cattlemen. While this government has seen fit to lease ground in the national forests for the grazing of cattle, it does not imply that the government will protect the cattlemen from all risks.

The national forests were created for all of us to enjoy, not just a specific entity. Originally, the virgin forests contained the wolves and other wild creatures. Man introduced domestic cattle? thereby upsetting the natural balance.

In his 1960 “Wilderness Letter,” which was used in a 1964 bill to establish the National Wilderness Preservation System, Wallace Stegner wrote, “… Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction.”

Wildness reminds us what it means to be human? what we are connected to rather than what we are separated from. This is not about economics. This is about putting ourselves in accordance with nature, of consecrating these lands by remembering our relationship to them.

Who can say how much nature can be destroyed without consequence? Who can say what the human spirit will be crying out for a hundred years from now?

ROY BOAST
Albuquerque

ABQjournal: Lab Whistle-Blower Beaten By Adam Rankin, Journal Staff Writer

A Los Alamos National Laboratory whistle-blower scheduled to meet with a congressional investigator this week was severely beaten early Sunday by a group of men he says told him to keep his mouth shut.

Tommy Hook, a 23-year LANL employee, has a broken jaw, a herniated disc in his back, broken teeth, can barely talk and fades in and out of consciousness, said his wife, Susan. He was assaulted outside Cheeks, a strip club on Santa Fe’s Cerrillos Road.

“When they were beating him up, they were telling him he needed to keep his mouth shut,” she said. ” ‘If you know what is good for you, you will keep your mouth shut,’ ” she said the attackers told her husband.

Hook has filed for whistle-blower protection with the Department of Energy over what he says was retaliation for information he provided on alleged financial irregularities at LANL. He also has a lawsuit alleging retaliation pending against the University of California-run lab.

Thugs for Silence — you’re with us or you’re with the enemy. mjh

edited 6/21/05

Customer Data Lost, Citigroup Unit Says By Jonathan Krim

A unit of financial services giant Citigroup Inc. said yesterday that a box of computer tapes with account information for 3.9 million customers had been lost in shipment, exposing a vast new swath of Americans to the increased possibility of identity theft.

The announcement from CitiFinancial, a subsidiary that provides personal and home equity loans, pushes to more than 6 million the number of U.S. consumers whose personal data have been lost or stolen in just the past six months. The spate of breaches has included federal agencies, universities, banks and other financial institutions, data brokers and data-storage companies. …

Last month, a data storage company lost information on 600,000 current and former employees of Time Warner Inc. In February, Bank of America Corp. reported it had lost tapes containing data on 1.2 million federal employees, including some U.S. senators.

The breaches have thrown a spotlight on the active marketplace for personal data and prompted calls for congressional action to impose limits such as restricting the availability of Social Security numbers.

The Cincinnati Post – Distorted history demeans our past by James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

what’s new for Memorial Day 2005 is the recasting of America’s past in such a way that “blasphemes” our civil religion of service and sacrifice. …

“It’s an irony,” [Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins University] observes, “that a ‘conservative’ administration has launched a radical campaign of reshaping American historical thinking.” The Bush Doctrine, he continues, aims to change the world – but the first step is that America must be diverted from its tradition of governmental prudence and realism in the setting of objectives, at home and abroad. …

For America’s commander in chief to sully our historic achievements is to dishonor past sacrifice, to undo the meaning of Memorial Day – and to discourage service, present and future. Down that disrespectful road lies even further trouble with military recruitment and retention.

Defenders of the administration might answer that the new Bush policy is popular, even necessary. Yet if America’s leaders feel the need to rework history in order to make way for the new desired future, it’s inevitable that other historical markers of memory will be flattened.

Memorial Day is a good time to recall All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, and Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. Peace. mjh

Assault On the Media By E. J. Dionne Jr.

The war on Newsweek shifted attention away from how the Guantanamo prisoners have been treated, how that treatment has affected the battle against terrorism and what American policies should be. Newsweek-bashing also furthered a long-term and so far successful campaign by the administration and the conservative movement to dismiss all negative reports about their side as the product of some entity they call “the liberal media.” …

I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media. …

But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush’s skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek’s. …

We now know that the conservatives’ admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001.

When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist — and to keep reporting.