Banksy outbids Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg, who doesn't understand the Constitution, civil liberties, decent policing or public education, also doesn't know much about art as these two clips illustrate:

Huffington Post, October 21013 - The anti-graffiti, anti-street art wet blanket known as Mayor Michael Bloomberg apparently does not like Banksy. Bloomberg made the erasure of graffiti a big part of his tenure with projects such as the 2002 Graffiti Cleanup Initiative and the launch of the city's Anti-Graffiti Task Force. The initiatives oversaw the removal of over 16.3 million square feet of graffiti from more than 6,241 sites across New York City as a result.

In 2005, Bloomberg also spoke out against a graffiti party hosted by Marc Ecko Enterprises.

So it should not have come as much of a surprise that the billionaire mayor is not a fan of Banksy's latest NYC open-air exhibit "Better Out Than In," even though an authentic Banksy piece can sell for six figures at auction.

When asked about the elusive street artist during an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, Bloomberg responded, “I’ll leave it up to our Department of Cultural Affairs.”

He then went on to add:

“But look, graffiti does ruin people’s property and it’s a sign of decay and loss of control. Art is art and nobody’s a bigger supporter of the arts than I am. I just think there are some places for art and there are some places [not for] art. And you running up to somebody’s property or public property and defacing it is not my definition of art. Or it may be art, but it should not be permitted. And I think that’s exactly what the law says.”

New Yorkers seem to feel differently, seeing as how the Banksy's work has been drawing large crowds, inspiring fans, and riling competitors.

 

LA Times - The mysterious British street artist's "Flower Girl" mural, which he stenciled onto the wall of a Los Angeles gas station in 2008, was sold for $209,000 Thursday evening at Julien's Auctions, where it was the highlight of a sale of nearly 100 works by 33 street artists.

The gavel price was $170,000 for the 9-by-8-foot, nearly 4-ton rectangular slab of white brick with black spray paint. The mural, which came with a customary additional "buyer's premium" to yield the final total, shows a little girl holding a flower basket under the eye of a surveillance camera planted atop a tall, leafy stalk.

With about 150 people gathered in the auction room, bids rolled in by phone and online. Julien's Executive Director Martin Nolan said the winning bid was phoned in by a Los Angeles buyer who requested anonymity.

The auction included five other works by Banksy that were done between 2002 and 2006. They fetched $421,250 combined, although one of the sales wasn't final because the gavel price had fallen $10,000 short of the $150,000 pre-sale estimate.

The highest known price for a Banksy work is about $1.1 million for a London mural called "Slave Labor" that was auctioned in London in June.

The seller of the L.A. mural was Eytan Rosenberg, former owner of a Valero gas station at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, who says that five years ago he gave the OK for a group of three street artists to paint something on its white brick wall.

... In what Rosenberg described as a delicate and expensive operation, the brick facade was removed in April, along with a section of the building's steel supports and part of the drywall on its interior. Art removal experts hauled it directly to Julien's storage facility, where "Flower Girl" has remained.

The waning of war

Washington Post

Action notes

Infrequently asked questions

Since the secret TPP trade agreement involves, without any public debate, the dismantling of constitutional powers of national, state and local governments of the U.S., isn't it actually a form of treason or terrorism?

CIA helped to jail Mandela

Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1990 - For nearly 28 years the U.S. government has harbored an increasingly embarrassing secret: A CIA tip to South African intelligence agents led to the arrest that put black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela in prison for most of his adult life.

But now, with Mandela en route to the U.S. to a hero`s welcome, a former U.S. official has revealed that he has known of the CIA role since Mandela was seized by agents of the South African police special branch on Aug. 5, 1962.

The former official, now retired, said that within hours after Mandela`s arrest, Paul Eckel, then a senior CIA operative, walked into his office and said approximately these words: ``We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.``

With Mandela out of prison, the retired official decided there is no longer a valid reason for secrecy. He called the American role in the affair ``one of the most shameful, utterly horrid`` byproducts of the Cold War struggle between Moscow and Washington for influence in the Third World.

Asked about the tip to South African authorities, CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said: ``Our policy is not to comment on such allegations.``

Bratton would have crushed OWS sooner

Capital News - Michael Bloomberg's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, waited 63 days before sending police officers in riot gear to clear Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park back in 2011.

Bill Bratton, according to a former New York City official who talked to him afterward, said that if he were commissioner he would have "cleared them out right away."

Bratton, who was NYPD commissioner under Rudy Giuliani, has now been given a mandate to implement the more community-friendly police strategies that de Blasio promised during his spectacularly successful mayoral campaign. And he was presented by de Blasio on Thursday as a kindred spirit on policing theory.

But de Blasio supporters looking for the clean break from the Bloomberg administration the mayor-elect promised in the campaign, during which he also pledged to “end the stop-and-frisk era” in New York, may find Bratton's substantive views about police work to be remarkably similar to the current administration's.

... And in a series of speeches earlier this year which largely went unnoticed, he staked out unflinching support for the kind of aggressive, proactive policing he first used when he served as Rudy Giuliani’s first police commissioner from 1994-1996, and when he was the Los Angeles Police Commissioner from 2002 to 2009.

In June, at an event hosted by the Manhattan Institute, Bratton called stop-question-and-frisk “the most basic, fundamental and necessary tool of American policing. We cannot function effectively without it.”

... Also, while in Los Angeles, Bratton sought to implement anti-terrorism efforts that drew criticisms from civil rights activists who said it mirrored the controversial “spying” tactics employed by the NYPD, which are the target of three federal lawsuits in New York and New Jersey.

Days before the Sept. 10 mayoral primary, de Blasio said the NYPD should scale back its anti-terrorism surveillance program. In response to the latest in a series of investigative stories from the Associated Press about the program, de Blasio said, “We have not been leveled with by the NYPD that, in fact, the kind of surveillance happening is much broader and not based on specific leads.”

He went on to say that “anything that is not based on specific leads should not continue.”

Puerto Rico in serious trouble

Washington Post - The economy [in Puerto Rico] has been in recession for nearly eight years, crimping tax revenue and pushing the jobless rate to nearly 15 percent. Meanwhile, the government is burdened by staggering debt, spawning comparisons to bankrupt Detroit and forcing lawmakers to severely slash pensions, cut government jobs and raise taxes in a furious effort to avert default.

Graphic Puerto Rico’s debt load is bigger than that of any state except California and New York, and it dwarfs Detroit’s debt at the time of that city’s bankruptcy filing.

The implications are serious for Americans outside Puerto Rico both because a taxpayer bailout would be expensive and a default would be far more disruptive than Detroit’s record bankruptcy filing in July. Officials in San Juan and Washington are adamant that a federal bailout is not on the table, but the situation is being closely monitored by the White House, which recently named an advisory team to help Puerto Rican officials navigate the crisis.

The island’s problems have ignited an exodus not seen here since the 1950s, when 500,000 people left for jobs on the mainland. Now Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, are again leaving in droves.

They are choosing the uncertainty of the job market in Orlando or New York City or Philadelphia over what they view as the certainty that their dreams would be crushed by the U.S. territory’s grinding economic problems.

Since recession struck in 2006, the population has shrunk by more than 138,000 to 3.7 million, with the vast majority of the outflow headed to the mainland.

Pocket paradigm

In a culture of impunity, rules serve the internal logic of the system rather than whatever values typically guide a country, such as those of its constitution, church or tradition. The culture of impunity encourages coups and cruelty, and at best practices only titular democracy. A culture of impunity varies from ordinary political corruption in that the latter represents deviance from the culture while the former becomes the culture. Such a culture does not announce itself.

In a culture of impunity, what replaces constitution, precedent, values, tradition, fairness, consensus, debate and all that sort of arcane stuff? Mainly greed. We find ourselves without heroism, without debate over right and wrong, with little but an endless narcissistic struggle by the powerful to get more money, more power, and more press than the next person. In the chase, anything goes and the only standard is whether you win, lose, or get caught.-Sam Smith

Word

Art is by nature somewhat destructive. Every artist while seeking to add to the sum of art, attempts to take away your memory and appreciation of what went before, saying, "Look at me, I am new." - Lou Stovall

Bono remembers Mandela

Bono, Time - As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager. He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort. And he’s been a big part of the Irish consciousness even longer than that. Irish people related all too easily to the subjugation of ethnic majorities. From our point of view, the question as to how bloody South Africa would have to get on its long road to freedom was not abstract.

Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerized by his deft maneuvering as leader of South Africa...

Mandela would be remembered as a remarkable man just for what happened—and didn’t happen—in South Africa’s transition. But more than anyone, it was he who rebooted the idea of Africa from a continent in chaos to a much more romantic view, one in keeping with the majesty of the landscape and the nobility of even its poorer inhabitants. He was also a hardheaded realist, as his economic policy demonstrated. To him, principles and pragmatism were not foes; they went hand in hand. He was an idealist without naiveté, a compromiser without being compromised...

He had humor and humility in his bearing, and he was smarter and funnier than the parade of world leaders who flocked to see him. He would bait his guests: “What would a powerful man like you want with an old revolutionary like me?”

He could charm the birds off the trees—and cash right out of wallets. He told me once how Margaret Thatcher had personally donated £20,000 to his foundation. “How did you do that?” I gasped. The Iron Lady, who was famously frugal, kept a tight grip on her purse. “I asked,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask.” Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially and said her donation had nauseated some of his cohorts. “Didn’t she try to squash our movement?” they complained. His response: “Didn’t De Klerk crush our people like flies? And I’m having tea with him next week … He’ll be getting the bill.” (On other occasions, I heard Mandela praise the courage of F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South Africa, who had his own prison to escape: the prejudice of his upbringing. We should not forget his role in this historic drama).

Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.

Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.

He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.

Today, we can.

Today in history

1865 -- US: 13th amendment ratified, abolishing slavery.

1918 -- US: Department of War abolishes the practice of manacling defiant prisoners to the walls of their cells in solitary confinement, used to torture conscientious objectors in US prisons during World War I.

1920 - Dave Brubeck is born

1980 -- U "When you help the shepherd, you're helping the sheep." - Religious TV evangelist Jim Bakker to disciple Jessica Hahn in a Florida motel room.

1990 --Police in Oakland, California waste two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who is barricaded inside his home. After firing 10 tear gas canisters, officers discover the man is standing beside them, shouting "Please come out & give yourself up!!"

Ruler's Ascension Day in Bahrain

Daily Bleed
Any Day

Recovered history

A Russian soldier playing an abandoned piano
in Chechnya in 1994

Argentinan feminists storm Catholic cathedral

 

VIDEO

Opposing Views - Pro-abortion feminists attacked a Catholic cathedral in San Juan, Argentina, assaulting the men who stood in front of it praying, and finally burning an effigy of Pope Francis.

Citing Argentinian news sources, LifeSite News reported that video footage had been taken of a mob of angry women, many of them topless, harassing the men who stood in front of the cathedral to protect it, reciting prayers. The men did not retaliate as the women drew Hitler mustaches on their faces with marker, spray painted their faces, clothes and crotch areas, and sexually harassed them.

The women chanted, “To the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, who wants to get between our sheets, we say that we want to be whores, travesties and lesbians. Legal abortion in every hospital.”

The footage shows the men attempting to stay stoic, though many are visibly upset or in tears. About 700 more people prayed inside the cathedral.

When they were not able to get inside, the crowd burned a human-sized effigy of Pope Francis, shouting, “If the pope were a woman, abortion would be legal.”

Police were not on hand at the time. They reportedly told media they couldn’t intervene because the protesters were women.

Abortion is a contentious issue in conservative Argentina, where only in March of 2012 did the Supreme Court decriminalize abortion in cases of rape. Abortion is illegal in Argentina, and is only permitted if the mother is mentally incapacitated, if her life is at risk, or, recently, if she has been raped.

Even so, an estimated 460,000 abortions are performed each year in Argentina. Argentina’s health ministry estimates an average of 100 women a year die from improperly performed abortions.

Because Pope Francis is from Argentina, the tension is particularly high between Catholics and liberal women’s rights advocates in the country.

Obama plans a 30 year pass for wind fields that kill hundreds of thousands of birds annually

The Hill - The Obama administration has nearly finalized a rule that would give energy companies lengthy permits for wind farms that end up killing bald and golden eagles.

Hundreds of thousands of birds are killed every year after flying into large wind turbine blades, an issue that became an ongoing saga for the administration this year.

The White House finalized its review of a rule that would give the farms a 30-year pass for the killings, known as "takings."

The details of the Interior Department rule are not yet known.

Obama found himself caught between green groups and renewable energy companies over the summer due to the controversy surrounding the rule, which also applies to oil rigs and electric lines.

Late last month, Duke Energy reached a $1 million settlement with the Obama administration over the deaths of more than a dozen protected eagles and other birds at its wind farms.

The settlement marked the first time the administration had penalized a wind energy company for killing eagles.

Word: How to tell when NSA is lying

Amy Davidson, New Yorker - If the National Security Agency says that it is not “intentionally” doing something—say, collecting records of the locations of Americans’ cell phones—then it is almost certainly taking that very action.

If it says it is doing so “incidentally,” it’s probably doing so on a large scale. If it adds that said effort does not “target” Americans or isn’t “directed” at them, that means it doesn’t believe those Americans—or Congress, or the courts—should mind, because the N.S.A. analyst who entered a search term or tapped into a mobile-network cable had first closed his eyes and thought about terrorists.

And if the director of the agency, General Keith Alexander, says in testimony before the Senate that “the N.S.A. does not collect locational information under section 215 of the Patriot Act,” it does collect it, just maybe under a different section, or with no real authority at all.

Uruguay to legalize marijuana

Progressive - The world will get a glimpse of what it means when a whole country fully legalizes the consumption of marijuana by consenting adults.

The nation of Uruguay will take a step that no other nation has yet dared thanks to the global hegemony of the drug war, upheld and enforced by the United States and its most powerful allies.

Uruguay’s legalization bill will establish the government as the monopoly seller of marijuana, and undercut the black market by offering state-grown weed for just $1 a gram. Registered users will also be allowed to grow up to six plants of their own, or join clubs of up to 45 members who can produce 99 plants at once.

Children under age 18 may not buy the drug under Uruguay's proposed law. Similarly, driving under the influence is strictly forbidden, and so is advertising marijuana. Most importantly, only citizens of Uruguay may purchase legalized weed, which officials hope will tamp down on the kind of drug tourism that Colorado and Washington are becoming known for. In an effort to aid international drug control officials, the country also plans to produce a very specific genetic strain of marijuana that scientists can easily identify.

Speaking to a Brazilian newspaper over the weekend, President José Mujica called upon fellow world leaders to help Uruguay break the grip of global prohibition and finally show that the drug war is much more harmful than the drugs themselves.

Great moments at the FTC

Wall Street Journal - In March of this year, a small nonprofit in Cincinnati—the Music Teachers National Association—received a letter from the FTC. The agency was investigating whether the association was engaged in, uh, anti-competitive practices.

This was bizarre, given that the MTNA has existed since 1876 solely to advance the cause of music study and support music teachers. The 501(c)(3) has about 22,000 members, nearly 90% of them piano teachers, including many women who earn a modest living giving lessons in their homes. The group promotes music study and competitions and helps train teachers. Not exactly U.S. Steel.

The association's sin, according to the feds, rested in its code of ethics. The code lays out ideals for members to follow—a commitment to students, colleagues, society. Tucked into this worthy document was a provision calling on teachers to respect their colleagues' studios, and not actively recruit students from other teachers.

That's a common enough provision among professional organizations (doctors, lawyers), yet the FTC avers that the suggestion that Miss Sally not poach students from Miss Lucy was an attempt to raise prices for piano lessons. Given that the average lesson runs around $30 an hour, and that some devoted teachers still give lessons for $5 a pop, this is patently absurd.

Fukushima: Plans to dump contaminated water into ocean

ABC, Australia - The man in charge of the clean-up at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant says growing stores of contaminated water from the site will eventually have to be dumped into the sea.

In an exclusive interview with the ABC, the chairman of the Fukushima Monitoring Committee, Dale Klein, has also admitted there are likely to be more blunders and slip-ups at the plant in the months and years to come.

Since the 2011 earthquake and ensuing tsunami sparked the nuclear disaster, TEPCO has been pouring millions of litres of water onto Fukushima's reactors to try and keep them cool.

That radioactive water is now being stored in tanks at the site but already thousands of liters have leaked into the Pacific Ocean.

Mr Klein says the biggest challenge for TEPCO is dealing with these ever-growing volumes of contaminated water being stored at Fukushima.

He believes that after the water is treated and stripped of most radioactive elements, it will be safe to dump into the Pacific.

"At the end of the day, when the water is discharged, it will be released in a way that it's diluted," he said.

Common Core explained

Susan Ohanian - Lior Klirs, Coordinator of English Language Arts Content and Resources in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction at the Tennessee Department of Education, offers an explanation of how the Common Core-aligned tests will be technology-enhanced.

The item is engaging, rigorous, and authentic. It is technology-enhanced, taking advantage of PARCC's online testing platform to engage students with real-world skills like highlighting text on screen.

... Now we know why school districts are spending millions for computers and the required broadband wiring.

Advice: I just checked Staples. Highlighters are $6.49 per dozen.

Attendance plummets at historic houses

Art Journal

Race to the bottom update

National Enquirer - Keeping Up With The Kardashians ratings nose-dive as popularity plummets.

The once uber-popular reality show has been on a steady decline over the last four seasons, Radar Online reported

.In fact, the show has lost nearly 1 million viewers per episode since Season 5.

In 2010 Season 5 premiered with a whopping 4.67 million viewers and held steady with an overall season average of 3.39 million.

Throughout the next three seasons the show entered into a downward spiral and Season 8 finale that aired Dec. 1, 2013 raked in a disappointing 1.96 million viewers.
As previously reported with all their scandals and shenanigans, the Kardashians are now bad for business.

Almost a third of bank tellers rely on public assistance

Washington Post - Almost a third of the country’s half-million bank tellers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, according to a report.

Researchers say taxpayers are doling out nearly $900 million a year to supplement the wages of bank tellers, which amounts to a public subsidy for multibillion-dollar banks. The workers collect $105 million in food stamps, $250 million through the earned income tax credit and $534 million by way of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center.

How to plan a bike share progam

Treehugger

Democrats join in cutting food stamps

Greg Kaufmann, Nation - On the same day that President Obama eloquently described his vision of an economy defined by economic mobility and opportunity for all, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow was busy cutting a deal with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas to slice another $8 to $9 billion from food stamps (SNAP), according to a source close to the negotiations.

“One study shows that more than half of Americans will experience poverty at some point during their adult lives,” said President Obama.  “Think about that.  This is not an isolated situation… That’s why we have nutrition assistance or the program known as SNAP, because it makes a difference for a mother who’s working, but is just having a hard time putting food on the table for her kids.”

Indeed it does, but the Chairwoman consistently fails to get the memo.

There are currently 47 million Americans who turn to food stamps to help make ends meet.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, nearly 72 percent are in families with children; and one-quarter of SNAP participants are in households with seniors or people with disabilities.  Further, 91 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes below the poverty line, and 55 percent to households below half of the poverty line (about $9,500 annually for a family of three).

...The Senate Agriculture Committee’s previous proposal to cut yet another $4 billion from SNAP would have led to 500,000 losing $90 per month in benefits, the equivalent of one week’s worth of meals.

“That was the first time in history that a Democratic-controlled Senate had even proposed cutting the SNAP program,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.  “The willingness of some Senate Democrats to double new cuts to the program… is unthinkable.”

Word

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critics - Ambrose Bierce

Pocket paradigms

Our culture feels like a bad craft fair where everything you see seems to have been made before, only better..-Sam Smith

The danger of data drones

Sam Smith

One of the problems with test scores such as PISA is that they assume  the test is accurate enough to show significance despite statistically minor differences. But, as Dana Goldstein writes in Slate:

The truth is that the lessons of PISA for our school reform movement are not as simple as they are often made out to be. PISA results aren’t just about K–12 test scores and curricula—they are also about academic ability tracking, income inequality, health care, child care, and how schools are organized as workplaces for adults.

To figure out what PISA results really tell us, let’s first look at what’s on the test. PISA is quite different from the mostly multiple-choice, fact-driven state exams American kids take annually. The idea of PISA is to test students’ ability to handle words and numbers in real-world situations. One math activity asked students to compare the value of four cars, using a chart showing the mileage, engine capacity, and price of each one. American kids were especially bad at problems like this, in which they were not provided with a formula, but had to figure out how to manipulate the numbers on their own.

A reading activity asked test takers to read a short play, and then write about what the characters were doing before the curtain went up. The challenge is that the question prompts students to envision and describe a scene not actually included in the text itself. These are good questions that most of our kids should be able to tackle—we want analytical, creative children, not just kids who are good at memorization.

Let’s look at some of the PISA figures. Here are some the media didn’t report:

There was only a 13% difference in the score for the top country in 2012 and America’s. In 2000 there had been only an 8% difference. 

Thanks to a 3% improvement in scores, Japan came in 4^th place in 2012. It was in 8^th place in 2000.

Despite Race to the Top and Common Core, if you’re going to play this game then you have to say both are failures because America’s test scores went down 1% between 2000 and 2012.

Our data obsession teaches us to ignore the obvious, but because we don’t know how to test for that we stick with the most easily obtained data. For example, if the wealthiest schools in New York are spending 80% more per student than the poorest ones, then it is likely this will have some effect on test scores.  If we teach students to use the numbers they learn in a different way than, say, Finland, it is likely to have an effect. But what test can tell you that Finland’s approach is better or worse than ours?

And it’s not just in education. For example, the Obamacare disaster is not one of bad data but of the unwise use of data. It assumed that people would react more like programmed robots than like quirky human beings. And that just establishing the goals for a web site would produce the web site one wanted.

Similarly, our medical industry blindly uses BMI as a major health measure, despite the fact that we are three, and not two, dimensional people and that muscle and fat have different health implications.

When you’re dealing with millions of people, it’s so much easier to come up with such cozy formulas than it is to admit honestly the complexities of the situation. And the beauty of it is that those who do it never have to take a test that might prove them to be in error.

Wealthiest NY school districts spend 80% more per student than the poorest 10%

USA Today - The wealthiest 10% of New York school districts spent 80% more per student last year compared to the poorest 10%, according to the state's largest teacher union.

During the 2012-13 school year, the wealthiest districts spent an average of $35,690 per student, according to a New York State United Teachers analysis. The poorest schools spent an average of $19,823.

Corporados want to penalize solar panel users

Guardian, UK - An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalizing individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action.

Poland accused of allowing torture for US

Guardian, UK -  Lawyers for two men subject to extraordinary rendition by the CIA told the European court of human rights that Poland, which permitted a secret "black" site to operate on its territory, should be held responsible for their torture.

The two-day hearing at Strasbourg was the first time a European country has been taken to court for allowing US agencies to carry out "enhanced" interrogation and "waterboarding" programs. In a highly unusual legal move, the media and public were barred from the opening day's session.

The military base at Stare Kiejkuty, north of Warsaw, it was revealed, had previously been used by German intelligence and later the Soviet army during the second world war. One of the men, it was alleged, was subjected to mock executions while hooded and otherwise naked.

...The court also heard a submission from Ben Emmerson QC, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, who argued that where gross or "systematic human rights violations are alleged to have occurred, the right to know the truth is not only an individual right that belongs to the immediate victim of the violation, but also a collective right that belongs to the whole of society".

The effects of climate change in before and after photos

Gizmodo

Obamacare: Enrollment isn't enough

Huffington Post - Unresolved technical problems on HealthCare.gov could lead to a rude surprise at the doctor's office next month for patients who think they successfully used the website to sign up for health insurance. They may find they're not insured after all.

HealthCare.gov, the federal online portal for health-insurance shopping in more than 30 states, has improved after more than a month of intense fixes, and enrollment is accelerating. But insurance companies are still getting information on their would-be customers that is garbled and incomplete, and in some cases they are getting no information at all. President Barack Obama's administration is scrambling to repair the faulty system, but scant time remains until the Dec. 23 deadline for consumers to choose a health plan that will be in place Jan. 1.

The result could be an untold number of consumers remaining uninsured despite completing the enrollment process -- another embarrassing chapter in the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature health care reform law.

Today in history

1484 -- The pope establishes severe penalties against German witches & magicians; over the next 300 years perhaps 200,000 accused witches are executed.

1770 -- Six of the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre found innocent, largely due to defense attorney John Adams' intimation that Crispus Attucks, America's first black hero, may have caused "the dreadful carnage of that night" with his "mad behavior...at the head of...[a] rabble of Negroes..."

1893 1st electric car (built in Toronto) could go 15 miles between charges

1955 -- US: Montgomery, Alabama civil-rights bus boycott begins. Lasts for 54 weeks, to end segregation practices. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her bus seat on 1 December starts year-long Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott by 30-40,000 Negro riders (out of a Negro population of 50,000). The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) is formed to coordinate the boycott, & Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is elected president. Boycott ends in victory 21 December 1956).

1933 - Prohibition came to an end when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Within four decades everything learned about alcohol rohibition is forgotten and drug prohibition commences

Today is Arbor Day in Lebanon

Daily Bleed
Any Day

Illinois legislature votes to raid state workers' pensions

RINF- In a special session on Tuesday, the Illinois legislature passed a long-anticipated bipartisan pension “reform” bill that slashes pension benefits in response to the estimated $100 billion in unfunded state liabilities.

The agreement was reached over the Thanksgiving holiday by the four Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate. The bill passed 62-53 in the State House of Representatives and 30-24 in the State Senate.

The timing of the December 3 special session was important, as the vote was taken just hours after federal bankruptcy court judge Steven Rhodes read his ruling on the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit. In addition to letting the bankruptcy proceed, Rhodes explicitly ruled that federal bankruptcy law trumps state constitutional protections for worker pensions.

Rhodes’ decision is aimed at setting a precedent to allow for the looting of state and municipal pension funds, worth trillions of dollars.

70% of 11,000 silent movies made in America between 1912 and 1930 have been lost

Daily Mail, UK

NYC's new police chief strongly favors stop and frisk

Huffington Post - Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayor-elect who surged to the top of polls this summer while promising to reform the aggressive policing strategy known as stop-and-frisk, has selected a police commissioner who embraced that strategy in the past.

William Bratton, who presided over dramatic crime reductions as police commissioner of New York City between 1994 and 1996, and Los Angeles between 2002 and 2009, will once again take over the New York City Police Department.

Bratton became an international celebrity during his first term as New York’s top cop under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. During his 27 months at the helm of the department, he oversaw an extraordinary 33-percent drop in the violent crime rate. He also helped innovate the aggressive style of policing that grew under current Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and which relies on the use of stop-and-frisk, a strategy that has led to hundreds of thousands of arrests of mostly black and Latino New Yorkers, often on minor marijuana charges.

As The Huffington Post reported Monday, opponents of stop-and-frisk have raised questions about whether Bratton is the right man for the job.

“I have not heard him make a definitive statement that the way stop-and-frisk was carried out in New York City over the last 10 years was ineffective,” said Delores Jones-Brown, a former prosecutor and the director of the John Jay College Center on Race, Crime and Justice. “It’s wrong, ethically and morally. I don’t need to hear him waver.”

During Bratton's first term in New York, police sharply stepped up enforcement of drug possession and other low-level crimes, and drug arrests soared by 97 percent from 1993 until the end of his tenure. As the arrest-rate climbed, so did charges of police misconduct, especially in precincts in neighborhoods heavily populated by blacks and Latinos. Ad Info

In August, a federal judge ruled that the city’s use of stop and frisk violated the civil rights of black and Latino New Yorkers. The city appealed the decision, but the ruling is likely to stand.

De Blasio campaigned on a promise to scale back the practice and to dismiss Kelly, who made the policy a keystone of his tenure. Bratton hasn’t condemned Kelly’s tenure outright, but has hinted that Kelly may have taken the hard-nosed approach too far. In 2012, he compared stop-and-frisk to chemotherapy, saying it is an “intrusive power,” but “applied in the right way, it can have the effect of reducing crime.”

De Blasio referred to those remarks at a press conference in Brooklyn Thursday morning. "Bill Bratton knows when it comes to stop and frisk it has to be used with respect, it has to be used properly," de Blasio said.

Azi Paybarah, Capital New York, June 14, 2013 - No matter what the New York City Council or the federal courts do to curb stop-and-frisk, the New York Police Department will still utilize some form of the controversial tactic, said former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton after a breakfast hosted by the Manhattan Institute this morning.

"They will put more oversight, more guidance, more training; it's all for the good," Bratton told reporters. "At the same time, they can't do away with it."

"One of the mayoral candidates is campaigning on the idea that he's going to do away with stop-question-and-frisk. He's out of his mind," he continued. "Quite clearly he knows nothing about stop-question-and-frisk. Stop-question-and-frisk is constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio." Bratton called it "the most basic tool fundamental of American policing."

"So, while you may have more oversight and training, which is always good, more guidance, more reporting requirements, it doesn't change the fundamentals that are always involved in stop-question-and-frisk," he added.

1999 - Members of the NYPD's Street Crime Unit are known as "the commandos of the NYPD." In existence since 1971, the unit has undergone a 300 percent build-up since 1997. Former NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton encouraged the men to "become far more aggressive." Currently made up of roughly 400 mostly white officers, this unit, along with the 7,000 strong Narcotics Unit, represent the front line in Mayor Giuliani's "quality of life" crackdown on - and criminalization of - people of color, especially young, poor, and homeless people. They wear (and peddle) tee shirts that say: "Certainly There Is No Hunting Like the Hunting of Men." And their slogan is, "We own the night." According to police data, the unit's activity "has in the last two years resulted in 45,000 street searches to net fewer than 10,000 arrests." Nearly all of those stopped by police were people of color. But New York State Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer, who has launched a civil rights investigation into the "stop and frisk" practices of the Street Crime Unit, "said the unit may have searched hundreds of thousands of people in the last two years without finding any basis for arresting them." In fact, the New York Times reported, "half the gun arrests made by the Street Crime Unit in the last two years were thrown out of court."

Oakland North 2013 -   Some of Bratton’s tough policing tactics have come under fire by civil rights groups and community members in Oakland and other cities where he’s worked, like his support of the “broken windows” strategy, in which minor crimes like public urination are dealt with strongly to discourage more serious crimes, and his encouragement of “stop-and-frisk,” a tactic that allows an officer to stop someone suspected of a crime and frisk the individual if he or she feels their safety is in danger.

At the January 22 Oakland City Council meeting, when the council voted in the $250,000 contract for Bratton’s group, residents packed the chambers, to express both concerns and support for the newly hired Oakland Police Department crime consultant group. Opponents of stop-and-frisk have put up a bus shelter poster outside the Grand Lake Theater depicting a group of young people with their hands against a wall as a police officer pats them down. The poster reads: “Bratton go home! This is not what a community looks like.”

Some community leaders, especially in the faith-based community, have expressed support for Bratton’s new role in Oakland. “We have to do everything we possibly can to bring the violence down and reduce crime,” said Pastor Gerald Agee of Friendship Christian Center International, who attended the January 22 council meeting in support of the consultant group. “If it’s William Bratton, who has a track record of bringing down crime in Los Angeles and New York, then let’s do it.”

But some community groups like PUEBLO, which advocates for low-income Oakland residents and opposed the approval of the consultant contract, have raised concerns that aggressive use of policies like stop-and-frisk will lead to racial profiling. They also worry that the city is spending too much on consultants. “There’s plenty of expertise available for little to no money,” said Rashidah Grinage, director of PUEBLO. “We don’t agree that in order for us to bring down violence, that we have to award a $250,000 contract to a so-called expert.”

....Grinage said racial profiling by police was also associated with Bratton’s aggressive law enforcement strategies and that this kind of policing could damage Oakland. “We believe that this style of aggressive targeting without probable cause is the reason we are in this consent decree in the first place,” she said, referring to the Riders settlement. “We certainly don’t need that reinforced.”

US lags behind other developed countries in Social Security

OFF THE CHARTS

As Barack Obama was saying about inequality

Daily Beast - In an August article under the headline “Income Gap Grows Wider (And Faster),” The New York Times determined: “Income inequality in the United States has been growing for decades, but the trend appears to have accelerated during the Obama administration.” The Times based its conclusion on an detailed analysis of wages. But the evidence is also clear in the disparity between the stock market and the growing numbers in poverty, including many working poor in part-time jobs.

...While the stock market has soared, so has poverty. More than 42 million Americans are now in poverty, a record level. Sixteen million more are on food stamps today than when Obama took office. A study by the Southern Education Foundation found that for the first time in 40 years, a majority of public school students in 13 Southern and 4 Western states are living in poverty.


After that, what will count is not his speeches but his record. Right now he’s on track to be one of America’s worst presidents on a subject he calls “defining.” If so, how will he be defined?

Pocket paradigm

The nature of culture is drastically changing from being something in which the individual is indoctrinated and absorbed, towards something the individual must preserve, restore or recreate in order to avoid the destruction of all culture save that of the corporate market and the political systems that support it. The strategies by which this can be accomplished depend on no small part on the imagination, passion, obstinacy, and creativity of ordinary people who refuse their consumptive assignments in the global marketplace, who develop autonomous alternatives, and who laugh when they are supposed to be saluting. The business of constructing culture is no longer an inherited and precisely defined task but a radical act demonstrating to others that they are not alone and to ourselves that we are still human - Sam Smith

Word

The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling and riding over the plundered plowman and the beggar.-Thomas Jefferson

Meanwhile. . .

TODAY IN HISTORY: MARK TWAIN

Just An Earth-Bound Misfit Weather

The temperature in West Yellowstone MT hit -31 degrees in the past 24 hours.

Over a quarter of uninsured say they'll go for the fine

Reports Gallup: Twenty-eight percent of uninsured Americans say they are more likely to pay the fine for not having health insurance than to obtain insurance, as required by the healthcare law.

Number of banks shriinking, while too big to fail banks grow larger

Michael Snyder, Activist Post - The total number of banks in the United States has fallen to a brand new all-time record low and that means that the health of the too big to fail banks is now more critical to our economy than ever. In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States. Today, there are only 6,891 left, and that number continues to drop every single year. That means that more than 10,000 U.S. banks have gone out of existence since 1985.

Meanwhile, the too big to fail banks just keep on getting even bigger.  In fact, the six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.  If even one of those banks collapses, it would be absolutely crippling to the U.S. economy.  If several of them were to collapse at the same time, it could potentially plunge us into an economic depression unlike anything that this nation has ever seen before.

Turning Detroit's debt into a human disaster

John Nichols, Nation - With a ruling Tuesday by US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes, Detroit officially becomes the largest US city ever to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Despite a determination that negotiations with creditors outside of bankruptcy court had not satisfied good-faith requirements, the judge cleared the way for the emergency manager and his law firm to advance a “plan of adjustment” that is likely to include deep cuts in pension guarantees for retired city employees and a “fire sale” of city assets that could result in public utilities and the Detroit Institute of Arts collection being bartered off to private bidders.

What Judge Rhodes has done is not the end of the bankruptcy process. It is merely the beginning. But the process has been framed in a manner that runs the risk of undermining the city’s long-term recovery by taking money away from the most vulnerable residents of Detroit. As Jordan Marks, executive director of the National Public Pension Coalition notes, “In the bankruptcy, the modest pensions of Detroit’s firefighters, police officers, and other city employees could be all but wiped out, even as Wall Street banks continue to extract hundreds millions of dollars from the city’s economy. This is a dark day for people of Detroit who worked hard, played by the rules, and are now at risk of losing everything.”

By Tuesday afternoon, according to Reuters, the emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, had "called on unions to help bridge gaps with the city on planned pension cuts." And he has commissioned the auction house Christie's to assess the value of the art institute's collection -- which traces its roots to the 1880s and includes works by Bruegel, Cézanne, van Gogh and murals by Diego Rivera -- for possible sale.

There is no question that Detroit, like many American cities, faces fiscal challenges. But instead of assuring that those challenges are met in the most humane and functional manner, the city is being steered into a wrenching process of restructuring that—by all appearances—will be based on flawed math, flawed priorities and an exceptionally flawed understanding of how democracy is supposed to work.

How TPP could seriously endanger the environment

Campaign 350 = Leaked text reveals that the TPP would empower corporations to directly sue governments in private and non-transparent trade tribunals over laws and policies that corporations allege reduce their profits.

Legislation designed to address climate change, curb fossil fuel expansion and reduce air pollution could all be subject to attack by corporations as a result of TPP. Additionally, the deal could criminalize internet use, undermine workers’ and human rights, manipulate copyright laws, restrict government regulation of food labeling and adversely impact subsidized healthcare.

A Detroit union leader tells what it's like

Deadline Detroit -Dan McNamara, one of the city’s best-known labor leaders, has stepped down as president of the Detroit Fire Fighters Association, a post he held for 11 years. McNamara, 59, chose not to run for re-election because he will have to retire from the Detroit Fire Department when he tuns 60 next year, which will fall midway through the two-year term.
 

A firefighter since 1977, McNamara has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Wayne State University. Shortly after becoming DFFA president in 2002, he was diagnosed with a blood cancer, which he has battled quietly while running the union through some of the most tumultuous times in city history.

The interview was conducted by Deadline Detroit's Bill McGraw at the union office last week.

DEADLINE DETROIT: There is no collective bargaining for city of Detroit unions these days. What is life like for a union president  under an emergency manager?

DAN McNAMARA: “It’s horribly difficult. Horribly. For us not to be able to bargain, to be told things are being imposed -- financially, OK, we kind of understand. But when they’re going to impose things that are subjective in nature, and not financial, like seniority, they’re just using the emergency manager law to tear apart our contracts. In the past, we gave up pay to defend our health care and our pensions. We gave to this city, and someone walks in one day and says, ‘It’s gone.’"

You joined the Detroit Fire Department in 1977. What’s changed since then?

“Our firefighters are in the worst situation they could ever be in, but not a call goes unanswered. Every one of our engines has over 100,000 miles. We’re riding pieces of crap. We’re wearing horrible gear. Since I came on in 1977, we’ve lost thirty-some companies. Now we have 887 firefighters. Then we had 1,400-1,500 at a minimum. The average age today is almost 45.”....

What will your retirement be like with a partial pension, if that happens, as threatened, in bankruptcy?

“Whatever they cut, there’s also the health-care costs on top of that. To give me $125 a frickin’ month and go up on the exchange to buy health care that costs $800 to $1,000 a month. We have retired firefighters and cops, under the old plan, they’re making $800 to $1,000 a month. You’re going to have us living under bridges. With the financial hits, we have members who are calling their kids home from college now. There’s no future. And they are having trouble getting applicants for the new class. No one wants this job now. This used to be a destination fire department.”

Can a gym efficiently produce its own electricity with workouts?

Think Progress

Guide to how NSA may be including your phone in the billions it tracks every day

Washington Post

Hubble telescope wasting public funds on selfies

Andy Borowitz, New Yorker - NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, whose mission is to capture images that help scientists better understand the universe, has instead spent much of the past several weeks transmitting an annoying series of self-portraits, NASA scientists confirmed today.

NASA officials were alarmed in mid-November, when, ignoring their orders, the Hubble extended a long robotic arm in order to get a good vantage point on itself and began snapping thousands of blurry, low-resolution photos.

There'll always be a Chicago

Talking Points Memo - Former Chicago Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, just months removed from a federal prison facility, on Monday filed to run for the Cook County Board seat formerly held by William Beavers -- who reported to prison the same day.

According to The Chicago Sun-Times, Sanchez left prison five months ago after serving a 2.5 year sentence for rigging city hiring and promotions. Monday was the filing deadline for the March 18 primary elections. Sanchez wasn't even the first ex-con to get in the race. Convicted former Ald. Isaac Carothers is also running.

Britain moves closer to dictatorship with threat to treat reporters as terrorists

Huffington Post - British police are examining whether Guardian newspaper staff should be investigated for terrorism offenses over their handling of data leaked by Edward Snowden, Britain's senior counter-terrorism officer said on Tuesday.

The disclosure came after Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, summoned to give evidence at a parliamentary inquiry, was accused by lawmakers of helping terrorists by making top secret information public and sharing it with other news organizations.

The Guardian was among several newspapers which published leaks from U.S. spy agency contractor Snowden about mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's eavesdropping agency GCHQ.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, who heads London's Specialist Operations unit, told lawmakers the police were looking to see whether any offences had been committed, following the brief detention in August of a man carrying data on behalf of a Guardian journalist.

Security officials have said Snowden's data included details of British spies and its disclosure would put lives at risk. Rusbridger told the committee his paper had withheld that information from publication.

"It appears possible once we look at the material that some people may have committed offenses," Dick said. "We need to establish whether they have or they haven't."

CNN easing out of heavy news business

NY Daily News - No one is safe.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker is a step closer to shaking up HLN, the cable news network’s sister channel, sources tell The News.

While Zucker has remained elusive about changes in mind for HLN, a source close to the situation tells The News that “nothing is off the table.”

That includes possibly dumping firebrand Nancy Grace, whose acerbic personality was a huge part of last winter’s highly rated coverage of the Jodi Arias murder trial.

In September, Zucker tapped cable veteran Albie Hecht to run HLN. Hecht, who has no real background in news, has specialized in entertainment programming at the helm of Nickelodeon and Spike TV.

“By this time next year, you’re going to be looking at a whole new HLN,” a network source said. A second source added, “In terms of people leaving HLN, there have been no internal conversations.” Nancy Grace's show, which covers celebrated trials, could be on the way out at CNN.

...Bolstering Zucker’s case for change, CNN’s most-watched show is the food-centric travelogue “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” and its third-most-watched program is Morgan Spurlock’s “Inside Man.” Both have little to do with news.

On the flip side, “Anderson Cooper 360” is the network’s second-highest rated show.

Zucker has said he has no plans to stop covering news at CNN. “A control room at CNN will always be hot — always ready to cover breaking news,” a network source said.

Bikes outselling cars in most European countries

BBC- Figures from industry bodies indicate that bicycles outsold cars in 26 of the European Union's 28 states in 2012. It is thought the trend reflects a slump in car sales brought on by the continent's economic crisis.

The popularity of cycling appears to be going beyond the traditional "cycling capitals" of northern Europe such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Italy was typical of many southern European states, with 1.6 million bikes bought as against 1.4 million cars.

One in five American families struggling to meet basic needs

Arloc Sherman, Off the Charts - Almost 1 in 5 American families struggled to meet one or more of nine basic needs in 2011, the Census Bureau reported earlier this year.  These included difficulty meeting essential expenses, not paying rent or mortgage, getting evicted, not paying utilities, having utilities or phone service cut off, not seeing a doctor or dentist when needed, or not always having enough food.  Several of these measures of financial difficulty worsened between 2005 and 2011, according to the Census data.

“The number of American households that could not meet basic expenses increased by 16 percent (from 16.4 million to 19.1 million) from 2005 to 2011.  During that same period, the number unable to pay their rent or mortgage increased by 39 percent,” Census writes.  (The total number of U.S. households rose by 4 percent over the same period, Census data show.)

 

Pocket paradigm

One response to society's assault on human variation is the creation of an "identity," around which the icons, values, and artifacts of a culture are consciously built. Identity cultures -- such as the black, lesbian or disabled "community" -- are intentionally designed to end discrimination but perhaps also are unconsciously part of a broader reaction to the threat against culture itself. Many may feel the need for an identity not merely because of prejudice against their ethnicity, but against the biggest race of all, the human one. The obvious advantage of identity culture is the protection of a group. The less obvious disadvantage is that over-emphasis on one's status, sex, or ethnicity can be just as much an obstacle to individualism as, say, loyalty to the corporate culture. It converts context into classification. When someone stands up in a meeting and says, "Speaking as a gay Jew. . ." they are defining themselves as far less than they really are.- Sam Smith

Word

Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of govenrment have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interessts have been passed into the hands of these coporations." --Andrew Jackson

Headline of the day: Wisconsin DNR struggling to curb sex at nude beach

Winona Daily News - Wisconsin authorities thought they could curb libidos at the state's nude beach by closing it on weekdays, but citation data shows the move just shifted the hanky-panky to the weekends.

The Department of Natural Resources issued 13 citations at the beach between June and early October this year. All were for sex, and 11 were issued on weekends. Those numbers are down from 2012's totals, but wardens said the problem is far more prevalent than the numbers suggest. All the citations were issued during just seven days of surveillance and some people seen having sex ran off before wardens could cite them.

"There's no doubt there's more stuff going on," said Nathan Kroeplin, who supervises DNR law enforcement in Dane County. "There's definitely frustration. (The weekday closures) didn't really seem like it made that much of a dent."

Over the years, the sandbar has become a destination for nudists from around the country. Exposing one's genitals is a misdemeanor in Wisconsin, but prosecutors in liberal Dane County say naked people must cause a disturbance before they'll charge them. The DNR estimates as many as 70,000 people have visited the sandbar some summers.

The trouble is visitors haven't been content with skinny-dipping and sunbathing. Many are looking for trysts and drugs, according to the DNR.

The agency has been trying to put the kibosh on the bad behavior for more than a decade. In the late 1990s, it closed the beach at night, banned camping on the beach and installed a gate to block vehicles and halt drive-in, drive-out trysts. In 2007, it closed sections of the surrounding woods and cut down brush near the beach to eliminate cover for sex.

This spring the DNR decided to close the beach on weekdays from March through mid-September. Agency officials theorized people were more likely to commit offenses during the week when fewer people were around. But the larger weekend crowds didn't police themselves as hoped.

"Some of the stuff we cited people for was fairly discreet," Kroeplin said, "but there was other stuff out in the wide open and never once did I see somebody come up and say `stop that.'"

It's unclear what the DNR might do next.