FitSugar

Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Roarman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:42:41 -0800

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives - potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious - an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material - finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group - women from 45 to 64 years of age - whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces - some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession - might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.

A New Scarcity of Jobs

Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce - particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 - the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”

Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.

Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.

It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.

Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.

All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen - who has never before struggled to find work - feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.

If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.

“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”

Fewer Protections

Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.

On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.

“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”

When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month - $25 less than her husband’s disability check.

Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.

Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level - then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three - according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”

Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.

Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance - a stream of checks that ran out last week.

For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.

“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”

Ms. Booth, with a résumé full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.

She sends out dozens of résumés a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.

She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.

“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”

On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.

“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”

Yes, she replied - and not only for his benefit.

“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”

Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses - the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.

“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”

For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.

“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.

Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.

She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.

“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.

What she has is personality and presence - two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.

“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”

And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.

“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”

She has applied everywhere she can think of - at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.

“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”

Two Incomes, Then None

Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.

She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.

“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”

By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.

When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus - enough for presents under the Christmas tree.

But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments - diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure - leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.

And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.

For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.

Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.

“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.

When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.

“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.

For one thing, no pinto beans.

“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”

Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.

“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Her counselor has a couple of possibilities - a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?sq=... New Poor&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

35 Inconvenient Truths The errors in Al Gore’s movie

Grandpa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:10:22 -0800

35 Inconvenient Truths
The errors in Al Gore’s movie
For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

By

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

October 18, 2007

Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He may reached through SPPI, or directly at (

monckton@mail.com

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35 Inconvenient Truths
The errors in Al Gore’s movie
A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.
Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion. Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment. Next, Ms. Kreider makes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stewart Dimmock, the lorry driver, school governor and father of two school-age children who was the plaintiff in the case. This memorandum, however, will eschew any ad hominem response, and will concentrate exclusively on the 35 scientific inaccuracies and exaggerations in Gore’s movie. Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.” However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term. Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion. We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff.

ERROR 1
Sea level "rising 6 m"

Gore says that a sea-level rise of up to 6 m (20 ft) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland. Though Gore does not say that the sea-level rise will occur in the near future, the judge found that, in the context, it was clear that this is what he had meant, since he showed expensive graphical representations of the effect of his imagined 6 m (20 ft) sea-level rise on existing populations, and he quantified the numbers who would be displaced by the sea-level rise. The IPCC says sea-level increases up to 7 m (23 ft) above today’s levels have happened naturally in the past climate, and would only be likely to happen again after several millennia. In the next 100 years, according to calculations based on figures in the IPCC’s 2007 report, these two ice sheets between them will add a little over 6 cm (2.5 inches) to sea level, not 6 m (this figure of 6 cm is 15% of the IPCC’s total central estimate of a 43 cm or 1 ft 5 in sea-level rise over the next century). Gore has accordingly exaggerated the official sea-level estimate by approaching 10,000 per cent. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC estimates a sea-level rise of “59 cm” by 2100. She fails to point out that this amounts to less than 2 ft, not the 20 ft imagined by Gore. She also fails to point out that this is the IPCC’s upper estimate, on its most extreme scenario. And she fails to state that the IPCC, faced with a stream of peer-reviewed articles stating that sea-level rise is not a threat, has reduced this upper estimate from 3 ft in 2001 to less than 2 ft (i.e. half the mean centennial sea-level rise that has occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago) in 2007. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s 2007 sea-level calculations excluded contributions from Greenland and West Antarctica because they could not be quantified. However, Table SPM1 of the 2007 report quantifies the contributions of these two ice-sheets to sea-level rise as representing about 15% of the total change. The report also mentions the possibility that there may be an unquantified further contribution in future from these two ice sheets arising from “dynamical ice flow.” However, the Greenland ice sheet rests in a depression in the bedrock created by its own weight, wherefore “dynamical ice flow” is impossible, and the IPCC says that temperature would have to be sustained at more than 5.5 degrees C above its present level for several millennia before half the Greenland ice sheet could melt, causing sea level to rise by some 3 m (10 ft). Finally, the IPCC’s 2007 report estimates that the likelihood that humankind is having any influence on sea level at all is little better than 50:50. The judge was accordingly correct in finding that Gore’s presentation of the imagined imminent threat of a 6 m (20 ft) sea-level rise, with his account of the supposed impact on the present-day populations of Manhattan, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, etc., etc, was not a correct statement of the mainstream science on this question.

ERROR 2
Pacific islands "drowning"

Gore says low-lying inhabited Pacific coral atolls are already being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming, leading to the evacuation of several island populations to New Zealand. However, the atolls are not being inundated, except where dynamiting of reefs or over-extraction of fresh water by local populations has caused damage. Furthermore, corals can grow at ten times the predicted rate of increase in sea level. It is not by some accident or coincidence that so many atolls reach just a few feet above the ocean surface. Ms. Kreider says, “The IPCC estimates that 150 million environmental refugees could exist by the year 2050, due mainly to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural disruption.” However, the IPCC cannot be basing its estimate on sea-level rise, since even its maximum projected rise of just 30 cm (1 ft) by 2050 would not cause significant coastal flooding or shoreline erosion. There are several coastlines (the east coast of England, for instance) where the land is sinking as a consequence of post-ice-age isostatic recovery, or where (as in Bangladesh) tectonic subduction is similarly causing the land to sink. But such natural causes owe nothing to sea-level rise. There have been no mass evacuations of populations of islanders as suggested by Gore, though some residents of Tuvalu have asked to be moved to New Zealand, even though the tide-gauges maintained until recently by the National Tidal Facility of Australia show a mean annual sea-level rise over the past half-century equivalent to the thickness of a human hair. The problem with the Carteret Islands, mentioned by Ms. Kreider, arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen. In the Maldives, a detailed recent study showed that sea levels were unchanged today compared with 1250 years ago, though they have been higher in much of the intervening period, and have very seldom been lower. A well-established tree very close to the Maldivian shoreline and only inches above sea level was recently uprooted by Australian environmentalists anxious to destroy this visible proof that sea level cannot have risen very far.

ERROR 3
Thermohaline circulation "stopping"

Gore says “global warming” may shut down the thermohaline circulation in the oceans, which he calls the “ocean conveyor,” plunging Europe into an ice age. It will not. A paper published in 2006 says: “Analyses of ocean observations and model simulations suggest that changes in the thermohaline circulation during the last century are likely the result of natural multidecadal climate variability. Indications of a sustained thermohaline circulation weakening are not seen during the last few decades. Instead, a strengthening since the 1980s is observed.” Ms. Kreider, for Mr. Gore, says that “multiple scientists” have claimed that we cannot exclude the possibility of the disruption or shutdown of the Conveyor. Disruption, perhaps: shutdown, no. It is now near-universally accepted that the thermohaline circulation cannot be and will not be shut down by “global warming,” and the film should have been corrected to reflect the consensus.

ERROR 4
CO₂ "driving temperature"

Gore says that in each of the last four interglacial warm periods it was changes in carbon dioxide concentration that caused changes in temperature. It was the other way about. Changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 concentration by between 800 and 2800 years, as scientific papers including the paper on which Gore’s film had relied had made clear. Ms. Kreider says it is true that “greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes in the ice signals have a complicated relationship but they do fit.” This does not address Gore’s error at all. The judge found that Gore had very clearly implied that it was changes in carbon dioxide concentration that had led to changes in temperature in the palaeoclimate, when the scientific literature is unanimous (save only for a single paper by James Hansen, whom Gore trusts) to the effect that the relationship was in fact the other way about, with a carbon dioxide feedback contributing only a comparatively insignificant further increase to temperature after the temperature change had itself initiated a change in carbon dioxide concentration. The significance of this error was explained during the court proceedings, and was accepted by the judge. Gore says that the 100 ppmv difference between carbon dioxide concentrations during ice-age temperature minima and interglacial temperature maxima represents “the difference between a nice day and a mile of ice above your head.” This would imply a CO2 effect on temperature about 10 times greater than that regarded as plausible by the consensus of mainstream scientific opinion (see Error 10). Ms. Kreider refers readers to a “more complete description” available at a website maintained by, among others, two of the three authors of the now-discredited “hockey stick” graph that falsely attempted to abolish the Mediaeval Warm Period. The National Academy of Sciences in the US had found that graph to have “a validation skill not significantly different from zero” – i.e., the graph was useless.

ERROR 5
Snows of Kilimanjaro "melting"

Gore says “global warming” has been melting the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. It is not. The melting of the Furtwangler Glacier at the summit of the mountain began 125 years ago. More of the glacier had melted before Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936 than afterward. Temperature at the summit never rises above freezing and is at an average of –7 Celsius. The cause of the melting is long-term climate shifts exacerbated by imprudent regional deforestation, and has nothing to do with “global warming.” Ms. Kreider says, “Every tropical glacier for which we have documented evidence shows that glaciers are retreating.” However, a recent survey of the glaciers in the tropical Andes shows that they were largely ice-free in the past 10,000 years, except on the very highest peaks. The mere fact of warming or melting, therefore, tells us nothing of the cause. Ms. Kreider says, “Global warming exacerbates the stresses that ecosystems (and humans) are already experiencing.” However, since the temperature at the summit of Kilimanjaro remains below freezing and has not risen in 30 years, “global warming” is not “exacerbating the stresses” at the summit of Kilimanjaro.

ERROR 6
Lake Chad "drying up"

Gore says “global warming” dried up Lake Chad in Africa. It did not. Over-extraction of water and changing agricultural patterns dried the lake, which was also dry in 8500BC, 5500BC, 1000BC and 100BC. Ms. Kreider says, “There are multiple stresses upon Lake Chad.” However, the scientific consensus is that at present those “stresses” do not include “global warming.”

ERROR 7
Hurricane Katrina "man made"

Gore says Hurricane Katrina, that devastated New Orleans in 2005, was caused by “global warming.” It was not. It was caused by the failure of Gore’s party, in the administration of New Orleans, to heed 30 years of warnings by the Corps of Engineers that the levees – dams that kept New Orleans dry – could not stand a direct hit by a hurricane. Katrina was only Category 3 when it struck the levees. They failed, as the Engineers had said they would. Gore’s party, not “global warming,” was to blame for the consequent death and destruction. Ms. Kreider says, “Mr. Gore has never addressed the issue of climate change and hurricane frequency.” What Gore actually says, however, addresses the frequency not only of hurricanes but also of typhoons and tornadoes –

“We have seen in the last couple of years, a lot of big hurricanes. Hurricanes Jean, Francis and Ivan were among them. In the same year we had that string of big hurricanes; we also set an all time record for tornadoes in the United States. Japan again didn’t get as much attention in our news media, but they set an all time record for typhoons. The previous record was seven. Here are all ten of the ones they had in 2004.”

For the record, however, the number of Atlantic hurricanes shows no trend over the past half century; the number of typhoons has fallen throughout the past 30 years; the number of tornadoes has risen only because of better detection systems for smaller tornadoes; but the number of larger tornadoes in the US has fallen.

ERROR 8
Polar bear "dying"

Gore says a scientific study shows that polar bears are being killed swimming long distances to find ice that has melted away because of “global warming.” They are not. The study, by Monnett & Gleason (2005), mentioned just four dead bears. They had died in an exceptional storm, with high winds and waves in the Beaufort Sea. The amount of sea ice in the Beaufort Sea has grown over the past 30 years. A report for the World Wide Fund for Nature shows that polar bears, which are warm-blooded, have grown in numbers where temperature has increased, and have become fewer where temperature has fallen. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago, and survived the last interglacial period, when global temperature was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the present and there was probably no Arctic ice-cap at all. The real threat to polar bears is not “global warming” but hunting. In 1940, there were just 5,000 polar bears worldwide. Now that hunting is controlled, there are 25,000. Ms. Kreider says sea-ice “was the lowest ever measured for minimum extent in 2007.” She does not say that the measurements, which are done by satellite, go back only 29 years. She does not say that the North-West Passage, a good proxy for Arctic sea-ice extent, was open to shipping in 1945, or that Amundsen passed through in a sailing vessel in 1903.

ERROR 9
Coral reefs "bleaching"

Gore says coral reefs are “bleaching” because of “global warming.” They are not. There was some bleaching in 1998, but this was caused by the exceptional El Nino Southern Oscillation that year. Two similarly severe El Ninos over the past 250 years also caused extensive bleaching. “Global warming” was nothing to do with it. Ms. Kreider says, “The IPCC and other scientific bodies have long identified increases in ocean temperatures with the bleaching of coral reefs.” So they have: but the bleaching in 1998 occurred as a result not of “global warming” but of a rare, though not unique, severe El Nino Southern Oscillation.

ERROR 10
100 ppmv of CO₂ "melting mile-thick ice"

Gore implies that the difference of just 100 parts per million by volume in CO2 concentration between an interglacial temperature maximum and an ice-age temperature minimum causes “the difference between a nice day and having a mile of ice above your head.” It does not. Gore’s implication has the effect of overstating the mainstream consensus estimate of the effect of CO2 on temperature at least tenfold. Temperature changes by up to 12 degrees C between glacial minima and interglacial maxima, but CO2 concentration changes by no more than 100 ppmv. Gore is accordingly implying that 100 ppmv can cause a temperature increase of up to 12 degrees C. However, the consensus as expressed by the IPCC is that 100 ppmv of increased CO2 concentration, from 180 to 280 ppmv, would increase radiant energy flux in the atmosphere by 2.33 watts per square meter, or less than 1.2 degrees Celsius including the effect of temperature feedbacks.

ERROR 11
Hurricane Caterina "manmade"

Gore says that Hurricane Caterina, the only hurricane ever to strike the coast of Brazil, was caused by “global warming.” It was not. In 2004, Brazil’s summer sea surface temperatures were cooler than normal, not warmer. But air temperatures were the coldest in 25 years. The air was so much colder than the water that it caused a heat flux from the water to the air similar to that which fuels hurricanes in warm seas.

ERROR 12
Japanese typhoons "a new record"

Gore says that 2004 set a new record for the number of typhoons striking Japan. It did not. The trend in the number of typhoons, and of tropical cyclones, has fallen throughout the past 50 years. The trend in rainfall from cyclones has also fallen, and there has been no trend in monsoon rainfall.

ERROR 13
Hurricanes "getting stronger"

Gore says scientists had been giving warnings that hurricanes will get stronger because of “global warming.” They will not. Over the past 60 years there has been no change in the strength of hurricanes, even though hydrocarbon use went up six-fold in the same period. Research by Dr. Kerry Emanuel, cited by Ms. Kreider, has been discredited by more recent findings that wind-shear effects tend to nullify the amplification of hurricane strength which he had suggested, and, of course, by the observed failure of hurricanes to gain strength during the past 60 years of “global warming.”

ERROR 14
Big storm insurances losses "increasing"

Gore says insurance losses arising from large storms and other extreme-weather events are increasing, by implication because of “global warming.” They are not. Insured losses, as a percentage of the population of coastal areas in the path of hurricanes, were lower even in 2005 than they had been in 1925. In 2006, a very quiet hurricane season, Lloyds of London posted their biggest-ever profit: £3.6 billion.

ERROR 15
Mumbai "flooding"

Gore says flooding in Mumbai is increasing, by implication because of “global warming.” It is not. Rainfall trends at the two major weather stations in Mumbai show no increase in heavy rainfall over the past 48 years.

ERROR 16
Severe tornadoes "more frequent"

Gore says that 2004 set an all-time record for tornadoes in the US. More tornadoes are being reported because detection systems are better than they were. But the number of severe tornadoes has been falling for more than 50 years.

ERROR 17
The sun "heats the Arctic ocean"

Gore says that ice-melt allows the Sun to heat the Arctic Ocean, and a diagram shows the Sun’s rays heating it directly. It does not. The ocean emits radiant energy at the moment of absorption, and would freeze if there were no atmosphere. It is the atmosphere, not the Sun that warms the ocean. Also, Gore’s diagram confuses the tropopause with the ionosphere, and he makes a number of other errors indicating that he does not understand the elementary physics of radiative transfer.

ERROR 18
Arctic "warming fastest"

Gore says the Arctic has been warming faster than the rest of the planet. It is not. While it is in general true that during periods of warming (whether natural or anthropogenic) the Arctic will warm faster than other regions, Gore does not mention that the Arctic has been cooling over the past 60 years, and is now one degree Celsius cooler than it was in the 1940s. There was a record amount of snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere in 2001. Several vessels were icebound in the Arctic in the spring of 2007, but few newspapers reported this. The newspapers reported that the North-West Passage was free of ice in 2007, and said that this was for the first time since records began: but the records, taken by satellites, had only begun 29 years previously. The North-West Passage had also been open for shipping in 1945, and, in 1903, the great Norwegian explorer Amundsen had passed through it in a sailing ship.

ERROR 19
Greenland ice sheet "unstable"

Gore says “global warming” is making the Greenland ice sheet unstable. It is not. Greenland ice grows 2in a year. The Greenland ice sheet survived each of the previous three interglacial periods, each of which was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the present. It survived atmospheric CO2 concentrations of up to 1000 ppmv (compared with today’s 400 ppmv). It last melted 850,000 years ago, when humankind did not exist and could not have caused the melting. There is a close correlation between variations in Solar activity and temperature anomalies in Greenland, but there is no correlation between variations in CO2 concentration and temperature changes in Greenland. The IPCC (2001) says that to melt even half the Greenland ice sheet would require temperature to rise by 5.5 degrees C and remain that high for several thousand years.

ERROR 20
Himalayan glacial melt waters "failing"

Gore says 40% of the world’s population get their water supply from Himalayan glacial melt waters that are failing because of “global warming.” They don’t and they are not. The water comes almost entirely from snow-melt, not from ice-melt. Over the past 40 years there has been no decline in the amount of snow-melt in Eurasia.

ERROR 21
Peruvian glaciers "disappearing"

Gore says that a Peruvian glacier is less extensive now than it was in the 1940s, implying that “global warming” is the cause. It is not. Except for the very highest peaks, the normal state of the Peruvian cordilleras has been ice-free throughout most of the past 10,000 years.

ERROR 22
Mountain glaciers worldwide "disappearing"

Gore says that “the ice has a story to tell, and it is worldwide.” He shows several before-and-after pictures of glaciers disappearing. However, the glacial melt began in the 1820s, long before humankind could have had any effect, and has continued at a uniform rate since, showing no acceleration since humankind began increasing the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere. Total ice volumes in three of the last four Ice Ages were lower than they are today, and “global warming” had nothing to do with that.

ERROR 23
Sahara desert "drying"

Gore says terrible tragedies are occurring in the southern Sahara because of drought which he blames on “global warming.” There is no drought caused by “global warming.” In 2007 there were record rains across the whole of the southern Sahara. In the past 25 years the Sahara has shrunk by some 300,000 square kilometers because of additional rainfall. Some scientists think “global warming” may actually mitigate pre-existing droughts because there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere. Before 1200 AD there were frequent, prolonged and severe droughts in the Great Plains. Since 1200 AD, there has been more rainfall. Likewise, the US has had more rainfall since the 1950s than it had in the earlier part of the 20th Century, when the great droughts which were then common were described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. South African rainfall was also more stable in the second half of the 20th Century, when human effect on climate is said to have become significant, than in the first half.

ERROR 24
West Antarctic ice sheet "unstable"

Gore says disturbing changes have been measured under the West Antarctic ice sheet, implicitly because of “global warming.” Yet most of the recession in this ice sheet over the past 10,000 years has occurred in the absence of any sea-level or temperature forcing. In most of Antarctica, the ice is in fact growing thicker. Mean Antarctic temperature has actually fallen throughout the past half-century. In some Antarctic glens, environmental damage has been caused by temperature decreases of up to 2 degrees Celsius. Antarctic sea-ice spread to a 30-year record extent in late 2007.

ERROR 25
Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves "breaking up"

Gore says half a dozen ice shelves each “larger than Rhode Island” have broken up and vanished from the Antarctic Peninsula recently, implicitly because of “global warming.” Global warming is unlikely to have been the cause. Gore does not explain that the ice shelves have melted before, as studies of seabed sediments have shown. The Antarctic Peninsula accounts for about 2% of the continent, in most of which the ice is growing thicker. All the recently-melted shelves, added together, amount to an area less than one-fifty-fifth the size of Texas.

ERROR 26
Larsen B Ice Shelf "broke up because of
'global warming'"

Gore focuses on the Larsen B ice shelf, saying that it completely disappeared in 35 days. Yet there has been extensive ice-shelf break-up throughout the past 10,000 years, and the maximum ice-shelf extent may have been in the Little Ice Age in the late 15th century.

ERROR 27
Mosquitoes "climbing to higher altitudes"

Gore says that, because of “global warming”, mosquitoes are climbing to higher altitudes. They are not. Most recent outbreaks have been at lower levels than those of a century and more ago. He says that Nairobi was founded 1000 m above sea level so as to be above the mosquito line. It was not. In the period before anthropogenic warming could have had any significant effect, there were ten malaria outbreaks in Nairobi, one of which reached as far up as Eldoret, almost 3000 m above sea level. Malaria is not a tropical disease. Mosquitoes do not need tropical temperatures: they need no more than 15 degrees Celsius to breed. The largest malaria outbreak of modern times was in Siberia in the 1920s and 1930s, when 13 million were infected, 600,000 died and 30,000 died as far north as Arkhangelsk, on the Arctic Circle. There is no reason to suppose that malaria will spread even if the climate continues to become warmer.

ERROR 28
Many tropical diseases "spread through
'global warming'"

Gore says that, as well as malaria, “global warming” is spreading dengue fever, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, arena virus, avian flu, Ebola virus, E. Coli 0157:H7, Hanta virus, legionella, leptospirosis, multi-drug-resistant TB, Nipah virus, SARS and Vibrio Cholerae 0139. It is doing no such thing. Only the first four diseases are insect-borne, but none is tropical. Of the other diseases named by Gore either in his film or in the accompanying book, not one is sensitive to increasing temperature. They are spread not by warmer weather but by rats, chickens, primates, pigs, poor hygiene, ill-maintained air conditioning, or cold weather.

ERROR 29
West Nile virus in the US "spread through
'global warming'"

Gore says that West Nile virus spread throughout the US in just two years, implicitly because of “global warming.” It did not. The climate in the US ranges from some of the world’s hottest deserts to some of its iciest tundra. West Nile virus flourishes in any climate. Warming of the climate, however caused, does not affect its incidence or prevalence.

ERROR 30
Carbon dioxide is "pollution"

Gore describes carbon dioxide as “global warming pollution.” It is not. It is food for plants and trees. Tests have shown that even at concentrations 30 times those of the present day even the most delicate plants flourish. Well-managed forests, such as those of the United States, are growing at record rates because the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is feeding the trees. Carbon dioxide, in geological timescale, is at a very low concentration at present. Half a billion years ago it was at 7000 parts per million by volume, about 18 times today’s concentration.

ERROR 31
The European heat wave of 2003 "killed 35,000"

Gore says, “A couple of years ago in Europe they had that heat wave that killed 35,000.” Though some scientists agree with Gore, the scientific consensus is that extreme warm anomalies more unusual than the 2003 heat wave occur regularly; extreme cold anomalies also occur regularly; El Niño and volcanism appear to be of much greater importance than any general warming trend; and there is little evidence that regional heat or cold waves are significantly increasing or decreasing with time. In general, warm is better than cold, which is why the largest number of life-forms are in the tropics and the least number are at the poles. A cold snap in the winter following the European heat wave killed 20,000 in the UK alone. Though the IPCC says 150,000 people a year are being killed worldwide by “global warming,” it reaches this figure only by deliberately excluding the number of people who are not being killed because there is less cold weather. In the US alone, it has been estimated that 174,000 fewer people are being killed each year because there are fewer episodes of extreme cold.

ERROR 32
Pied flycatchers "cannot feed their young"

Gore says “The peak arrival date for migratory birds 25 years ago was April 25. Their chicks hatched on June 3, just at the time when the caterpillars were coming out: Nature’s plan. But 20 years of warming later the caterpillars peaked two weeks earlier. The chicks tried to catch up with it, but they couldn’t. So they are in trouble.” Yet adaptation is easy for the flycatchers: they merely fly a few tens of kilometers further north and they will find caterpillars hatching at the appropriate time. Besides, though Gore does not say so, what is bad news for the pied flycatchers is good news for the caterpillars, and for the butterflies they will become.

ERROR 33
Gore's bogus pictures and film footage

In the book accompanying Gore’s film, the story of the pied flycatchers and the caterpillars is accompanied by a picture of a bird feeding her hungry chicks. However, closer inspection shows that the bird is not a pied flycatcher but a black tern; and that she is not carrying a caterpillar in her beak, but a small fish. Gore similarly misuses spectacular footage of a glacier apparently calving off enormous slabs of ice into the sea – footage that is often shown on television to accompany stories about “global warming.” However, the glacier in question is one that is known to be advancing – and to be doing so more rapidly and more often than previously. It is in southern Argentina, where its snout crosses – and eventually dams, Lake Argentino. Water builds up behind the ice dam and eventually bursts it, causing the spectacular collapse of ice into the lake that is so misleadingly used as the iconic image of the effect of “global warming” on glaciers. The breaking of the ice dam used to occur every eight years or so: now, however, it occurs every five years, not because of “global warming” because of the regional cooling of the southern Atlantic.

ERROR 34
The Thames Barrier "closing more frequently"

Gore says that rising sea levels are compelling the operators of the Thames Barrier to close it more frequently than when it was first built. They are not. The barrier is indeed closed more frequently than when it was built, but the reason has nothing to do with “global warming” or rising sea levels. The reason is a change of policy by which the barrier is closed during exceptionally low tides, so as to retain water in the tidal Thames rather than keeping it out. Yet even the present leader of the official Opposition in the UK Parliament recently used a major speech as the opportunity to mention today’s more frequent closing of the Thames Barrier as though it were a matter of grave concern.

ERROR 35
"No fact...in dispute by anybody."

Gore says that his prediction that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide will rise to more than 600 parts per million by volume as soon as 2050 is “not controversial in any way or in dispute by anybody.” However, not one of the half-dozen official projections of growth in CO2 concentration made by the IPCC shows as much as 600 parts per million by 2050.

Conclusion
35 serious scientific errors

As many as 35 serious scientific errors or exaggerations, all pointing towards invention of a threat that does not exist at all, or exaggerations of phenomena that do exist, do not reflect credit on the presenter of the movie or on those who advised him. The movie is unsuitable for showing to children, and provides no basis for taking policy decisions. Schools that have shown the movie to children are urged to ensure that the errors listed in this memorandum are drawn to the children’s attention.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

Holocaust Imagery at Protest Organized by Michele Bachmann

stephley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:37:27 -0800

Update 11/6/09
Flush off of the upset Democratic victory in NY-23, which he had a big hand in, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, is demanding that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) apologize for sponsoring Thursday’s anti-health care reform rally, which brought to the hill signs comparing health reform to the Holocaust.
“I just cannot believe that Congresswoman Bachmann sponsored and brought to the American people, the use of images from the Holocaust, actual photographs of skeletal remains of people from the cremetoria, in order to make a point about the health insurance bill,” says Israel. “I can’t believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood and see those images and not have the common decency to say, ‘I disagree with the use of those images.’”

http://washingtonindependent.com/67009/democratic-congressman-demands-ap...

I should have just called this The Fools on the Hill
By Jed Lewison, Daily Kos
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.dailykos.com//143761/

...via Matthew Yglesias, this image of Holocaust victims was on display at today's "House Call" protest organized by Michele Bachmann and the Republican House Leadership:

Take a closer look:

Keep in mind that this wasn't some Glenn Beck-organized 9/12 stunt. This was an event staged by the House Republican leadership -- actual elected officials, members of the U.S. government.

Other Republican members of Congress were on stage, too: Minority Leader John Boehner (OH), Minority Whip Eric Cantor (VA), Roy Blunt (MO), Jeb Hensarling (TX), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Michele Bachmann (MN) -- who was a key organizer of the event -- Virginia Foxx (NC), Ginny Brown-Waite (FL), Jean Schmidt (OH), Sue Myrick (NC), and many more.

If Republicans wonder why most Americans view them as part of the fringe extreme, they need not look beyond this event. While Democrats were touting the endorsement of AARP, Michele Bachmann and the House leadership were rallying amidst signs like this, shoulder to shoulder with 2,000 teabaggers.
---------------------------------------

And they couldn't get the Pledge of Allegiance right:

And of course "a few" brought their offensive signs:

From Citizens to "Stakeholders": The New American Constitution

Grandpa — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:38:31 -0700

From Citizens to "Stakeholders": The New American Constitution
By Angelo M. Codevilla

"I'm going to get everybody concerned around a big table where all can express their views and their needs. And I'll express mine, and that will make sense of them all because I'll be president."
-Barack Obama, candidate

OBAMA WAS NOT KIDDING. Ever since he became president the media have carried accounts of him and his closest officials meeting with "everybody," meaning executives of banks, auto makers, insurance companies, medical suppliers, energy producers, indeed of major corporations in each sector of American life. They meet for no less a purpose than to mandate new ways for Americans to go to the doctor; to change the kinds of cars we drive, the kinds of places we live, and the work we do; to decide how much we should pay for electricity; and many more things. Corporations that had grown by providing their customers ever more attractive choices now negotiate with the U.S. government and each other about how collectively to structure (read, restrict) their customers' choices in ways that will suit the government while guaranteeing their profits. To object that there is nothing in our Constitution that empowers the government to make deals with some private citizens at the expense of other private citizens or otherwise to shape citizens' lives involuntarily is to have failed to notice that a new constitution has largely superseded the one ratified in 1789. Here is a primer on it.

The Obama administration develops laws and practices toward any sector of American life by holding "summit" meetings with what it calls the "stakeholders" in that sector, satisfying and modifying the stakeholders' interests into a scheme that supports its own political standing and objectives. For each sector, it appoints what it calls a "czar," who shepherds the stakeholders into line, binding both the government and the stakeholders. It expects Congress to follow, and the people to consent. Thus in July 2009 Obama argued that since "the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals" (meaning the leaders of some associations with whom he had been meeting) had agreed to his plans for restructuring America's health care system, "including even Wal-Mart" (more on this below), any wholesale objection to his plan was somehow illegitimate. Although in America this way of governing has grown gradually only over the past half-century, it is common around the world.

First developed in 1920s Italy, what we are coming to know as stakeholder government is akin to the regimes of Argentina, Mexico, and the European Union. Herein I explain what should be obvious: Unelected "stakeholders" gathered by "czars" around big tables make for bodies politic very different from officials elected and removed by the general public. Recall Aristotle's lesson: Any polity's character and identity depend on who makes the rules. Stakeholder government must make America different from what it has ever been, and more in the image of the countries where it has been practiced.

The Difference

UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, whose form if not substance has been copied around the world, laws are made by legislators, each of whom represents voters with diverse interests and views about their own and the common good. Such legislators arbitrate conflicts within and among interests. As well, they "enlarge and refine" the public's views of the common good. The voters, for their part, may accept or reject the legislators' or executors' actions by voting them out. Crucially, this Constitution limits the extent of the government's role in people's lives. By contrast, under the constitution that is now fast waxing solid among us, decisions about what cars we will drive, how we will go to the doctor, how much and what kind of energy we will use and at what price are no longer up to individual consumers, nor even subject to our collective judgment as citizens. Rather, they are being made by stakeholders around the big table under the guidance of their czars. Crucially, no constitution limits what they may agree to impose on their fellow citizens.

By governing explicitly through "summits" with "stakeholders" rather than through representative institutions, the Obama administration is leaving no doubt that, in the new American constitution, "stakeholders" are the only citizens, and that neither voting nor taxpaying qualifies as stakeholders the individuals who used to be known as citizens.

Mere interest in any field does not qualify anyone or any group as a stakeholder. Thus, for example, while our government considers teachers' unions and state governments and certain nonprofit groups as stakeholders in the field of education, it does not recognize parents as stakeholders. Nor are car buyers stakeholders in the auto industry, whereas bondholders, labor unions, and management are. Whereas citizens are supposed to be created equal, stakeholders have only such status as the sovereign authority manages to give or take from them. Thus, in the auto industry, the Obama administration chose to rank the unions first, management second, and some bondholders ahead of others. The energy business's stakeholders include the various companies involved in the production of energy plus farmers and environmentalists. But not consumers. By definition, non-stakeholders have no stake.

Our Not-So-New Constitution

BARACK OBAMA IS BY NO MEANS the first American to believe that minimally intrusive government based on representation of individuals in localities is a barrier to doing what needs to be done to improve people's lives, and that it does not fulfill people's spiritual need to feel part of things bigger than themselves.

Woodrow Wilson's 1885 book, Congressional Government, faulted the U.S. Constitution for not creating a power able to deal in detail with the reality of "modern industrial organization, including banks, corporations, joint-stock companies, financial devices, national debts, paper currency, national systems of taxation...so that the play of the civil institutions shall not alter the play of the economic forces, [and thus accurately to regulate] the complication and delicacy of the industrial system." Wilson wrote that competent government must be like "a foreman [who] take[s] a hand in the work which he guides; and so I suppose our legislation must be likened to a poor foreman, because it stands altogether apart from that work which it is set to see well done." A competent government must also have full power "to remedy the mistakes of the legislation of the past." In short, according to Wilson, a new constitution that reaches over citizen-voters and their elected representatives should transcend the Constitution of 1789. This new constitution should run the nation's vital organs directly, with full power over details. Planted by Wilson, this Progressive dream continued to grow in the minds of America's ruling class.

The version of that dream that Obama named "The New Foundation" in 2009 had been gestating since the 1930s creation of "independent" agencies endowed with powers "quasi-legislative and quasijudicial" to govern broad areas of national life. With each passing year, Congress has given broader and less defined authority to these agencies, and ever less defined mandates. Bureaucracies with names like the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency exist on the state level as well, and take their cues from their kindred on the federal level. Almost half of state funds come from the federal government. At all levels and in each of the fields they cover, these agencies are and cannot be but the sum, the expression, the guarantors, the regulators, of the interest groups in their field. Presidents Clinton and Bush held "White House Summits" on all manner of subjects, to develop policies in concert with interest groups and then to get Congress to ratify faits accomplis. Obama means to bring these developments to their logical conclusion.

Stakeholders Are Artificial

WHAT EXACTLY IS A "STAKEHOLDER"? How does anyone qualify as a stakeholder?

What is the difference between a society organized on the basis of stakeholders rather than of citizens, families, localities, states?

Because the Constitution of 1789 (and its imitators) is based neither on socioeconomic classes nor on socioeconomic functions, it takes no position on the relative value of medicine, mining, banking, or farming, or of the individuals and corporations who perform these functions. Much less is our Constitution about arranging and rearranging functions, making some in any given field into winners and others into losers. That is because our Constitution and its imitators presuppose that government exists by the consent of the individuals who live under it, all of whom are "created equal." By sharp contrast, stakeholders are not equal individuals, but rather unequal collective entities.

In the 19th century the word "stake," which had meant a bet, also came to mean a share, a claim, or an interest. A 1975 British management textbook defines "stakeholders" as "the persons and groups having a direct stake in our organization: the owners, employees... customers, suppliers, financiers, managers, the area in which the organization is established, etc." But as used currently in the U.S., the term is hardly distinguishable from "interest groups" or "corporations." Hence "stakeholder primacy" is close to what one might call in economics "producer primacy" and is diametrically opposed to "consumer primacy." Under the new constitution, privileged access to power defines any corporation's socioeconomic functions, its status as a stakeholder, and constantly readjusts that status vis-à-vis other stakeholders. Government rightly arranges and rearranges each group's roles and functions, deciding who and what are to be on top or below, because modern stakeholders, interests, or corporations have no natural or customary right to exist as they do.

Indeed, when such as Obama gather "everybody around a big table," they mean in practice that they will choose those in any given function, field, or sector whom they think counts or should count. That is why everybody does not include you. Those who are chosen to be around the ruler's table will count if they had not counted before, and those whom the government chooses to leave out will not count as much afterward as they had before. Thus each automaker, health care provider, producer of various kinds of energy, etc. has enormous incentives to beat out others in their field for a seat at the table. For stakeholders, the price of privilege is to lend themselves, and their increasingly captive customers, to the rulers' agenda. The stakeholders pay in the coin of political support, and receive in return the privilege to profit from the rules they help to shape. Privilege flows down, support flows up. As stakeholders serve the rulers' agenda with the rulers' support, they function as parts of the ruling party. This is the nature of the beast, and has been so everywhere that this form of rule has manifested itself.

Artificial Morality

WHAT DO SUCH REGIMES OFFER to the vast majority of persons who are not around the big table, the non-rulers and nonstakeholders who are necessarily on the wrong end of the special deals? After all, even the rank-and-file members of government-connected labor unions or ordinary shareholders of favored industries get only the crumbs that fall from the big table. Somehow, such regimes must divert the many from measuring daily reality against largely unrealistic hopes of material benefit. Hence such regimes try to transcend the facts of daily life, typically by presenting themselves as agents of national enterprises-the less well-defined the better-that will raise the nation to a new, higher moral and spiritual level, as well as eventually fulfill everyone's private dreams. Cynically or not, these oligarchies live by filling voids in the non-favored masses' souls. The bigger these voids, the better.

Though the Obama administration and its supporters represent disproportionately American society's most secular elements, there is no mistaking its claim to righteousness and its followers' faithful commitment to transcendent ends, including, prominently, controlling the earth's climate. Thus Michael Knox Beran wrote: "In rejecting the Anglo-American politics of limits, Obama revives a political tradition" of seeking "a communitarian paradise" in which "citizens forsaking their own swinish pursuits would become happy in the pursuit of a common good" and end up loving one another. The charismatic leader would cause their sinful society to do penance and fill their spiritual emptiness. That such attitudes could support a constitution that consists of trading privilege for political support is strange to reason. But, in America as elsewhere, reason often counts less than passions, especially partisan ones.

Mutatis mutandis, what is happening in America is just another variation of a well-known phenomenon with many local names.

Italy

THROUGHOUT THE LATE 19th and early 20th centuries, progressive critique of representative constitutions was all the rage among Western intellectuals. But it was summed up most coherently in Italy in the 1920s. Along with Joseph Schumpeter, the Italians argued that mature capitalism naturally produces large entities in capital, labor, and endeavors of all sorts. Because the most successful of these want to secure themselves from competition, they demand protection and coordination from the state. The state grants these demands ostensibly because the public good demands that producers and consumers, creditors and debtors be harmonized to their own good. Not incidentally, those who run the state draw power from their role as harmonizers. Hence, beginning in 1925 the Italian government established in each sector of public life a corporazione, and pressed the principal industries in that field to join it. It also pressed workers to join that sector's labor unions. Business and labor then worked out their modus vivendi in meetings with their senior partners in the Ministry of Corporations.

As Benito Mussolini explained at the Ministry's inauguration, "The Ministry of Corporations is an institution...where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. This is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations [are] acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State...." (sic) In sum, the state nominally ratified the decisions of the workers' and of the owners' representatives. In reality, all such representatives worked under the watchful eye of the state, which mediated and shaped their decisions, and sometimes dictated them. Moreover, the participants in these arrangements of "cooperative consultation" valued their status because they knew they were privileged to have been chosen for it, and because they profited from the privilege. The core of Mussolini's party consisted of persons moved by interest, not ideology. Privilege ran the system, not force.

Mussolini gave this amoral system moral cover with the general population by mocking the liberal pretense that man can find secular meaning individually. The state, he wrote, can fulfill human imagination by letting individuals feel part of things that are obviously beyond the power of any person to achieve. By hoping together, cheering together, believing together in things so big that they can only be accomplished together, through shared rituals, through faith in the truth of science of which the state is the effective arbiter, individuals are fulfilled more than through any intellection.

So while Italy's regime in the 1920s and '30s empowered hundreds and enriched thousands, millions of ordinary Italians celebrated with parades, sound and light, oaths, subsidized art and literature, the myth that they were the reincarnation of glorious Romans. The regime talked a lot about "faith" and "religion." But the place that the regime allotted to the Catholic Church in the official culture was just a place; the state led the people in self-worship, and the Church was to be just another acolyte.

Argentina

WHEREAS IN 1890 ARGENTINA'S per capita income was 81 percent that of America's, by 1913 it was only 70 percent. As the Argentine people continued to grow relatively poorer amidst arguably the world's grandest natural resources, the presidents and congresses produced by elections under their liberal constitution increasingly became vehicles for citizens expressing mutual grievances.

In 1943 the army staged a coup d'état to stop the strife and integrate contrasting grievances into a social whole. The minister in charge of the labor movement, Col. Juan Perón, quickly dominated the government, became president, and instituted "a new human solution, a third philosophical position." This new arrangement would avoid "the extremes of proletarian domination, of social immobility, of vengeance for past wrongs, of abuse of wealth." The new order "institutionalized existing labor organizations, thus placing them within an order of social peace, converting them into a constituent of state power...constituting one of its pillars, adding to the nation's equilibrium and harmony." Note well that while labor leaders exercised more power than ever under Perón, they now held their offices by his leave.

The same was true of other social entities. Perón established an industrial bank, which engaged explicitly in preferential lending. Some sectors-e.g., agricultural export-had a harder time getting loans because they did not fit his view that Argentina should disengage from Britain as much as possible. Others, especially industrialists whose plans fit with his economic nationalism, got easy terms. Especially favored were vehicles, machinery, pharmaceuticals, plastics. Tariff policy served the same ends. Within each sector, executives who showed themselves most harmonious got preferential treatment for government contracts. In sum, the partnership of management, labor, and government yielded impressive profits to the partners while impoverishing the nonpartners and disempowering all but the Perónists.

The Argentine regime of the 1940s and '50s, the echoes of which endure in our time, was possible only because it was upheld by the pseudo-religious worship of Juan Perón's wife, Evita-a phenomenon all the more significant for being so unlikely. Only because millions of otherwise intelligent people were so emotionally addled as to importune the Vatican to declare Evita a saint could they overlook the ruin that her husband's regime was bringing upon them. Privilege kept the regime together at the top, while enthusiasm about Juan and veneration of Evita made the unprivileged feel good about themselves.

Mexico

THE INSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (PRI) that stamped its character on Mexico from 1934 to 1990 developed out of the circumstances of the Mexican revolution of 1910, not from ideas. Nevertheless, that shape belongs to the same genus as that of the constitutions we are considering, and as such sheds further light on the nature of that genus.

For more than three decades prior to the revolution, Mexico had been ruled by the technocratic dictator Porfirio Díaz, under the forms of a U.S.-style constitution. But neither Díaz, nor his technocrats, nor the figurehead congressmen really represented the country's increasingly antagonistic prominent citizens, some based on the land, some in industry, others in the army, all well armed. From start to finish, the revolution was about which of these claimants would be left standing, and what he would do with the others' retinues. After nearly 14 bloody years, the winner was Plutarco Elías Calles who, having physically eliminated his opponents' retinues, spent the next four years persecuting Christians with fire and sword. In 1934 Calles made Lázaro Cárdenas president, thinking he would be his tool, but who arrested him and pacified the country by institutionalizing the ruling party. In sum, the PRI, as it was named in 1938, was all about Mexico's barons agreeing to share the loot in peace under any given president, while jockeying for a better share under the next one-including the labor and peasant leaders who kept their charges in line and passed the crumbs to them.

The PRI made small farmers members of the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), and enrolled wage workers, by sector, into the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). Each of these became a "sector" of the party, along with the "military sector" and the "popular sector." The military sector was then folded into the popular one, and that effectively subdivided into interest groups both functional and geographic. That the party secured the loyalty of each group's leaders by franchising to them the power to extort from those below their level, which power subsequent levels franchised further down in ways that we characterize as corrupt, is less interesting than the fact that the PRI's essence is unremarkable in the modern world: Government power organizes society into groups that agree to be thus organized in exchange for the wealth that comes from privileged power over their subordinates, subject only to demonstrating loyalty to the system.

Officially anti-Christian, the PRI tried to build an official culture for Mexico that would legitimize its rule and fulfill the people's longing for moral meaning. That culture had three components, touted on murals, in curricula, and in subsidized literature: "We are all Indians, and ours is the continuation of a glorious pre-Columbian history." "The Gringos stole our land, try to oppress us in countless ways, but we resist them heroically." "Unlike and against the Gringos, we are part of the world's progressive movement, and believe that the state exists to take care of the people." These myths, along with patronage backed by force, made modern Mexico what it is.

The European Union

THE EUROPEAN UNION uses the word harmony arguably more than any other to describe what it is about. The ideas of Jean Monnet and friends in the 1920s that germinated into the
1956 Treaty of Rome and eventually the EU arose out of the desire to restore some of the harmony that World War I had destroyed. It is difficult to overstate the contrast between how freely persons, goods, and ideas moved throughout Europe before 1914 and the passports and protectionism that persisted after the war. It is just as difficult to argue against the widespread sense that, prior to 1914, increased popular representation had made governments throughout Europe more bloody-minded than they had ever been. For Monnet and other heirs to the 18th-century Physiocratic tradition of Diderot, the path to peace and prosperity lay in de-emphasizing political repre sentation. If people could be habituated to treating each other as valued suppliers and customers rather than as political adversaries, then they would live in peace and prosperity once again.

World War II flattened the remaining obstacles in the way of Monnet's vision by discrediting what was left of nationalism in Europe. By the late 1940s the need to eat and to be warm had overwhelmed all political questions except whether to align with America or with Stalin-for most, not much of a question. Moreover Germany's Konrad Adenauer, France's Charles de Gaulle, and Italy's Alcide de Gasperi, the principal figures of postwar Europe, advocated both siding with America and European integration. As Catholics and patriots, they envisaged a Europe of nations governed by elected representatives. Theirs would have been a chastened, wiser version of pre-1914 Europe. They supported the Treaty of Rome's integration of European markets, sector by sector, under a European Commission, as part of a "political Europe." Their vision failed because there was little political substance left in European hearts and minds, and no sentiment for common, purposeful political existence. Hence the technocratic work of the Commission ended up being all the Europe that's there.

The fact that the EU deals with people's lives technocratically does not negate the political character of the things it touches. Who is to rule over whom? Who will gain and who will lose? What kinds of activities, what sort of life do we encourage, what do we discourage, and what do we prohibit? What do we honor and what do we dishonor? What, if anything, do we kill and die to protect, or to destroy? Since 1993 the European Union's Commission, courts, and parliament have made countless decisions about such matters as well as about the length of condoms and the specifications of lawnmowers. Their decisions about energy have made scores of billionaires, while other decisions about agriculture and fishing have put thousands out of business. Their decisions about what constitutes human rights have effectively promulgated a moral code common to Europe's ruling class but alien to all of Europe's nations. Nor does anyone pretend that these decisions emanate from "the people" of Europe, since perhaps the sole item concerning European affairs on which there is unanimity is that the European Union suffers from a "democratic deficit." Lack of popular mandate notwithstanding, the EU is especially active in cultural affairs, specifically rejecting Christianity as even one among the bases for its legitimacy. The EU is very loud in affirming its own moral superiority, but this substantively empty claim moves no hearts.

Our New Foundation?

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES between the New Foundation that President Obama is instituting and the regimes of the European Union, or of 1920s Italy, PRI Mexico, or Perón's Argentina are beside the fact that all are variants of one kind of rejection of liberal representative government. What does this rejection mean in America? Here is how it works among us.

Arguably the main American constitutional event of 2008-09 was the passage under the Bush administration, with support from future president Obama as well as from virtually all the nation's major interest groups, of a $700 billion bill to purchase "troubled assets" from big banks. All agreed that unless the government were given this huge sum with unprecedented latitude and in a hurry, the average American would see his life's savings disappear. By 2008 the hurried demand for large, unspecified powers under the threat of imminent disaster was no longer exceptional. The Obama administration made it the rule, and used the money to build its "New Foundation."

The Obama team (different from its predecessor only in degree) purchased few "troubled assets." With most of the money it bought stakes in the biggest banks, with which it leveraged them to support its political agenda, including the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, which Obama had also made dependent on the government by lending them "troubled asset" money. Chrysler (with GM to follow) having failed financially, the Obama administration forced it to give a 55 percent stake in itself to the United Auto Workers union, a major constituent of the Democratic Party. The government took the next 30 percent, and gave the remainder to Italy's Fiat, in exchange for management and technology. In so doing and against bedrock bankruptcy law, it gave some 43 cents on the dollar to the UAW's unsecured interest in the company and only 28 cents to secured creditors. Meanwhile, part of the deal worked out with the favored stakeholders was that they would produce mainly small cars, with better fuel economy. But few believed that the American public would buy them. Doing this lent support to the administration's claim of moral authority as savior of the earth from global warming. In an event that would have been unremarkable in Europe or the Third World, the Obama administration took assets from persons independent of it, transferred them to political allies, and bolstered in the popular mind the rationale for its rule.

What does it take to become a stakeholder in our new constitution, and what does it yield? Consider the Service Employees International Union. Andy Stern, its president, said, "We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama-$60.7 million to be exact-and we're proud of it." Stern claimed that he hired people who "knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls, and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail in support of Obama." He had borrowed some 20 of those millions. But he is reaping fabulous returns on his investment.

The union has 2 million dues-paying members whom Stern and his associates got, according to the Los Angeles Times, by forceful or fraudulent takeover of locals as well as by bribery and intimidation. But Stern is now a stakeholder in just about any matter he chooses. Most visibly, on April 15, 2009, his lawyer and lobbyist were part of an administration virtual "round table" that decided to withhold $6.8 billion of "stimulus money" appropriated for the state of California unless the state restored a $7.4 million (1.4 percent) cut it made in one of its programs, which happens to be serviced by Stern's union. Surprised, California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe said, "The involvement of a stakeholder in this kind of state-federal deliberative process is unusual at best...outside any norm I am familiar with." Alas, this sort of thing is becoming the new rule.

One corollary of that rule is that powerful stakeholders like the SEIU can help turn former opponents into new stakeholders. Thus when President Obama said, wryly and proudly, that even Wal-Mart was supporting his health care plan-the very Wal-Mart that the Democratic Party had demonized for its resistance to unionization-he was in fact acknowledging yet another debt to the SEIU. Stern's union, along with liberal groups, had so harassed Wal-Mart that it agreed, in exchange for peace, to endorse the Obama health plan's requirement that employers provide health insurance or pay the government 8 percent of gross income. Not incidentally, if the plan became law, Wal-Mart would be insulated against potential competitors who did not offer health insurance.

Whereas the big banks, GM, and Chrysler became stakeholders by accepting partnership with the Democratic Party and the United Auto Workers union, and the SEIU did it by brute force and money, even as Wal-Mart was forced into an auxiliary role, an outfit by the name of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society did it by presenting the administration with a plan for a single electronic registry of all American health care records. The company had tried to sell its plan to Congress as a cost-saving measure. But it then realized that the plan would help the Obama administration grasp the whole of the U.S. health care system in order to impose its priorities on it. Hence, HIMSS got a $36.5 billon contract, for starters. Its money and its status as a stakeholder came from pure lobbying and networking with vendors and customers, who saw opportunity in the administration's proclivities.

In sum, in America as elsewhere, stakeholder government grows by its essential internal dynamic: the more the rulers' power grows over more matters, the greater the incentives of people to do whatever they can to become stakeholders.

Where does stakeholder government hit those of us who are part of the general public? Consider colonoscopies. In May 2009, after consultation with stakeholders, Medicare proposed no longer paying for the electronic, noninvasive, "virtual" kind, and only for the kind that involves insertions into your colon. The makers of the electronic equipment for the virtual ones disputed this immediately. What will and will not go up your colon depends on to which part of the industry the money will go. Under our new constitution such questions, regardless of how important to you they may be, are reserved for stakeholders.

Hence it is poignant to read William Greider, an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's New Foundation, expressing shock in the Nation about its results. Greider wrote that Obama's actions had taught people such as himself "a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn't. They watched Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where's my bailout,' became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites nationwide."

Greider continued, "If the largest bank holding companies are given privileged proximity to the source of government protection, then everyone in finance and commerce will want to become a bank holding company, too. We are already seeing this happening as former investment houses like Goldman Sachs and non-bank financial firms decide to join the system. Why not General Electric and Microsoft? Where does this end? What does it mean for smaller enterprises that lack the scale and influence?" He concluded, "Government and politics would become even more responsive to big money, but also able to tamper intimately with private enterprise, picking winners and losers based on political loyalties, not on performance."

Why should Greider or anyone else have expected that government, especially one made up of bankers and bank regulators, would not have plenty of money for them? Why should anyone expect that a government that has the United Auto Workers as a constituency, or that wants to harness the auto industry or the energy industry to its plans, would not pay to support and shape them according to its vision? Why should anyone expect that persons who watch government dispense privilege to its supporters and enablers would not want to pay the price to join their ranks? Why be surprised that the bigger the government, the bigger a friend it is to those connected with it, and the more indifferent to the unconnected? It would be just as unreasonable to expect water to flow uphill.

Nor does it make sense, under this genus of constitutions, to rue the substitution of political loyalty for performance, because in these constitutions, political loyalty is the only kind of performance that counts.

What's It to Us?

THE MORAL BASIS OF OUR "New Foundation" consists of the desire that many have to support it, whatever it might be. For many, the will to affirm collective action is much less a matter of ideology than of eagerness to escape what they experience as a meaningless America. Thus in an influential 1997 Wall Street Journal article, prominent neoconservatives William Kristol and David Brooks regretted that so many Americans had chosen to elect Republicans who pledged to get government off their backs. "Wishing to be left alone is not a government doctrine," they wrote. They argued for government that would lead America to "a grand destiny," to "national greatness." What would that look like? Candidly, Brooks explained elsewhere, "It almost doesn't matter what task government sets for itself as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness.... Energetic government is good for its own sake. It raises the sight of the individual. It strengthens common bonds. It boosts national pride. It continues the great national project." Italians, Argentineans, Mexicans, and others are familiar with such pseudospiritual summonses to what the French intellectual bureaucrat Jean-Marie Guéhenno calls "religions without God."

Adherence to the regime's official truths and refusal to challenge their moral substance is a prerequisite for working within the system wherever political loyalty also becomes the measure of cultural, spiritual matters, whether in the European Union, in 1920s Italy, 1950s Argentina, in Obamaland, or in PRI Mexico. In practice, however, such moral bases of government are but thin cover over the raw trade of privilege for power.

Moreover, in America as elsewhere, while giving lip service to official truths enhances one's self-image, actually taking them as moral authority is another matter. In this regard, the moral basis of our "New Foundation" is emptier and engages hearts less than that of Mussolini's Italy, Juan Perón's Argentina, and Mexico's PRI's dinosaurs. Encouraging people to think of themselves as saviors of Planet Earth by driving small cars is thin stuff by comparison with images of glorious Rome, of saintly Evita, of the great Montezuma. Our New Foundation requires either habituating oneself to be enraptured by empty words, or getting used to swallowing questions that naturally come to mind (e.g., how can the world be burning up when the last decade has been colder than the previous?), or uttering official lies. In sum, if you are not a stakeholder-and odds are you won't be, can't be-the Stakeholder Constitution will impoverish you morally as well as materially.

Conformity is now the new dissent

samantha999 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:17:45 -0700

Conformity is now the new dissent

By Mark Steyn

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. Under the stimulus bill, there's a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful ("QUESTION AUTHORITY"), you can trade them in for a new "CELEBRATE CONFORMITY" sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

"The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!" warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They've been directed to show up at "thousands of events," told to "organize," "knock on doors" …

No, wait. My mistake. That's the e-mail I got from Mitch Stewart, Director of "Organizing for America" at BarackObama.com. But that's the good kind of "organizing." Obama's a community organizer. We're the community. He organizes us. What part of that don't you get?

When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. Not that these extremists showing up at town hall meetings are real members of the "community." Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the haut est form of coutur ism. Senator Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama's health care proposals as too "well-dressed" to be genuine. Only the Emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that.

Thankfully, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has seen through the "manufactured anger" of "the Brooks Brothers brigade." Did he announce this in a crumpled suit? He's a Press Secretary who won't press. Apparently, the health care debate now has a dress code. Soon you won't be able to get in unless you're wearing Barack Obama mom-jeans, manufactured at a converted GM plant by an assembly line of retrained insurance salesmen. Any day now, Hollywood will greenlight a new movie in which an insane Sarah Palin figure picks out her outfit for spreading disinformation (The Lyin', The Witch And The Wardrobe).

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, added her own distinctive wrinkle to the Brooks Brothers menswear. She disdained the anti-Obamacare protests as fake grassroots. "I think they're AstroTurf," she declared. "They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care."

Is this one of those Chinese Whispers things? Obama told Gibbs to tell Boxer to tell Reid, and by the time it reached Pelosi, it came out as uniforms night: Brooks Brothers. Mel Brooks. Springtime for Hitler. Swastikas. Or is the Speaker right to sound the alarm about this army of goosestepping dandies? A veritable Garbstapo jackbooting down the Interstate like it's a catwalk in Milan.

Fortunately, this president doesn't fold like a Robert Gibbs suit. He won't give in to the attire pressure. So, on Monday, the official White House Web site drew attention to the alarming amount of "disinformation about health insurance reform." "These rumors often travel just below the surface," warned Macon Phillips, Chief Commissar of the Hopenstasi …whoops, I mean White House Director of New Media, "via chain e-mails or through casual conversation."

"Casual conversation," eh? Why can't these "dissenters" just be like normal people and read off the teleprompter?

"Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help," continued Commissar Phillips.

"If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously "well-dressed"? Is he mouthing off about cancer survival rates under socialized medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we'll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov., which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama's latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you'd like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking "Vee hoff vays of making you tokk less casually, dumbkopf!" Go to flange@whitehouse.gov if you need parts for your new government car, or your new government hip replacement. Go to flaunt@whitehouse.gov if you'd like a special preview of President Obama's latest bare-chested pictorial for Vanity Fair. Go to flatulent@whitehouse.gov if you'd like to report your neighbor's cow for excessive CO2 emissions.

Better yet, just send everything on everyone to the White House. Unsure about that old hippie artist across the street? The one who said, "Yeah, I voted for Obama 'cause I thought it'd be cool to have an African-American president. But, since the economic downturn, the bottom's really dropped out of my hemp tapestry market." He seems to be starting to entertain impure thoughts about the Dear Leader's plans for us, doesn't he? And yet, with the best will in the world, one couldn't really describe him as a snappy dresser, could one? It's a tough call. So best be on the safe side, and report everyone. The Administration can hire people to sift through it all, and that will stimulate the economy even more than the new cashmere-for-clunkers program: Are you an angry right-wing fop? Why not trade in your frankly effete sweater for an evening with Joe Biden?

The Washington Post's Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (not, as far as I know, a Brooks sister to the Brooks Brothers) says "the town hall demolition derby" is "cynically designed and carried out in order to destroy real debate in the public square over health insurance reform." Decrying the snarling, angry protesters, liberal talk-show host Bill Press (no relation to the Corby Trouser Press) says that "Americans want serious discussion" on health care. If only we'd stuck to the President's August timetable and passed a gazillion-page health care reform entirely unread by the House of Representatives or the Senate (the world's greatest deliberative body) in nothing flat, we'd now have all the time in the world to sit around having a "serious discussion" and "real debate" on whatever it was we just did to one-sixth of the economy.

But a sick, deranged, un-American mob has put an end to all that moderate and reasonable steamrollering by showing up and yelling insane, out-of-control questions like, "Awfully sorry to bother you, your Most Excellent Senatorial Eminence, but I was wondering if you could tell me why you don't read any of the laws you make before you make them into law?"

The community is restless. The firm hand of greater organization is needed.

Looking for Any Advice

qtpy17 — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:15:26 -0700

I have recently begun the job search again and would welcome any advice. I am searching for position in the web marketing field.

Thanks so much!!!

Name
Address
Address
Phone: ~ Email:

EXPERIENCE
Training and Quality Assurance Specialist 12/2007 - Present
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston, MA
• Create and provide process and systems training, documentation and competency
development
• Maintain training database, schedule and user evaluations
• Develop and implement accountability models for staff
• Identify areas of opportunity for improvement in the day to day work flow
• Interact with both employee and corporate clients

Content Manager/Marketing 6/2006 to 12/2007
True Apparel Co., TrueJeans.com Woburn, MA
• Wrote and edited website content
• Researched marketing information
• Organized and managed merchandising and shipping initiatives
• Proactively learned and utilized new technologies
• Participated in team projects to boost product visibility
• Participated in the hiring and managing of interns
• Continuously worked to optimize website’s content for search engines
• Worked with and monitored effectiveness of various affiliate marketing opportunities
• Developed and maintained lists of targeted keywords
• Assisted with direct mail and opt-in email list maintenance

English Teacher 9/2005 to 6/2006
Lowell High School Lowell, MA
• Taught ninth grade Lyceum English
• Planned and taught MCAS Prep in a large urban setting
• Taught twelfth grade honors English
• Attended/participated in Lowell’s New Teacher Academy
• Worked with Special Education staff member for inclusion students

English Teacher 9/2004 to 6/2005
Lowell Catholic High School Lowell, MA
• Taught twelfth grade Advanced Placement English Literature, Honors English IV,
College Preparatory English IV, Creative Writing, and SAT Prep
• Created structured Advanced Placement English Literature curriculum, testing and grading
• Provided after school accessibility to students

Patient Accounts 6/2001 to 9/2003
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston, MA
• Responsible for daily review and on-line analysis of patient billing information
• Provided timely and accurate resolution of insurance claims processing
• Established a reconciliation of open balances and credit balances
• Prepared written inquiries to insurance companies regarding outstanding claims

EDUCATION
Regis College Weston, MA
MS Candidate –Concentration in Communications 9/2004 to 5/2007

Bachelor of Arts in English May, 2004
Minor in Business Management
Cumulative GPA: 3.57

For frugalists, bargain hunting is a lifestyle

tdsollog — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:09:08 -0700

For frugalists, bargain hunting is a lifestyle
For these extreme anti-consumers, your trash is their food, furniture
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24879628

By Allison Linn, Senior writer,MSNBC
updated 2:39 p.m. ET, Tues., June. 3, 2008

For Rebecca, browsing Dumpsters also is a way to protest the country’s rampant consumer culture. She has salvaged furniture, clothes, art supplies and even appliances.

It’s an unseasonably cold day in Seattle, and Rebecca is standing in her kitchen, preparing for her regular Sunday afternoon outing. As she gathers her backpack and grocery bags, her dog sniffs around excitedly, anticipating the long walk and treats that await.

In the course of their errands, Rebecca and her dog will visit several stores and coffee shops, a bakery and a chocolate factory. But instead of walking in the front door, she plans to head out back and go Dumpster diving.

Rebecca, 51, owns a small duplex and has a job running an art program for a health care organization. She’s also an artist in her own right whose accomplishments include a piece that hangs in the Seattle Art Museum.

And she gets 99 percent of her food from the Dumpster.

“It’s so easy to eat for free,” she says. “The only things I buy are butter and milk.”

It’s no secret that American culture is a consumer culture. We like big cars, big houses and big bags of things bought at big malls and big-box retailers. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the few people who call themselves anti-consumerists, freegans, frugalists or just plain Dumpster divers. Whatever the moniker, these people delight in drastically reducing their consumer spending, finding life’s essentials at bargain prices or paying nothing at all.

“I like getting stuff free. It’s like a treasure hunt,” says Ran Prieur, 40, who lives in Washington state and whose extremely frugal life includes occasional Dumpster diving. “It’s kind of similar to what you get from gambling.”

It’s hard to say how many people are trying to live this way, but frugal communities say they are seeing more interest. A couple years ago, a group of friends in San Francisco made a compact to try not to buy anything new for a year; now there are “Compactors” all over the world. The Freecycle Network, through which people give away stuff they no longer need rather than trashing it, boasts thousands of participants.

Freegans - whose efforts to live outside the conventional economic system may include hitchhiking, foraging for food and eschewing regular jobs - say there is growing interest in adopting at least parts of their philosophy.

“A lot of people are recognizing that there are a lot of ways that people can provide for their needs,” said Adam Weissman, a spokesman for the main freegan Web site.

Being thrifty
Rebecca, who asked that her real name not be used because she worries she could lose her job if her employer knew about her Dumpster diving, doesn’t need to get food for free.

She says she likes the thrill of the chase, and the surprising bounty of good food she finds. And despite holding a steady job and having grown up in an affluent family, she says she sometimes worries she won’t have enough money. She also likes to “save a little here, save a little there,” so she can afford splurges like a laptop computer and keep funding her art.

For Rebecca, browsing Dumpsters also is a way to protest the country’s rampant consumer culture. She has salvaged furniture, clothes, art supplies and even appliances. Still, even she isn’t totally immune to the culture she avoids - feeling blue recently, she went in for a little retail therapy and bought a new pair of sneakers.

Rebecca grew up in Greenwich, Conn., the daughter of an ad man. As early as high school, she remembers searching through garbage while walking the streets of New York City. Her mother would walk ahead, pretending not to know her. Nobody else bothered her.

“That’s when I really started liking things cheap,” she says.

After high school, Rebecca went to art school, but in 1979, she decided to drop out and head to Seattle. Her artwork includes materials she’s found in the garbage or on the street.

To many first-time Dumpster divers, the most surprising thing is how much good stuff is out there.

Prieur, for example, says his trash bin excursions have netted him smoked salmon, high-end bacon, olive oil, plenty of produce and other goodies. Prieur, who owns a piece of land but has no permanent home, estimates that when he’s staying with his sister in Seattle, he gets 20 to 30 percent of his groceries from garbage bins.

His habit elicits mixed responses. A favorite item at his sister’s house is “Dumpstered” apple pie. But he’ll sometimes invite people over for dinner and get the cautionary response: “Just promise not to put any Dumpster food in it.”

Says Prieur: “There’s a big emotional thing attached to not eating out of the garbage.”

Baby squash, popcorn and granola
When Rebecca reaches the grocery store, she moves with purpose across the parking lot to a fenced-in Dumpster. With practiced nonchalance, she opens the gate and walks in, closing it behind her. On the ground, she immediately finds a bag of baby squashes. They go in the backpack to be steamed up for dinner.

Next, she hikes herself up and peers in the Dumpster itself. Out comes a bag of popcorn, a bag of granola and a package of rice. All are torn, but the contents appear clean.

“Aw darn,” she calls from within. “A box of chocolates - but they’re empty.”
Rebecca passes up pasta and a few other items, explaining that she prefers ready-made food because she doesn’t like to cook.

The granola isn’t her taste, either - she’s a self-described picky eater - but she can give it to her boyfriend.

She also passes up a bag of flavored potato chips, explaining, “I don’t like salt and vinegar.”
Climbing out of the Dumpster, Rebecca opens the gate again and heads out.

In 10 years of serious Dumpster diving, Rebecca says she’s never gotten sick eating food from the trash.

She has only occasionally been hassled by a store manager, but she will usually talk her way out of it by spinning a story that she recently lost her job. People sometimes lecture her, telling her eating out of a Dumpster isn’t good for her. She generally plays along with the spiel, “because most people assume that’s who you are - either homeless or mentally ill,” she says.

‘I hope that Starbucks has some decaf’
As she heads further into Seattle’s University District, Rebecca’s on the lookout for coffee.

“I hope that Starbucks has some decaf because I’m out of decaf,” she says.

But after rifling through several garbage bags, she only comes up with a pile of breakfast sandwiches. She feeds one to her dog.

In her escapades, Rebecca has found CDs, a $100 bill, an answering machine and a five-pound bag of coffee. It often amazes her to come across perfectly good things in the trash, and she will find herself speculating about what personal decision - a fight with a boyfriend, maybe? - would cause someone to throw out something like a CD.

Around the end of the school year, Rebecca will spend more time in the neighborhood near Seattle’s University of Washington to forage for things that people throw out when they move - art supplies, coffee makers, that sort of thing. She also likes to hit the fraternity houses.

“Good God,” she says, “they’ll throw out everything.”

251 million tons of trash
The same could be said for Americans in general. Americans produce about 4.6 pounds of waste per person per day - or nearly a ton a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

For many who get their essentials secondhand or for free, one motivation is that they are disgusted by such waste. But their lifestyle is dependent on the consumer culture that they reject.

If Americans didn’t demand pristine produce and bread baked fresh daily, there would be little for Dumpster divers to find. And if we didn’t lust for new couches long before the old springs had gone soft, and new jeans months before their current ones had developed holes, there would be little for thrift store aficionados and garage sale lovers to buy.

Frugalists say they there are plenty of places to find stuff, if you know where to look. They get things on the sidewalk, through Internet posts and at organized giveaway events.

Laura Thompson, 57, does most of her “shopping” in the bathtub, with a stack of catalogs that she never orders from. When she really needs something, she either goes to a thrift store or tries to find it for free. Recently she lamented that she needed a raincoat, and a friend who likes secondhand shopping gave Thompson the one she was wearing.

Thompson is most meticulous about one thing: paper towels. She’s had the same roll of Costco paper towels since March 2006, and she estimates that there’s still about an inch left. If a houseguest asks for a paper towel, they most likely will be turned down.

Thompson only uses paper towels for “icky” jobs, like getting oil off anchovies. She relies on rags and cloth napkins for most other needs. She does have a little bit of a cheat, though: If she goes to a restaurant and is given a stack of paper napkins, she will take those home and use them.

Thompson, who also lives in Seattle, has been trying to conserve paper towels for about 10 years, motivated by a combination of environmental activism and lifelong frugality.

‘Down to the underwear’
Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller once held high-powered telecommunications jobs and were self-professed yuppies. Then in the mid-1990s, they read a book called “Your Money or Your Life” and had a revelation: They could just stop working.

Since then, they have lived on investments, occasional sales of Blix’s crafts and, in recent years, Heitmiller’s part-time work as a handyman. They are so enamored of their simple lifestyle that the Seattle couple even wrote their own book about it: “Getting a Life.”

One day in early spring, Blix was dressed in a pink sweater, turquoise turtleneck, khaki pants and knit socks. Everything she was wearing had come from a secondhand shop, “down to the underwear,” she noted - except the socks, which were knit by a friend.

When Heitmiller asked his wife whether everything he was wearing had come from a secondhand shop, too, she looked him over quizzically and said she didn’t know what underwear he was wearing.

Blix and Heitmiller started their post-regular work life living on about $30,000 a year. Lately, their budget has crept up to about $45,000, largely because of rising costs for health insurance and a decision to eat more organic food. They also travel more often to California now to visit their grandchildren.

To maintain their lifestyle in a comfortable three-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex, the two have become avid secondhand shoppers, as well as what Blix calls “curbside shoppers.” That means that they find things, like their coffee table, sitting outside with a “free” sign on it. Other items, including a television and kitchen table, were inherited.

The hardwood floor in their house was salvaged from another house, and Heitmiller bartered his handyman skills in exchange for some leftover carpeting they used elsewhere in the house.
Blix keeps a list of things that they would like to have, and she says she’s often surprised at how things fall in her lap. Recently they were considering buying some items for their front yard when a friend called with some mulch to give away.

“If you put a need out there in the universe, you’ll be surprised,” she said.

Blix doesn’t think she spends more time shopping than most Americans spend at the mall - the very mention of which makes her physically shudder. The couple goes out for a meal about once a month, and they’ll occasionally visit a coffee shop. Heitmiller has a cell phone for his handyman business; Blix does not want one.

‘A leftover from previous thinking’
Blix, 58, and Heitmiller, 62, say that, in deciding to live simply, they also are forced to talk honestly about money, something many couples don’t do. Still, like any couple, they have the occasional financial disagreement. The difference is that their most memorable disagreement is one that most couples wouldn’t remember at all.

What happened is this: Blix took a Costco gift card she’d received and bought a new set of flatware, to replace the set Heitmiller had had since his first marriage in 1968, without so much as a word of discussion beforehand. To Heitmiller, it was an “oddity” that she would buy something new to replace something that worked just fine. To Blix, it was her money and she wanted new flatware.

On the rare occasions Blix has spent money like that, she calls it “a leftover from previous thinking,” when she was more beholden to money.

The idea of not working sounds great to a lot of people, but there are downsides. Health care costs have risen substantially, and without an employer the couple is left to foot the bill themselves until Medicare kicks in. They have a high-deductible policy that doesn’t cover prescription medication.

Over the years, the couple also has noticed that they have grown away from many of their old friends, although now they have a new group of friends who think more like them, including those active in what is called the Voluntary Simplicity movement.

Blix says another problem she has is “time management,” meaning what to do with all the time she has because she doesn’t work. “You really are faced with, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ ” she says. “It’s something that I definitely work on.”

Three Dumpsters of bread
It’s looking more and more like rain as Rebecca walks along the water and through a park, pausing briefly to admire the view of Seattle’s downtown. The aroma of rosemary and yeast fills the air. She is nearing one of Seattle’s favorite artisan bakeries.

Behind the bakery sit three tan Dumpsters, each filled with nothing but bread - every type you can think of, bagged and looking as mouth-watering as they do on the shelves at Whole Foods. It doesn’t even smell bad here - the store’s other Dumpsters, containing actual trash, are around the front of the store.

Rebecca pulls out a loaf of ciabatta for herself, and then roots around for a whole-grain loaf for her boyfriend of 18 years. He’s not much of a Dumpster diver himself, but he will eat some things she finds.

A white hatchback pulls up and three young guys get out and head for the Dumpsters. Methodically, they begin gathering bread for themselves and their friends. They pause, arms and mouths full of bread, to discuss the merits of ciabatta vs. olive bread. No one comes out of the bakery to bother them.

Next, Rebecca heads toward an outpost of the local food co-op. Behind the shiny new building are two large Dumpsters, and next to those someone has set aside produce boxes. Rebecca says the good fresh fruits and vegetables are usually in there, but today they are empty. No matter; hiking herself up on the large Dumpster, she finds the mother lode - a breakfast burrito, samosas, pulled pork sandwiches and vegetarian burgers, all individually wrapped in tinfoil and some still warm. They aren’t set to expire until the next day.

“This is a nice catch today,” she says.

It’s raining as she begins the long uphill trek back to her house, her backpack filled with enough food to last a couple of days, until her next trip through the city’s Dumpsters.

“I’m a working girl,” she says. “I have a job. I own my own house. And I Dumpster dive. So there you go.”

Christina Aguilera - Us Weekly Interview

dirrtyhoney — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:08:58 -0700

Feeling “a sense of accomplishment” after dropping her 40 lbs of baby weight, songstress Christina Aguilera sat down with Us Weekly on May 18th to discuss how she did it, her past cravings, seeing her shape change while pregnant, nursing, and 4-month-old Max Liron’s latest developments.

On seeing her body change during pregnancy:

I couldn’t help but embrace it. You just want what’s best for your baby. I tried not to get carried away, but I wanted to splurge a little.

What she indulged in:

Oh, my God, candy! I had a huge craving for candy toward the end of the pregnancy, from Starbursts to Skittles. I actually took a picture of myself with my big belly in a little lingerie top, surrounded by bowls of the candy I like.

On her fitness and diet plan:

Christina started doing a mix of cardio, weights, and stretching for 90 minutes, five times a week in late February with her longtime trainer, Tee Sorge. Six days a week, Christina follows a protein, veggie, and whole grain-heavy diet; since she is breastfeeding, she consumes at least 1770 calories to keep milk supply steady. Sundays are her cheat day - Christina loves chili cheese fries!

I started out slow, just listening to my body and making sure I didn’t overdo it. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’m tighter and stronger. As you feel your body getting stronger, you become more motivated to be in the gym! It doesn’t matter how big or small you are. When you’re defined, I think it’s sexy. I exercise because it makes me feel good. It’s not just a physical thing.

It’s more mental than anything; food is comforting. Like when I first got engaged, I gained weight. We call it the “love chub.” When you’re happy and you’re cozy just chillin’ in bed together on a day off, what do you want to do? Cozy up with cozy foods.

For me, it’s a baked potato and a steak. And I truly love southern comfort food: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese. I’m not into depriving myself; rather, I limit the bad things that I like. I watch my carbs and starches. It was a huge thing to switch to wheat bread - I love my white bread! - but I did it!

The toughest thing is not having what you want when you want it. I’m a night owl and a late-night snacker, so it’s hard not to reach for a comforting bag of chips.

On support from husband Jordan:

Even when I have a cheat day and say, “Ugh, I shouldn’t be eating this,” he’ll say, “Honey, you look amazing. Just eat it.” So much of people’s body issues [are] mental. I have positive people around me, and my husband is really supportive. One of the most important things to me is staying positive and raising a child with a great outlook and self-esteem.

Christina, who watched her mother be abused at the hands of her father as a child, shared that in choosing Jordan, she hopes to have insured that her childhood experiences are something Max will never witness.

In making the decision to marry whom I did, I knew that my husband is not the type to have violent tendencies, and he would never hurt me. We had many conversations before, and I really ensured that I put myself in the position to marry someone who was not going to, in any way, shape or form, repeat the cycle of abuse with my child and what I had endured as a child.

On being back in her jeans:

Yes, it’s just a matter of feeling as good in them as I did before! My goal was to get back into a pair I love from Hysteric Glamour. I fit into my size extra-small, but I notice I have different hips than before - though I embrace the new curves, especially above the waist!

On that chest everyone is talking about:

It’s kind of hilarious! I’ve never fit into an E-cup before. I look at my husband and go, ‘Guess what size this bra is?’ And when I tell him, he’s just amazed. We keep the tags that prove it, to look back for memory’s sake!

On nursing:

It’s something that I’m playing by ear. I didn’t know going into it if I was going to love it. He was a natural latcher, right out of the womb. It made the job very easy for me, but also I love the bonding sense of it. I’m a working mom, so after a hard day, I get to spend that time with him where I feed him and sort of be his source of life. It’s an incredible feeling.

Max’s latest accomplishments:

When you tickle him or make a funny face, he’s very reactive. He has those hearty giggles, and it’s amazing to see. And he’s really responsive to music; I guess it’s in the genes!

On the best part of being a mom:

Oh my God, seeing what you and the one you love have created in front of you: a living, breathing person.

More kids?:

Absolutely. I can’t tell you when, as I’m not into planning things like that. Maybe around the next tour!

Source: Celebrity Babies

jean-paul galutier embriodered satin luxury handbag

Rachie Rees — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:14:44 -0700

Jean Paul Sports Handbag

This is a luxury handbag it is lined with real satin, and is crafted with this flash lion.

I like this myself, it would be a beautiful handbag- I personally would'nt use it as a handbag. I would use it for storage within the house- and have it insured.

How would you use it!
Would you show it off?
Or keep it safe somewhere?

Blog me your comments!

Even Vampires Get The Blues Katie MacAlister

KimmiAnn — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 18:03:36 -0700

Paen Scott is a Dark One: a vampire without a soul. And his mother is
about to lose hers, too, if Paen can’t repay a debt to a demon by
finding a relic known as the Jilin God-in five days.

Half-elf Samantha Cosse may have gotten kicked out of the Diviner’s
Order, but she’s still good at finding things-which is why she just
opened her own private investigation agency.

Paen is one of Sam’s first clients-and the only one to set her elf
senses tingling. Which makes it pretty much impossible to keep their
relationship on a professional level. Especially since Sam is convinced
that she is Paen’s Beloved-the woman who can give him back his soul,
whether he wants it or not…

Excerpt:
Prologue

“Hi.” A woman stood in the doorway, American if her breathy voice was anything to go by. “Are you Payann, by any chance?”

Paen looked up from a tattered manuscript, wincing slightly at the mis-pronunciation of his name. The woman had to be from the southern US. No one else drawled his name into two syllables. “I’m Paen, yes. Can I help?”

“Hi,” the woman said again, slipping in through the barely opened door, a big Cheshire cat smile on her face. “I’m Clarice Miller.”

Paen was on his guard the second the smile hit her lips. Whose was she, he idly wondered as she smoothed down her sexy, nearly see-through gauzy dress before starting across the room in what he assumed was meant to be a seductive slink. Daniel’s? No, Danny preferred redheads, and this woman had a mane of golden-brown curls that spilled over shoulders. Finn’s? Clarice turned her smile up a notch as she stopped before the chair opposite him. She might possibly be Finn’s, but his middle brother tended to prefer earthier women, Pagans and Wiccans. Clarice looked fresh out of an expensive salon or day spa. Which meant she had to belong to-

“Avery said you’re the laird of Castle Death?” She tilted her head slightly, so she was peering up at him through her lashes in a pose he mentally dubbed the Princess Di look. It was charming on the late princess…less so on the American in front of him.

Regardless of the irritating interruption, he kept his voice pleasant. “I’m the acting laird of the castle-which is named de Ath, incidentally, not Death-but my father is the true owner. He and my mother have moved to Bolivia however, so if you have a question about the estate, I will do my best to answer it.”

The scarlet-tipped fingers of her left hand trailed along the edge of his rosewood desk as she sidled around it toward where he sat. “Your daddy’s in Bolivia? How fascinating. But you’re left here to handle everything yourself since you’re the oldest son? That must be a lot of work. Avery says your land runs for miles and miles all around the castle.”

Paen heaved a small, inaudible sigh, and mentally wrote the word “gold-digger” next to the woman’s face. Lately, Avery had taken to bringing home women who seemed to be more attracted to the family’s home and supposed wealth than the men who lived there. “Yes, we have a bit of land. And yes, it takes some doing to manage the estate, but as I enjoy the work, it’s not really that much of a chore. Is there something in particular I can help you with? Some question you have, perhaps?” He glanced at the ancient manuscript before him, wishing nothing more than to be left in peace so he could finish translating it.

“Well now, that’s mighty kind of you, but I’m here to help you,” she answered, scooting aside the manuscript so she could ease herself onto the desk. Her smile changed into one of blatant invitation. “I was thinking I might give you a hand-” She paused as her eyes flickered briefly to his crotch. “-with whatever you might need. I’m told that I’m very good at what I do.”

Paen sat back as she crossed her legs. He gave her full marks for the casual way her dress seemed to slide back on her thighs as if by accident. Did she know what he and his brothers really were? Or was she just looking for a fling with a bona fide Scotsman, as he’d heard female American tourists were wont to do? “What exactly did you think to turn your hand to?”

“Oh…this and that,” she answered, her little pink tongue running quickly across her bottom lip. Paen watched her attempts at seduction with mild amusement. “Anything you like, really. I’m open to all suggestions.”

She dropped one shoulder and leaned forward, allowing him an unobstructed view of two plump breasts.

Being a man, he felt obliged to admire them for a moment. That done, he gave Clarice a tight, dismissive smile. “Indeed. I’m afraid that I already employ a steward, and she’s quite competent, if a bit on the trying side sometimes. Although I appreciate your offer, there really isn’t much that I need help with.”

She licked her lips again, more slowly this time. “I bet I could think of something.”

Paen looked down in surprise. Clarice, evidently emboldened by his brief admiration of her breasts, uncrossed her legs, kicking off a sandal and sliding her bare foot along the inside of his thigh until it rested on his crotch. “You wouldn’t by any chance be indicating that you’d like to have sex with me?”

“Why, sugar, I thought you’d never ask,” she purred, caressing him with her toes.

Enough was enough. Lord knew he was no stranger to casual sex-quite the contrary, in fact-but he had work to do, and it didn’t involve banging a lusty American. He carefully pried her foot off his groin and pushed it away. Before she could protest, he stood and marched over to the door, holding it open for her. “Thank you for the offer, but there are two reasons why I am unable to take you up on it.”

“Two reasons?” she asked, not moving from his desk. Her brows pulled together as she made a little pout at him. “What two reasons?”

Paen sighed again. He was used to women fawning over his three brothers, but seldom did one ever cast her eyes on him. Normally he was the pursuer. He always supposed women sensed something of his tormented, soulless nature, and left him alone because of that.

“One, I don’t screw my brothers’ women.” He walked back to the desk, stuffed her sandal on her foot, and gently pushed her off the desk, returning to the open door. Rude, yes, but he didn’t have the time or inclination to play with this woman. “And two, you have no idea who I really am. It would be best if you left now.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” Clarice said, her voice thick as she undulated toward him. Rather than feeling any attraction toward her, her blatant attempts at seduction left him cold. Perhaps if she had truly been attracted to him rather than what he represented, he might have been interested, but he was not so deluded to imagine she cared for anything other than herself. “Or more to the point, I know what you are.”

Paen stood silent as she leaned into him, her breasts rubbing against his chest. She gave him a knowing smile, and then tipped her head back and to the side, baring her neck. “Avery told me all about you. Go ahead, sugar. You know you want to.”

The hunger rose as the scent of a warm, willing woman curled around him. His mind warred with the hunger-why shouldn’t he take what he wanted from her? She was offering it, after all. Once Avery knew she had tried to seduce him, he would want nothing more to do with her, so where was the harm it taking what was being offered?

Deep within him, the hunger growled and demanded satisfaction. She leaned closer into him, her neck a few scant inches away from his mouth. He swallowed hard, trying not to give in to the hunger, reminding himself that he was a civilized man, not a beast to jump on every morsel of food. He inhaled her scent, finding nothing unpleasant other than the chemical odor of a strong perfume. He preferred a woman’s natural scent to anything that came out of a bottle, but he wasn’t in a position to complain. His tongue ran over the points of his sharp canines, the hunger building until it was a dull roar in his ears, throbbing to the beat of his heart. The urge to bite, the need to drink deeply was almost overwhelming. All he had to do was sink his teeth in that tender white flesh…

“Take it, Paen. Take me. Take me now! Make me yours forever!”

It was the triumph in her voice that stopped him from giving in to the hunger. Like a bucketful of cold water tipped over his head, distaste washed over him at her words.

“You may know what I am, but I also know what you are,” he said, stepping back, his voice cold and flat.

“What?” she asked, her eyes confused for a moment. “What do you mean? You aren’t going to bite me? You aren’t going to Dracula me and drink my blood? You aren’t going to make me your eternal bride?”

“No,” he answered, more amused than annoyed. “I’m not going to drink your blood, or marry you. My name is Paen Alasdair Scott, not Dracula, and I’m not a prince of the night, or a count, or even a dashing, romantic figure. I’m a simple Scot with an interest in the history and travels of Marco Polo, and a weakness for computer games.”

“But…you’re a vampire!” she protested. “You can’t refuse me!”

“We prefer the name Moravian or Dark One. They are less dramatic, and result in fewer people arriving at the front door with torches and wooden stakes. As for refusing you…” He gestured toward the open door. “Thank you again, but I’m a busy man. If you wouldn’t mind leaving now?”

“Well, I have nevah!” The confusion in Clarice’s grey eyes changed to haughty anger as the twangy cadence of her accent deepened. “There’s just somethin’ wrong with you, you know that?”

“Yes, I’m aware of it,” he answered, still amused despite the annoying aspect of the interruption. “I’m more or less damned by an ancient curse. My parents hadn’t completed the seven steps to Joining when I was born, so unlike my younger brothers, I have no soul.”

“But-your brother said that only a woman can save you. He said that you need a woman to become whole again.”

“Clearly it’s time for me to have yet another talk with Avery,” Paen said, sighing a little. “He means well, but I’ve told him before-I have no intention of accepting a Beloved even if I did find her.”

“Beloved?”

“Only a Beloved can redeem a Dark One’s soul. But I don’t need a woman to live a happy life,” he told her, gently pushing her out the door. “I’m quite content on my own. I have my research, and family-although they can be annoying as hell sometimes-and given my brothers’ randy natures, all the beautiful women I can look at. I even had a girlfriend a few years ago, although she left me for a software genius. So as you can see, I may be damned, but I’m just fine with it. Thanks again for the offer. See you later.”

“But-you can’t-you need to drink blood-”

Paen quietly closed the door on the Clarice’s outraged protests, turning the lock after a moment’s thought. No sense in giving her the chance to pop back in and throw herself at him again.

“Alone at last,” he said to himself as he turned back toward his desk.

“Not exactly.”

Across the room, a shadow moved against a wall, separating itself to form into a man. Paen watched with interest, cautious, but not overly concerned about the sudden appearance of what he believed was a demon in his study. “Today seems to be my day for entertaining guests. I assume this isn’t just a social call?”

The man-shaped demon chuckled. Paen was momentarily taken aback by such an act-demons were notorious for their lack of sense of humor. It was a rare one who could appreciate sarcasm and irony. “I’m not going to drag you down to Abaddon, if that’s what you are wondering. So I suppose in a sense, this could be construed as a social call. I’m Caspar Green.”

Paen looked at the hand the demon offered. It didn’t look like it concealed any spring-loaded razor blades, or deadly acid pumps, or even some horrible contagion that would cause various body parts to wart up and subsequently fall off, but you never really knew with demons. “Erm…you’ll forgive me for being rude, but I don’t recall ever hearing about a demon who assumed a mortal name.”

Caspar smiled. Paen glanced quickly toward a delicate glass-fronted secretary that held his more valuable manuscripts. Generally when demons smiled, things broke. “That would be because I’m not a demon. I am, in fact, an alastor.”

“Alastor?” The name tickled in the back of his mind.

“Yes.” Caspar tipped his head to the side. “I find myself somewhat offended that you thought I was a common demon. I assumed you were a man of some discernment.”

“Forgive me,” Paen said with a wry twist to his lips. “I am a bit of the stereotypically cloistered scholar. I haven’t had time to mingle much with citizens of the Otherworld, but correct me if I’m wrong-isn’t alastor another name for a demon?”

“I am of the demonic persuasion, yes, but not truly a demon. Alastors are not bound to demon lords-they can be, however, employed. A better name would be nemesis; it is what most alastors are commonly called. As for my name-I was mortal at one time. It is my preference to use a name that puts humans at ease.”

“I’m not human,” Paen pointed out, finally shaking the alastor’s hand. He may not be able to tell a demon from an alastor, but he wasn’t a fool. He’d heard enough stories of how tricky those beings born in the service of dark powers could be.

“No, you’re not, although some would say you’re close enough to count as human.” Caspar smiled again and gestured toward a chair. “May I?”

“Certainly. Er…I don’t often have denizens of Abaddon visiting. What is the proper protocol? Should I offer you a whisky, blood of a virgin, or would you prefer a small rodent?”

“Whisky will do just fine,” Caspar answered, seating himself in the chair opposite Paen’s desk. “Although the blood of a virgin…?”

Paen poured some whisky in a small lead crystal glass and gave it to the man. “I’m afraid we’re fresh out.”

“Ah. As I feared. The market price on virgin’s blood has been outrageous of late. Ever since the virgins formed a union, they have been unreasonable in their demands. Slainte.” Casper sipped at his whisky. “Excellent. How old is it?”

“My father set it down the year I was born,” Paen answered, leaning a hip against his desk, his arms crossed over his chest. “What exactly is it you want?”

Casper took another sip. “Extremely smooth for a whisky that’s…hmm. I judge it to be approximately three hundred years old?”

“Two hundred and forty-six.”

“Ah. Delightful, nonetheless.”

Paen frowned. His curiosity was roused by the being who sat before him drinking his father’s whisky, but not so much that he was willing to spend all afternoon in polite chitchat with him.

“The reason I am here involves your father, actually. You have no doubt heard how he met your mother?”

“Yes,” Paen said, growing uneasy. Caspar Green might not be a demon, but nothing good could come of someone from the Otherworld being concerned with his father. “They met at the conclusion of what is now referred to as the French and Indian War. My mother was French. My father fought on the side of the English. His head was almost completely severed during one battle, and she found him and tended to him despite her family’s objections. They fell in love. What do my parents have to do with you?”

“A great deal, actually. Or rather, their meeting does. The story you’ve been told isn’t quite accurate-your father was wounded, and your mother did nurse him back to health, but he himself inflicted the injury.”

Paen thinned his lips. He didn’t believe anything so ridiculous. “Why on earth would he do such a foolish thing?”

“Because I told him his Beloved was nearby.”

“You told him?” Paen stared at the man in outright disbelief.

Caspar smiled, on the surface a pleasant smile, but Paen was aware of the aura of power that surrounded the alastor. “Yes. Your father engaged the demon lord Oriens to find his Beloved. I was charged with locating her, which I did. I informed your father of her situation, and counseled that a drastic action would be needed to get within her circle of friends. He took the action, and the rest, as they say, is history. Literally, in this case, but that’s one of the perks of being immortal.”

“Even assuming that’s true-and it sounds highly unlikely to me-what does that have to do with my father now?”

Caspar carefully set the glass onto the desk, clasping his hands over his knee, an affectation that for some reason annoyed Paen. “There is a little matter of the debt your father accrued in purchasing Oriens’s help.”

Paen’s jaw tightened. Yet another gold-digger, albeit a demonic one. He went around to the other side of the desk, pulling out the estate checkbook. “How much?”

“You misunderstand me, Paen. The debt your father owes Oriens is not one that can be repaid by means of mortal money.”

“Oh?” Paen closed the checkbook, watching the man suspiciously. “What is it he owes for this debt, then?”

“A simple thing, really. A small statue of a monkey. You may be familiar with it? I understand it is a family heirloom-the Jilin God is its most common name.”

Paen frowned as he dug through his memories. “A statue of a monkey? No, I’ve never heard of it, let alone am familiar with it.”

Caspar pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here is a sketch of it. It’s about six inches high, black, made of ebony. It’s origins are said to be Chinese, about six hundred years old.”

“Ming dynasty,” Paen said absently, still poking around in his memories. As far as he could remember, his father never mentioned anything about a monkey statue as a family heirloom. He himself knew every square inch of the castle, and he’d never seen such a statue.

“Yes. How perspicacious of you to know that. Are you familiar with the era?”

“Only in a collateral sense. I am doing some research on a knight in the service of Marco Polo. He was in China during the Ming dynasty. What proof do I have that any of what you’re telling me is true?”

Caspar smiled yet again. Paen was starting to get tired of that knowing smile. He felt decidedly out of his depths with the man, and it wasn’t a feeling he relished. “I thought you might ask for some proof. I have here-” Caspar pulled out a small leather case, the size to hold a passport. “-a document signed by your father, and bearing his seal.”

Paen took the document over to where a magnifying light sat on his worktable. He read the document quickly. It simply stated that one Alec Munroe McGregor Scott, of Darmish, Scotland, did swear to provide the lord Oriens or his due representative with the statue known as the Jilin God in exchange for services rendered him. Paen, no stranger to antique parchment, and certainly familiar enough with it to detect modern paper doctored to look old, examined the item closely with the magnifying glass. He went so far as to pull out a small pocket microscope to examine the fiber content of the document, as well as the red wax seal.

“Very well. I concede this document is real. But why has Oriens waited two hundred and forty years to collect this debt?”

“Oriens is a busy demon lord. Perhaps it slipped his mind, or perhaps he had no need for the statue until now. Regardless of the why, the debt is now being called due, and it must be paid.”

“I have no idea what or where this Jilin God statue is. If Oriens waited this long, he can wait another three months until my parents return from the depths of the Bolivian forests to their home in La Paz.”

Caspar spread his hands. “Alas that it was so easy. The debt must be repaid within one lunar cycle upon being called due, or else Oriens is entitled to claim the collateral used to secure his services.”

Paen could have sworn his blood turned to ice. The situation was quickly going from bad to worse. “What collateral?”

“There is really only one thing a demon lord wants-a soul.”

“My father promised his soul in order to have you locate his Beloved?”

“No, his soul was held in trust for another, so he could not use it,” Caspar answered, shaking his head. “He tried to, but Oriens wouldn’t accept that as collateral.”

Little glaciers rose in his heart. “Then whose soul did he use?”

Caspar smiled, just like Paen knew he would. “Why, that of his Beloved, naturally. Although strictly speaking he wasn’t in possession of her soul, the fact that she was his Beloved, and would by her very nature agree to sacrifice herself on his behalf, served as a guarantee. I’m afraid that means if you do not provide me with the Jilin God in the next five days, your mother’s soul is forfeit. Unfair to her, true, but that is the nature of these arrangements.”

“Five days?” Paen asked, his mind a whirl. He would die before he let a demon lord lay one hell spawned finger on his mother, let along her beautiful, pure soul. “What happened to a lunar cycle?”

“I’m afraid that it took me some time to track down your whereabouts,” Caspar said with faux apology.

“That’s ridiculous! Right, there are four of us. We’ll just divide up the work…”

“Oh, no, I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Caspar gave him a sad little smile. “Didn’t I tell you? This debt is yours alone to fulfill. You are your father’s son, you see.”

Paen frowned. “Why mine? My brothers are just as much the sons of my father as I am.”

“Yes, but you are the eldest. According to the agreement your father signed-“ he gestured toward the note. “-the debt must be repayed by the debtor himself, or the nearest member of his blood. That would be you, the oldest son.”

“That is completely outrageous. My brothers-“

“-are not eligible to locate the missing statue. If they do, the debt will be considered forfeit, and the collateral will be collected.” Caspar plucked the promissory note from Paen’s hands and tucked it away in the leather case. “All that remains is five days. If you do not have the statue in that time…well. We won’t dwell on the unpleasant.”

“Get out,” Paen said, gritting his teeth against the pain that threatened to swamp him at the thought of what the alastor was saying.

“I understand that you are upset, but-”

“Get the hell out of my house! Now!” Paen roared, starting toward the unwelcome visitor.

“I will be in touch about your progress with the statue,” Caspar said hurriedly, backing toward the wall as Paen prepared to grab him and throw him out of the room. Hell, he wanted to throw him out of the country…off the planet, if he could manage it. “Until then, farewell!”

Paen snarled several obscenities and medieval oaths as the man’s form shimmered, then disappeared. He continued to swear under his breath over the next half hour as he placed four international phone calls, and authorized three messengers to be sent out into the depths of the Bolivian forests in an attempt to locate his parents.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea where they are, or where this monkey god statue is?” he asked his brothers that evening.

“Not a clue on either count,” Avery said as he slipped on a leather jacket. “No one tells me anything. The whole thing sounds a bit dicey to me, to be honest. We can’t help you search for this statue because you’re the eldest? What’s up with that?”

“Some archaic medieval law still around a few hundred years ago, no doubt,” Paen grumbled. “There were all sorts of agreements then that operated under obsolete laws.”

“Well, I hate to be callous, but since we can’t help you search for the statue, I guess I’ll go out.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Paen said, stalking past his brother. “You and Dan will go to the Lachmanol Abbey in the Outer Hebrides, and beg the abbot for access to his very rare collection of sixteenth century manuscrips. There you will scour the manuscript for references to this damned statue.”

“Me? Why me?” Paen’s second youngest brother looked up from the evening paper. “Why can’t you go? And I thought this demon said none of us could look for the statue?”

“You’re not going to be looking for the statue itself. I want to know more about it-where it came from, what its history is, that sort of thing. You’re the only one besides me who knows Latin. Avery can use his charm to get access to the manuscript, and you can translate them.”

“Sounds like a bloody bore, but I’ll do it for Mum.” Avery admired himself in the mirror again, then frowned at Paen. “You’re not going to brood the whole time we’re gone, are you? Because if you are, we won’t bring back any souvenir girls for you.”

“We’re going to an abbey, you idiot,” Daniel said, smacking his brother on the arm as he stretched and grabbed his coat.”

“Bet you I could find some.”

Paen only just kept himself from rolling his eyes. “I’m not brooding. I never brood.”

His brothers, all three of the rotters, laughed.

“Paen, you’re the world’s champion brooder,” Daniel said, stretching again and squinting at the clock.

“Aye, and a broodaholic, to boot. I’m thinking we need to do an intervention, or maybe get you into one of those twelve step programs. ‘Hi, my name is Paen, and I’m broody.’ Maybe that’ll help you lighten up a bit.” Finn grinned at his brother.

Paen stifled the urge to sock him in the arm. Finn was just as tall as he was, and although he had a good twenty pounds on his brother, it had been a near thing the last time he wrestled Finn…or any of them, for that matter.

Instead, Paen gave them all a narrow-eyed look, wondering for the umpteenth time how his fair-haired mother and dark-haired father could produce four sons who differed so greatly in appearance. He took after his father in looks with black hair that insisted on curling despite his efforts to make it lay flat, and grey eyes. Avery was every bit his blonde-haired, blue-eyed mother’s son, while Finn and Daniel were somewhere in between. “There is a vast difference between being concerned for Mum’s soul and brooding. What you see here is concern, with just a dash of worry thrown in to keep from going stale. There’s not a single shred of brood on me.”

“Here it comes,” Avery told Finn.

The latter nodded. “The bit about us lot being so lucky because we have our souls, and him being damned and all. Same old, same old.”

“Well, I am damned! You don’t have the slightest concept what it is to be in my position,” Paen argued. “You have no idea the torment, the pain-”

“-the agony of living each day without any hope, without love shared with a soulmate, without any chance at redemption,” his brothers all chanted together.

Paen growled. He loved his brothers, but there were times when he would pay good money to be an only child.

“And yet you claim you’re perfectly happy that way. We’ve told you that we’d move heaven and earth to help you find your Beloved,” Avery said. “Just say the word, and we’ll scour the length and breadth of Scotland for her. The whole of Britain, even!”

“I met a woman yesterday who you might like,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “I could ring her up before we leave-”

“No!” Paen said quickly, a little chill running through him. “I’ve had enough of Avery all but pimping for me-I’ve no need for any more of you bringing home women you just know will turn out to be my Beloved. I don’t need a woman to save me. I’m perfectly happy, in a completely non-brooding way, just as I am, and besides, I’m well on the way to locating the Simia Gestor Coda.”

“Oh, not that fairy story again,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s not a fairy story.”

“I know, I know,” Daniel said, holding up his hands. “This book you’re always going on about supposedly contains the details about the origins of Dark Ones, including a way to unmake the curse binding you guys.”

“Exactly. I just have to find it, and I will be able to lift the curse myself. Completely without the assistance of any interfering woman, thank you.”

“Paen, you’ve looked for the last twenty-five years for that manuscript-I think it’s time you admit it doesn’t exist,” Avery said. The others nodded. “I don’t know why you’re so bent on fighting the fact that you need a woman to save you. Women are nice! They are smooth, and they smell good, and god knows they do things to my body that make my eyes cross with bliss. You need to get off this high horse of ‘I’ll save myself’ and get with the program, brother. Find your Beloved, let her save you, and make lots of little Paens.”

Paen glared at his irresponsible brother. “Just because I can keep my dick in my pants and you can’t-”

“Oh, I can, it’s just a lot more fun out and about,” Avery answered, pausing to punch Finn in the shoulder until keys to a car were handed over. “Ta, mate. We’re off to this abbey of fun. I’ll call and let you know how many women I manage to find there, too.”

“Between the fast cars and faster women, you’re going to kill yourself one of these days,” Paen warned.

“One of the perks of being immortal, brother, is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want, and to hell with the consequences. You should try it sometime.”

A muscle in Paen’s jaw twitched. “One of us has to have some responsibility and keep things together while Mum and Dad are off.”

Avery rolled his eyes and left the sitting room. Daniel grabbed his jacket and followed after his brother, saying, “I’m with Av on this, Paen. You need to loosen up a bit, and let go of some of that responsibility you’re always harping on. I’ve got my mobile phone. I’ll give you a ring if we find anything.”

“Well?” Paen turned to his remaining brother. “Don’t tell me you’re going to pass up an opportunity to get in a few digs about how I need to ignore the castle, the family, and Mum’s eternal happiness and instead live like there’s no tomorrow.”

Finn grinned. “Could I pass up such a wonderful chance? All that repressed sexuality-what you really need is to fall in love with some delicious bird, f*ck your brains out, let her save you, and try out happy instead of gloomy.”

“Do you know how tiring it gets repeating that I don’t need a Beloved? Women I can, and do, have whenever I’m struck with the desire for sex. A female doesn’t need to bind herself to me to satisfy my sexual desires.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but here goes-Paen, you’re missing out on a whole world of pleasure by keeping yourself at an emotional distance from women. You might as well use slags for all the involvement you have with them. I know you equate feeling affection for a woman with a Beloved, but you know, you can actually like a woman you sleep with without her saving you. Maybe even love her a little, if you’re determined not to find your true better half.”

“I don’t have a better half,” Paen said, fighting the desire to punch something, anything. “I’m whole as I am. I might be in eternal torment, but love, souls, and emotional commitments are all overrated. If I didn’t know that for myself, all I’d have to do is look at you lot. Always falling in love with some woman or other, then moping around when they end up stomping all over your hearts-no thanks. If all you’re going to do is lecture me, you might as well go, too.”

“I was about to ask what you wanted me to do to help you,” Finn said with a grin.

“To find the statue?” Paen ran a hand through his hair, happy to change the subject of conversation. “You can’t.”

“Not technically, no. So what can I do to help you find it?”

Paen felt as if the weight of the world had descended upon his shoulders. “To be honest, I’ve no idea where to even start looking for it. I’ve never come across a mention of it in the family papers, and since Dad is completely incommunicado until someone tracks him down and forces a satellite phone into his hand, I’m at a loss as to where to begin searching. It could be in the castle, hidden somewhere. It could have been lost or stolen or sold over the years, and I’d have no way of knowing.”

“Hmm,” Finn said. “Sounds like we need some professional help.”

“What sort of professional help?” Paen asked as his brother went to the phone. “If it’s anything involving demons, it’s right out. We’re in enough trouble because of them.”

Finn dug around in his jeans pocket and pulled out a handful of miscellaneous items, extracting a blue sticky note from his keys and change. “Not a demon. I met a woman last week in Edinburgh, an underwear model-man, she had great tits, just how I like them, big enough for my hands but not fake looking-and she said her cousin was trained as a Diviner, and the two of them were just opening up a private detective business. I bet a Diviner could figure out where the statue is. I’ll give Clare a ring and get the cousin’s number.”

“Might as well,” Paen said glumly as he slumped down into a chair. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he wanted nothing more than to brood about the latest trial fate had dumped on him. As if things weren’t bad enough already… “It’s not like a Diviner could make things any worse.”

Chapter One

“What do you think of the sign?”

Clare set down a box of desk supplies and a bouquet of fresh cut flowers, and frowned. “Well, to be honest, Sam, I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but I don’t think the crow landing on your head this morning is a good omen. It means your life is about to go crisis central. But I’m here to help, and you know I’ll do what I can to keep you from going outright insane.”

“No…I meant the sign on the door.” I nodded to where a local sign painter was putting away her stencils and paints.

“Oh. Mmm.” Clare tipped her head and considered the freshly painted words on the upper half of the open office door. “Eye Scry, Samantha Cosse and Clare Bennet, Discreet Private Investigations. It’s nice, but I still think it’s a bit too strange. People are going to think we’re not normal private investigators.”

“We aren’t normal, Clare.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m as normal as they come.” She plucked a tulip from bouquet and went to the window, using her elbow to wipe a small clean patch on the grimy glass. “Isn’t it a lovely morning? “

I glanced out the window at the grey, sodden-looking sky, and shrugged as I arranged paper in my new printer/copier/fax machine. "It's a typical Scottish May: grey, cold, and wet."

"When I woke up this morning," Clare said dreamily, unconsciously striking an elegant pose that made her a star on the fashion runways, "the dew had kissed all the sweet little flowers just as if fairies had danced upon them with damp little slippers. Don't you think that's lovely? I thought that up all by myself."

"Very, um…." Clare blinked silver-tipped lashes at me. I relented under her hopeful expression. "Very poetic. But not terribly accurate, is it?"

She blinked again, her large blue eyes clouded with confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well…just look at you." I waved a hand toward her torso. "You're the opposite of short, sturdy, dark-haired me-you’re tall, lovely, elegant, and have that silver blonde hair that everyone seems to rave about, but you're hardly in a dancing on the dew-kissed flowers sort of form, are you? You'd squash the little buggers flat were you to try it in your human form."

She rolled her expressive eyes and bopped me on the arm with her tulip. Clare always had flowers with her-she couldn’t help it any more than my mother could. It was just part of their genetic makeup. "You're going to start that silly business again, and I won't listen to it, I simply won't listen to it."

I took her by both arms and shook her gently. "You're a faery, Clare. It's time you face up to that fact. You're a faery, your real name is Glimmerharp, and you were left with my aunt and uncle because your faery parents wanted you to have a better life than running around in wet shoes, stamping dew onto flowers. I doubt if they would have done so had they known that your idea of a better life is to parade up and down in scanty lingerie in front of a strangers with cameras, but that's neither here nor there. You are a faery, and the sooner you admit that, the happier everyone around you will be."

"I am not a faery; I am an underwear model."

"You're both."

"Oh!" She plucked a piece of the smooth red tulip's flower and popped it in her mouth. "You take that back!"

“I won’t,” I said calmly, releasing her to hook the printer up to the laptop that sat on the scarred and battered oak desk I’d claimed as my own. “It’s the truth, and you know it, even if you are in denial.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about denial!” she said, marching over to her desk, a trail of tulip blossoms gently drifting to the floor behind her. “You deny your heritage every chance you get.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, the mere thought of me being able to ignore who I was was beyond ridiculous. “There’s no way I could deny my parentage-not after growing up the only kid in my neighborhood whose mother is a bona fida poetry-spouting, pointy-eared, gonna live forever elf. Years of Keebler jokes made sure I knew just how different I was, and we won’t even go into what a mention of Lord of the Rings does to me. What I’ve never understood is how you can accept the fact that my mother is an elf, and yet insist that there are no such things as faeries.”

“I refuse to talk to you when you get in that mood,” Clare said, and picked up an empty milk jug she’d brought to serve as a vase. “I won’t let you ruin the excitement of the day with all that nonsense.”

“Excitement?” I looked around the small office as Clare left to fill the vase with water. The painter had toddled off, leaving the faint odor of acrylic paints behind her. Through the open door I could see a dark, dingy hallway that led to a couple of flats, and a shared bathroom.

“That’s not quite the word that comes to mind,” I said loud enough that Clare could hear me down the hall. “But never fear! A little elbow grease and some creative decorating courtesy of that thrift store you saw on the way in should do much to wipe out the years of neglect. I just wish Mila would come and get her boxes of sex toys.”

Clare’s muffled voice drifted into the room as I crawled under the desk to plug in the computer equipment. “You shouldn’t have told her she could keep her stock here.”

“I had a hard enough time persuading her to rent this office to me-ow!” I rubbed the back of my head where I cracked it on the underside of the desk. “Evidently her sex store is doing a tremendous amount of business and she needs all the storage space she can get. Besides, she knocked a hundred pounds off the rent just for us putting up with a few extra boxes.”

Clare’s answer was drowned out by the sound of running water. I scooted backwards under the desk, dragging with me the phone cord to plug in the new set of phones I’d purchased. “Regardless of the naughty toys, I don’t know how exciting this job is going to be to someone who spends time in Milan and Paris and Berlin being paid thousands of pounds to stand around and pout in her panties."

“It’s not nearly as exciting as you might think,” Clare said, coming back into the room. “That’s why I decided to go on hiatus for a year. My modeling batteries need to be recharged, and this job should do wonders for that.”

“Eh…OK.” I plugged the cord into the appropriate wall socket, and jumped violently when the phone above me rang loudly, causing me to whack my head on the desk a second time.

“Phone,” Clare said helpfully.

“Oh, thank you. I might have thought it was my umbrella ringing, otherwise.” I hunkered down under the desk rubbing my abused head.

“I’ll get it,” Clare said, hurrying over to her desk. “Your umbrella is ringing. Honestly, Sam! Your imagination! Good morning, Eye Scry, discreet private enquiries, this is Clare. How can I help?”

I crawled out from under my desk, wondering as I brushed off the dusty knees of my pants who was calling us. I’d only set up the phone lines the day before, and had given the number out to just one person other than Clare. It was probably just the phone company checking to see if the line worked. I turned on my laptop and sat down at my desk while Clare made little murmurs of encouragement to whomever was on the phone.

“I see. Well, I don’t believe that will be a problem, Mr. Race. My partner has a particular talent with finding lost objects. Oh, you did?” Clare looked at me, her eyes round. “Then perhaps it would be best if you talked to her yourself. Can you hold? Thank you.”

“Lost items?” I asked. “That’s not a client, is it?”

“Yes, it is. It’s a Mr. Owen Race. He’s a medieval specialist of some sort, and he wants us to find some sort of an antique book for him. But Sam-he says that Brother Jacob recommended you to him. I thought you were kicked out of the Order of Diviners?”

“I was, but Jake said he’d keep an ear out for me for anyone who might be able to use the services of a failed Diviner. Sounds like he found someone. Hello, this is Samantha Cosse. I understand you need some help locating an object?”

Like Clare’s, the man’s voice was English, very upper class, positively reeking of places like Eton and Cambridge and the BBC. It made me all the more aware of my flat, accentless (to my ears) Canadian speech. “Good morning, Miss Cosse. Yes, as I told your associate, I am seeking to locate a very rare medieval manuscript that was stolen from me recently-the Simia Gestor Coda is its name. I understand from Brother Jacob at the Diviner’s House that you studied there for several years, and have a good deal of experience in locating missing items?”

Oh dear. He wanted a Diviner, and I was anything but one. I’d have to let him know right away that I wasn’t what he thought I was. “I’ve had some luck locating missing items, yes. But if you are seeking the assistance of a true Diviner, Mr. Owen, I’m afraid you may have been misled. I did study at the Diviner’s House with the Order, but I was…well, to put it bluntly, I was kicked out before my novitiate was completed. Although I have been trained in elementary divination, I’m afraid I am unable to conduct the more advanced rituals.”

“I see. I appreciate such frankness, and can assure you that I have no need for the services of a professional Diviner. Brother Jacob recommended you to me because you apparently have a talent for locating items that goes beyond mere divination.”

I slumped back in my chair in relief. I hadn’t anticipated Jake sending me a customer despite his declarations that he would do all he could to help me, but now that I had bared the ugly truth in my past, I could focus on the job being offered. “I will be happy to put the full resources of my firm at your disposal,” I said. “Perhaps we can meet to discuss this further?”

“Excellent. I’m in Barcelona at the moment, but I would be happy to pay your airfare out here.”

I blinked back my surprise. “Er…I appreciate the offer, Mr. Race, but we are still in the process of setting up our business, and I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving all the remaining work to my partner.” I motioned to Clare and wrote he wants me to go to Barcelona on the notepad. Clare looked panicky. I’d had to promise her when we thought up the idea of the investigation agency that I would handle all of what she termed the “messy businessy stuff.”

“Sam, no,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry,” I mouthed, then said into the phone, “That’s very generous of you, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. However-” I raised my eyebrows in question. Clare nodded quickly. “However my partner would be available to fly to Barcelona. She would be very happy to stand in my place and discuss with you all the necessary details.”

“Erm…no, that won’t be necessary,” he said, sounding disappointed. I shook my head at Clare. “I will be returning to Edinburgh at the end of the week, so we can meet then.”

“I would be happy to get started on your project if you can give me the details over the phone,” I said in my most professional voice, opening a text document. “Why don’t you give me the specifics of the item that was stolen, and later you can fax me any insurance documents you have, as well as the police report.”

Twenty minutes later I hung up the phone and hit save on my document file.

“Well?” Clare asked, absently nibbling on a carnation. “Do we have a job?”

I smiled. “We are employed! Let fly the doves and all that.”

“Hurrah! I told you this was going to be exciting! Although I’m disappointed I won’t be going to Barcelona. Such a pretty city. So, we’re looking for a book?”

“Yes, some sort of medieval manuscript that was stolen. Evidently Mr. Race has quite a collection, and he didn’t notice the theft until he had ordered an inventory of his holdings a month ago. He’s going to have his housekeeper round up some information about the manuscript, but until then, we can get to work on the little info he gave me. He believes the manuscript could well have been taken by a rival collector.”

“Oooh. How thrilling! It’s like an art theft, only with a medieval book.”

“Mmm,” I said, gathering up my bag and jacket. “I’m going to go visit a couple of antique shops and see if I can’t get some info on who the big collectors are in Britain.”

“What would you like me to do?” Clare asked, chewing another bit of flower.

“You’d better stop eating those flowers, or you won’t have anything left but a vase full of stems,” I said at the door.

She shot me a look of pure outrage. “I do not eat flowers!”

I raised my eyebrows and looked at the half-eaten carnation in her hand. She glared at it for a minute as if it had magically appeared in her hand. “You’re a faery, Clare. No one else eats flowers but really hard-core vegetarians, and I’ve seen you wolf down a steak, so I know you’re not that. If you want to do something helpful, do an Internet search for me on the-” I consulted my notes. “-Simia Gestor Coda. With a name like that, it has to have some sort of a history. I’d like to know everything you can find out about its past. All Mr. Race told me was that it was written by a mage who was supposedly in Marco Polo’s service. Oh, also, pull up a list of the major antiquities dealers for England. It wouldn’t hurt to know who might be dealing in something like a rare antique manuscript.”

I spent the next couple of hours visiting various antique shops in and around the Royal Mile, the most famous street in all of Edinburgh. By the time I tottered into the last shop on my list, a small, dusty shop tucked away between a bookstore and a Gyro shop, I was feeling uninspired. The antique dealers were particularly loathe to talk about their clients, and none of them had heard of the Coda.

A little bell over the door jangled as I entered the shop. Like others of its ilk, this antiquities shop was filled to the rafters with statuary, objets d'art, stuffed animals, strange old mechanical pieces, books and illuminated manuscripts, and a myriad of other items whose use and purpose were shrouded in the distant reaches of the past. I browsed through the items, glancing periodically at a man I took to be the owner as he stood with his back to me in the doorway to another room, speaking to someone I couldn’t see.

“Shoot,” I said to myself as I glanced at my watch. I was three hours away from the office already, and I wanted to get back to help Clare. I stopped in front of a bookcase bearing a stuffed spider monkey, and sent yet another impatient look toward the man in the doorway. “I don’t have time for thiaaaaieeeeeee!”

My heart just about leaped out of my chest as the spider monkey I’d assumed was stuffed suddenly jumped from the bookcase to my shoulder. “Oh, man alive, you just scared a good ten years off me. Hello there, Mr. Monkey. Um…that is, I assume you're a mister. I can't tell what with that little sailor suit you're wearing. Do you belong here? Of course you do, what a stupid question. What else would a monkey be doing in an antiques shop? Would you mind asking your owner if he could talk to me for a few minutes? No? Drat. Well, doesn’t matter-you’ll do as an excuse to interrupt him.”

The monkey, evidently satisfied with his evil plan to give me a heart attack, leaped back onto the bookcase where he smoothed down the fur on his tail.

“Um…I can’t use you as an excuse unless you’re on my shoulder, so hop on…er…what’s your name?”

I reached out a tentative hand to stroke his arm. He didn't seem to mind being petted, so I gently touched the jeweled collar he wore around his neck. Tiny rivets spelled out a series of letters.

"B…E…P…well, hello there, Beppo."

The monkey stopped examining his tail and held out a rust-fingered hand. Stifling back a giggle at the dignified look on his little face, I carefully shook his hand. Satisfied, he returned to his grooming.

"You are one strange little monkey. All right, Beppo, hop on and let’s go interrupt your owner."

He dropped his tail and held out his hand again.

"Hee!" I shook his hand again. That completed, he picked up his tail.

"Beppo," I said again, unable to resist. Down went the tail, out went his hand.

"OK, cute but could well become annoying. Here, if you don’t mind-” I hoisted the monkey off the bookcase and set him onto my shoulder. His tail wrapped around my neck as he clung with one hand to my ponytail “Groovy. Now let’s go pretend that I just found you in a dangerous situation and see if I can’t have a quick word with your owner before toddling on my merry-holy crap! What is it with everyone trying to startle me into an early grave?”

A being popped up in front of me. I mean, literally popped up right out of the floor. All my supernatural senses went into high tingle mode at the sight of what appeared to be a short, middle-aged man

Only he wasn’t a man. I didn’t exactly know what he was, but he wasn’t human.

“Hello,” I said politely, feeling it was better to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’d come across a few different types of beings in my time with the Diviners, and although only a couple of them had turned out to be from the wrong side of the tracks, metaphorically speaking, some who looked bad had turned out to be quite nice. “That was an impressive entrance. Was it for me in particular, or are you just a fan of antiques?”

The man looked from Beppo to me. “You bear the monkey.”

“Beppo?” The monkey promptly held out his hand. I gave it a little two-fingered shake. "He jumped on me earlier, but I was just taking him back to his-what’s this?"

The man shoved a shoebox-sized package at me.

“I am charged to give it to you. It is yours now,” the man said, then without another word, dissolved into black smoke that sank down into the floor.