From the NY Times:
There's a Catch: Jobs
By BOB HERBERT

The president tells us the economy is accelerating, and the statistics seem to bear him out. But don't hold your breath waiting for your standard of living to improve. Bush country is not a good environment for working families.

In the real world, which is the world of families trying to pay their mortgages and get their children off to college, the economy remains troubled. While the analysts and commentators of the comfortable class are assuring us that the president's tax cuts and the billions being spent on Iraq have been good for the gross domestic product, the workaday folks are locked in a less sanguine reality.

It's a reality in which:

• The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by three million in the past two years.

• The median household income has fallen for the past two years.

• The number of dual-income families, particularly those with children under 18, has declined sharply.

The administration can spin its "recovery" any way it wants. But working families can't pay their bills with data about the gross domestic product. They need the income from steady employment. And when it comes to employment, the Bush administration has compiled the worst record since the Great Depression.

The jobs picture is far more harrowing than it is usually presented by the media. Despite modest wage increases for those who are working, the unemployment rate is 6.1 percent, which represents almost nine million people. Millions more have become discouraged and left the labor market. And there are millions of men and women who are employed but working significantly fewer hours than they'd like.

Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has taken a look at the hours being worked by families, rather than individuals. It's a calculation that gets to the heart of a family's standard of living.

The declines he found were "of a magnitude that's historically been commensurate with double-digit unemployment rates," he said. It was not just that there were fewer family members working. The ones who were employed were working fewer hours.

According to government statistics, there are nearly 4.5 million people working part-time because they have been unable to find full-time work. In many cases, as the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas noted in a recent report, the part-time worker is "earning far less money than his or her background and experience warrant — i.e. a computer programmer working at a coffee shop."

Economists expect some modest job creation to occur over the next several months. But there's a "just in time for the election" quality to the current economic surge, and even Republicans are worried that the momentum may not last. The president has played his tax-cut card. The spending on Iraq, most Americans fervently hope, will not go on indefinitely. And President Bush's own Treasury secretary is talking about an inevitable return to higher interest rates.

Where's the jobs creation miracle in this dismal mix?

Meanwhile, these are some of the things working (and jobless) Americans continue to face:

• Sharply increasing local taxes, including property taxes.

• Steep annual increases in health care costs.

• Soaring tuition costs at public and private universities.

Families are living very close to the edge economically. And this situation is compounded, made even more precarious, by the mountains of debt American families are carrying — mortgages, overloaded credit cards, college loans, etc.

The Bush administration has made absolutely no secret of the fact that it is committed to the interests of the very wealthy. Leona Helmsley is supposed to have said that "only the little people pay taxes." The Bush crowd has turned that into a national fiat.

A cornerstone of post-Depression policy in this country has been a commitment to policies aimed at raising the standard of living of the poor and the middle class. That's over.

When it comes to jobs, taxes, education and middle-class entitlement programs like Social Security, the message from the Bush administration couldn't be clearer: You're on your own.

From stltoday.com:
Maybe Limbaugh will champion rehab for all addicts now
By Bill McClellan

In this space last week, I discussed the allegations that Rush Limbaugh was a
drug addict. At the time, there were published reports that he was hooked on
Oxycontin, sometimes referred to as "hillbilly heroin."

"If that turns out be the case, you can be sure we'll be hearing stories about
personal problems of one sort or another that led the talk-show host to get
involved with the drugs," I wrote. "The addiction will be discussed as a
medical problem."

Which is exactly what drug addiction is, I wrote. Then I described some
dead-end fellows at the courthouse for whom addiction is not a medical problem,
but a crime.

I received a lot of angry e-mails. That wasn't surprising. Limbaugh has a large
audience, and his faithful listeners are fed up with the liberal media. They
were particularly fed up last week because their guy had been forced to resign
from his role as "intelligent fan" on a football show. Now I was trying to
compare Limbaugh with a bunch of lowlifes at the courthouse. It was just the
sort of thing one might expect from a liberal.

Truth is, I don't consider myself a very good liberal, but I am certainly no
ditto-head. I've listened to Limbaugh's show just enough to know that I don't
like his style. Constant ridicule is not my idea of entertainment. That has
nothing to do with politics. If James Carville had a radio show, I wouldn't
listen to it, either.

So I wasn't listening Friday when Limbaugh announced that he was, in
fact, a drug addict. He mentioned an investigation, and he said he was going
into rehab. That sounds like something a good lawyer would advise a client to
do, and Limbaugh has hired one of the best. In an act of harmonic convergence,
Limbaugh has retained Roy Black, who once defended William Kennedy Smith.

Most of the drug addicts I write about have public defenders, who are, usually,
fine lawyers, but awfully busy. That's not to say that they wouldn't recommend
their clients check into rehab, but that is seldom a possibility. We spend our
money chasing these addicts down, and prosecuting them, and then warehousing
them. In the last three years, we've opened three new prisons in Missouri.
Rehab? No money.

In his statement Friday, Limbaugh blamed his addiction on back and neck pain.
Fair enough. A lot of fellows I know have had back pain, and it can be brutal.
But the guys at the courthouse, they've got pain, too. Their problems are like
background noise that never goes away. Except, maybe, when they're high. They
don't have maids to go out and score hillbilly heroin for them. They go out on
the streets looking for the real thing. Or, more often, they opt for a rock of
crack cocaine. It's cheap and effective. Maybe they sell a couple of rocks to
get one for free.

They get caught, and their addiction is not a medical condition. It's a crime.
People like me think it shouldn't be. Legalize drugs, we say. If you want to be
a crackhead, be one. We can't stop you, anyway.

Some people dismiss our arguments, but still take pity on the crackheads.
Liberals, of course. They argue that the penalties for crack, a drug favored by
the poor, are substantially higher than are the penalties for the drugs favored
by our wealthier citizens.

That argument has not carried much weight with conservatives. Limbaugh, for
instance, has ridiculed it. You can be sure that his enemies will be pointing
out that he has maintained that the answer to any disparity in penalties is not
to go soft on the crackheads, but be tougher with the other law breakers.

He might still believe that. He might demand a long prison term if he's charged
with a crime, but he wouldn't need a Roy Black to make that demand. I suspect
Limbaugh is on our side now, and that he understands it makes no sense to send
drug addicts to prison. I hope he understands that the same argument should
apply to his fellow addicts of whom I so often write.

"[T]hose who claim to care about the well-being of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce, pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests... [W]hen non-vegetarians say that 'human problems come first' I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals."

Peter Singer
Animal Liberation, 1990

From the Phoenix New Times:
The Veal Deal
Farm animal activist Kari Nienstedt just says no to beating up barnyard pals
BY ROBRT L. PELA

Maybe she read Charlotte's Web one too many times as a kid. Maybe she got a bad slice of veal shank. Whatever the reason, Kari Nienstedt is devoted to saving cute little farm animals (and big, ugly farm animals) from being mistreated on their way to slaughter. Kari's the Arizona spokesperson for Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection group, and if she had it her way, our only interaction with a pig would involve bringing him flowers on his birthday. As she and her fellow farm animal activists gear up for the annual Phoenix Walk for Farm Animals on October 11, Kari joined me to discuss life without meat, turkey adoption, and why milk is murder.

New Times: So you're a farm animal rights activist. What kind of person does this sort of work?

Kari Nienstedt: Anyone with a conscience. It's a matter of becoming educated about farm animal cruelty and then acting on it. A lot of people don't put much thought into where food comes from, but once you start investigating and you understand what goes on behind the scenes, you have to take action to alleviate the suffering.

NT: How is it that we never think about cute little barnyard faces when we eat steaks?

Nienstedt: There's a lot of money spent on encouraging us not to think about where the meat was before it showed up on that little Styrofoam tray. We've even been given a language that keeps us from thinking about how we're eating flesh: We call it "beef" when it's really a cow. It's "pork," not a pig.

NT: I'm guessing you're a vegetarian.

Nienstedt: Right. I found out about the process called factory farming, which involves confinement and terrible amounts of cruelty, and I went vegetarian almost immediately. Three years later I went vegan, which eliminates the other animal products from your diet.

NT: Are farmers just plain evil?

Nienstedt: People who work in slaughterhouses aren't necessarily bad people. They love their pets, and their families. But they've become desensitized; trained to think of the stuff on their plates as something other than an individual. It's some sort of product, not an individual who can feel pain or fear.

NT: But they're farm animals! They're there to provide meat or to produce milk!

Nienstedt: The animals would disagree with you. They have every right to live free from suffering, every right to their own bodily integrity. They have the right to not be murdered. There's a huge difference between growing plants and growing animals for food. Plants don't have a central nervous system; they're not capable of feeling emotions. Animals do.

NT: Is that what it comes down to? A head of lettuce doesn't have a central nervous system, and so there's no cruelty involved in eating it?

Nienstedt: Pretty much. If the being can suffer, it's up to us to make sure that it doesn't.

NT: Should we just wait until animals die of natural causes, and then eat them?

Nienstedt: I guess if you really needed meat that bad, you could do that. But many would argue that you can live more healthily without meat. It's an easier solution to work away from a meat-centered diet than to figure out a way to convince factory farmers to be kind to sheep.

NT: You don't eat eggs or cheese. But is it really harmful to the animals when they lay eggs or give milk?

Nienstedt: Actually, it is. I mean, there's no moral dilemma in having a pet chicken and eating her eggs, although it's kind of gross. But with cows, there's a certain amount of cruelty. Cows are kept impregnated, which keeps them producing milk, and then after the mother gives birth, the baby is taken away so that it won't drink her milk. The female calves are put back into the milk industry, and the males become veal. The dairy and veal industries are inseparable, and so a great amount of suffering is caused by the milk industry -- more than steak or chicken. Sorry.

NT: Do you guys just call the cops on Farmer John when there's blatant, documented farm animal abuse?

Nienstedt: No. Farm animals are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act. Turkeys and chickens are also exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act. So pretty much anything goes with farm animals.

NT: The Humane Slaughter Act?

Nienstedt: It requires that animals be stunned before they're killed. Which is difficult to enforce when you're talking about 10 billion animals a year.

NT: But domesticated animals are protected.

Nienstedt: If you did to a dog what is routinely done to farm pigs today, you'd be put in jail for it. But you can do whatever you want to farm animals.

NT: I'm opposed to animal abuse, too. But is there really a humane way to raise animals for meat?

Nienstedt: Well, there's a lot of talk about free-range chicken. But free-range animals suffer some of the same cruelties, because there are no standard guidelines for free-ranging. The only difference is that the chickens are supposed to be given a certain amount of time outside. But they can still be kept in pens; they can still be de-beaked; they're still slaughtered under the same horrible conditions. Chicken warehouses often have 25,000 chickens in them, so it's impossible to ensure humane treatment for that many animals.

NT: Wait a minute. Did you say "de-beaked"?

Nienstedt: De-beaked. Five chickens are usually kept in a 14-inch-square pen, and they just sort of go nuts. They get stressed out and start attacking themselves or their pen mates. In order to minimize the loss, chicken farmers often slice off the tips of the chicken's beaks so they're blunt and can't pierce the skin.

NT: Okay. Stop. Enough. So you're saying that farm animal rights activism is about making sure the animals live full lives before they're slaughtered.

Nienstedt: It's really about how you can live your life without contributing to suffering, without harming animals and causing them pain. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but in the meantime, it would be better if farm animals were treated nicely.

NT: But is a chicken really sitting there thinking, "God, my life really sucks. I have to share my pen, and eat this shitty grain, and then some asshole's going to cut my head off"?

Nienstedt: No. But they're aware they're being tortured. When you get to meet an animal, one-on-one, you get to see that they do have personalities. I met a chicken, and she had a sense of humor! But she was being tortured. Factory farm animals are in a constant state of torture. It's really horrible.

NT: But for every head of cattle that you save from cow abuse, there are millions that don't get rescued. So what's the point?

Nienstedt: Not millions, billions. Ten billion farm animals are slaughtered every year in the United States alone. About eight billion of those are chickens and turkeys. Those sorts of staggering numbers are why you see so much burnout in the farm animal rights activist community. These issues are so overwhelming.

NT: Did you just say the phrase "burnout in the farm animal rights activist community"?

Nienstedt: Yes. It's a big problem, and there's no organization in place to address it. It happens when you start thinking about how many people on the planet eat meat, and how your family doesn't understand your position, and pretty soon you're depressed and ready to go back to eating meat.

NT: What's all this about turkey adoption?

Nienstedt: Well, you can sponsor a turkey at Farm Sanctuary. You're not actually taking him home with you; it's a Thanksgiving program where you send us money, and we send you a photograph of the turkey and his name and a little background on him. The money pays for his feed and care during his stay at Farm Sanctuary.

NT: Or so we're told. I visited adoptaturkey.org, and read about Lydia the hugging turkey, who likes to give turkey hugs to shelter visitors, and Megan the Cuddling turkey, who gives turkey kisses. But I still wonder what Thanksgiving dinner would be like without a pile of dark meat.

Nienstedt: Well, there are substitutes, like Unturkey and Tofurkey, but you're right, we tend to think of the holiday as being about eating turkey.

NT: Excuse me. Tofurkey?

Nienstedt: It's really good! You should try it.

NT: I promise I will. So, you guys operate farm animal sanctuaries. Is this a place where goats can go to recover from being fed the wrong kind of garbage by Farmer John?

Nienstedt: Not entirely. We go to slaughterhouses and go to the dead piles and look for movement among the rotting bodies. We oftentimes find live animals, and we take them back to Farm Sanctuary and rehabilitate them and they either live out their natural lives there or we adopt them out.

NT: If I were a goat, and I went to Farm Sanctuary, would there be turndown service? Instead of a mint on my pillow, would there be a tin can?

Nienstedt: No, but it's really great there. The pigs get to roll in mud, and the cattle get to graze, and the ducks get to run up a hill. The only real trauma there is when one of the animals gets adopted out, and then the other animals get sort of sad.

NT: Farm animal adoption? Do you place sheep with inner-city kids?

Nienstedt: No. In order to adopt, you have to have farmland, and you have to be vegan, and you have to be committed to unusual pets. Chickens and ducks and pigs are funny and moody, and Farm Sanctuary is a great place to meet them and discover that they have these great personalities. We host "pignics" where you can meet pigs and give them belly rubs. And I promise you, once you get to know a pig, you'll never think of him as ham again.