College Grads Flock to Farms

Robin Wiesner, a Brown University graduate, cools off in the spray from a sprinkler as she walks with Luke Donahue at Wolf Pine Farm in Alfred on Wednesday. Since starting her apprenticeship at the farm April 1, she says she has found working and living there intensely satisfying. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

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Maine's organic growers attract more than 200 applicants to work and learn this season.

Beth Quimby
June 5, 2009 - Portland Press Herald (Maine)

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Just three days into her summer apprenticeship at Wolf Pine Farm, Elizabeth Hartsig, 27, appeared to be adjusting quickly to her first experience as an organic farmhand, despite a sunburn.

Hartsig, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs and has a master's degree in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis, eagerly demonstrated what to do about the cutworms that have been showing up in the Swiss chard.

"You pick them up and rip them in half," she said.

Pest management is just one of the lessons Hartsig has learned since leaving a teaching job in Atlanta to spend the summer at the 50-acre farm owned by Amy Sprague and her husband, Tom Harms.

Hartsig must work the fields, tend to 80 chickens and help with the couple's 5-year-old and 3-year-old daughters.

Water must be hand-pumped and warmed via a solar panel, and wood for the stove must be split and stacked.

In exchange, Hartsig gets to live rent-free in an off-the-grid cabin with the other two apprentices. She gets four free meals a week, all of the farm's vegetables she can eat, a week's vacation and $700 a month.

Hartsig said she couldn't be happier.

"It is an incredibly beautiful place. I am very pleased to be here," she said.

Hartsig is one of hundreds of people spending the growing season at one of Maine's organic farms.

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which links apprentices with farmers, has been flooded with applications, which normally run about 70 a year. This year, 230 people applied for positions at the 85 farms that participate.

Organic farmers around southern Maine said they have seen a big increase in inquiries about farming positions this year, including people who travel the world, stopping off to work for a couple of weeks through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms network, known as WWOOF.

Rachel Seemar, co-owner with Bethanny Peters of the Wildroot Farm in Kennebunk, said this year's apprentice heard about their horse-powered farm by word of mouth while hiking around Puerto Rico last winter.

Now she is happily residing in the apprentice's quarters - a tent on a raised platform - and learning how to drive workhorses for a $300 monthly stipend.

How much the recession and dreary job market play into the surge of interest is unclear. But for Andrew Marshall, educational programs coordinator at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, the increase in apprenticeship applications reflects an explosion of interest in locally grown food and sustainable agriculture.

The fact that Maine's organic farming association is one of the country's oldest and one of only a few with an organized and staffed apprentice program might be responsible as well.

The apprentices tend to be educated, single adults in their 20s or 30s who have read all of the requisite books, such as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," but have little or no hands-on knowledge of food production.

"Frankly, most of the people who are interested don't have much experience with agriculture or even rural living," Marshall said.

Joey Listro, 22, is just a few college credits shy of graduating from the University of Southern Maine. He said his parents back in Connecticut were surprised when he announced his plan to spend his summer working at Rippling Waters Organic Farm in Standish.

"My parents were like, 'Wait a second, you are going to be a farmer? What were those four years of college education for?' " he said.

Organic farmers who take on apprentices rely heavily on them as a source of labor, and also take their responsibilities as teachers seriously.

Seth Kroeck of Crystal Spring Community Farm in Brunswick hands out notebooks with readings on agriculture to the four apprentices he takes on each year to help raise 125 lambs and 11 acres of vegetables for 225 customers who have bought shares of the harvest.

The apprentices have the choice of an apartment with all the amenities or a 1963 camper for their living quarters. They earn $800 a month and a small meal stipend.

"We pay at the top of the scale, but we are very selective," Kroeck said.

This year, the Crystal Spring group includes students or recent graduates from Brown University, St. Lawrence University, the University of New Hampshire and Prescott College.

Kroeck said that with all of that education, the level of discussion is high, which is important to him.

"Because we spend 60 hours a week together," he said.

Sprague, who got her own start in farming as an apprentice, said she has never had any of her helpers drop out, despite the long hours and hard work.

Robin Wiesner, 33, is a Brown graduate who majored in geology. She started her apprenticeship at Wolf Pine Farm on April 1 and said she quickly discovered why people don't leave.

The farm life is intensely satisfying, she said.

Although this is her first experience living outside a city, Wiesner said she relishes the dark and quiet at night. And she discovered that she had a real talent behind the wheel of a tractor.

"I'm in love with this place and this family," she said.

What Obama's "socialism" – the one all those right-wing nuts and true believers in the free market keep freaking out about – looks like.

- CommonDreams.org

Rumsfeld to 'face difficulties' over Guantanamo: UN expert

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May 3, 2009 - AFP

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GENEVA — Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld could soon be in trouble for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday.

"In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties," Leandro Despouy, who is Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.

A US bipartisan Senate report released late last year found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody.

It said Rumsfeld authorised harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at the Guantanamo prison, although he ruled them out a month later.

Despouy said the "strong resistance" put forward by the former US administration to current US president Barack Obama's decision to close the detention centre has nothing to do with the officially cited reason of "national security" considerations.

Rather they are fearful that they may be taken to task once the detention centre is closed, said Despouy.

The UN expert called on the international community to "support" Obama's decision to close the prison.

"If we act in the perspective of human rights, we should support the efforts of those who want these responsibilities to be established," he added, referring to the harsh interrogation techniques used on the detainees.

He said the international community should help the US by taking in former detainees.

Obama has said he would close the notorious "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by January 2010 and is seeking host states for up to 60 of the 245 inmates.

The Obama administration however faces a series of legal and political hurdles at home in its efforts to close the base, with strong opposition against releasing detainees into the United States.

In January, the UN's special torture rapporteur called on the US to pursue Rumsfeld and former president George W. Bush for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks broadcast on Germany's ZDF television.

He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

Medical bills play a role in 62% of bankruptcies, study says

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A study by Harvard researchers showing an increase in bankruptcies in which medical bills were a contributing cause could give Obama's bid for healthcare reform a boost.

Lisa Girion
June 4, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

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President Obama's push for healthcare reforms gets a boost today from a new study by Harvard University researchers that shows a sizable increase over six years in bankruptcies caused in part by ever-higher medical expenses.

The study found that medical bills, plus related problems such as lost wages for the ill and their caregivers, contributed to 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007. On the campaign trail last year and in the White House this year, Obama had cited an earlier study by the same authors showing that such expenses played a part in 55% of bankruptcies in 2001.

Medical insurance isn't much help, either. About 78% of bankruptcy filers burdened by healthcare expenses were insured, according to the survey, to be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine.

"Health insurance is not a guarantee that illness won't bankrupt you," said Steffie Woolhandler, one of the authors, a practicing physician and an associate medical professor at Harvard.

"Lots of health insurance comes with big co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services," she said. "So you can be insured and still end up with big bills. At the same time, even if you have good insurance through your employer, you can lose it if you get sick and can't work."

Most people who filed medical-related bankruptcies "were solidly middle class before financial disaster hit," the study says. Two-thirds were homeowners, and most had gone to college.

The study does not suggest that medical expenses were the sole cause for these bankruptcies, but it does identify them as a contributing factor. The increase in such filings occurred despite a 2005 law aimed at making it more difficult for individuals to seek court protection from creditors.

And the latest study probably understates the current burden of medical expenses because it is based on bankruptcies filed before the recession hit.

The findings by a team of Harvard researchers from the law and medical schools are expected to help fuel the debate over what type of healthcare system is right for the U.S.

In a letter Wednesday, Obama made another push for a healthcare overhaul, reiterating his concern about the financial burden the current system places on families and businesses.

"Soaring healthcare costs make our current course unsustainable," he wrote in the letter to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who are leading efforts to develop healthcare legislation. "It is unsustainable for our families, whose spiraling premiums and out-of-pocket expenses are pushing them into bankruptcy and forcing them to go without the checkups and prescriptions they need."

Momentum has been growing in Congress for healthcare reform. Such change can't come soon enough for Mary McCurnin.

She and her husband, Ron, filed for bankruptcy and nearly lost their home near Sacramento after a series of medical crises, including her breast cancer and his open-heart surgery. Ron, 63, lost his insurance coverage when the company providing it lost its California license after paying 10% of his hospital bills. Mary, 59, managed to get on Medi-Cal after they "went broke."

Despite the ordeal, she said, the self-employed illustrators feel fortunate that they survived and managed to hang on to their home. "The healthcare industry is killing people," she said. "There's no other way to put it. We just got lucky."

Linda and Jeffrey Somach pay $800 a month for health insurance. But the Staten Island, N.Y., couple filed for bankruptcy a month ago when their out-of-pocket medical expenses surpassed $40,000.

Linda Somach, a psychologist, can earn $80,000 a year if she sees patients full time. But she had to scale back to care for Jeffrey, who has terminal brain cancer. That reduced their income. At the same time, she is constantly getting bills for out-of-network charges, deductibles and medical care that their insurance doesn't cover.

"We put so much of the medical stuff on credit cards," she said. "My patients do it too."

The study suggests that such plights are routine.

Woolhandler is on the board of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that advocates for a single-payer system, in which government, not private insurers, brokers healthcare. She said the study showed that private insurers had failed in their core mission: protecting consumers from financial ruin in the event of a medical crisis.

"We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the uninsured isn't enough. Reform also needs to help families who already have insurance by upgrading their coverage and assuring they never lose it."

A spokesman for private insurers said the industry recognized that uncovered and expensive medical care imposed a burden on families and businesses. But he said that private insurers were in a better position to rein in spiraling medical costs and that the industry had a plan for protecting people from being forced into bankruptcy over medical expenses not covered by insurance.

"In fact, in our comprehensive reform proposal we recommended in December that Congress should look at an out-of-pocket spending cap and a system of tax credits for low-income people," Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

"If an individual's health expenses reached a certain level, there could be tax credits or other assistance to help those individuals," he said.

The study found that medical-related bankruptcy filers with private insurance reported average medical bills of $17,749. By comparison, people who filed for bankruptcy without insurance reported average medical expenses of $26,971.

Individuals with diabetes and neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, had the highest medical bills, averaging $26,971 for those with insurance and $34,167 for those without. Hospital bills were the largest expense for about half the families that filed health-related bankruptcies.

Good Times

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Brian Morton 
June 3, 2009 - City Paper (Baltimore)

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I can't help but smile.

Sure, we're nowhere out of the weeds yet. Jobs are still hemorrhaging, gas prices have started sliding upward for the summer, North Korea is lighting matches next to their underground atomic bonfire project, the jury's still out on all the bailout money we've thrown at Wall Street, and the automakers and the entire state of California look like they're next at the payout window. But still, there remain things to laugh about.

For starters, there's the Manny, Moe, and Jack of fat, florid white politicians helming what's left of the Republican Party: Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Newt Gingrich. The three of them are busy trying to drag America back into either the '90s (Gingrich), the '50s (Limbaugh), or the Dark Ages (Cheney), and none of them realize the long-lasting damage they are doing to the Republican Party. And you know what? Let them.

When President Obama named Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court, you would think that we hadn't had more than 200 uninterrupted years of white men on the Supreme Court, to hear Limbaugh howl about it. The list of Republicans lining up to claim that Sotomayor, a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton, was an "affirmative action" pick, is getting longer than Michael Steele's efforts to be listed in UrbanDictionary.com.

It didn't take long for Limbaugh to call Sotomayor a "reverse racist" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean), Gingrich to tweet that she is a "Latina woman racist," or Washington pundit and GOP water-carrier Fred Barnes to imply that she is "not the smartest." It never fails to amaze how the most privileged section of American society can get its undies in a bunch the second someone not of its number is tapped for a post of authority where he or she might have some influence over "the clique."

Black leaders in America are quite used to the mainstream media running up to them and asking them to "disavow" any idiotic statement made by another black leader; for a while, there was a cottage industry for this any time Louis Farrakhan opened his mouth. This, however, does not work in reverse. One of the closest people to an actual national leader the Republicans have right now is Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who this past weekend was the sole guest on CNN's State of the Union with John King.

When King asked McConnell if he'd repudiate the words of Gingrich and Limbaugh, McConnell answered, "Look. I've got a big job to do dealing with 40 Senate Republicans and trying to advance the nation's agenda, and better things to do than be the speech police over people who have their views about a very important appointment."

So while we're laughing, we might want to have a little sympathy for McConnell trying to ride herd on his shrinking caucus. Because if you think about it, if his conservative colleagues continue to smear a member of the fastest growing segment of the American populace, in a few years, he might have even fewer senators of whom to keep track.

Lastly, we can now be entertained by the squirming of the Fox News conservatives who got up in arms about the Department of Homeland Security report on violent right-wing domestic extremism. Despite years of eliminationist rhetoric on the right from the grass roots at gun shows to mainstream talk radio hosts like Michael Savage and authors like Ann Coulter, conservatives manufactured a few days of outrage that the government might actually put together a cold-eyed assessment of the chances that someone might take it all seriously. DHS also put out a report on left-wing extremism, but it's pretty obvious after the last few months that there is virtually no comparison between the two.

Look at the record: Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber, was not a liberal. Timothy McVeigh was not a liberal. Randall Terry was not a liberal. Richard Poplawski, who shot three police officers in Pittsburgh back in April, claiming Obama wants to take his guns? Probably not a liberal. Jim David Adkisson, who opened fire in a church in Tennessee last year after leaving behind a manifesto saying he wanted to kill "every Democrat in the Senate and House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book"--I'm guessing he didn't give money to public radio and subscribe to Mother Jones. And it's a safe bet that Scott Roeder, accused of killing Dr. George Tiller in church on Sunday, isn't a liberal either.

So watching the hypocrites on Fox try to wriggle away from the televised fainting fits they had barely a month ago now that right-wing domestic terrorism has once again reared its ugly head might be worth a few chuckles.

Let's be real here: Times are tough all over, and it's quite likely the grimmest might be yet to come. General Motors is bankrupt, nobody knows what's up with Pakistan's nukes, and let's not forget that Osama bin Laden is still somewhere out there waving George W. Bush's "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

But entertainment is entertainment, and you've gotta find it where you can. And if you can't laugh at the problems of the Right, who can you laugh at?

Maryland's Donna Edwards: Emerging Leader, Liberal Maverick

Donna Edwards at the Take Back America conference in 2008 (photo by OurFuture.org)

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State's first black congresswoman opposes Obama war-funding plan

Paul West
June 4, 2009 - The Baltimore Sun

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When Congress gives President Barack Obama more funds later this month for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, only one Maryland lawmaker is expected to dissent: Democratic Rep. Donna F. Edwards.

Edwards believes the president is taking the U.S. in the wrong direction in Afghanistan. She argues that Obama has no plan for winning and no strategy for getting out.

Congress "failed" its responsibility to challenge President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, Edwards said in an interview. "And we can't make that mistake with President Obama."

After less than a year in the job, the first black woman elected to Congress from Maryland has stamped herself as the most liberal member of the state's congressional delegation. She is also building a national following on the left.

"We see her as an emerging leader, and I think she will really be a dynamic force in the Congress," said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, which gave her a prominent place on the agenda at the liberal group's conference in Washington this week.

It's a heady ascent for the 50-year-old lawyer from Prince George's County, who had never held public office until last June. But standing up to a highly popular president from her own party - one whose margin of victory in her district was larger than any other in the state - seems right in character.

Edwards got her start in politics as a local activist, fighting plans for the $2 billion National Harbor project on the Potomac. The developer eventually agreed to her demand for residential housing at the hotel-retail complex.

The single mother of a college-age son then took on Rep. Al Wynn, her one-time boss as a Maryland state senator. Running to his left and attacking his support for the war in Iraq, she nearly upset the veteran Democrat in the 2006 primary; last year, she finished him off.

Like others on the left, Edwards is unhappy with some of Obama's early pragmatic decisions, such as withholding photos of Abu Ghraib detainee abuses (releasing them would be "part of how we reach the rest of the world," she contends) or taking a single-payer health care option off the table before congressional negotiations even started ("not helpful").

"I think at his core the president is one of us," Edwards told activists during a panel discussion at the conference. By bringing pressure from the left, liberals can "open up the political space for this president to do what his gut wants him to do anyway."

Three weeks ago, Edwards took the House floor in opposition to Obama's Afghanistan policy.

The president, she said, would "commit our servicemen and women to a war without end."

She was the only Marylander to vote against Obama's $96.7 million war funding request, which gained initial House approval on a bipartisan vote of 368-60, with 51 Democratic liberals opposed. A final vote is expected Friday.

Her "no" vote put her at odds with some on the left whose enthusiasm for Obama outweighs their doubts about his war plan. Moveon.org, which gained power as an antiwar group and was an influential part of an online coalition that backed Edwards, did nothing on the war funding vote, for example.

The hawkish Washington Post editorial board criticized her, but Edwards said she had given the issue considerable study and traveled to Afghanistan just days before opposing Obama's request.

They "may have called me naive for that" vote, she told the liberal activists. "But if we don't ask the questions now, we'll be asking ourselves these questions ten years from now, I guarantee that."

Another foreign-policy move that generated criticism was her refusal to support a measure that recognized Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas and blamed the Islamist movement for casualties in Gaza Strip fighting that flared in late December 2008. The Jan. 9 resolution was approved 390-5, with Edwards and 20 others voting "present."

It was "the wrong resolution at the wrong time," and not in the best interest of resolving the crisis, she explained after the vote. But Politico reported this week that Edwards had alienated some in the Jewish community in the Washington suburbs, who question the depth of her support for Israel.

"Look, I voted 'present' on a resolution that was apparently very important to the Jewish lobby. And so, obviously, that's going to result in an expression of, whatever, concern and questions," Edwards said during the interview in her House office.

She calls Israel "a really important ally" and says she's a strong supporter of the Jewish state. But "even with allies and partners, it's important for the United States also to stake out our own security interests and work with our allies and partners on those."

Edwards recently came back from a six-day trip to Israel, sponsored by the nonpartisan New America Foundation, that included a visit to the Gaza Strip. She said she backs Obama's efforts to secure a Mideast peace, including his call for a freeze on the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

In another foray into foreign policy politics, she was one of five members of Congress arrested and taken into custody in late April outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington in a protest against that government's human rights record in Darfur.

Her involvement raised questions about what kind of representative Edwards intended to be: a gadfly or a workhorse, a bomb-thrower or a serious inside player?

"I want to do what's right by people in my congressional district and in the country," she said. "I think people, at this early stage ... would describe me as somebody who's really thoughtful and careful and who does her homework."

At this early stage, some Democratic activists also describe the ambitious newcomer as a future statewide candidate, one with significant potential in party politics.

"She's a true believer," which would be an advantage in a Democratic primary contest, said Eddie Eitches, president of an American Federation of Government Employees local.

Edwards admits that she doesn't see "congresswoman" as the last job title on her professional resume. But she laughs off speculation about a run some day for the Senate.

"Oh, gosh," she responded and, referring to herself in the third person, added that "she's going to do her job in the United States Congress, is what she's going to do."

That, and move soon into a new home - a luxury National Harbor condo that she fought to make part of the waterfront development.