The Dallas, Texas college, which was founded in 1872, recently abandoned its football program and converted the field into a working organic farm maintained by the students themselves.

The metamorphosis was the idea of Quinn president Michael Sorrell, whose goal was to teach agriculture to students in an urban community that, due to the dearth of supermarkets in the area, has difficulty obtaining quality food.

The ‘We Over Me Farm’ is, as Sorrell describes it, the fundamental core of the institution.

“It shapes the way we view ourselves,” says Sorrell. “It shapes the way we teach our students, it shapes the way we reach out to the community, it provides a very real and tangible example of this notion that we simply can do better and we don’t have to wait for anyone to do for us [what] we can do for ourselves.”

The project has caught on with enthusiastic Quinn undergrads like Ronisha Isham, who has the neighborhood in mind. “It helps the community,” Isham says, “and I’m really big on community service.”

Fellow student Benito Vidaure beams, “I just fell in love with the dirt.”

Slow Films has more on ‘We Over Me Farm’ in a short-form video viewable here. For further reading, see Janet Heimlich’s article in ‘The Texas Observer.’

The USDA has decided in its infinite wisdom, despite pink slime and a few other debacles of the food industry, to test a program allowing chicken companies to check their own livestock and decide whether or not the chickens are safe to eat.

The USDA claims this will save them tens of millions of dollars.

Well, USDA, I can save you even more. If you’re going to let the chicken companies inspect their own chickens, just trash the whole program, because I guarantee you they will decide “ALL of our chickens are safe!”

At some point, you would hope someone at the USDA (and I looked it up, there are over 100,000 employees there) would have raised their hand and pointed out the glaringly obvious: “Uh, since these guys are selling us chicken/beef/fish/whatever, don’t you think they are going to say that everything they’re selling is safe?”

Ideally, another person (we’re up to 2 out of 100,000 – a push perhaps, but I woke up optimistic this morning) would have seconded the first person’s statement and then, just maybe, we could have our food actually inspected before we eat it.

Which, I will point out to the USDA and its 100,000 employees, is generally considered to be their core job.

And it gets worse.

Right now, the USDA inspectors (who are independent, don’t work for the chicken companies, and aren’t driven by chicken company profits for holiday bonuses) inspect 35 chickens a minute for lovely things like bile, feces and random spare parts that got through processing.

That’s a chicken every two seconds.

Should you so desire, take two seconds to inspect the next chicken you see at the store. It’s really not a lot of time, but with some practice you could get pretty good at it – which is a nice thought because you are essentially performing the task that stands between me eating a relatively clean chicken or a feces- and bile-covered chicken. (There is a difference, Mr. USDA, trust me on this one.)

Well, under this new program, the chicken companies will rubber stamp – er, I mean inspect 175 chickens a minute. 175! That’s just under three chickens a second.

Are you thinking, “Wait a minute, 175 chickens a minute? That’s impossible!” Well congratulations – you are now ahead of 100,000 USDA employees in the class on food safety.

I have a little test for you and the USDA: if you can even count to 175 in sixty seconds, I might reconsider my opposition.

If you can’t, you need to sign this petition, share it with the world, put it up on Facebook.

Even better, if you know anyone at the USDA, send it to them and ask them to see what they can do for you, for me, and for everyone who prefers their chickens to be properly inspected, let alone inspected at all.

This post originally appeared at HandPicked Nation.

“Until we see meaningful and sustained job growth, Senator Hagan is looking closely at any creative, short-term measures that can get bipartisan support and put people back to work,” said Hagan spokeswoman Sadie Weiner. “One such potential initiative is a well-crafted and temporary change to the tax code that encourages American companies to bring money home and put it towards capital, investment, and–most importantly–American jobs.”

Uh-huh.

The Bush administration tried this back in 2004, billed as a one-time-only tax giveaway, as Matt Taibbi discusses with Keith Olbermann in this clip. Then as now, the rationale for giving corporate donors a giant, sloppy, wet kiss is that letting them repatriate hundreds of billions at a steep discount creates jobs. Yet, Bush tax cut after Bush tax cut, the promised jobs never appeared — proof to Republicans that we needed even more tax cuts.

Corporate executives took the money and ran.

Goldman Sachs — yes, that Goldman Sachs  — dubbed Bush’s American Jobs Creation Act the “no lobbyist left behind” act. (Hagan’s Republican colleague, NC Sen. Richard Burr, then a congressman, was a cosponsor.) The Washington Post described the bill this way in 2005:

A measure designed to create jobs is instead rewarding the companies that are most adept at stashing overseas profits in tax havens, allowing them to bring money home at a severely discounted tax rate. Once here, that money is simply freeing up domestic profits that would have been spent on job creation and investment anyway.

Phillip L. Swagel, a former chief of staff on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, opposed that bill. He acknowledged the raw infusion of cash might have some sort of stimulative effect. But, Swagel observed, “[Y]ou might as well have taken a helicopter over 90210 [Beverly Hills] and pushed the money out the door. That would have stimulated the economy as well.” The George W. Bush administration ended its economy-decimating, eight-year run with the worst jobs creation record on record.

Now, Third Way honorary co-chair, Senator Hagan, looks to be holding the football for another one-time-only, jobs-creating tax giveaway. Jobs are coming this time. Really.

Bloomberg reports that Cisco Systems, one of the tax holiday’s biggest boosters, “has cut its income taxes by $7 billion since 2005 by booking roughly half its worldwide profits at a subsidiary at the foot of the Swiss Alps that employs about 100 people.” (California-based Cisco lists three offices in North Carolina, including Research Triangle Park.) Cisco’s real game, Bloomberg suggests, is to prop up its flagging stock prices with dividends and buybacks — just what happened after the Bush tax holiday. Plus additional executive compensation and bonuses, Taibbi suggests. Meanwhile, U.S. companies are hoarding about $2 trillion in cash “they no longer need … to weather the economic crisis.” Furthermore, according to Bloomberg:

Nor are chief executive officers doing much in the way of using excess cash to build plants or buy new technologies. The same goes for innovating products or expanding into fresh territory. Given the employment numbers, it’s safe to conclude that they aren’t using the cash to add workers.

Which simply means it’s time for Republicans and Democrats in Congress to tee up another “job-creating” tax cut for robber baron corporations.

Robber barons is too polite a term. Tax dodgers shouldn’t be treated as royalty.

Bloomberg: Payroll-Tax Break Said to Be Discussed by Obama Aides Amid Slowing Economy,

President Barack Obama’s advisers have discussed seeking a temporary cut in the payroll taxes businesses pay on wages as they debate ways to spur hiring amid signs that the recovery is slowing, according to people familiar with the matter.

. . . The talks reflect the political constraints the White House is operating under with the Republican majority in the U.S. House pushing to cut federal spending. A hiring stimulus based on a tax break for employers may appeal to Republican lawmakers, many of whom have called for measures to help businesses.

Companies Only Hire When Customers Are Coming In The Door

Here is something the geniuses haven’t noticed, in all their geniosity: It doesn’t matter how much more money you give to business owners, businesses are not going to hire any more employees until they have a REASON to – and that reason is customers coming in the door.

OK, That was bold and italicized. Maybe if I make it ALL CAPS the geniuses will see it? Let’s see: BUSINESSES ARE NOT GOING TO HIRE ANY MORE EMPLOYEES UNTIL THEY HAVE A REASON TO AND THAT REASON IS CUSTOMERS COMING IN THE DOOR.

Businesses are not going to hire people just to sit around and listen to iPods or read the paper, waiting for a customer.

Terrance Heath, in America’s Unhappy Anniversary: Ten Years Of The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy,

Republicans claim that preserving the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is in the interest of small businesses, but small business owners are starting to demand a repeal of the Bush tax cuts.

“We are fed by our consumers, not by our tax breaks,” says Rick Poore, owner of Designwear, Inc., a screen-printing business based in Lincoln, Neb. “If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It’s as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I’ll just take the wife to the Bahamas.“

Businesses are fed by their customers, not by tax cuts. Tax cuts only feed deficits. Customers coming in the door is what causes businesses to hire. In case you missed that: Customers coming in the door is what causes businesses to hire.

Direct Job Creation Is Needed

Until there are more customers businesses are not going to hire. Why should they? So it is up to us (government: We, the People…) to create some customers. The way to do that is to hire people to do some of the things that it is government’s job to do anyway, but government has been putting off because of so many tax cuts.

Fix the infrastructure: Our infrastructure is crumbling. In Obama Should Call Chamber’s Infrastructure Bluff I linked to an Urban Land Institute report on the country’s infrastructure, showing how we are falling behind countries like Brazil, China and India, and to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Report Card, that says a $2.2 trillion investment is needed just to bring the country’s infrastructure back up to current standards.

This infrastructure work has to be done no matter what. The longer we delay it the more our country falls behind. It is millions of jobs that need doing at a time when millions need jobs! (And by the way the government can borrow at nearly zero interest rates right now — one more reason to do it now.)

Green jobs: And then there are the green jobs you should be creating. You should be hiring people to retrofit every home and building in the country to be more energy efficient. This pays for itself because we stop sending so much money to the oil-producing countries, stop putting so much carbon in the air, and our economy becomes more efficient. And put more money into alternative energy, too. I mean, jeeze, geniuses, what part of this is hard to get?

Jobs fix deficits: Hiring people to fix up the infrastructure takes them off the unemployment rolls and off the other assistance programs, lowering government spending on those programs. Having those jobs means they are paying taxes again, raising government revenue. And fixing up the infrastructure makes our businesses more competitive again, growing the economy. It’s a no-brainer which should mean even the DC geniuses can figure it out.

Fix Trade

Because of bad trade deals, much of any revival of our economy just means that we send more money out of the country. The trade deficits, especially with China, are also economy deficits. We are not just sending jobs and money out of the country, we are sending our chances of coming out of this economic slump out of the country as well.

And these trade deals pit exploited, underpaid workers in non- or weak democracies against our workers who had been benefiting from the good wages, workers protections and other non-”business friendly” things that democracy brings along with it.

Our trade deals have made our democracy and the resulting high standard of living into a disadvantage. Who were the geniuses that let that happen?

Restore Long-Term Incentives

Tax cuts have cut the incentive for long-term business models. It used to take time to build a fortune, so businesses had to place themselves within healthy communities with good schools, well-maintained infrastructure and solid, well-funded public structures like the court system. Cutting top tax rates changed business models to make more sense “harvesting” those things in a hurry and moving on to the next community with resources to plunder. Low top tax rates encourage quick-buck schemes.

Propose The Right Thing

Propose the right thing and do it publicly, instead of trying to appease a political ideology bent on destroying government. Doing the right thing is also the right thing politically. If the job situation doesn’t get better you’re going to be thrown out of office. So come one, geniuses, get smart and start hiring people to fix up the infrastructure and make the economy more energy efficient.

10 years of Bush tax cuts is enough! Click here to demand your representative supports the Fairness in Taxation Act so the rich contribute their fair share.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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The informed reply goes something like this:

1. The crisis isn’t real. It’s been fabricated by the neo-liberal politicians whose goal is to eliminate all taxes on rich people and bust structures like unions that afford the non-hyper-wealthy with some leverage in the American political economy. It. Isn’t. Real.
2. You’re blaming the wrong people. To the extent that I accept arguments that we do need to cut spending (and I do, by the way – read on), whatever problems we do actually have are the direct result of Republican taxation policies.

So, for the sake of argument let’s say America has a serious financial problem. How would I solve it? Well, I’m no economist, but here are some ideas:

1. Eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s well over $300B right there. That would pay 1.4 million teachers for five years, ballpark. You know, since teachers are such an ungodly drain on the economy.
2. Get out of Iraq. There’s another $100B per year. And then get out of the military adventure business for good. Right now the US spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world combined, and there’s no moral, ethical or economic excuse for it.
3. Take a chain saw to waste in the military budget. Things like the F-22 Osprey, which has already wasted $22B and will likely cost another $75B to finish. By the way, it’s unclear that the damned thing will actually work, and once you get past the contractors and their pet Congressweasels nobody seems to want it.
4. Let’s have a good, hard look at the corporate tax code, because ExxonMobil, GE, BoA, Chevron, Boein, Valero, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips and Carnival Cruise Lines combined to pay damned near no taxes, despite often-record revenues. In fact, between tax credits, refunds and bailouts, these companies hit us up for trillions of dollars in the past year or two. I’m not accusing any of these companies of breaking the law, and the way the laws work they’re actually required to behave in this way. All I’m saying is, you know, you earn billions and billions in profit, maybe the tax code should be structured so that you pay your fair share in taxes. That’s all.

Once we’ve done these things, then let’s see where we are.

I know, I’m just a simple country boy. And I didn’t major in math by any stretch. But it looks to me like this plan has us up over a trillion dollars in five years (maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how we parse item #4).

From where I sit, it just doesn’t seem right to go after the little guy first just so we can make sure that Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and the Koch brothers can have a tax cut.

Some people are better at dealing with the conflict than others, whether through denial or a well-developed, pragmatic knack for keeping things in perspective. Unfortunately, I don’t do denial at all and while I like to think of myself as having a strong pragmatic streak, in practice my principled side tends to dominate my decision-making in ways that occasionally deprive me of convenience and pleasure.

I know I have a problem here, and I know that I’m not the only one. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and maybe writing some of this down will help. Maybe a reader will have a comment that will foster a bit more perspective, even. I may be a slightly older dog, but I am more than willing to learn some new tricks.

Let’s start with baseball. Yesterday was Opening Day for my hometown Colorado Rockies as well as my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. Denver was just crazy. I live a few blocks from Coors Field, which was sold out (and friends tell me there weren’t even scalpers – no tix for sale at no price, no way, period). In addition to the 47K inside the park, there were probably another 50-100,000 outside, in the streets, parking lots and bars of the Ballpark neighborhood. I’m not sure, but I assume that the 16th Street Mall and Larimer Square were also zoos, as well as any number of sports bars in the city’s outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. In other words, yesterday was a massive holiday.

And I couldn’t take part. Sorta. I did wander up into LoHi, where Highlands Tap & Burger makes a point of showing all the Sox games. Had a beer. Had a great burger. Had a nice time. But it wasn’t the same as being part of a shared cultural celebration that looked, from a distance, even bigger than the 4th of July.

Why? Well, my friends know that the Rockies are my least favorite team. So do some strangers, if they’ve ever made the mistake of asking why I hate the Rox. The short version is that it’s a matter of principle: in 2006 the club went public with the news that it was basing official decisions (including personnel) on religion. Specifically, they were looking for “character,” and “character” means evangelical Christianity. I wrote about my feelings on the subject at the time and I revisited the issue a year later when the Rockies made it to the World Series.

Like the Constitution, I don’t really care what religion someone is. And since it’s a privately owned business, I guess there aren’t any de jure legal problems with them running things this way (although I imagine they’re wide open to a civil suit should someone in the organization feel discriminated against). But that doesn’t mean that I don’t find the policy reprehensible to its core.

Further, since I’m no longer an evangelical Christian myself, I can’t help being a little put off by the fact that the team’s ownership just said that I lack character. Trust me, I’m a huge fan of character. I think more teams ought to make character a centerpiece of how they run things. If you’ve been paying attention, you probably realize that teams with persistent character issues always seem to find a way to underperform their talent. And, as a guy who loves competition and has been an athlete his whole life, I’m sick of the sports section reading like a police blotter. I doubt I’m the only one.

I’ve never seen any correlation between religion and character, though. Evangelical Christians, for instance, can and often are people of the highest moral fiber, and I’m proud to number several such people among my family and circle of closest friends. But growing up Southern Baptist also teaches you that it ain’t necessarily so. Some of the worst sub-humans I have ever encountered in my life were upstanding evangelicals, pillars of the community, etc., and their moral failings and hypocrisies were quite well known in their congregations.

By the same token, I know and have known lots of atheists and agnostics, and my best guess is that the saint-to-scoundrel ratio is probably comparable to what you find in any religious community.

As a result of the Rockies’ policy, which I find both socially and personally offensive, I vowed that I’d never set foot in Coors Field or in any way subsidize the team’s ignorance and prejudice with my dollars. And I have held the line, too – literally, not a penny has made its way from my wallet to theirs. I revel in their failures (and especially loved the 2007 World Series, when my Sox waxed them in four straight) and long for the day when everyone associated with this policy is long, long gone.

But. There’s always a but. I’m admittedly conflicted. I love my city and I know that a successful franchise is good for it economically. It spurs civic pride (although here in Denver it would be okay if our civic pride were a little less connected to the fortunes of pro sports teams). Yesterday, by any measure imaginable, was wonderful for the 5280, and if the Rockies remain in the pennant race throughout the season it will mean greater job security for those who make their livings from the sports industry and the restaurants and bars that serve it. I care about these issues, and passionately.

Not only that, my principled stand, while morally satisfying, represents one more high wall between myself and my community. This chasm is never more evident than when I find myself discussing (debating, arguing) the subject with friends, who often feel as though my position amounts to an attack on them. (Ironically, they frequently seem more affronted by my stance than they are by Rockies policy itself, which they always find an easy way to dismiss, even if they aren’t evangelicals.)

By now, I hope it’s clear that my real problem isn’t with friends who disagree. My problem lies in my struggle to behave ethically without further alienating myself from others.

I’m not too proud to acknowledge how much this troubles me.

It isn’t just the Colorado Rockies, either – here in the US nearly every phase of our lives is challenged by some ethical or political consideration or another. Where do you buy groceries? Really – they’re pretty anti-union, aren’t they? You like coffee? I assume it’s organic and fair trade, right? You drive a what? Not only is it not a terribly green model, one of the company board members donates a lot of money to a variety of anti-gay rights organizations. Your electricity is generated in coal-fired plants, by the way. Your shirt was made in a sweat shop. Your computer is indeed nice, but it’s also the product of one of the country’s harshest chemical production cycles. Your kids attend a charter school? Thanks for helping suck more funds out of the public school system that’s so critical to our shared national interest. Sweet hell – are you wearing a diamond? Yeah, that restaurant does do a great bowl of pasta. And the owner has supported every hatemongering politician to run for office here in the last 30 years.

Been there. Feel your pain. I mean, I’ve turned my back on Target. I won’t be going back in a Dillard’s anytime soon. I haven’t had a Domino’s pizza in decades. Even if it didn’t taste like horse piss you’d never catch me drinking a Coors. And don’t even get me started on Wal*Mart (although they are implementing some encouraging green practices across the enterprise).

Seriously – if I drew a hard line around all of my principles and then did all the research I’d need to know which companies were doing what, and then boycotted those I had problems with, what would be left of my life? I probably couldn’t eat anymore. I’d have to walk everywhere (assuming I could verify that the company making my shoes was pure). The behavior of our media conglomerates would assure that I never again came near a television, a theater, a radio, a newspaper, and for that matter, probably a book. I’d certainly not be able to watch the NFL at least until such time as Michael Vick is gone (and given the rap sheets attending most football teams, we can probably scratch the whole sport off forever).

And so on. And on and on and on.

These are ugly issues to contemplate for an ethical human trying to live in contemporary society, because frankly you’re lucky if you can get through a minute, let alone a day, without having to compromise some important value or another. If there’s a Hell, and if it is operated according to meaningful principles, we’ve all probably earned our way in by noon each and every day.

Still, it isn’t okay to just throw up your hands and accept the inevitability of compromise. If I stop insisting that principles matter, if we stop trying to live as ethically as possible, what then? For one thing, the corruption of the society gets even worse (if that’s possible), and for another we might as well sell our souls to whoever will give us a nickel.

There are lines. There are standards that have to be at least a bit flexible. And if people like me insist on the absolute when all around us are finding ways of making peace with reality, we quickly wind up like Ethan Brand, the doomed anti-hero of the famous Hawthorne short story, staring into the fire and contemplating our intimate knowledge of the perfect sin: the rejection of the fellowship of man.

In the end, we have to find our way into subcultures that are themselves defined by the principles we value, so that our lives are not defined by a choice between values and community. This isn’t easily accomplished in a nation that often seems dedicated to the eradication of principle, but it is necessary.

As long as we feel the tension associated with a need to choose between the two, we will know that the battle isn’t yet over.

. . . spoke with seven top nuclear engineers and scientists to at least establish some boundaries for the disaster’s potential health and environmental impacts. The rough consensus: The long-term and most severe effects from radiation at the plant, where four of six reactors are in crisis and hundreds of tons of spent fuel is a risk, will be largely contained to the area around the plant, affect a relatively limited population and will likely not spread outside Japan.

So what, as Reuters reports, if the

. . . unprecedented multiple crisis will cost the world’s third largest economy nearly $200 billion and require Japan’s biggest reconstruction push since post-World War II.

Uncovered by insurance because it was an act of God (however Old Testament)? No problem.

The highly specialized German Nuclear Reactor Insurance Association (DKVG) partially insured Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant to the tune of tens of millions of euros. But the Cologne-based insurer won’t be paying anything.

“We do have a stake in the risks in Japan, generally speaking. But the property insurance and liability insurance policies exclude damages from earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions,” DKVG chief executive Dirk Harbrücker told Deutsche Welle.

Never mind that when it comes to building new reactors, the Independent reports that “some estimates suggest extra safety will add at least another 10 per cent.”

The case will be made that the Fukushima reactors, despite how old they were, survived both an earthquake and tsunami with attendant explosions, fires, and loss of water to spent fuel rods with minimal (by some standards, anyway) leakage of radiation into the atmosphere. Fukushima could turn into the gift that keeps on giving for nuclear energy advocates.

Except for one small stumbling block: because neither Fukushima’s nor any other reactors have been attacked by terrorists, it remains to be seen how one would stand up to subversion from within, assault by ground troops, or a plane loaded with explosives crashing into it.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.