http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070205525.html Jefferson changed 'subjects' to 'citizens' in Declaration of Independence Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 3, 2010 "Subjects." That's what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies. 'Subjects' of attention But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated. Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word "citizens." No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch. Scholars of the revolution have long speculated about the "citizens" smear -- wondering whether the erased word was "patriots" or "residents" -- but now the Library of Congress has determined that the change was far more dramatic. Using a modified version of the kind of spectral imaging technology developed for the military and for monitoring agriculture, research scientists teased apart the mystery and reconstructed the word that Jefferson banished in 1776. "Seldom can we re-create a moment in history in such a dramatic and living way," Library of Congress preservation director Dianne van der Reyden said at Friday's announcement of the discovery. "It's almost like we can see him write 'subjects' and then quickly decide that's not what he wanted to say at all, that he didn't even want a record of it," she said. "Really, it sends chills down the spine." The library deciphered the hidden "subjects" several months ago, the first major finding attributed to its new high-tech instruments. By studying the document at different wavelengths of light, including infrared and ultraviolet, researchers detected slightly different chemical signatures in the remnant ink of the erased word than in "citizens." Those differences allowed the team to bring the erased word back to life. But the task was made more difficult by the way Jefferson sought to match the lines and curves of the underlying smudged letters with the new letters he wrote on top of them. It took research scientist Fenella France weeks to pull out each letter until the full word became apparent. "It's quite amazing how he morphed 'subjects' into 'citizens,' " she said. "We did the reverse morphing back to 'subjects.' " France said the possibility that the erased word was "subjects" came up during a talk she gave to library donors and visitors about how to study historical documents without harming them. France had determined that a word existed beneath "citizens," and she asked the group for ideas. One woman called out "subjects," and library staff members immediately realized that she was on to something. The intensive work on the document soon began. The erased word is on the third of the draft's four pages, in the section that addressed grievances against King George III and outlined his incitement of "treasonable insurrections." The sentence is not found in the later Declaration of Independence, but "citizens" is used elsewhere in that document and "subjects" is not. Scholars previously determined that Jefferson had been writing his early version based on the first draft of Virginia's constitution, where the words "our fellow subjects" appear. Finding Jefferson's erased word is the library's greatest accomplishment using its new technology, but several other projects are in progress. The imaging device, for instance, found thumb and fingerprints on the Gettysburg Address using infrared light, and library researchers are seeking to determine whether they are President Abraham Lincoln's. Light outside the visible range has also brought to life details of Pierre L'Enfant's design for Washington and notes on papers of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Van der Reyden said the research and discoveries illustrate why it's so important to keep and protect original documents. The erased "subjects," she said, could have been detected only from Jefferson's original draft. ***** http://robertreich.org/post/764586220/slouching-toward-a-double-dip-or-a-lousy-recovery-at Slouching Toward a Double Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best Robert Reich Saturday, July 3, 2010 The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and all the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing. The odds of a double dip are increasing. In June the nation added fewer jobs than necessary merely to keep up with population growth (private hiring rose by 83,000 after adding only 33,000 jobs in May). The typical workweek declined. Average earnings dropped. Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing. The states are running an anti-stimulus program (raising taxes, cutting services, laying off teachers, firefighters, police and other employees) that’s now bigger than the federal stimulus program. That federal stimulus is 75 percent gone anyway. And the House and Senate refuse to pass another one. (The Senate left Washington for the July 4th weekend without even extending unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans now running out.) The second booster rocket – the Fed’s rock-bottom short-term interest rates – are having almost no effect. That’s because jobs and wages are so lousy that consumers don’t have enough money to buy much of anything, making small businesses bad credit risks and causing big ones to sit on the huge pile of cash they’ve accumulated. Wall Street and the other biggest global banks, meanwhile, are making piles of money betting against government debt all over the world. These were the same banks and financiers, remember, that were bailed out by government not long ago. But now they’re demanding fiscal austerity, and politicians are once again doing their bidding – cutting deficits in every rich economy that should now be doing the reverse. The people who are suffering the most from the failure of public officials and the greed of large bankers are the least able to endure it. Unemployment among people with four-year college degrees is barely over 5 percent; among high-school dropouts it’s over 25 percent. Those who have been jobless the longest or who have left the labor force altogether are men over fifty who are least likely to get back in. Families most in need are losing the services – state-supported Medicaid, child dental care, after-school programs for the kids, public transit – they most depend on. The irony is that had there been no bank bailout in 2008 and 2009, no large stimulus, and no extraordinary efforts by the Fed to pump trillions of dollars into the economy, we’d have had another Great Depression. And because it would have sucked almost everyone down with it, the nation would have demanded from politicians larger and more fundamental reforms that might well have lifted everyone, and set America and the world on a more sustainable path toward growth and shared prosperity: A stimulus that financed the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure and alternative energies, single-payer health care, a cap on the size of big banks and resurrection of Glass-Steagall, earnings insurance, an Earned Income Tax Credit that extended into the middle class, and a truly progressive tax coupled with a price on carbon to pay for all of this over the long term. No one in their right mind would have wished for another Great Depression, of course. But we seem to have got the worst of all worlds. The bank bailout, the stimulus, and the Fed brought us back from the brink just enough to dampen zeal for anything more. As a result, we are now slouching toward a tepid recovery that could just as well fall into a double dip recession, while a large portion of our population suffers immensely. ***** http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04171136.htm Venezuela slum takes socialism beyond Chavez 06 Jul 2010 Esteban Israel * Caracas slum a lab for Chavez's socialist project * Radical groups are key part of president's support * Opposition sees militants as Chavez's personal army CARACAS, July 6 (Reuters) - While President Hugo Chavez struggles to revive the battered bolivar, in a hillside slum overlooking his palace, die-hard supporters are talking about getting rid of the Venezuelan currency altogether. Welcome to the 23 de Enero barrio, home to about 100,000 people and something of a laboratory for Chavez's nationwide socialist experiment. Here you find dogs named "Comrade Mao", and even a "revolutionary car wash." "We are creating a popular bank and are going to issue a communal currency: little pieces of cardboard," says Salvador Rooselt, a soft-spoken 24-year-old law student and community leader who often quotes Lenin and Marx. Some 20 militant groups sometimes described as Chavez's "storm troopers" run this urban jungle in western Caracas, where hulking concrete buildings daubed with colorful murals -- one depicting Jesus Christ brandishing an AK-47 rifle -- show off the neighborhood's radical tradition. "We are giving capitalism a punch in its social metabolism," said Rooselt, of the Alexis Vive group, wearing its trademark bandana with the image of guerrilla icon Ernesto Che Guevara around his neck. A deeply-rooted socialist ideology, absolute territorial control and financing from the government have allowed Alexis Vive to put into practice some of the ideas Chavez is struggling to implement in the rest of Venezuela. Socialist stores sell milk and meat from recently nationalized producers at about a 50 percent discount. Residents do voluntary work, kids are encouraged to steer clear of drugs, and some youths have even joined a pioneer organization modeled on similar groups in Communist Cuba. "I'm sure President Chavez supports our initiatives and seeks to implement them at a national level," Rooselt said. Alexis Vive spreads its message via Radio Arsenal, an underground FM station Rooselt says was inspired by Vladimir Lenin's experience with a political newspaper a century ago. They are also turning their hands to urban agriculture and fish farming to feed locals, and say that the future communal bank will extend micro-credit to foster economic independence. "TENSE ALLIANCE" Despite being a stronghold of the "chavista" movement with a massive electoral muscle that has helped the president win votes for more than a decade, 23 de Enero's radicalism has often proved a political liability for Venezuela's leader. A series of attacks targeting opposition symbols such as the Globovision television station, and even the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, have led Chavez to publicly distance himself from these groups in the past -- although some neighbors think they still take direct orders from "Comandante Presidente." George Ciccariello-Maher, a social scientist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley who has studied Venezuela's radical movements, calls it a "tense alliance" between the president and the barrios. "Chavez depends on the radical sectors for support, but neither side truly trusts one another ... If he were to destroy them, he would be destroying his own base as well," he said. Gone are the days when local groups proudly displayed their automatic weapons in front of visiting reporters. Militants from Alexis Vive say their armed struggle is over. "Ever since the revolutionary process started there haven't been any weapons. We joined the Bolivarian militias," said Rooselt, referring to a 35,000-strong armed force recently launched by Chavez to defend his socialist revolution. But other more belligerent groups within 23 de Enero appear to be still armed to the teeth. In January, one of the groups released a video to the media showing its members dressed in military attire and brandishing automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. They called on Chavez to clean his government of corrupt "false socialists." Security in 23 de Enero remains tight. Rooselt's told Reuters he received a call by cell phone the moment two reporters were spotted in the neighborhood. That might explain why crime rates here have dropped by 95 percent, according to the militants, who say they have turned it into one of the safest places in crime-ridden Caracas. "SPEARHEAD OF THE REVOLUTION" Known in the past as "Little Vietnam," 23 de Enero has a long history of left-wing radicalism. The neighborhood's name refers to January 23, 1958, the date on which military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was toppled. The community, mostly made up of rural workers attracted to the capital by Venezuela's oil boom, played a key role in the 1989 riots known as the "Caracazo," which claimed scores of lives when the army shelled buildings in the area for days. Alexis Vive, for instance, honors community leader Alexis Gonzalez, who was killed by the police in 2002. Berkeley's Ciccariello-Maher calls 23 de Enero an example of "alternative sovereignty" beyond the control of the state. "The neighborhood and movements it nurtures represent both the laboratory and spearhead of the Bolivarian Revolution ... It is in 23 de Enero that the most radical forces are located, forces which drive the process forward," he said. The government is finding new ways of supporting 23 de Enero. In a plot behind a local market, neighbors in Che Guevara bandanas are building a state-funded brick factory equipped with Iranian-technology. Not far from there, a group of former paratroopers who joined a failed coup d'etat by Chavez in 1992 have set up a "revolutionary car wash" next to a wall displaying a huge picture of the late Colombian guerrilla commander Marulanda. "Here in 23 de Enero we are committed to take this process to the very end," said cooperative member Martin Campos, a 38-year-old retired soldier sporting a yellow baseball cap with a red star. "We are chavistas. Red, very red." (Editing by Daniel Wallis and Anthony Boadle) ***** http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2010/07/02/harry-potters-butterbeer-recipe-uncovered/ Harry Potter's Butterbeer Recipe Uncovered? July 02, 2010 Got butterbeer? Harry Potter fans are all abuzz about butterbeer, and they've got the foamy mustaches to prove it. The cold and creamy, frothy drink is the most popular food item at the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando, according to Universal spokesman Tom Schroder, with visitors lining up to try it. "Then they would walk around and have this mustache on," said Sabrina Sampson, 11, of Richmond, Va., who described the drink as tasting "like cream soda. It was somewhat thick, and it was really sweet, and then it got salty as you swallowed it, like butterscotch." Schroder said that about half the visitors to The Wizarding World sample butterbeer. "There may be no bigger product launch smash this year than butterbeer," WalletPop.com said. "It's interesting that one small thing they can sell for a few dollars is getting as much attention as the rides," said Gabe Travers, who reviewed the park for WESH.com, the NBC affiliate in the Orlando area. Immediately after The Wizarding World's June 18 opening, butterbeer was one of the most searched-for terms on the Internet. A butterbeer recipe on MuggleNet.com got 3,445 hits when the park opened, up from an average 350 daily views before the opening, according to MuggleNet.com spokesman Andrew Sims. Now the recipe is averaging 1,200 daily views. Even DISboards.com, a site for fans of Disney World, has a separate thread for comments related to Universal's butterbeer. Universal would not release its butterbeer recipe, but press materials describe the drink as "reminiscent of shortbread and butterscotch." In the Harry Potter books, butterbeer appears to have an inebriating effect, and some older online recipes include butterscotch schnapps, but the Universal version is nonalcoholic. In Bon Appetit's January 2002 issue, author J.K. Rowling was asked what butterbeer tastes like, and she said: "I made it up. I imagine it to taste a little bit like less sickly butterscotch." The version sold at The Wizarding World was tasted and approved by Rowling herself. "Everyone knows butterbeer was approved by J.K. Rowling, so people want to taste it and see if their tastebuds match up," said Travers. Visitors to the park see a large wooden barrel that bears the word "BUTTERBEER" as soon as they enter, and they can buy it from a street cart and inside The Three Broomsticks restaurant and Hog's Head pub. Butterbeer is sold in two varieties, regular and frozen, but many people buy both. "There are some two-fisted butterbeer moments happening," said Schroder. The consensus among online fans appears to be that the frozen version is more delicious. The drink is drawn from a tap, like a beer, and the dense, whipped topping is added from a separate tap. It's served in cups, about $3 ($4 for frozen) for a disposable cup and about $10 ($11 for frozen) for a hard plastic souvenir stein. Travers said if he were trying to make the drink at home, he'd "start with a good cream soda." The hard part, he said, would be the topping: "It tastes like a Werther's caramel candy but the foam had the consistency of a dairy or latte type of foam. It's pretty dense; it floats on top." Robert Lima of Warwick, R.I., who says he still loves "all that is Harry Potter" even though he's 24 years old, tried butterbeer a week after the park opened and described it as "frosty magical goodness!" But Sabrina Sampson had one small reservation: "It was too sweet to chug down, but it was good for the first five sips or so." ---------- No need to travel to Hogsmeade (or to Universal Orlando) to get a taste of Harry Potter's butterbeer. Universal isn't giving out its recipe, but we've created an easy version of the formerly fictional drink made famous by the young wizard. BUTTERBEER Start to finish: 1 hour (10 minutes active) Servings: 4 1 cup light or dark brown sugar 2 tablespoons water 6 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar 3/4 cup heavy cream, divided 1/2 teaspoon rum extract Four 12-ounce bottles cream soda In a small saucepan over medium, combine the brown sugar and water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook, stirring often, until the mixture reads 240 F on a candy thermometer. Stir in the butter, salt, vinegar and 1/4 heavy cream. Set aside to cool to room temperature. Once the mixture has cooled, stir in the rum extract. In a medium bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar mixture and the remaining 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Use an electric mixer to beat until just thickened, but not completely whipped, about 2 to 3 minutes. To serve, divide the brown sugar mixture between 4 tall glasses (about 1/4 cup for each glass). Add 1/4 cup of cream soda to each glass, then stir to combine. Fill each glass nearly to the top with additional cream soda, then spoon the whipped topping over each. ***** http://www.progressive.org/wx070510.html Republicans Incite Class Warfare—Within the Middle Class By Matthew Rothschild, July 5, 2010 The Republicans have found a new scapegoat for the economy, in addition to illegal immigrants. The new scapegoat is public sector workers. Unwilling to blame Bush for the budget deficit, unable to blame Wall Street for wrecking the economy, and incapable of blaming a lack of regulation or capitalism itself for the morass we’re in, Republicans are pointing their fingers now at public sector workers. The teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other government employees are just making too much money, the Republicans say, regardless of the fact that public sector workers in state after state have been laid off or put on unpaid furloughs. But Republicans don’t want you to think about. Much less do they want you to notice that it’s the top 1 percent that’s made off like bandits over the last 30 years. God forbid we raise the marginal income tax rates, or the capital gains tax, or the estate tax. The last thing Republicans want is to incite class warfare against the upper class. Far better to incite warfare within the middle class and have the majority of Americans blaming each other. (See “War on Public Workers,” by Amy Traub in The Nation, July 5.) One Republican politician after another is joining the chorus against public sector workers, whether it’s Scott Brown of Massachusetts or Mitch Daniels of Indiana or Rand Paul of Kentucky or even Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, who has ordered all state workers to get minimum wage until the budget mess there is resolved. In Wisconsin, where I live, the Wisconsin State Journal just ran a story about public sector workers in Dane County earning more than workers doing similar jobs in the private sector, with at least one local politician complaining about this. But the average public sector salary is only about $35,000. Are we really going to accept that such a salary is too high? Shall we just kiss the middle class goodbye? Part of this strategy of blaming the public sector worker is mere distraction—a shell game to keep people from focusing on those who are really feasting at the trough: the corporations and the richest of the rich. And part of it is a calculated attack on unions, since the public sector has a 37.4 percent unionization rate, while the private sector is down at 7.2 percent. But whatever the motivation, it’s a disgusting strategy. The next time you hear a politician or a pundit trash public sector workers, ask them if they’d like to take minimum wage—or even a salary of $35,000. Chances are, they’re making a lot more than that.