Question of the Day: What do the oil catastrophe and the Wall Street collapse have in common?

Three big things, I'd say.

In both cases, a powerful, politically protected industry invented something that could not easily be repaired when it broke. We seem to be entering an age when complex technologies, whether financial or physical, sometimes literally have no solutions when they go haywire in unanticipated ways. We thought this might happen with nuclear power (and it still could); but for now deepwater drilling is the bigger menace.

Secondly, in both cases the proverbial ounce of prevention was not applied. Had existing laws been enforced, and had the political process not corrupted the regulatory process, these man-made calamities didn't need to happen.

In the case of the oil disaster, which is fast becoming the worst single environmental catastrophe ever, America's long-term failure to move away from dependence on carbon fuels combined with pure short-run political capture. By now, we should have been at the point of energy conversion where high risk, mile-deep undersea wells were not used at all. But even so, this blowout would have been averted had existing laws been enforced.

It's the same story with the financial collapse. We didn't need these exotic, doomsday financial instruments. And had the regulators not been in bed with the industry, the crisis would have been headed off at any of several earlier stages.

But the worst common element is this: both crises are teachable moments that our president could be using to transform public opinion. Yet despite these gifts from the progressive gods, President Obama seems congenitally unable to rise to the occasion.

It appeared, in the end game of the health reform effort and at moments in the financial reform fight, that we were seeing sparks of the Obama whom we so admired on the campaign trail. But Obama's performance in the oil disaster seems a case of one step forward, two steps backward.

If ever there were a moment to make clear that our energy future cannot be left to the energy industry, and to rally the public on behalf of a long term shift away from carbon fuels to renewable sources, it is now. Will we ever have a better, more graphic villain than BP? Will we ever have the public more on our side? Will we ever have Republicans with dirtier hands?

In the late sixties and early 1970s, the environmental movement burst on the national stage because the environmental assaults of that era were immediate and undeniable -- from oil spills to smog to the Cuyahoga River catching fire. Thanks to the victories of that era, environmental damage has become less palpable and pyrotechnic.

Global climate change, the ultimate menace, is gradual, insidious, ineluctable, contested, and seldom vividly symbolized. By contrast the BP blowout is immediate, tangible, and terrifying. Even the Limbaughs and the Becks cannot deny what is dominating TV week after week, and the right is making a fool of itself by lurching from attacking the president's daughter to blurting out that "accidents happen."

There is more than a germ of truth, however, in the right's argument that Obama was slow off the mark to get on top of this crisis, just as he was pitifully slow to clean house at the Minerals Management Service he inherited from Bush. And if the administration does not pick up its game, the Tea Party right will make the Gulf catastrophe Obama's fault, just as it has made the slow pace of recovery and the bank bailouts Obama's fault.

I have been in a number of conversations, as a journalist, a public lecturer, privately, and as author of the new book A Presidency in Peril, in which Obama loyalists urge me to cut the president a little more slack. It's only sixteen months into his presidency. He is still learning. He did, after all, deliver health insurance reform. In that battle, with two outs in the ninth inning, he discovered his inner partisan and fought for a Democrats-only bill, and prevailed.

And he is about to deliver financial reform, right?

But in both cases, the credit goes more to legislative leaders who would not let the bills die and to progressive lobby groups such as H-CAN and Americans for Financial Reform. There is still a furious fight over key provisions in the House and Senate reform bills, and in many cases Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is weighing in on behalf of weaker rather than stronger measures.

With the spotlight off legislative floor action, and a lot of the deals being made in backrooms, the financial industry hopes to gain back ground that it lost as public opinion shifted in favor of tougher reform measures.

The financial reform battle is an epic David-Goliath contest. The banking lobby spends more in a day than Americans for Financial Reform's annual budget. The leadership of AFR combined with the actions of courageous senators such as Maria Cantwell, Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, and a couple of dozen others, shows how public opinion could be rallied.

But imagine how much more reform we could get if the President of the United States clearly weighed in on behalf of David rather than Goliath.

This could also be a defining moment in the fight for a clean energy future if President Obama used it as such.

Time is running out for this president to lead. If he continues temporizing rather than leading, the moment passes, and the Republicans pick up substantial numbers of seats in Congress. The window closes, both for transformative progressive reform and for a successful Obama presidency. Even worse, the initiative passes to a truly lunatic rightwing.

I would say to the loyalists: Yes, this president faces multiple challenges that are really hard, as well as a fiercely obstructionist Republican Party and a grass-roots right in league with a media machine. But all crisis-presidents faced obstacles and the great ones turned them to opportunities.

The other day, one of the president's enthusiasts told me that Obama has been very successful in terms of the agenda that he set out to achieve. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. A president has to play the hand history dealt him.

Robert Kuttner's latest book is A Presidency in Peril. He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos.

More on Barack Obama

If a visitor to Moscow had just one day to see Russia's political system in action, Monday would have been as good as it gets. In part that's because riot police were again hoisting protestors up like human battering rams and throwing them into paddy wagons. But that's a small part of it, and not an unusual one. Far more impressive was the sheer scale of the government's effort, the lengths it was willing to go to repress a few hundred people who tried to hold a rally against it. That was a thing to see.

It started with a bit of ingenuity from the mayor's office, which is given the job of denying permission for these rallies in the first place. This always requires finesse. Russia's constitution, after all, guarantees the freedom of assembly and speech, so it would seem undemocratic to forbid the things outright like they did in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Putin had said just the previous day, on May 30, during a rare confrontation with a dissident, that local authorities should not use lousy excuses to block opposition rallies, that such rallies are even helpful as long as they offer constructive criticism and don't disturb the peace. So they had to find a pretty good reason this time.

For both its wit and its cynicism, the one they came up with deserves applause: they decided to hold a blood drive, the biggest and loudest the city had ever seen. A pro-Kremlin youth group called the Young Guard was then given the money to construct an enormous stage on Triumphal Square, right where the protestors had petitioned to rally. It included a sound system that would have put Lollapalooza to shame, and for the protection of the selfless young donors who were bussed in to participate, the police blocked off the entire square with saw horses and vans full of riot police. It was a matter of public safety, you see.

Then around 5:00 p.m., an hour before the banned opposition was set to begin, the blood collectors from the Young Guard began parading across the stage and giving short, patriotic speeches. For instance, "My name is Dmitry, and I donate blood because I love my country, and I want my country to thrive and be healthy." The state TV cameras eagerly taped this for the evening broadcast. But there were no blood collection vans anywhere in sight, and no one could have considered this anything more than a farce.

It's only purpose (and at what cost!) was to push the protestors into a tiny corner of the square, maybe a couple hundred of them, where they could be surrounded by riot police and kept well out of sight of the evening traffic. This began at about 6:00 p.m., when roughly a hundred people started chanting slogans, old people and young people, many with children on their shoulders, and many passersby who just seemed to like the naughtiness of shouting in the street: "Russia without Putin," "This is our city, too," "No to Putinism," and so on. The chanting was spontaneous, and there were no leaders around and no sign of any organization. But those who shouted the loudest, or held any kind of banner, were grabbed by riot cops, lifted off the ground and thrown into police vans. Pepper spray was used on at least one of the men who resisted. (I got a mouthful; it wasn't fun.) For a couple of hours this went on, and according to official figures 130 people were taken to jail.

But it was all quite pointless in the end. When the anti-Putin slogans began, the Young Guard cut out their speeches and started blaring music that drowned out everything for a block around. (You want to talk about disturbing the peace?) So despite Putin's rhetoric the day before, any constructive criticism the protestors may have wanted to share wouldn't have gotten very far. What's more, any idiot passing by, whether sympathetic to Putin or not, could plainly see what the authorities were doing at the rally. They really weren't fooling anybody.

Down the street, well away from the action, I caught up with some of Russia's famous dissidents, the only people one could reasonably call leaders of the opposition. They were a pretty pathetic sight, and no one was paying much attention to them, including the police. The younger ones hadn't even made it to the square, no Garry Kasparov or Boris Nemtsov, and the two most prominent ones have such radically different views that it was funny to even see them together. There was 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a human rights activist from the Soviet days and one of the only dissidents left in Russia with any moral standing. And then there was Eduard Limonov, the rambling and wacky head of the National Bolshevik party, which wants to turn Europe and much of Asia into part of a new Russian empire. (Why Putin loyalists try so hard to discredit him -- most recently by leaking footage of him with a whore -- is beyond me. He does a fine job of that himself.)

Alexeyeva, flanked by her fellow activist Lev Ponomaryov, had little more than this to say: "We were unable to secure permission from the authorities, but still, we managed to show some sign of discontent." By that point, Limonov was already walking away, and he wasn't in the mood to talk. The cops had made no move to arrest him, to put him in the headlines, so he had eight of his party's activists, guys with Nirvana t-shirts and pierced lips, walk him a few blocks to where a KIA sedan was waiting. "I don't know why he wanted to leave. He left and that's it," one of his body guards told me as we walked back to the protest. "This is the first time they didn't arrest him. They didn't even try. They didn't even come up to us," he complained.

As we approached the square, the national anthem was playing, and beneath it the protestors were still chanting something. (In one of the day's strangest ironies, the Young Guard's soundtrack also included the diametric opposite of the national anthem: "Blood Type" by Viktor Tsoi: a song about what war and the state have always done to the individual.)

The crowd was starting to thin when I ran into another old-time dissident, Sergei Kovalyov, who had helped organize the protest (insofar as it had any organization at all). He is 80, he was heading home, and said he understood perfectly well why the government was acting this way. "The authorities simply can't back down, because they understand better than you or I that their power is not legitimate, and if they show any weakness in the face of reason, they won't survive. It's very simple. If they want to hold on to power, they need to act this way."

I can't say I agree with him. Could it really cost Putin that much to allow a few thousand protestors to rally in Moscow, even if they demand his resignation, even if they make the evening news? Isn't the absurd comedy of the blood drive more embarrassing than allowing some semblance of political debate? It has to be. And the fact that his government doesn't realize this suggests a level of paranoia and self-doubt that only a guy like Khrushchev could match. So maybe Kovalyov is right: only a weak system goes this far to repress debate, to make sure that it's voice is the only one getting through. It seems clear, in any case, that not even the frailest gesture of protest gets to see daylight in Moscow today. That says a lot about the withered state of the opposition, sure, but I think it says more about Putin's leadership.

More on Vladimir Putin

Although most Americans have been either celebrating being off from work or school or remembering their fallen heroes, a storm has been gathering-- one that will break this week-- around Mark Kirk, a corporately-funded Republican from the Chicago suburbs who has made his career based on patently false claims about winning imaginary military awards. And as he twists and turns in the wind attempting to spin it all as a "typo", just a few days after he voted against repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, evidence has begun to surface that he didn't just lie about his awards; he also lied about his sexuality-- yes, another homophobic Republican closet case is about to get outed for his grotesque hypocrisy!

Meanwhile, in honor of Memorial Day, we turned DownWithTyranny over to Democratic congressional candidates who have learned important and relevant lessons connected to military service. Already up are guest posts from Doug Tudor (D-FL), Tod Theise (D-NJ) and Justin Coussoule. (D-OH). At 3pm we'll be posting Bill Hedrick (D-CA) and at 6pm we'll close the day with Mitchell Howie (D-AL).

Doug talked about his hopes that "someday that we will use Memorial Day to not only pay tribute to those Americans who died serving our country in the military, but also to come together once a year as a country to rededicate ourselves as a nation opposed to wars. I believe the best way we can honor those who have fallen on the field of battle is to work our very hardest to ensure that no others have the same fate... "Over the course of this Memorial Day, nearly all politicians and candidates will fall over themselves claiming how much they respect the fallen, honor our veterans, and support our troops. Few of them will follow up with any discussion of how they will actually protect the veterans from an underfunded Veterans Administration, multiple deployments, never-ending and unsustainable warfare, and lives of uncertainty based on campaign cycles. This must stop. 

"To me, 'Honor, Courage, Commitment' means I must have enough honor to speak the truth to power; to have the courage to question the leaders of my party; and the commitment to stand strong enough to do my part to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I did throughout my career in the Navy, you can count on me to stay true to these three core values."

Tod Theise, an attorney, is currently serving in the New York Guard and he wrote about how his tenure there has "had an indelible impact on how I view not only war, but peace":

When my unit travels to Fort Hamilton, Floyd Bennett Field or some other military facility to perform what we affectionately refer to as "will drills," we are confronted with a reality most Americans never witness. It is a sobering experience to sit down with a young man or woman to discuss things like the disposition of their remains or draft a health care proxy in the event they return from Iraq or Afghanistan incapable of making decisions regarding medical care. It is heart rending to make small talk with a twenty-year-old about how he wants his kid brother to get his prized hot rod if he doesn't make it back. Even more difficult is addressing issues involving children and what happens to them when mommy or daddy comes home in a flag-draped casket. 
 
Our soldiers are not action movie characters or cartoonish fodder for our entertainment. They are flesh and blood. They are our brothers and sisters. They are our sons and daughters. They have precious dreams that they sacrificially defer in order to preserve our liberties. I often find myself looking for a quiet place amidst the frenzy of our legal services operation to bow my head, say a prayer and shed some tears at the prospect that some of these soldiers will not be coming home or that their lives will be forever changed by the hell that is war. That their families will sit down for Christmas dinners to come with an empty place setting that will never be filled. That their children will grow up never knowing their mothers or fathers. That they will leave a piece of their soul in an Iraqi desert or Afghani mountain range. 

Sending servicemen and women into the line of fire is the most solemn decision any elected official will ever make. Before such a decision is made, it is incumbent upon those in power to consider exactly what they are placing at risk. I subscribe to a very simple standard for whether to commit troops to the field-- would I send my own son or daughter to fight. Most politicians could not answer this question in the affirmative. Yet they wrap themselves in the flag and reflexively send other people's children across the globe to fight for causes not worthy of their own progeny's blood. I hope there is a special corner of hell carved out for these hypocrites.  

My service in the Guard has, more than anything, taught me to value our troops at a very human level. I pray on this Memorial Day that I never discount who they are for the sake of political expedience.

Justin Coussoule, the West Point grad and former Army officer, took an opportunity to express a very different perspective. Last week Justin talked about how his experience as an officer led him to the conclusion that DADT should be repealed. Today he talked about how he his military service helped him better understand the importance of equal pay for women.

As a cadet at West Point and then an Army officer, I worked alongside highly trained, highly effective, and highly competent soldiers, many of whom were women. In fact, my wife and my sister-in-law are both veterans, and they along with the female soldiers I led served as honorably and ably as the men in their units. The same is true for women in the workplace today, where women contribute in all industries at all levels. Unlike in the Army, though, women today only earn about 75% of what a man in the same job is paid. Women deserve equal pay for equal work. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a step forward, but there are still those who would oppose equality in pay, like my opponent, John Boehner. In the 21st century, what possible reason could one give for not supporting equal pay for equal work?Â
 
As a society, we will always be better for affording equal chances to those who want to succeed. We cannot discriminate against or oppress those who would make our nation better simply because of gender. I learned in the Army that from Private to General Officer, pay is based on rank, not gender. The same should be true in the civilian workforce, where pay is based on performance, and gender has no impact. Women today serve from the assembly line to the board room, and the gains made in the last fifty years must be protected with continued fair and equal access to the same opportunities men have. 

Like Doug Tudor, Bill Hedrick has been a very vocal advocate for ending the occupation of Afghanistan as quickly as can be done taking the safety of our forces into consideration. On a day that the President of Germany resigned over the scandal of him going to Afghanistan and admitting publicly that German troops and fighting and dying there to "protect German economic interests," Bill reminds us that his own children are on active duty in Iraq right now.

Our family members have been asked to make enormous sacrifices at the direction of our political leaders in Washington. For whom are those sacrifices being made? A corrupt Afghan central government whose leader threatens to "join the Taliban?" To protect oil fields or natural gas pipelines for US and European corporations? To maintain contracts for war profiteers who have grown rich from military procurements to support endless occupations?
 
Right now my children are serving in the military, two currently stationed just south of Baghdad on their third deployments. And while my kids put their lives on the line to 'defend the Constitution'-- the tacit bargain when one enlists-- I am not willing to have their lives in jeopardy to defend profits for Mobil/Exxon or 'opportunities' in Iraq for British Petroleum. 
 
Further, it is tremendously offensive for our leaders to verbally wrap themselves in the flag and congratulate themselves for their courageous vote to fund an expansion of an ill-founded war when all they risk is losing the next election. My children, indeed all our sons and daughters, are asked to display genuine courage-- risking an arm, a leg, a life.
 
This week, Washington politicians like Ken Calvert committed billions of dollars more to an on-going war policy that does little to make us safer at home, will certainly result in more deaths and grievous injuries to more military personnel, and drives us as a nation further into debt. After seven years in Iraq and nine years in Afghanistan, it is long past time to bring our men and women safely home.

Tomorrow is primary day in Alabama and there's a crucial race in the 5th district, the northern tier of the state, to replace party switcher Parker Griffith, who went from being a miserably conservative Blue Dog to being an even more miserably conservative Republican. By far, the best candidate running in either party's primary is an Air Force vet, Mitchell Howie. Howie's post, which will be available at DownWithTyranny at 6pm (PT) talks about how the young officer came to the conclusion about how dangerous to our national security corporately-mandated energy policies are-- and what he plans to do about changing those policies.

That's why part of my platform in this race is to create a Green TVA here in North Alabama. The Tennessee Valley Authority has brought jobs and electricity to homes all across the Tennessee Valley for decades, and I want to do the same with clean energy. A Green TVA just makes sense. We can create American jobs by manufacturing products like wind turbines and solar panels in the auto manufacturing plants who's doors have closed over the passed several years. North Alabama's deep water ports can ship these products to consumers and vendors all over the country, who currently must send American money to China in order to meet their clean energy needs. Research universities within this district can provide the know-how to develop newer, better clean energy technology so we can stop relying on foreign oil, and secure our nation with clean, American power.

Some have said this is a far fetched idea, but I remind them that the same was said about walking on the moon before a team of rocket scientists started their research at the Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, which still stands in Alabama's Fifth Congressional District.

This Memorial Day, I hope all Americans will remember the service of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for American freedom, but also think about how many more of our brave men and women will have to lay down their lives to fund the oil addiction that weakens our country. We need clean, American power that brings jobs, a sustainable climate, and security that can't be influenced by the same powers that fund international terrorism. That's why my name will appear on tomorrow's Democratic Primary ballot in North Alabama, and one of the many reasons I'm going to bring service back to Washington.

A reporter asked me "what went wrong with the small schools idea?" It's odd question because all the networks developing highly effective new schools--KIPP, Achievement First, Success Network, Green Dot, Alliance and dozens more--still use the tried and true rule of thumb of 100 students per grade.

The better question is "what went wrong with the big schools idea?" The 50-year experiment with mega-high schools of 1,500-4,500 students had disastrous results especially for low income students. The combination of anonymity and a proliferation of low expectation courses set up the results we see today: one third of American students drop out and one third graduate unprepared for college or careers.

Fixing this problem has proven vexing. The one difference between good schools and bad schools is everything--structure, schedule, curriculum, instruction, culture, and connections with families and community. That makes turnarounds, especially at the high school level, really difficult. Layer on top of that outdated employment contracts and revolving door leadership and you have a national Gordian knot.

The best approach to date has been trading bad seats for good seats--closing failing schools and opening good new schools. This approach, while politically and logistically difficult, has been used with success in Chicago and New York. Armed with this knowledge, Arne Duncan went to Washington determined to take on the problem lowest performing schools.

The good news is that team Duncan inserted more than $5 billion into the stimulus plan to address this problem. The bad news is that grant programs address specific schools and encourage do-it-yourself fixes rather than new school development.

Layered on top of efforts to fix failing schools is the push for a new edu-employment bargain. Obama and Duncan deserve a lot of credit for pushing for a new bargain that values performance, differentiates compensation, and encourages talented and motivated young people to consider teaching.

There's a emerging opportunity set that we need to interject into the national focus on bad schools and bad teachers--personalized digital learning.

Most 'teacher effectiveness' efforts presume a classroom of age-cohorts slogging through textbooks and taking bubble sheet tests. The most talented teachers have a hard time meeting the needs of diverse students. If we shift the focus from teaching to learning, we'd invest more in a new generation of learning tools, platforms, and school formats that personalized learning.

New tools will help us rethink school turnarounds as well. The old rule of thumb of 100 kids per grade is simply a function of how many kids a group of adults can get to know. When learning looks more like an iPod playlist and kids are connected to a variety of adults on social learning platforms, we can begin to imagine schools that blend the best of online and onsite learning. It is becoming possible to make big schools personal and effective by incorporating digital learning.

We can't reach the goals that President Obama set to be first in the world in college completion by reforming the system we have; this is an innovation challenge. It will take new tools, new schools, new partnerships, and a variety of new roles for learning professionals.

Here's an example of five policies that would speed innovation and improvement:
1. Students should be able to enroll anywhere
2. Funding should follow students to the best learning option
3. States should expand, not restrict, innovative learning options
4. The feds, states, and districts should embrace rather than exclude private investment in learning solutions
5. Universities should accept demonstrated competence in addition to transcripts based on seat time and credits

We are attacking the Gordian knot with 2005 solutions when we should be building 2015 solutions to America's education challenge.

More on Barack Obama

BERLIN — German President Horst Koehler resigned Monday in a surprise move after being criticized for reportedly linking military deployments abroad with the country's economic interests – creating a new headache for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The resignation, effective immediately, came only a year into Koehler's second term as the largely ceremonial head of state. Merkel had installed the former International Monetary Fund boss as president in 2004.

The current president of parliament's upper house – Bremen Mayor Jens Boehrnsen, a member of the opposition Social Democrats – will take over presidential duties temporarily, largely signing legislation into law.

A new president must be elected within 30 days. German politicians now will have to figure out quickly who should replace Koehler even as they are preoccupied with trying to make budget cuts amid the eurozone debt crisis.

Merkel called off a planned visit Monday to the German World Cup team's training camp in Italy.

Koehler, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, cited a week of criticism over a radio interview he gave following a visit to German troops in Afghanistan.

He said in that broadcast that, for a country with Germany's dependency on exports, military deployments could be "necessary ... in order to defend our interests, for example free trade routes."

That was taken by many as relating to Germany's unpopular mission in Afghanistan, although his office later said that he was referring to anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia. Germans are often uneasy about deployments abroad, given the country's militaristic past, and the mission in Afghanistan makes many particularly uncomfortable.

Opposition politicians had called for Koehler to take back the remarks and accused him of damaging public acceptance of German military missions abroad.

"I regret that my comments in an important and difficult question for our nation were able to lead to misunderstandings," a strained-looking Koehler told reporters at the president's Bellevue palace.

Koehler complained that some critics had suggested he supported "Bundeswehr missions that are not covered by the constitution."

"This criticism lacks any basis," Koehler said in a statement delivered alongside his wife, Eva Luise. "It also is lacking in the necessary respect for the presidential office."

He added "it was an honor to serve Germany as federal president" then walked off without taking questions.

Koehler positioned himself as an outsider to Germany's political elite and enjoyed high popularity ratings. He occasionally refused to sign bills into law due to constitutional concerns, and once warned politicians against using the global financial crisis as a "backdrop for posturing."

The controversy over his military remarks wasn't particularly major and appeared to be petering out. Still, it added to a general sense of government drift.

The presidency is supposed to be above the political fray and carries little real power but traditionally functions as the nation's moral voice. The president is chosen by a special assembly of lower-house lawmakers and representatives of Germany's 16 states.

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Associated Press writer Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The economy trudges ahead yet debt dogs many Americans, stressing them out even as they firm up their own financial foundations.

There are new jobs produced but old worries persisting for people despite belt-tightening and boosted savings, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

About 46 percent of those surveyed say they're suffering from debt-related stress, and half of that group described their stress as "great deal" or "quite a bit." On the other hand, about 53 percent say they feel little or no stress at all.

That's in line with findings from last year, even though times seem better today: The economy is growing and generating jobs, and households have made progress in repairing their financial footing, trimming debt, watching spending and saving more.

It's a big turnaround from a year ago – a shrinking economy, jobs jettisoned as businesses struggled to survive the deepest recession since the 1930s.

So why aren't the stressed – and the not-so-stressed – feeling better?

For starters, it just doesn't feel much like a recovery to many people.

Unemployment is stubbornly high – 9.9 percent. The jobless face fierce competition for work. Those with a job are watching their paychecks shrink.

A growing number of people are at risk of falling into foreclosure, and only those with the most stellar credit probably can get a new loan. AP-GfK polls show that only 20 percent say the economy is good, compared with 15 percent last year.

Cynthia Bryant, 73, feels stress from her bills – much of that heartburn related to medical expenses.

"I need a different car. I can't afford it. I have to watch every penny that comes in," says Bryant, who worked as a purchasing agent for a computer company before she retired. Bryant, who lives in a Denver suburb, gets by on a fixed-income that hasn't budged, although her expenses – rent, groceries and other basics_ have risen.

Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board, a research group that keeps close tabs on consumers, says it's people's individual circumstances – more so than their sentiment about the economy – that shape their confidence and their stress over debt. "It's about what happens to me – my house, my car, my job," he says.

Christina Standridge, 33, of Milwaukee, says she's stressed about her debts, including car payments.

Laid off twice in the past two years, Standridge has watched her income drop. She worries about losing her current job as an administrative assistant for a company that designs and builds waste water control systems.

Standridge and her husband, who works at a factory fixing machines, have one daughter. The family is watching the pennies. "We're trying to spend less and pay off the bills," she says. "We're cutting corners wherever we can. We're trying to do things that are relatively cheap," she adds, such as having a backyard barbecue rather than going out to eat or to the movies. "Bills gotta be paid," she says.

People are whittling their debt.

The average amount owed on credit cards is $3,900, the poll said. That's down from $5,600 in the fall and $4,900 last spring.

Families with incomes over $50,000 have sliced their credit card debt by more than half, yet their stress from debt hasn't changed much – it's moderately low. Families with incomes under $50,000, however, have added only slightly to their debt, while their stress level rose sharply.

Goldstein says human nature can factor into people's feelings of debt-related stress.

"You have the optimists and the pessimists. You get half the world looking up at the stars and the other half with their head down looking at the mud," he says.

More broadly, people are cutting their debt at the fastest rate in more than six decades, according to the Federal Reserve. People defaulting on mortgages and other loans factor into the reduction, economists point out.

Household debt fell 1.7 percent last year to $13.5 trillion, according to the Fed. It was the first annual drop, based on records going back to 1945.

People on average carry around $44,000 in debt – mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other consumer debt. That's a far bigger load than in the early 1980s, when unemployment topped 10 percent. In 1982, per capita debt totaled about $14,000 in today's dollars.

At the same time, people are building up their savings – 4.2 percent of their disposable income last year, the most since 1998, the Commerce Department says.

A Debt Stress Index tied to the AP-GfK poll was 29.2 in May, unchanged from a year ago. The reading signals moderately low stress.

Paul J. Lavrakas, a research psychologist and AP consultant who analyzed the AP-GfK survey, finds that among those with the most stress from debt are women, married couples, people age 30-44, and the poor – households with incomes less than $20,000.

Those with the least debt stress include men, retired people, single people, those 60 and older, and the wealthy – households with incomes greater than $100,000, he says.

Last year, Democrats felt better about their finances than Republicans, despite generally being in worse shape. That sense seems to have worn off: Democrats now report higher debt stress levels on average than Republicans.

Retired mechanical engineer Patrick Burns, 60, of Allyn, Wash., is among those who isn't stressed over debt. He keeps his IOUs to a minimum.

"I've never really gotten into debt," he says. "I've always kind of lived within my means, and I've found there's a lot less stress with that."

The AP-GfK poll involved interviews with 1,002 adults and was conducted May 7-11. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

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AP Director of Polling Trevor Tompson and Associated Press writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

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Online

Poll site: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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No one can deny that banks have had a tough time of it when it comes to stock market valuations over the last couple of years. The global financial crisis, massive debt and NPL issues along with punishing public opinion led to a massive collapse in banking stocks and company valuations in recent times. It would be simple to blame the sub-prime and global financial crisis as the sole cause of all the ills of the banking sector, but I have a different theory which explains a large part of the picture.

In the last 5 years the S&P 500 has experienced incredible volatility. On October 9, 2007 the S&P 500 hit its all time record of 1,565.15, but it was followed by the biggest annual loss in the S&P's history, losing 37% in 2008 (the previous record being -22% in 2002 at the end of the dot com boom). As a result you'd expect any participants in the US market to have suffered similarly, and they have. Volatility, or the range/spread of buy and sell trades in the US markets is at an all time high and according to many analysts this volatility is here to stay. The certainty in the market has largely disappeared, and with it, the status quo in respect to valuations.

In the last 5 or 6 years, however, a new component has come into valuation metrics for listed companies. We still have revenue, we still have market share, branding and so forth, but innovation is clearly an increasingly significant part of the story. Let me illustrate:

Comparative Performance - S&P 500, Tech and Banking Stocks
Below is a graph (source: Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg) showing the comparative performance of a selection of key stocks from the US market, the S&P500 Index being the dotted yellow line.

Clearly Apple and Google have differentiated themselves. What has made the difference? Why have Google and Apple performed so much better over the last 5 years in market terms? Let's examine the facts and see what conclusions we can draw.

Microsoft's Revenue in 2005 exceeded Apple's by more than 300%, and Google's by almost 600%. In the last 5 years Microsoft's Revenue has increased from$39B in 2005 to close to $60B in 2009, certainly not a bad performance. Google's revenue certainly has increased, but in the years 2007-2009 it has only jumped from $16.5B to $23.7B. Since 2005 Apple has increased their revenue from $13.9B (2005) to $36.5(2009). Apple has certainly benefited from the popularity of the iPhone (Released June 29th, 2007) and more recently the iPad (Released April, 2010).

But if we compare the top 4 US banks we see that their revenue makes the tech companies look fairly ordinary. If revenue was the key driver, then we'd expect to see that the banks would have better comparative valuations. Given that Microsoft's revenue is still close to double that of Apple's revenue, and more than double that of Google - if the answer was that 'tech' revenue was valued at a premium then we'd expect Microsoft to be fairing better.

2009 data	Assets ($B)	Revenue ($B)
Bank of America (BAC)	$2,300	$113
J P Morgan Chase (JPM)	$2,000	$101
Citigroup (C)	$1,800	$106
Wells Fargo (WFC)	$1,200	$51.7

On this basis, revenue, while a critical component of a company's valuation, would seem to not correlate cleanly with the exceptional performance of Apple and Google recently. Well before the GFC started to impact company valuations, they were already being hurt by something...

So is it future revenue potential?
P/E Ratios show somewhat the expectation of the market in respect to future revenue potential. For the 'blue chip' performers like Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo - P/E Ratio (Price/Earnings Ratio) are all performing in the range of 15-17, whereas Apple and Google are at 21.8 and 22.1 respectively. Certainly expectations are that Google and Apple have not yet hit their peak in earnings capability because their valuations show a higher multiple. Indeed, the S&P 500 typically tracks at around 15 - so Google's and Apple's performances are something special.

Future earnings might account for a higher valuation today, but this is not necessarily the sole factor in their comparative performance which, over the last 5 years, has been much better than Microsoft, the top banks and industrials. In fact, you have to look very hard globally to find better performing stocks in respect to either new or established companies in terms of growth in both revenue and share price over the last 5 years.

So future revenue is a factor, but not the sole factor. If it was, then you'd expect Microsoft would get some of the joy too as part of the 'tech' clique, but they've not received as much optimism as their tech buddies have.

What differentiates Apple and Google's revenue from the rest of the pack?
You might attribute Apple's success in respect to valuations from their great products. But if you compare market share both Google and Apple really still are minority players when compared with Microsoft, purely from a product perspective. While Google's Android and Apple's OS-X are taking some share of the mobile market, Windows is still a force to be reckoned with.

So where is the differentiation? Google's strength to date, and Apple's more recent success with great new device technologies has centered around one key area. Their ability to create great, but simple and intuitive, propositions.

Google.com as a search engine is the perfect representation of search (at least for now). When Google launched their search engine in 1997, there was really no one that could touch them in terms of simplicity of experience and validity of results, and today, although many have attempted to copy Google's formula, (read Bing.com) we still see Google maintaining a 65.6% market share of the SE space. What Google bought to the table, their foundation or core, was innovating the customer experience and making technology really simple to use.

Apple has done the same. User Experience is at the heart of why the iPod, iPhone and iPad have captured not only the imagination of the consumer market, but why Apple and its products are increasingly part of the common vernacular. Sure Apple's stuff looks great, cool and is about as aspirational as branded products get in the Y-Gen/Digital Natives space today. But this stuff just works.

Innovating the customer experience is the 'secret sauce'
Innovating the customer experience is at the heart of why Apple and Google are outperforming the market today. It's also at the heart of why traditional banks are suffering. As market analysts, consumers and as media commentators we just see more of the same.

While there has been pressure on the banking market, bankers seem content to 'wait it out' until more sane, normal times return. Banking is an old and traditional industry and it doesn't take kindly to change. But that is problematic - because right now their lack of adaptability is hurting bank valuations significantly. There's nowhere for banks to go from here if they can't innovate around the customer. The lack of innovation means less future revenue and reduced earnings potential.

In fact, as of today it's more likely that a Google, Apple, PayPal or new start up like Square will innovate the customer experience in banking, rather than banks themselves. This is where banks need to take a good hard look at themselves. The lack of capability to innovate the customer experience is costing them, and it's only going to get worse.

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The following summarizes the author's comments at a round table this week to launch UNESCO's World Report "Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue," to which she contributed recommendations on the need for media literacy programs. The round table was part of activities at the third United Nations' Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

According to Chapter 5 of UNESCO's World Report "Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue" (http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=35396&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html), because the media and cultural industries have become highly dynamic sectors in economic, social and political terms, they are increasingly shaping individual and collective identities, worldviews, values and tastes in ways that challenge formal education systems.

New media and new forms of distribution facilitate greater access to content production and the dissemination of cultural content, the report said.

But asymmetries implicit in the digital divide continue to restrict opportunities for genuine cultural exchange, it noted.

Moreover, it said, the very multiplicity of choices and the cultural challenges they embody can result in cultural isolation as well as a proliferation of stereotypes.

Let's just take the example of Rima Fakih, who was crowned Miss USA 2010 this month.

I was asked to comment about the fuss on both sides of the issue on CNN that same week, notably that she is a 24-year-old Arab-American Shiite Muslim originally from south Lebanon, and proud of her origins.

Here we're dealing with stereotypes of Shiite Muslim women being veiled, usually crying over dead relatives or living in poor neighborhoods or villages noted for their conservatism, because that's how the media portray them, and that's the image that comes across.

Would it make any difference that the CNN producer who prepared me for the interview was a worldly, multi-lingual Shiite Lebanese woman with beautiful green eyes, who is not veiled and who goes to the beach to swim like all those beauties in Copacabana?

Rima Fakih comes from a culturally diverse society (Lebanon) and settled in another one (the United States) where she fulfilled her dreams. More power to her!

But for that, the blogosphere was abuzz with stories about "Sex and the Shiite," like the popular American TV show "Sex and the City," or headlines like "Rima Fakih: Terrorist in a Bikini?" That's downright bigoted.

Someone dug up the name Fakih, which is popular in south Lebanon, and linked it to Hezbollah, because they claimed someone from that family - and it could be a very distant relative Rima doesn't even know - is a member of the Party of God, ergo her connection to Hezbollah. I have a friend from the Fakih family and he is very liberal and drinks wine.

That's like saying anyone with an Irish last name of Adams is related to Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein fame and is an IRA terrorist. Imagine the outrage that would cause.

My approach to cultural diversity comes from years of experience as a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor, and later as someone who has taught journalism to undergraduates in university and who has trained professional journalists seeking to upgrade and update their skills and knowledge.

We start with simple and easy to remember rules: accuracy, fairness, balance and never making assumptions about people or things.

These rules depend on a basic element the media often overlook: critical thinking.

Critical thinking enables humans to discern, respect and accept cultural differences. It begins at home, where children pick up cues from their parents' behavior towards others; it is reinforced at school, where some of those behavioral patterns are manifested; and, increasingly, it has been influenced by the media, that play an all too pervasive role in our lives.

Parents who expose their children to different ethnicities, religions, languages and cultures should be credited for creating enlightened and tolerant citizens.

Being able to think critically in the media requires freedom to operate, to investigate and to disseminate the results of one's findings. Nowadays, it's done across various platforms through multi-media and social media channels.

To achieve such goals, those working in media have to be open to cultural diversity, be multilingual and be able to communicate past the loaded rhetoric that represents unilateral points of view.

Journalists must have the ability to ask questions and understand answers in a second language. It's imperative that any self-respecting journalist be fluent in two or more languages.

Unless journalists learn to decipher other people's languages, cultures, backgrounds and problems, they could be misled, or misleading.

In their attempts to beat the competition, produce exclusives, or just stay afloat financially in a fast-changing media landscape where technology and content are often confused, journalists are missing the point.

Yes, commercial interests are key, but content is still king. A story, is a story, is a story.

It's a prerequisite that we drill into journalists the understanding of nuances, of accents, of dialects, of body language, and of non-verbal communication, to ensure that these multi-directional reports are not lost in the global cacophony of messages.

Two of my favorite subjects in school were geography and history. I regret to say they've been marginalized, or swallowed up into other sexier-sounding topics of education.

The result is that today's journalists may fail to make the historical connection between events, thereby sidestepping the contextual references, or, refer to countries by their previous names and mix up racial and ethnic components.

In a worst-case scenario, these faux pas can lead to conflict or agitate already existing turmoil.

Other than linguistic and cultural accuracy is the matter of hype, when one blows things out of proportion or gives them undue attention.

The trick is not falling into the trap of stereotyping and racially profiling people by using loaded terms, unsuitable adjectives, or words that trivialize others' backgrounds.

Again, it takes hard work to filter through the bluster of warring factions, to fine-tune opposing points of view while doing them justice, to expose injustice without going overboard, and to create awareness where action is needed.

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As the official after-party host on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel had the final word on Lost with his alternate endings. Watching the Lost actors let loose with parodies of Survivor, The Sopranos and Bob Newhart immediately seemed like more fun than the actual ending to the show (though probably not as fun as this).











When he decided to borrow a comedy routine from Patton Oswalt, Columbia General Studies valedictorian Brian Corman most likely didn't know what he was getting himself into. As soon as the plagiarism was brought to his attention, Patton sent out this sarcastic tweet to his followers and kicked off a media shaming that lasted a couple of days. If Corman's delivery had been at least tolerable the whole thing would have been slightly more forgivable. But as it was, this is the most painful telling of a legitimately funny bit that you're likely to come across.











Speaking of things that are not funny and actually kind of sad, Sex and the City 2 opened last week to some truly terrible reviews. Lucky for us, Babelgum Comedy summed up the movie in 60 seconds just in case you were considering actually watching all 2 hours-plus.








Fake parody trailers pop up on the internet every day. But it's rare that one goes so far as to make it's own full-on flash-y website. Whoever is behind War Pigs, an action comedy "from the director of Wild Hogs and Old Dogs," has some serious resources at their disposal. I'm betting that they're making a play for a Snakes on a Plane-inspired, make it seem real and maybe it will become real, movie deal. Their Facebook page lists a release date of "late 2010" and the studio as "Touchstone / Dreamworks / Fox" so we'll just have to see how that pans out. In the meantime, they do have something solid on their hands with the trailer.





The fifth and final viral video slot this week is kind of toss-up. Some strong contenders include Derrick Comedy's Hipster Thomas Jefferson sketch, the self-conscious American Idol "Kanye Moment," and Ozzy Osbourne having some fun at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. But since I'm already missing the show, and am still unhappy with NBC's decision to push it to mid-season, the Parks and Recreation as Friends opening credit sequence made me smile this week. Enjoy and happy Memorial Day weekend!

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It's Memorial Day, so I'm going to do something different, but, I feel is appropriate. I'm going to nominate someone for the Congressional Medal of Honor, and by so doing, try to give credit to an overlooked American hero.

When I was eleven years old, my mother took me to see The Longest Day, the best movie ever made about June 6, 1944. Yes, Saving Private Ryan has that epic scene, but it is isolated. Longest Day tells the entire story, better than anyone has done before or since. And the actor who stole the picture, for me was Robert Mitchum, who played Brigadier General Norman Cota. If there was one character who sent chills up my spine, it was this one. I kept asking, for years after, who was this guy?

I'm a lot older more, and I know a lot more--about the battle and about Cota--and I am even more impressed. Cota was the Assistant Commander of the 29th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit. The Allied high command understood that Omaha Beach would be the tough nut to crack. But they had to take it anyway, as it sat right in the middle of the landing areas; without it, the Brits and the Americans would be cut off from each other, and could be cut up, piecemeal. Because it was so difficult, so heavily manned and fortified by the Nazis, this was the only beach assigned two, instead of one divisions. The first of these was the 1st Infantry Division, The Big Red One, the most experienced outfit in the U.S. Army. The other was the 29th, which had never been in combat before.

It was as bad as they expected. Omaha Beach was a killing field, carefully set up to stop the Allies at the waterline, and kill as many of our soldiers as possible. I have visited this site, and despite all that I had read and seen in movies, was stunned. Standing by the German guns, you recognized how well each had been cited, to rake down as much of the beach as possible. No one should have made it through that alive.
The Allied plan centered on getting to the exits, or draws. Generals recognized that one of the American Army's great strengths was its incredible mobility, the most advanced in the world. If they were going to put that mass of tanks, halftracks, trucks, and jeeps to use, they had to take those pathways.

Doing so, however, was not going to be easy. The Germans knew the same thing we did, and poured twenty foot thick concrete to block these roads, and put mortars, cannons, machine guns and infantry to guard them. We tried again and again, and couldn't do it.

While we were failing, more and more troops came ashore, and died. They piled up on the beaches, or on a seawall, and got torn to bits by shells or rifle fire.

Many of those who got hit drowned. When I visited I discovered that the tide on those beaches moved at an incredibly fast pace. I had stopped on the beach for a brief conversation, suddenly discovered the tide had passed me by, and that I was now standing on a sandbar. I had to get my feet wet to reach safety, and if I had dawdled, it would have been much worse. If you were shot and couldn't get up, the water swept in over your head and you died.

Cota had previously decided that the men would need leadership early on, and went in early that morning, the highest ranking officer on the beach. He found chaos, and began to organize and inspire. Amidst heavy fire, he rallied his men; it was Cota who called out to one special unit, "Rangers, lead the way," a line that is now the official motto of that elite force.

But he did a lot more than that. In one of those "Eureka" moments that seems simple--after the fact-- he realized that the only way the Americans could win was by attacking the bluffs. These were the elevations, rolling hills, that linked the draws, only about 100-150 feet high, and relatively undefended. Once they took these positions, the soldiers could work their way along the ridgelines, then take the German fortifications in the flank. Cota grabbed a bunch of troops and then he, not the Rangers, lead the way. Up and over they went; at one point the general got far ahead of his men, and when they caught up, he was standing, twirling his .45 pistol on his forefinger, admonishing the lower ranks that they couldn't always depend on him to show them how to do things. We took the bluffs, then the draws, then Omaha Beach.

Put as bluntly as possible, D-Day succeeded because of Norman Cota.

In time he was promoted to Major General, and installed as CO of the 28th Division. This was sent into the Hurtagen Forest, one of the great hell-holes of the Second World War. Dense forest--trees so thick it was dark under their awning--blocked the use of mechanized equipment. The Germans had sown fields of mines, including the horrible Bouncing Bettys, that popped up when struck, then exploded at crotch height. German artillery shells did not even have to be precise to kill; they exploded amongst the trees, showering soldiers with sharp wood fragments that cut through them.
The 28th was chewing up German units, but it had come to a standstill. Eisenhower was prepared to relieve Cota. Till he saw the casualty figures. No general could have been expected to do more. Cota kept his job.

Cota left the Army in 1946, died in 1971, and is buried in the cemetery at the United States Military Cemetery at West Point.

Douglas MacArthur won the Congressional Medal of Honor, not for storming a machine gun nest, but, according to his citation, for "conspicuous leadership," how, "His utter disregard of personal danger under heavy fire and aerial bombardment, his calm judgment in each crisis, inspired his troops...."
Cota received the Distinguished Service Cross, and there was some discussion of upgrading this to the Medal of Honor, but no one ever followed through on this.

It is long overdue time to correct that omission. Norman Cota served his country well under fire, leading troops when no one else could. Above all, he saved the Second Front.
I call for a national effort to get the military and Congress to award, posthumously, the Congressional Medal of Honor to Norman Cota, for his outstanding service in World War II.