Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 175

Corruption you missed this week: The justice department���s office for access downsizes

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The week started with the State of the Union Address and ended with the GOP-Nunes memo, which was enough excitement to keep everyone busy. In chaotic times, it���s easy to miss other stories about the unjust pursuits and other forms of corruption that have flown under the radar in politics���like how the Office for Access to Justice reportedly closed.

The Office for Access to Justice ���quietly closed,��� according to the New York Times

According to the New York Times, the Justice Department has shut its doors in an exploitive move since Jeff Sessions technically can���t close it without bringing it forth to Congress. Instead, the Justice Department has allegedly moved ���resources elsewhere��� by reducing the size of its staff. The division began in 2010 with former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and was meant to assist those who can���t afford access to counsel and legal assistance. The division���s staff worked with stakeholders in the state, local, and tribal justice systems to��aide��litigants who didn���t have the means for resources.

Ben Carson allegedly used his position for private gain, according to the Washington Post

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has allegedly involved his family in work matters that violate federal ethics rules. The Washington Post obtained memos through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that showed Linda M. Cruciani, HUD���s deputy general counsel for operations, urging Caron not to include his son, Ben Carson Jr., in an agency listening tour last summer. There have reportedly been other incidences which also may have been a violation, according to the report. Since published, Carson has called on the HUD Inspector General to review the matter.

DOJ dismisses Senator Robert Menendez���s remaining charges, according to the New York Times

The remaining charges included bribery counts. Mendez, D-NJ, was accused of lobbying on behalf of Salomon Melgen, an eye doctor in Florida, in exchange for political donations.

The New York Times called the move ���a decision that underscores how a 2016 Supreme Court ruling has significantly raised the bar for prosecutors who try to pursue corruption cases against elected officials.���

Administration removes watchdog responsibilities from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unit, according to the Washington Post

The Trump administration has reportedly cut down on the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity���s responsibilities. This unit has acted as a watchdog and has been known to lead some of CFPB���s most controversial cases including��those that have dealt with discrimination lawsuits. According to a memo The Post obtained, the CFPB said it will still try to protect consumers, but would try not to ���push the envelope.���

As marijuana laws relax, doctors say pregnant women shouldn���t partake

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Two-year-old Maverick Hawkins sits on a red, plastic car in his grandmother���s living room in the picturesque town of Nevada City, Calif., in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. His play pal Delilah Smith, a fellow 2-year-old, snacks on hummus and cashews and delights over the sounds of her Princess Peppa Pig stuffie.

It���s playtime for the kids of the provocatively named Facebook group ���Pot smoking moms who cuss sometimes.���

Maverick���s mother, Jenna Sauter, started the group after he was born. ���I was a new mom, a young mom ��� I was 22 ��� and I was just feeling really lonely in the house, taking care of him,��� she said. She wanted to reach out to other mothers but didn���t want to hide her marijuana use.

���I wanted friends who I could be open with,��� Sauter said. ���Like, I enjoy going to the river and I like to maybe smoke a joint at the river.���

There are nearly 2,600 members now in the Facebook group. Marijuana, which became legal for recreational use in California this month, is seen by many group members as an all-natural and seemingly harmless��remedy��for everything from morning sickness to postpartum depression.

Delilah Smith���s mom, Andria, is 21 and a week away from her due date with her second child. She took umbrage when an emergency room physician recently suggested she take ���half a Norco������ a pill akin to Vicodin, an opioid-based painkiller ��� for her excruciating back pain.

Smith was disdainful. ���She was like, ���We know more about Norco and blah, blah, blah and what it can do to you, but we don���t that much about marijuana,’��� Smith said.

���I was like, ���Test me!��� I was like, ���Observe me. My kid could count to 10 before she was even 2 by herself, and I smoked pot throughout my whole pregnancy. She���s not stupid! There is no third eye growing.’���

The number of women in the United States who use marijuana during pregnancy has been difficult to gauge, partly because some women are reluctant to tell their doctors. At least 24 states consider substance use during pregnancy a form of child abuse, so divulging such information can have serious consequences.

Still, a number of��studies��nationally suggest there���s been a sharp jump in pot use among pregnant women. Younger mothers, especially, were reported using marijuana during pregnancy.

Andria Smith and Sauter both told their doctors of their marijuana use, and after they gave birth, their babies were tested for signs of marijuana���s chief active ingredient,��THC.

Because their babies tested positive, Sauter and Smith were visited at home by county social service workers, who gave the women information about the effects of marijuana use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Researchers say psychoactive compounds in marijuana easily��cross the placenta, exposing the fetus to perhaps 10 percent of the THC ��� tetrahydrocannabinol ��� that the mother receives, and higher concentrations if the mom uses pot repeatedly.

Dr. Dana Gossett, a research obstetrician and gynecologist at the University of California-San Francisco who also treats patients, said studies��have shown marijuana��increases the risk of stillbirth��or adversely affects how a baby���s brain develops.

Gossett cited some��research��that suggests children exposed to marijuana while growing in the womb can have poorer performance on visual-motor coordination ��� tasks like catching a ball or solving visual problems like puzzles.

And studies also show, she said, these kids may have behavioral problems at higher rates than other children by age 14, and are at greater risk for initiating marijuana use.

���That is biologically plausible,��� Gossett said, ���because the effects of THC in the brain may actually prime that child for addictive behavior, not just to marijuana but to alcohol as well.���

There has been little research on the effects of THC passed to a baby via breastfeeding. But because there isn���t enough evidence to determine the risk, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)��discourages marijuana use during pregnancy, and warns breastfeeding moms to avoid eating or smoking marijuana or inhaling its secondhand smoke ��� since some amount of THC, just like alcohol, can pass into the baby that way.

To Smith���s point that her daughter, Delilah, is just as smart as her peers, studies do show that, in general, children exposed to marijuana in utero don���t score worse on reading or mathematics as they get older.

Sauter said she and her friends don���t smoke near their children, nor do they spend their days stoned to oblivion.

���It���s not like being totally out of it,��� Sauter said. ���I���m completely aware of my surroundings. I���m watching my kid, watching my friends��� kids. I���m hanging out. You totally know what���s going on.���

Sauter said many parents she knows are uncertain if they can get in trouble using pot now in California. Indeed, child protection laws in most states remain at odds with liberal marijuana laws. Some moms on the Facebook page will not go to the doctor ��� even when they���re sick.

���They don���t want to get tested,��� Sauter said. ���And that���s dangerous. We should be able to be open about it. Because if something does go wrong, we���ve got to know.���

ACOG does not endorse mandatory testing for THC in pregnant women or newborn babies ��� out of concern that women could be jailed or have their babies taken from them. Instead, the organization urges obstetricians to ask pregnant women about drug use during prenatal visits, counseling these patients against substance use and helping them alleviate their nausea, back pain or postpartum depression with medications deemed safe by federal drug regulators.

But with��recreational cannabis now legal��in at least eight states and the District of Columbia,��physicians like Gossett are worried that newborns and young children, whose brains are rapidly developing, constructing billions of neural connections, will come to know the world in an altered state.

���They���re learning what things look like and how things move and how to respond to the world,��� Gossett said. Marijuana���s psychotropic effects, she added, will change ���a child���s ability to interpret the world around him.���

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and me: Seeking enlightenment with the Beatles’ guru

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Credit: Getty/Keystone)

Disciples cannot take knowledge from a master until they raise their level of consciousness so knowledge will flow to them.�����Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Spinning in the eye of his hurricane was at once glorious, stirring, and electrifying, and wholly devastating, maddening, and mortifying. Riding an emotional roller-coaster, I ricocheted from heavenly delight to hellish desolation and back.

This extraordinary man, who moved me so intensely, came from India ��� a land of mysteries. Until the mid���twentieth century, its vast spiritual treasures remained largely hidden from the West. A significant change occurred when he left for Ameri��ca���s shores and made ���meditation��� a household word. His brush with celebrities placed him in the spotlight. But his true legacy was Transcendental Meditation.

As a former disciple, I lived in his ashrams for twenty-two years and served on his personal staff for six years. For extended periods, I enjoyed close proximity to the most renowned guru of the twentieth century ��� Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Submission to a guru is an abhorrent idea in the West, where worldly achievements, individual assertion, and winning define us. Eastern wisdom is considered inferior to science. However, the venerable Indian tradition seeks loftier treasures. There the goal is to trade up ego identification for realization of the higher self (atman).

India is where disciples seek gurus to guide them toward spiritual enlightenment. But the alchemical process rendering this transformation has largely been concealed. Disciples seldom write about their ���spiritual makeover,��� as frankly, it���s incredibly embarrassing. Gurus don���t reveal their closely guarded methods. Otherwise the spell they cast on disciples would be broken.

Loyal devotees impart only highest reverence toward their gurus and paint roman��tic pictures. They extol their guru���s God-like qualities or quote their bespoken pearls of wisdom. Rarely do they divulge anything other than how great the master was, what miracles transpired, and what marvelous experiences were had.

Practically no one discloses the fact that, for the disciple to achieve moksha (free��dom from the karmic wheel), the ego must die. The raw truth is this: realizing who we really are (infinite being) rather than who we thought we were (limited self ), means giving up ego. That���s why higher consciousness is termed egoless. Ego death isn���t roman��tic. It can be devastating and shattering.

Irina Tweedie, author of “Daughter of Fire,”��said that to realize their higher self, dis��ciples must undergo ���self-annihilation������ ���turned inside out, burned with the fire of love so that nothing shall remain but ashes and from the ashes will resurrect the new being, very unlike the previous one.���

Many authors willing to let us peek through ashram windows are disenchanted dropouts who label ashrams ���cults��� and gurus ���cult leaders.��� Such expos��s portray in��sulting, exacting bearded men severely rebuking and correcting disciples.

To our Western mind, gurus might appear angry or abusive. But at what point do tough-love tactics cross into ���abuse���? How do gurus differ from coaches, athletic trainers, or drill instructors? Why is it okay for tough trainers to coach prot��g��s, yet not okay for tough gurus to train disciples?

Just as coaches bring out the best in their charges, true spiritual masters elevate their students. In a unique relationship of unconditional love, disciples surrender to gurus, and gurus lift disciples to God-realization. This time-honored Eastern tradi��tion, which transforms students into masters, has survived for millennia ��� because it works.

I wouldn���t dare liken myself to revered saints who���ve achieved enlightenment at their gurus��� hands. However, Maharishi���s relationship with his students, which I wit��nessed over two decades, was similar to that of other disciples with their great masters.

Why do Westerners find gurus and cultish ashrams repugnant, considering our dominant religion began with a spiritual master and twelve devoted disciples? That master treated disciples with tough love in a way that might resemble Maharishi. The disciples responded as we did under Maharishi���s guidance ��� with actions deemed tim��id, immature, clueless, and sometimes faithless.

Only a handful of six million who learned Transcendental Meditation (The TM Technique) spent any time whatsoever in Maharishi���s presence. Out of those who wit��nessed his antics, few understood his motives. Many who got scorched by his fire still remain baffled. A good number consider themselves victims.

As I morphed from a painfully shy teenage rebel to a disturbingly self-doubting but determined young seeker through Maharishi���s guidance, then into a spiritually aware teacher, I found what I was seeking, but not as expected.

Ultimately, I discovered the divine presence within me. Even though I no longer have a guru in physical form, I enjoy an intimate relationship with the inner guru. Any-one can experience this divine source directly, without accepting dogma, and without middlemen, such as priests, pastors, psychics, astrologers, rabbis, or gurus. Once we let go of ego attachment, we become our own guru and miracle maker. The kingdom of heaven is within us.

I feel Spirit has guided me always. A higher plan has been at work, threading my life with divine intervention. Some might say I live a ���charmed life.��� Though my days have been peppered with challenges, multitudes of blessings continually fall into my lap. Even during crisis, the solution always appears���usually instantly. Generally I don���t let anything, including myself, stand in my way. If I want to accomplish something, I just do it.

Luckily, I found a simple way to experience divine love directly, at will ��� anytime I ask. This has given me great solace. Once I made this connection, never was I alone again. The anguish of separation was gone. This mystical connection of love, light, grace, and wisdom is the pearl of great price, more precious than rubies or gold.

My life has been (and continues to be in spite of the absence of Maharishi���s physical presence) lived in devotion, led by Spirit daily ��� even when I was younger and didn���t know it.

Until his death at age ninety, Maharishi lived in Vlodrop, Holland. Working day and night, he was still trying to establish world peace. ���Maharishi Peace Palaces��� were theoretically being built in one hundred U.S. cities and three thousand cities world��wide. The plan was pundits would vibrate world peace by chanting the Vedas around the clock in these palaces.

Starting in 2002, about 150 wealthy devotees took Maharishi���s ���Enlighten��ment Course,��� forking over a cool million dollars per person to fly to Vlodrop, watch Maharishi on a video feed, and donate to the alleged permanent establishment of ten thousand pundit boys in India chanting day and night for world peace. Course graduates were bestowed golden medals and crowns and dubbed ���Raja���(the Sanskrit word for ���king���). They rode around in ostentatious royal white chariots drawn by white steeds, driven by formal coachmen in red uniforms and top hats, accompanied by marching bagpipers and flagbearers heralding their arrival ��� even when no one was there to greet them.

Hollywood director David Lynch was a graduate, though he didn���t accept the ti��tle or crown. He has continued to be a spokesperson for TM worldwide. The David Lynch Foundation has gained quite a foothold among the Hollywood elite supporting its meditation programs.

Near his death, Maharishi was in the public eye again. He conducted an aggressive worldwide publicity campaign and building project. Large ads appeared in the New York Times, newspaper articles about TM abounded, and ���Maharishi Ayurveda Health Spas��� cropped up everywhere. Sadly, nearly all closed a few years later.

Maharishi died February 5, 2008. On the same day, for the first time ever, NASA beamed a song, the Beatles��� ���Across the Universe��� directly into deep space toward Polaris, the North Star. Recorded exactly forty years previously, this song, written by John Lennon, quoted Maharishi���s oft-repeated Sanskrit phrase honoring his guru: Jai Guru Deva. As part of the celebration, people around the world simultaneously played the song at the same time it was transmitted by NASA.

���The Global Consciousness Project��� of Princeton University���s Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, which tracks meaningful correlations in random data, has found whenever great events synchronize feelings of millions of people, their network of seventy random number generators exhibits nonrandom patterns. On February 11, 2008, a striking U-shaped pattern occurred in morning and early afternoon hours, dur��ing Maharishi���s cremation in Allahabad, India.

In 1968, when filmmaker Alan Waite asked Maharishi what he would like to be remembered for, his answer was ���Nothing.��� But my hope is he will be remembered as a great spiritual master who played a leading role in an unparalleled revolution of consciousness. Right now the enigmatic guru might still be up to his old tricks ��� even from the beyond.

Why boredom can be good for you

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Being trapped in a tedious job, with no possibility of escape, is a recipe for real boredom. This kind of boredom is unpleasant and definitely bad for us. But a flurry of recent media interest on the subject of boredom suggests that it is a frequent experience that really bothers people and is not limited to the workplace. This must tell us something about contemporary life.

One of the defining features of today���s culture is the near ubiquity of mobile digital technology, and smart phones in particular. Look around any bus, waiting room or queue, and chances are that many of the people confined there will be head bent, thumbing-tapping or scrolling down. Even at home, phones and their menus are never far from reach.

To be able to be transported to any time or place, real or virtual, to access unlimited information and entertainment, or to carry out unfettered communication, is an extraordinary possibility, with untold positive potential. Nevertheless, increasing numbers of people now sense that constant connection is not good for them and feel the need for a ���digital detox���.

Go with the ���Flow���

Turning to one���s smart phone in order to fill or kill time in the hiatuses of life has become a widespread, unthinking habit, an automatic response to a lull in activity. It is a distraction from the impatience of waiting for time to pass. Paradoxically, such an attempt to avoid boredom, may, it seems, actually result in a kind of dissatisfaction, which is itself experienced as boredom. Psychologist Mihalyi Csickzentmihalyi���s concept of ���Flow��� explains why.

Flow is the satisfying feeling of complete absorption we get when we���re wholly focused on an enjoyable, open-ended activity, of which we are in control but which stretches our abilities ��� such as rock climbing, writing, solving an equation or building a piece of furniture. But if our skills are greater than those needed to accomplish the activity ��� such as casual internet use ��� boredom is the result. Consequently, digital ���surfing��� can be psychologically as well as physically superficial.

In our hectic lives, in which we���re bombarded by attention-grabbing external stimuli, the chance, instead, to withdraw for a while is an important opportunity to recharge mental batteries. Moments when there seems to be ���nothing to do��� are times when we can turn inwards, to reestablish our relationship with our self and cultivate an inner life.

We can revisit past experiences, enjoy them afresh, maybe see them in a different light and gain new understanding, or rethink future plans. Such times also offer us the chance to be fully in the here and now. We can look around and notice new details, developing our familiarity with our own environment and our sense of belonging to it and it to us. This is important for well-being. A longer period with time on our hands can lead to the discovery of a new interest ��� if it���s not frittered away with distractions.

But if we are used to being constantly busy, unoccupied time, alone with our thoughts, can be hard to tolerate. If so, these suggestions might help.

Try to see the challenge of learning to be still as a form of adventurous living; to look forward to having ���down time��� or ���quiet time��� rather than fearing boredom; or to borrow from clowning tradition the practice of ���staying with the problem���, that is, actively engaging with a problematic situation until a novel solution suggests itself.

Just pottering, carrying out simple tasks like washing up, deadheading garden flowers or mending, or lying on the grass looking up at the sky, can help the mind to disengage from purposeful thought and wander where it will, daydreaming, making new connections, reflecting, problem solving. Indeed, such free range mental activity is now understood by neuroscientists to be important for healthy brain function.

Embrace the gaps

While boredom signifies a lack of stimulus, gaps and pauses in engagement are potentially of great personal value. People who fully appreciate this are the those who say they never get bored: they are always able to find something that interests them to think about or do, or can find contentment in simply being. In business parlance, time is money, but time has its own intrinsic value. We need to learn to appreciate and enjoy raw time as a precious resource.

Indeed, people like the happily modest material consumers who took part in a study for my book Happier People Healthier Planet are notable for actually preferring to have control over their time than plentiful spending money. Viewing unassigned time as a positive asset encourages the development of inner resources, such as curiosity, playfulness, imagination, perseverance and agency, out of which all sorts of fulfilling activities can emerge.

A number of creative professionals have spoken of the benefit of boredom for their creativity. Novelist Neil Gaiman, for example, finds that getting really bored is the best way to come up with new ideas, and because constant social networking makes boredom impossible he committed himself to a period offline.

Millionaire businessman Felix Dennis, meanwhile, finding himself grounded in a hospital bed and bored silly without his phone, looked around for something else to do. As all he could find was a block of Post-it Notes on the nurses��� station and ���you can���t write a novel or a business plan on a Post-it Note���, he tried his hand at writing a poem. Several published volumes of poetry followed.

Winnie the Pooh understood the need for a vacant mind. ���Poetry and Hums aren���t things which you get,��� he said in The House at Pooh Corner. ���They���re things that get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.���

Farmers learnt long ago that land which is allowed to lie fallow from time to time becomes more productive. It seems that the same can be true of the human mind.

Teresa Belton, Visiting Fellow at the School of Education & Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia

Trump claims memo ���vindicates��� him in Mueller probe

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Donald Trump broke silence on Twitter about the GOP-Nunes memo following its release on Friday claiming that it vindicates him in the Russia probe, and once again turned it into an opportunity to deny any alleged obstruction and collusion with Russia.

���This memo totally vindicates ���Trump��� in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!��� Trump tweeted on Saturday morning.

The partisan document���which has been described as ���worse than a nothing burger������ was released by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and provided little insightful information, leading some to speculate that the GOP might be trying to create a distraction from the Russia probe. The report argued that the Steele dossier was biased; Trump approved the classified document to be released on Friday.

To further add to the memo’s probable illegitimacy, Nunes made an appearance on FOX News ���Special Report,��� with Bret Baier on Friday to talk about its release.

���I have an obligation to the American people when we see FISA abuse,” Nunes said in the interview. “These are secret courts that exist to target for foreigners, for catching terrorists, for catching people who might be bad actors and the American citizens that are represented before this court have to be protected, and the only place that can protect them is the U.S. Congress when abuses do occur.���

In the same interview, he��said that he didn���t read the FISA applications.

���No, I didn���t,��� Nunes told Baier, when asked if he saw the applications.

The emerging��developments��and continuous discussions are even concerning to some republican lawmakers. Indeed, Senator John McCain, R-AR, released a statement on Friday saying Trump was ���doing Putin���s job for him.���

The statement said:

���The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests ��� no party���s, no president���s, only Putin���s. The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia���s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller���s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation���s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin���s job for him.���

The night Jimi Hendrix plugged into the UK scene

(Credit: Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)

Two of London���s reigning guitar heroes, Townshend and Clapton, were tipped off by a third, Jeff Beck, that a new man was in town. After seeing Jimi at Blaises club, Townshend felt that some of his trademark guitar tricks had been nicked. Meanwhile, Clapton was sufficiently alarmed that he called Townshend, not previously a close friend, to an emergency meeting. Together they went to the cinema where they sat and tried to figure out how best to deal with this new menace. We don���t know what film they saw, but we do know they decided to make Hendrix welcome���although it���s hard to imagine what else they could have done. Run him out of town? Called an unofficial strike? Cast spells?

Jealousy wasn���t restricted to guitar players alone. It���s amusing to watch Mick Jagger in Joe Boyd���s 1973 film “Jimi Hendrix” claiming, in preposterous Belgravia Cockney accents, to have loved and supported Hendrix. In fact, Jimi���s unsubtle play for Marianne Faithfull, acted out before everyone at the Speakeasy (not to mention Marianne���s own approval of Jimi), started a Jagger/Hendrix feud which only ended with Jimi���s death.

The American R&B world, segregated from white society, may have been highly stylised but the English rock scene was a social system as rigidly stratified as every other area of English life: a hierarchy in which everyone knew their place and, more often than not, stayed in it. The Beatles and The Stones ruled the pop world, but in 1966 the newly emerging Rock world belonged to those perceived as virtuoso musicians. To the top of this scene floated Cream. It is hard to imagine today the degree of awe in which Cream were held. Nobody got onstage with them (nobody was foolish enough). So when, on October 1, 1966, at the London Poly, a slightly gawky, unknown left-hander appeared among the Trinity the audience thought they were about to witness a ritual humiliation. Some dumb American who didn���t know the form. Ginger Baker scowled. Clapton discreetly barred the way to his Marshall amp, so Hendrix plugged into Jack Bruce���s bass amp. Within thirty seconds of ���Killin��� Floor��� Clapton���s jaw dropped, and the hierarchy of the English rock world experienced a profound shift.

That part of the story is well known: less documented are Hendrix���s intentions that night. The more one inquires, the more it seems likely that he approached the show in the spirit of a pre-war Kansas City cutting session. (Given Hendrix���s abilities and the parochial nature of English rock, who wouldn���t?)

Chas Chandler���s mate, Keith Altham, interviewed Jimi the afternoon before the show. Always an astute observer, he was quick to notice a sharper side of Jimi���s temperament, one that corresponded to neither of the stereotypes reported by the press. Popular journalism dislikes paradox, preferring plain, easily digestible ���facts��� and characters free of annoying ambiguity. So Jimi was presented as a rampant ���Wildman of Borneo������unless a journalist happened to meet him, in which case the angle altered to mild shock at the discrepancy between the ���savage��� onstage and the ���gentle, shy��� man backstage.

As both journalist and PR man, Altham knew how to play up Fleet Street expectations to his clients��� best advantage but he was too bright to believe the stories he sold. He knew Hendrix as an altogether more complex personality and it amused him to see how Jimi���s sly, street-smart wit was too quick, its delivery too throwaway, to register with most English hacks:

[his] waspish responses were often lost on journalists who missed the softly spoken retorts as his incredibly long fingers fluttered nervously and he tailed off with ���etcetera etcetera��� . . .

In a piece written as a posthumous letter to Hendrix, Altham later wrote:

One of your best one-liners occurred prior to your being invited to jam with your great rival Eric Clapton and Cream . . . I asked you how you rated him, you said: ���He is a kinda hero of mine except I don���t really have heroes. But I can���t wait to find out if he is as good as he really thinks I am���. You looked slyly out of your manager���s window in Gerrard St.

So, as Jimi looked out on Gerrard St., what other guitarists might he have had in mind? Who were the Big Beasts of the English Blues jungle, and how did they rate?

Clapton, when I first saw him mid-���66, gave the most sustained display of virtuoso guitar playing I���d yet seen. Cream, especially in the days when they still spoke to one another, were truly something to see. In America���and especially on the West Coast���they were hugely influential. Jerry Garcia told me that he, and the other San Francisco bands, had never conceived that so much power could be focused through the format of a blues-based three-piece band. He called it ���a revelation���.

Jeff Beck was always the quirkiest and least predictable of players. Still is. And he can claim to have had some influence on Hendrix; we know that Jimi studied his Yardbirds records closely, especially Beck���s use of feedback, a phenomenon which up till then, in Mick Green���s words, was ���just something you wanted to get rid of, especially with semi-acoustic (electric) guitars���.

Once in England, Jimi also drew a lot from Pete Townshend, specifically his stage demeanour and the way he used gesture. For Townshend, who considered himself limited in technical ability, the way to convey power onstage was to scale up his movements till they were larger than life. That���s how he sees it: I���d say that as a guitarist/writer he played to his strengths. Using simplicity and directness he made half a dozen magnificent singles, and invented a visual language that complemented them so successfully it���s still copied to this day. Strangely, Pete, essentially a rhythm guitarist/songwriter who didn���t traffic in blues guitar at all, had the most in common with Jimi. Both were self-taught players who developed their own particular line further than any of their peers.

Of all the English players, Peter Green seemed the least intimidated by Hendrix. Green���in BB King���s words the ���sweetest sounding��� and ���best��� of the white bluesmen���sounds to me to have had some classical training (or else knew a bit about Spanish guitar). Jimi���s polyphonic style would have been less of a mystery to him than to some of the others. Let me explain ���polyphonic���. The English lead guitarists tended to play long lines of single notes: monophony. Jimi could do that as easily as anyone else but, as classical guitarists do, he could play an accompaniment and a melody at once (what���s often and inadequately referred to as his ���mixing rhythm and lead together���): that���s polyphony.

The best example of monophony was Clapton, who, as Hendrix quickly spotted, wasn���t a rhythm guitarist at all. Jimi, by contrast, had learned the ins and outs of the less glamorous rhythm guitar role during his formative days touring with R&B acts. The bandleaders on the soul circuit didn���t want any flash lead: just clear, sharp rhythm guitar. Jimi always spoke about ���escaping��� those confines but in fact R&B and Soul Review disciplines were the making of him.

University under fire for off-the-grid herpes vaccine experiments

(Credit: AP/Damian Dovarganes)

WASHINGTON ��� Southern Illinois University���s medical school has halted all herpes research, one of its most high-profile projects, amid growing controversy over a researcher���s unauthorized methods offshore and in the U.S.

SIU���s ethics panel launched a ���full��� investigation Dec. 5 of the herpes vaccine experiments by university professor William Halford, according to a memo obtained by Kaiser Health News.

Halford, who died in June, had injected Americans with his experimental herpes vaccine in St. Kitts and Nevis in 2016 and in Illinois hotel rooms in 2013 without routine safety oversight from the Food and Drug Administration or an institutional review board, according to ongoing reporting by KHN. Some of the participants say they are experiencing side effects.

The panel, known as the Misconduct in Science Committee, told SIU���s medical school dean that the inquiry should not only investigate the extent of Halford���s alleged wrongdoing, but also scrutinize ���members of his research team,��� according to the Dec. 5 memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

���The Misconduct in Science Committee is now in its investigative stage and the School anticipates this investigation will take approximately 120 days,��� SIU spokeswoman Karen Carlson told KHN in an emailed response. ���However, the investigation could take longer.���

The panel���s inquiry marks the second one to be launched by SIU since Halford���s methods were detailed in a KHN report in 2017.

The Department of Health and Human Services asked the university to determine whether Halford���s activities violated the institution���s pledge to HHS. SIU, a state university, had pledged to follow human-subject safety protocols for all research, even if privately funded.

In October, SIU medical school���s institutional review board determined Halford���s activities were in ���serious noncompliance��� with university rules and U.S. regulations and recommended that the misconduct committee investigate, according to records obtained by KHN under open-records laws.

Now, the committee has taken up the case, putting more pressure on SIU���s medical school, which initially said it bore no responsibility for the experiments.

The committee, which is made up of five faculty members, holds hearings about such misconduct and can call witnesses before reaching a conclusion.

The university is required to have such a committee to assure the federal government that it will examine allegations of research misconduct, said Bethany Spielman, a professor of health law at SIU���s medical school in Springfield,Ill. The medical school receives about $ 9 million a year in federal research dollars.

���Part of the reason this committee exists is to keep the federal funding clean and flowing,��� said Spielman, who specializes in bioethics. ���Any university that does research, especially with human subjects, wants to be trusted by the federal government and the public.���

In SIU���s response to KHN���s open-records request, the university excised the names of the committee members.

Carlson said that after the committee���s investigation is complete ���in conjunction with recommendations from the appropriate federal agencies, we will address our policies and procedures and anything else that arises from the investigation.���

���Currently, no herpes research is being conducted at SIU,��� she said.

SIU had said Halford conducted his research on human subjects independently in the Caribbean in 2016 with a company he co-founded with a Hollywood filmmaker. Yet, SIU���s medical school shared in a patent on a prospective vaccine with Halford���s company, Rational Vaccines, and promoted Halford���s vaccine research on its website.

The university has not responded to questions about its role in earlier experiments on human experiments by Halford. According to emails obtained by KHN and an account by one of the participants in the herpes vaccine experiment, Halford injected patients with the vaccine in 2013 in Illinois hotel rooms.

Many of the email exchanges with the participants in 2013 ��� asking them to send photographs of rashes, blisters and other reactions ��� were sent from Halford���s university email account. He used the university phone for communication and he referred to a graduate student as assisting in the experiment and to using the lab, which ethics experts said could constitute an improper use of state funds.

It is unclear whether the committee will have access to Halford���s or his former colleagues��� emails for its inquiry. An SIU colleague who had worked with him on his research took a job with Rational Vaccines, according to his online profile. Edward Gershburg, a former SIU professor, describes himself as the company���s chief technology officer, according to his LinkedIn account. Gershburg, who is no longer with the university, could not be reached for comment, and the company did not respond to questions about him.

In the Dec. 5 memo obtained by KHN, the misconduct committee pointed out that Halford received federal funding for his research on animals from the National Institutes of Health. In such cases, universities are supposed to ensure that researchers don���t use federal funding for unauthorized research, ethics experts told KHN. SIU���s Carlson said Halford���s NIH funds stopped in 2012.

���It is unclear at this time whether that grant is affected by the alleged misconduct,��� stated the memo, which was sent to the medical school dean, Jerry Kruse, who assumed that role on Jan. 1, 2016.

In a reference to Halford���s nasal cancer, which was diagnosed before the human-subject experiments, the committee added: ���We can only speculate as to [Halford���s] motivation, which may have been related to his terminal illness.���

NIH declined comment and HHS did not respond to questions.

The pressure on the university has intensified with attention from Capitol Hill and a high-profile lawyer.

In letters sent out earlier this month, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, told the Trump administration and Southern Illinois University that he wanted to be reassured that ���corrective action��� was being taken to prevent similar research abuses.

In a separate development, three participants injected with an unauthorized herpes vaccine by Halford are demanding compensation from SIU for alleged side effects from the vaccine.

The participants recently hired Alan Milstein, a New Jersey lawyer who specializes in litigating research abuses. In late December, Milstein notified SIU that the participants hired him to pursue litigation. Milstein asked for a meeting to discuss the participants��� fears about the vaccine and possible side effects.

���They realize now they were used as guinea pigs in outrageously unethical experiments that defied and flouted the most basic requirements of human-subject research in this country,��� Milstein said in an interview.

The participants, who have herpes, have requested anonymity to protect the privacy of their health.

Milstein sent a similar letter to Halford���s company, Rational Vaccines.

Rational Vaccines was co-founded with Hollywood filmmaker Agust��n Fern��ndez III and has since received millions of dollars in private investment from billionaire Peter Thiel, who contributed to President Donald Trump���s campaign.

SIU declined to comment, and the company did not respond to questions about Milstein���s letter.

While critics have accused Milstein of relying on overly aggressive tactics that obstruct legitimate research, he is widely known to pursue research misconduct cases, even those involving some of the nation���s most prominent research institutions.

Over the past decade, Milstein has represented plaintiffs alleging research abuses committed by drug companies and prestigious universities, including Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. The complaints often have led to confidential settlements.

Regardless of whether SIU can be found negligent in court, Spielman of SIU said she believed the university owed the participants an ���institutional apology��� for how the research was conducted.

���The university should acknowledge that there must have been some kind of breakdown in the system,��� she said.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Paul Ryan celebrates a public school secretary���s $1.50 weekly raise

Paul Ryan (Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)

House Speaker Paul Ryan retweeted an article published by AP News about how the GOP tax cuts are reportedly delivering bigger paychecks to workers across the country.

Ryan���s tweet, which has since been deleted (see a screenshot below), praised a public high school secretary, Julia Ketchum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who told AP News that she received a $1.50 weekly pay raise���an extra $78 a year, which came as a surprise.

Ryan presumably saw this as a proud win for the GOP, which is why he tweeted, along with the article: ���A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week��� she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.���

According to US News & World Report���s ���Best Places��� rankings, the average annual salary in Lancaster is $42,150. The median home price is $176,167, and the average monthly rent is $908. A Costco membership, the Gold Star package���the tier which provides the least benefits��� costs $60 a year, which is presumably what Ketchum���s $78 annual raise can cover.

People on Twitter, including democratic lawmakers and their teams, quickly responded, noting that $1.50 a week���an extra $6 a month���isn���t��something to brag about.

“Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and Republicans don’t want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to corporate America and the top 1% at your expense,” the political team for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tweeted.

Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and Republicans don���t want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to corporate America and the top 1% at your expense.

He also doesn���t want you to know he got $500.000.00 from the Koch family. pic.twitter.com/ENXxASfAMP

��� Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 3, 2018

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, responded, writing ���Wells Fargo, fresh off of defrauding millions of Americans, gets $3.4 billion.���

Wells Fargo, fresh off of defrauding millions of Americans, gets $3.4 billion. https://t.co/HT4yq3znxw

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) February 3, 2018

Jess King, who is running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 16th district, tweeted in response, ���@SpeakerRyan���s tax plan gives $3,000 a week to the top 0.1%, and gives our workers… $1.50 a week.”

Lancaster���s poverty rate rose 30% in the past decade.

The top 0.1%���s income rose 600% in the past 30 years.@SpeakerRyan���s tax plan gives $3,000 a week to the top 0.1%, and gives our workers… $1.50 a week.

But at least Charles & David Koch are happy, right Paul? pic.twitter.com/9tMGQOzgLv

— Jess King (@jessforcongress) February 3, 2018

The Trump admin���s approval of Medicaid work requirements threatens the lives of poor people

(Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Less than a month after the GOP passed its $1.5 trillion tax bill that will disproportionately benefit corporations and the super rich, the Trump administration opened the door to a policy that could gut Medicaid. New guidelines issued on January 11 will allow states to require recipients to work in order to receive healthcare benefits through the program. �����

In May 2017, Seema Verma, the Trump-appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare�� and Medicaid Services, issued a letter to governors calling for ���innovations��� to the healthcare programs in order to enhance ���human dignity.��� But as��studies have shown, the type of work requirements encouraged by the agency��are��ineffective in reducing��poverty,��and create barriers to life-saving services.

In response to the administration���s decision, the Southern Poverty Law Center has said that it would file a legal challenge. In a statement, the advocacy group called the work requirement ���an effort to curtail access to health insurance coverage for our nation���s most vulnerable people.���

On Friday, Kentucky received approval from the Trump administration to enforce Medicaid work requirements, the first among at least 10 states currently seeking to enact the change. These mostly Republican-led states include Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah��and��Wisconsin.

Tajah McQueen is a parent and a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, an organization fighting for tax reform to fund education and healthy communities. McQueen recently enrolled in Medicaid after being laid off from her full-time catering job.

���It’s insulting to assume that because I don���t have a job I don���t have dignity or respect for myself,��� says McQueen. ���If anything took away my dignity, it was being let go of my job without explanation, and living in a society that doesn���t have better tools for people in these kinds of situations.���

���It���s scary,��� McQueen adds. ���I suffer from depression and anxiety. If I lost Medicaid, I wouldn���t be able to afford to be able to pay for my medication or go to therapy. Not having my mental health under control would hurt my capacity to apply for jobs, and handle the everyday life of being a parent.���

Beginning in July, Kentucky will require recipients of Medicaid to work or volunteer 20 hours a week and pay a premium to continue to receive benefits. Though some recipients will be exempt from the work requirements, including pregnant women, primary caregivers of a dependent, full-time students and the disabled, Miranda Brown, outreach coordinator at the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, argues that the changes will create barriers for many who would otherwise qualify and who have no other means of obtaining coverage. ���So many people who access Medicaid live in rural areas where jobs and training programs are scarce and public transportation is non-existent,��� says Brown.

Darrion Smith is a member of��Black Workers for Justice, a statewide organization of Black workers in North Carolina, as well as a regional Vice President of the��UE Local 150, the North Carolina public service workers union. Both organizations are active in the Moral Mondays movement, which has vocally resisted North Carolina���s refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Smith believes that North Carolina���s proposal to further restrict Medicaid is directly connected to the GOP���s recently passed tax bill.

���This is an attack on poor people and working-class people. It���s a way to cut back spending on the American people in order to pay for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy,��� says Smith. ���Look at the changes they made to TANF [Temporary Assistance for��Needy Families] when they started requiring people to show income. Studies showed it did not increase hourly wages. It did not make employment any more possible.���

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities��has reported��that adding work requirements to cash assistance programs such as TANF has had the effect of moving people off of benefits without providing other long-term, stable income, leaving a ���substantial share of families worse off.���

Bill Higgins, an advocate with Homeless Voices for Justice in Maine, points to the impact of work requirements on the SNAP food assistance program in the state, which led to more than��9,000��people��losing benefits��when the requirements went into effect in 2015. While rates of food insecurity are falling in most states, in Maine those rates��are rising, and currently sit higher than the national average.

���People will absolutely lose their benefits,��� Higgins says of the new Medicaid requirements. He argues that people experiencing homelessness need housing and healthcare in order to obtain a job. ���Getting people into a home need to be��a first��step. There are barriers to employment just from being homeless. Taking away a benefit that helps them stay healthy is not going to help people get out of homelessness.���

Homeless Voices for Justice has rallied against other proposed changes to Medicaid in Maine, including mandatory premiums and co-pays. Higgins says the organization is committed to fighting the new work requirements as well.

Many supporters of these new work requirements, including Kentucky���s Republican Governor Matt Bevin, admit that such changes will result in people losing benefits. Bevin���s administration estimates that nearly��100,000 people��will lose access to Medicaid in the five years after the requirement goes into effect. This willingness to throw people off of coverage demonstrates that supporters of the work requirement are more interested in gutting Medicaid than in increasing either employment or healthcare access.

The Trump administration, for its part, appears willing to ignore studies showing that individuals thrown off of Medicaid will have no other access to care, and as a result could face serious illness and premature death. After pushing through a tax bill that will throw 13 million Americans off of healthcare, these new changes to Medicaid are further proof that the administration is willing to pursue an agenda of��tax cuts for the rich while low-income Americans are forced to pay the price.

The Dow Jones had a terrible day. Will Trump take credit?

(Credit: Getty/Mandel Ngan/Shutterstock/Salon)

On Friday evening, the��Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with 2.5 percentage decline����� 666 points, its steepest percentage downfall since June 2016, and greatest point collapse since the 2008 financial crisis, as��CNN noted.

Friday���s��Dow drop��tells a different economic story than��the��Bureau��of Labor Statistics’ jobs report that was also released Friday. That report��showed that the economy added 200,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate was also reported to��hold steady at 4.1 percent���the lowest since 2000. According to the report, average hourly wages were 2.9 percent higher than a year ago, too.

Yet, as CNN pointed out, the��Dow��is still just 3.9 percent below its record high of��26,616.71, which was achieved just last week on January 26.

Following the jobs report this morning, Donald Trump took to Twitter to boast about the thriving economy, and take credit for it, suggesting��that it was��a result of the tax cuts.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s...

Trump boasted about the economy earlier this week during his State of the Union address.

���Small business confidence is at an all-time high. The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value. That is great news for Americans’ 401k, retirement, pension, and college savings accounts,��� Trump said.

The��Dow’s fall today could signal early signs of a bubble bursting, though. Indeed, Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the long-term outlook for the economy might not be great.

“There are two bubbles: We have a stock market bubble, and we have a bond market bubble,��� he said. “We are dealing with a fiscally unstable long-term outlook in which inflation will take hold.���

In a separate interview, Greenspan called the tax plan a mistake.

“Economically, it’s a mistake to deal with sharp reductions in taxes now,��� he said.

Meanwhile, some on Twitter are speculating the crash is a result of the GOP-Nunes memo, and others are wondering if Trump will take credit for this too.

Will #Trump blame today's 666 point drop in the #Dow on #Clinton or #Obama?

— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) February 2, 2018

Dow drops 666 points and posts its worst week in over two years… you know @realDonaldTrump hates seeing this today and it���s 100% his fault when he decided to attack the credibility of the FBI this morning.

— Seph Lawless (@seph_lawless) February 2, 2018

Will #Trump take credit for this?: ���Dow plummets 666 points, capping worst week in 2 years��� https://t.co/obbTGDbz0d

— Maya Wiley (@mayawiley) February 2, 2018