Because of my grandparent’s interest, when I was a child,  my parents took me to visit the Workmen’s Circle Camp in Ashland, Massachusetts a few times.  (I didn’t even remember it was in Ashland until some relatives just reminded me where it was.)

I have done a little web research and have come up with a few items. Does any reader have anything else to add?

Ashland Historical Society – Workmen’s Circle

I say the Workmen’s Circle’s past is complex because until 1979, there was not a lot of documentation available from a single source until Gordon E. Hopper who wrote “Hopper on History” from the Milford Daily News researched the area extensively and published a series of articles for the News in 1979. Working with people with first hand knowledge of the area, the Ashland Historical Society, and others, Hopper compiled a 41 page summary of the events of the area from 1720 to 1979. It is not my intention to go into every detail of Hopper’s research due to the vastness of space required, so I will attempt the Reader’s Digest version.

Guide to the Records of Boston Workmen’s Circle-Brookline, Mass., undated, 1927-1999

In 1927, the Boston District bought land in Ashland, Massachusetts, where it established the Golden Ring camp. In 1957, the Ashland camp was destroyed in a fire and moved to Pembroke, Massachusetts. This camp was modeled on New York’s summer camp and resort in Hopewell Junction, New York.

American Jewish Historical Society Center for Jewish History

Boston Workmen’s Circle

“The Workmen’s Circle is my Jewish community because it allows me to express all the different aspects of my Jewish identity in one place. It’s where I act for change while being part of a larger, inter-generational community.”

Robert Reich’s article Trigger Happy: Why Deficit Cuts Should Be Triggered Only When Unemployment Reaches 5 Percent introduces the idea of deficit cuts only when the unemployment level drops sufficiently.

The President (remember him?) is still hawking his $450 billion jobs bill, but he’s having a hard time being heard above the deficit-reduction din — in large part because he himself is simultaneously calling for deficit reduction, and most people outside Washington can’t make sense of how we do both.

The public is confused because they don’t get it’s a matter of sequencing. We need to do more spending now in order to bring back jobs and growth, then do less spending in the future — after the economy is once again generating jobs and growth.

That’s why it make more sense for Democrats to propose a deficit reduction plan that goes into effect only when jobs are back. The trigger should be the rate of unemployment — and a 5 percent rate would signal we’re back on track.

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So the best of all worlds is to have a big jobs plan now, and also commit to automatic cuts triggered when unemployment falls to 5 percent.

Can anyone imagine such an insane idea as to have economic policy response tied to actual economic conditions?  (Warning:  The previous comment is meant to be sarcastic.)

Here is Aaron Task in Taken to Task: A Poverty of News, an Embarrassment of Media.

I get that poverty is a depressing topic and a change to how it’s measured is a complicated story to tell. But I’ve never had a viewer tell me they want LESS depth or more ‘infotainment.’

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Bashing the press is great fun. But the fault, dear Brutus, is not entirely in our media stars or their corporate overlords.

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In these difficult times, and especially on Veterans Day, it’s important for all of us to be aware of the messages we’re sending to the media in the stories we watch, share, favorite and Tweet about.

Those among us — journalists and civilians alike — who ignore the hard realities of American life and get lost in what should be the minor distractions. You’ve been taken to task.

According to the Truth Out article Former Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor: “A Pair of Testicles Fell Off the President After Election Day”.

“There’s a pair of testicles somewhere between the Capital Building and the White House that fell off the president after Election Day [2008],” said Davis, an Air Force colonel who spent two years as the chief prosecutor of Guantanamo military commissions, during an interview at his Washington, DC, office over the summer and in email correspondence over the past several months. “He got his butt kicked. Not just with Guantanamo but with national security in general. I’m sure there are a few areas here and there where there have been ‘change,’ but to me it seems like a third Bush term when it comes to national security.”

Even some friends of Dick Cheney can see what is going on:

In January 2009, Susan Crawford, the retired judge and a close confidant of Dick Cheney, who, until last year, was the convening authority for military commissions at Guantanamo, said al-Qahtani’s interrogation met the legal definition of torture and, as a result, she would not allow a war crimes tribunal against him to proceed.

After attending Elizabeth Warren’s volunteer convocation yesterday in Worcester, I suspect that perhaps she has found the missing items.

This interview IAEA Iran Report Spins Intelligence comes from The Real News.  The report is pretty devastating in my opinion.  You have to wait till near the end of the interview to hear the source of this latest “intelligence”.

Why is the Obama administration playing into the hands of the war mongering Republican presidential candidates by promoting this hogwash? Has Hilary Clinton got something incriminating on Obama, or is he really like his bellicose foreign policy?

The article Do Iran’s Objections to the IAEA Report Deserve Consideration? adds further details to what is in the above interview.

The quote below is just one of the added details.

…just how far-fetched are Iran’s claims that the IAEA Directorate General is politically compromised?

…as evidenced in this 2009 diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, the U.S. had secured the support of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in its campaign against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program as a quid-pro-quo for American support of his candidacy in the wake of Egyptian Nobel Laureate Mohammad El-Baradei’s resignation.

In his post “Fictitious” Wealth and Ludwig von Mises, Brad DeLong tries to untangle where the Austrian Economist Ludwig von Mises goes wrong.

I have picked out the paragraphs below in the hope of conveying an inkling of DeLong’s argument.

The problem, I think Ludwig von Mises would say, is that a certain amount of work has gone into creating the commodities–the food, the clothing, the houses, the little gold disks–and yet people think that there is more wealth in society than their actually is. People count the food as wealth, the housing as wealth, the clothing as wealth, the little gold disks as wealth, the fiat money as wealth, and the bank credit as wealth–and the last two of these aren’t wealth at all. They are fictions: false promises that there is somewhere some valuable gold that you have title to.

And, Ludwig von Mises would say, the larger the unbacked circulating medium the bigger the lie and the theft. And it is all guaranteed to end in tears, because if society thinks that it is richer than it is then plans will be inconsistent and unattainable. When that unattainability becomes manifest, that will trigger the crash and the depression.

That is, I think, where he is coming from.

And, of course, this is wrong–so so so so so so so so so unbelievably wrong. It is simply not the case that we can cheaply and easily buy things with money because it is valuable. It is, instead, the case that money is valuable because we can cheaply and easily buy things with it.

If we could only get Ron Paul to understand this, maybe Ron Paul would stop spewing his economic misinformation with such an air of authority.

The Raw Story article Targeted by Rove, Warren doubles down on ‘Occupy Wall St.’ says,

Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren isn’t letting an attack ad by a Karl Rove group dampen her support for Occupy Wall Street.

Here is the video of the interview.

In my previous blog post Karl Rove Attacks Elizabeth Warren, I suggested how she might respond.

One tack I might take in response, is to repeat the parts of the attack ad that showed the agreement with Warren’s claim that “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do…” and the ending question “Intellectual foundation for what?” She could step in and say, “Well, I am so glad you asked. I did the basic research and wrote books and made speeches documenting how the ultra-rich rewrote the rules of economic activity over the last 30 years to create a radical redistribution of wealth to the top 1% of the wealthy. Armed with that knowledge, the Occupy movement is asking for their money back.”

She came close enough to my suggestion to satisfy me.

Here is Cenk Uygur’s reaction to Elizabeth Warren’s interview.

— The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better.

Food Safety News posted the article Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins.

The article starts with the following:

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.” The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

I was immediately disturbed by this opening. I have read many recommendations to eat local honey to build up your resistance to pollen allergies because the local honey has many of the pollens you are breathing in the local air. Eating the pollen in the honey builds resistance to the pollen you breathe.

I have never found that store bought honey ever did any good for my pollen allergies, and now I know why.

According to the article, your best bet for getting the real thing is to buy local honey direct from local bee keepers (although Trader Joe’s honey was tested and found to be the real thing.) Read the article.

The intro to the article Living Large: October’s Executive Compensation Highlights is:

Big send-offs at IBM and Gannett, a sweetheart jet deal at Clear Channel, and a penalty for talking at Icahn Enterprises headline October’s top executive compensation goodies. As she does every month, Footnoted.com editor Michelle Leder stopped by to discuss some of the choice nuggets buried in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In the accompanying video, we delve into the specifics.

These shenanigans are an example of what has Occupy Wall Street so peeved.